Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween and Samhain to you all! Tonight I will dress up as a witch, pass out candy from my plastic cauldron, and perhaps do some knitting in between. I live on a street full of kids, so I'm expecting quite a few to come by tonight. We'll see. I also have two pumpkins that need carving (I mainly just want the seeds out of there so I can roast them) before tonight, so guess what I'm going to work on once I get home!

Last night was dedicated to getting stuff ready for the camera club annual print show. I didn't have any pictures that just really stood out to me for the show this year, so I grabbed five that I thought were decent enough and took them over to DBF's mom to have her print them. I think I used all my good shots last year at the print show! I think this year I will have an impressionistic flower in abstract, a bridge in Cincinnati for Hand of Man Pictoral, either a sunset or a fall foliage seen for Natural Pictoral, a goose with goslings for Fauna and a weird yellow flower for Flora. I won't win anything more than likely. I really think my impressionistic flower may have a shot for abstract, but I'm sure that the other things are doomed in the categories they're in. We'll see. I'm to the point of not caring.

I did very little knitting last night on dad's cardigan and no knitting on DBF's sweater. Today is SnB at lunch though, so I should be able to finish DBF's front panel of the sweater. I just need to do some neck shaping and I should be done. Here's a craptapulous picture of the sweater in progress:

It doesn't show you much since my camera sucks, but look, progress has been made! Huzzah!

I wore my witch hat into work today and brought my cape. We have a budget crisis right now, so we didn't get a Halloween party this year. I decided to dress up anyways. Take that, budget crisis!

Knit on...

A Weekend of Magic

OK, so as any of you know who have read my blog for any length of time, I play Magic. I'm decent at Magic, but I'm not the best player in the state either. But you know, seeing a woman win the state title would have been pretty cool, so DBF and I headed to Louisville this weekend for the Type 2 Kentucky State Champs. Here's my report:

First off, I ended up going 2-3-1 for the day. I should have dropped after going 2-2-1, but I decided to play another round anyways and ended up playing against the exact same freaking deck the next round. So against U/W Sacred Mesa, I went 0-1-1. Not too good. First round, I have to play a basic solar flare deck. I enjoyed playing against this match up since I was playing Solar Pox. I poxed a few times, so that was good. Then a card that I never would have expected came out to play...Counterbalance. Now my deck runs huge casting things like Angel of Despair and Akroma, so I wasn't too worried about it. I already knew he had the angels too, but there's only 4 total of them in the deck (2 Despair, 2 Akroma). I go to play an Angel of Despair and he flips over this with his counterbalance:

Hm, seven casting cost angel, seven casting cost debtors' knell...OK, angel countered. Blah. I still won the match 2-0, so it didn't hurt me that bad. But of all the odds of him flipping that one over...

Second round I had my arse handed to me by R/G land destruction. Getting mana screwed against land destruction sucks majorly.

Third round I demolish U/G control. Akroma good, mmmkay? Always fun.

Fourth round, I have to play Clay, who top 8s in major tourneys all the time. He's a good player and I get screwed by this:

Yeah, I only have four basic lands in my deck out of 25 lands...not good. I scooped.

Fifth round I have to play Tony. He's playing U/W Mesa and we wind up in a third game draw. First game I poxed turn two and he couldn't recover. Second game, he removed my graveyard with Tormad's Crypt. Third game, it just would never end...

Sixth round, I play the same deck again and draw nothing but land. That sucked. So, I dropped out, knowing I couldn't top 8 with that record. DBF ended up going 3-3, so at least he was even. Turns out that a Magnivore deck won the whole shebang. That was definitely not what I expected.

Knitting? You mean you read through the entire Magic section and want to know what's going on knitting-wise? Yeah, DBF's sweater is 21 inches long now, needs to be about 25 I think. I should have the front panel done tonight and maybe the back panel (made it too short originally, so I have to add about 3 more inches to it). I hope to finish my dad's cardigan either tomorrow night or Wednesday and be working on the sleeves of DBF's sweater by tomorrow night after poker tonight. DBF's secret project has been put on hold for the moment until I get all the other Christmas projects done. I also got some merino roving in from ebay. I didn't expect to win the auction for the rovings, but I did, so I won't complain. 99 cents for 100 grams of roving isn't too bad, especially with it being merino :oP

I'll have knitting pictures tomorrow as well. I would post some today, but blogger seems to be done with allowing me to post pictures.

Knit on...

Of Dumplings and Poker

So yesterday I get an email through my inbox from one of the local SnBers saying they needed to get out for lunch. Seeing as I was sitting in my office, looking at the potato I was about to cook for lunch, I said sure, why not? We decided to go to a little hole in the wall Korean place that happened to also be right next door to my favorite LYS, ReBelle. They had about 13 different things you could order from Korean BBQ (not as appetizing looking as it usually is) to vegetarian noodles. I ended up going with the steamed pork dumplings.

Now I was slightly leery of the dumplings because DBF ate quite a few in China and they didn't like his stomach that well. I ate them anyways since I had never had steamed dumplings before and they looked rather good. I grabbed some 筷子 and proceeded to gorge myself on these dumplings. They were extemely good. Better than good. They were awesome.

Yeah, I avoided the kamchi (not sure if I spelled that correctly) like the plague.

As the hours progressed, I could feel my stomach digesting the food, but it was not getting upset with me for eating it either. I will have to go get more of these dumplings, but not until at least next week. I'm very broke until I get paid in a week. My last 45 bucks is going towards cardboard crack, aka Magic, this weekend.

I went to play poker last night, but I was only there for about 20 minutes. I'm in the blinds and no one raised, so I check to see the flop. I have 4 7 off suit. Glad no one raised. Anyways, the flop comes up 2 3 5. Well, holy hell, I'm open ended. Someone raises that crap, so I go all in seeing as I'm open ended. He flips over two pair. The guy is playing 2 3 suited...pre-flop...not in the blinds...what the hell...

I don't hit an A or a 6, so I picked up my knitting, called to Kim to say I was out (she looked rather surprised as did many of them) and ran over to my grandparents to pick up my mail, then went home and began to pull cards for a Magic deck that I felt was very important to test out tonight: Solar Pox. It won a major tournament here recently which means that lots of people are going to be playing it at States tomorrow. The question now is, can we beat it or should we join it? Tonight shall tell. I hope we can beat it, because I really don't have the money to try to throw that deck together (I need 3 watery grave, 3 godless shrine, 1 angel of despair and 1 flagstones of troikar to copy it card for card).

Knitting? Oh yeah, you may want to know about knitting. I'm still working on DBF's sweater. I've almost got the front panel done now, so it'll be on to the sleeves pretty soon. I'm very much wanting it to be done. I need a finished project now. It seems like it's been so long since I've finished something. I've got the back panel and the left front panel of my dad's Christmas cardigan done and I'm working on the right panel too, so it's getting there as well. That's out of super chunky yarn though, so it goes a lot faster than DBF's sweater is going at the moment. Oh well, they'll both be done eventually and then it'll be on to mom's cardigan. No clue what to do for Grandma in Florida, or Grandma and Grandpa. We'll see if any patterns come popping out. They all may get super chunky cardigans this year :oP

Have a great weekend everyone. Good luck in Magic states, but not too much luck if you're playing against me or DBF :oP

Knit on...

Spinning

So a few times yesterday when I told some coworkers that I was going to go spinning, they asked me if I had lost any weight. Confusedly I said yeah, I've lost about 6 pounds, why do you ask? Then they replied, well, you said you were going spinning tonight.

The red hairs finally lost their shade of blonde when I realized that they thought I was going to go work out at a gym and use one of their exercise bikes. I just smiled and walked away. Yeah, I don't do gyms that well.

Spinning on a spinning wheel however, I seem to be getting down. I put a down payment on my Christmas wheel last night. I'm getting the Ashford Traveller, double drive, laquered finish. I'm excited. It's just like the one I've been using, only newer. Last night I spun for about 2 hours and finished this:

Two bobbins worth of singles. They're a little slubbier than last time, but I chalk that up to being rushed at the store. Two hours is just not enough time to spin two bobbins and ply them like I would like to do. Maybe once I get more proficient at it, I'll be able to finish more. Anyways, those are my own two bobbins. I picked them up yesterday so that I didn't have to unwind the singles at the store and could ply them the next time I go and use the wheel. I won't be going next Wednesday because:

Poker! You guessed it. There's a free tournament where the grand prize is 100 bucks. Of course I have to go play in that one. I wish it were on any other night but Wednesday.

Now my attention has shifted to my Magic side for the rest of this week. The Kentucky State Champs are this weekend for Magic and I have to figure out what deck I'm going to play. I really hate to play Gruul Beats, but it may be my only chance at winning. I like my blue/white janky deck, but it's not consistent enough to win 70% of my games. I also like thallids right now. The deck really surprised me the other day. The question is, can it survive things like Solar Flare, Blue/Green mystic decks, blue/white decks, or Gruul? That's what playtesting is for. I'm going to make a few changes to it tonight and then work on a sideboard for the three decks I have built. I will probably try to tweak that blue/white deck some more too. I need mana acceleration for it. I have a feeling that Friday after work it's going to be major playtest time with DBF. We'll probably both end up playing Gruul even after working on all these new decks :oP

Knit on...

And play some Magic too...

Midterms

Yeah, I never thought I would say it again, but I have a midterm exam today. I knew there was something that I didn't miss about school at all. Now I'm in grad school and I have my first midterm. Blah. It's all essay and I have no clue what will be on it. We've had so many readings that it's mind-boggling, so I don't even know where to begin. I've got a ton of notes from class, so I've been studying those and looking at the readings. I even made notecards last night. I studied until about 10 last night and then went to bed. I woke up this morning and I don't remember crap about what I studied.

That's why tonight I will spin. I will do something that is mindless and meditative. I don't want to count rows, I don't want to read charts, I don't want to do anything like that. I just want to spin and pull out fiber from a mass of fibers. No think, just do.

Last week I got two bobbins done then plied them at home because I had to get out of the shop (the owner wanted to go home, imagine that). This week I will buy two bobbins of my own so that I can spin them and then ply the next week without having to take the yarn off the bobbins. I'm going to spin that same grayish yarn you saw last week. I bought a pound of it because I figured if I spin up a pound, you'll really be able to see progress throughout that pound of fiber.

Anyways, my mind is already numb and the test is still 3 hours away.

Gods help me...

Knit on...

The Show Must Go On

So now on to the shows we saw while in Pigeon Forge. The first show we went to was Country Tonite. It was all about popular country songs sung by their crew and a bunch of dancers.
The outside of the theater around 7:45 at night.

And some blurry dancers.

After Dollywood on Saturday, we went to the Great China Circus which was basically a bunch of Chinese acrobats doing their thing. I'm still fascinated how they can contort themselves that way.

They opened up with a traditional lion dance.

One of the acrobats balancing by biting down on this stick thing. I was impressed.

On Sunday we went to the Dinosaur Walk museum which was basically a bunch of life-sized dinosaur sculptures. Now I'm a fossil nut (DBF is laughing probably as he read that), so we had to go see the place.

This guy's head is over 6 feet long. It's Saurosuchus.

They also had a big old Megalodon jaw sitting in there. It's the largest shark to ever live for those who haven't heard of it. DBF stood there for scale.

After the dinosaur museum, we took a helicopter ride. I don't have any pictures of that because I was videotaping it and I'm terrified of heights, so it was all I could do to video the thing.

Last night I played poker (surprise...) and finished third or fourth, I forget. I knit some more on DBF's sweater. I'm almost done with the front panel now. Just have some sleeves to go. I should get done with the front while at SnB at lunch. We'll see if I'm that productive. On another knitting note, I went to see my grandparents last night to bring them their souveniers from the trip. I mentioned something about putting a spinning wheel on layaway over at Stone's Throw after the first of the year, and they informed me that my Christmas present will be a wheel. I was shocked. I'm going to get a wheel! Woot! Now where am I going to put it...

Knit on...

Dollywood

Yep, we even went to Dollywood for free on the trip! Here are the pictures:

DBf doing a fine job of holding the map there.

Thunderhead wooden roller coaster. We rode twice in a row and ended up buying a really cool picture from the ride photos. DBF looked awesome in it and I kinda look cool in it. Once it's scanned in, I'll post a picture. It was too funny.

Mr. Bald Eagle posing ever so patriotically for my camera. I wish I had my real camera and not just the crummy digital there with me. This is a picture I told DBF I wished I had the camera for, one of the only ones for the whole trip.

The Dollywood Express coal-fired train.

It's hard to tell, but yes, those are Christmas trees sitting behind the fountain. Why they have Christmas trees sitting out on OCTOBER 21 I have no earthly idea...

Up next: The Show Must Go On

Gatlinburg

OK, so here's the first batch of pictures. These are from Gatlinburg .

Me and Miss Dragon.

DBF and Miss Dragon.

One of many wedding chapels in Gatlinburg.

DBF trying to eat taffy through the window. Yeah, I should have aligned that one better...

DBF and I on top of the mountain courtesy of the Gatlinburg Skylift and a nice Indian man.

Up next: Dollywood

I'm baaaaacccckkkk...

I have returned from mine and DBF's little weekend gettaway. Before I get into the Pigeon Forge trip, I have to show you what that handspun yarn turned into that I posted about on Thursday morning. I cast the scarf on Thursday night and finished Friday morning before leaving for Pigeon Forge:
It's a scarf, but that picture doesn't show much about it aside from the subtle striping pattern of the yarn.

Here it is, in action. I made a big buttonhole about 10 inches up on one side of the scarf since I knew the yarn would only make a tiny scarf. You just stick one end through the buttonhole and cinch it up to wrap around your neck and keep you toasty warm. Here's the pattern I made up for this little scarf:

Buttonhole Scarf

Materials:

Approximately 70-100 grams of heavy worsted-bulky yarn. I used my first semi-slubby 2 ply handspun from a wheel.

Size 10US needles

Pattern:

Cast on 17 stitches using any cast-on method.

Row 1: K2P1 to end

Row 2: K3 (p2K1 until three stitches from end) K3

Repeat Rows 1 and 2 until piece measures 10 inches in length. Make a 6 sticth buttonhole using favorite method. Continue in pattern until piece measures 3 feet in length total (36 inches). Bind Off.

OK, on to Pigeon Forge. DBF won a free trip there from a radio station here in town. Seeing as I never win anything like that, I was amazed that he won. We headed out and made really good time until we hit Sevierville. Yeah, traffic...it was a nightmare the whole trip. Now I'm from Orlando originally, so I should know a little something about tourist traffic, but I have never, NEVER seen back-ups the way this place backs up. It will take you at least 45 minutes to go about 1 mile there. It was rediculous.

So we hit the Gatlinburg strip on Friday. I saw a dragon, so DBF had to get a picture of me with her. I would post the picture, but blogger seems to have had enough of my picture posting for the morning. So, I'll post more this afternoon and tomorrow about the trip and what all we did. It was a fun weekend even though it was rather tiring.

We spent most of the day on Friday going to Gatlinburg to look at the shops and stuff. We didn't buy much there on Friday because we had to make it to a show in the evening and after the massive amount of traffic, we had to rush to get to the show. We went to a show called Country Tonight and it was pretty good. It was mostly modern country songs sung by the show's people. One of the singers sounded just like Johnny Cash which was pretty neat. They even had an Elvis Impersonator! And you thought that was only in Vegas...

Speaking of Vegas...I never realized just how many wedding chapels were in Gatlinburg. There must have been at least 10 different ones that I saw there. I even have my picture out in front of one. I almost sent that to my parents to give them a heart attack :oP Nope, we didn't get married while there despite the easiness of apparently getting married there :oP If I'm going to get married at a Drive-Through chapel, it better be in Vegas. Personally, I was hoping for a Star Trek wedding.

On Saturday we went to Dollywood and rode all the rides and saw all the crafts people. I was a little dissappointed by the crafts there. I did see one spinner, but all she had was finished projects and I was hoping for yarn and such. Oh well. Saturday night we went to see the Great China Circus which was pretty cool. I'm amazed at how flexible they are. Sunday we went back to Gatlinburg and rode the skylift up the side of a mountain and looked around some. We then went to the Dinosaur Walk museum and looked around there for a little while. After that, we hopped on a helicopter and took a 2 minute aerial tour of the area. We then stopped for some fireworks (can't go to Tennessee without getting fireworks...) and headed home. We even made it in time to watch the Amazing Race.

That was the trip in a nutshell. I'll post pictures as soon as blogger lets me!

Knit on...

You spin me right 'round baby, right 'round

So last night I made the hike up to G-town to visit Stone's Throw Artisans. They are such nice people there. Anyways, I went in, asked for instruction on how to use the Traveller spinning wheel, bought a pound of white fiber with some blackish-gray streaks in it and began to spin. I spun two wonky singles (hey, it's my first time on a wheel, I'll get better) and then ran out of time for me to ply them together. I quickly wound the two singles into two balls and went home. Next time, I'm buying my own bobbins so that I can take them home and then ply them the next week instead of doing what I did last night.

Not wanting to leave the yarn unfinished, I came home and picked up Mr. Drop Spindle and proceeded to ply the singles together. It started out rough, but by the time I got mid-way, I started getting the hang of it. This would have been much easier had I left the singles on the bobbin and plied them at the store. Next time, next time...

So here is the end result:

Like I said, very wonky yarn. It'll do for a scarf though. I'll think of it as "novelty yarn". I started getting much better with my singles on the second bobbin, so hopefully I'll just get better and better each week that I go there. Time shall tell.

Spooky also had a strange fascination with watching me wind the yarn off the drop spindle. She kept running around and chasing the spindle as I whirled it around the upside-down table in the front room. She wasn't interested in the yarn, just the wooden spindle. I'm sure she thought it was a chew toy. She thinks everything in the house is a chew toy after all.

I shall be on vacation starting tomorrow, so no posts until Monday. Hopefully then I'll have lots of pictures and stories to tell. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Knit on...

Argh, stupid blogger

I had typed up this nice long post explaining everything that happened yesterday and then blogger ate it. In short, here's the main points:

1. I still have a job and should have one for a while
2. I played poker and sucked arse
3. I will be spinning tonight at Stones Throw on one of their wheels for rent
4. I want to be on vacation right now instead of Friday
5. Blogger sucks

I would post more, but I have to get my butt to work.

Knit on...

Of Beer Cheese and Knitting

So I watched it rain all day yesterday. I cursed as I left my umbrella at home while I ran out to the car at 4:30 in the afternoon in the pouring rain. I came home and let the bunny out to pee (she always seems thankful for this) and crashed on the couch, cold and wet. After some debating, I decided to go play poker at the free league last night. It's not as much fun without DBF there, but it was something to do and I think I needed to get out of the house. I of course took knitting with me:

DBF's sweater in the works with the same Aquafina bottle for scale. It's about 10 inches tall now. Only another 15 more to go! Of course then I have to go back and make the first panel longer and then the sleeves and seem..blah blah blah. It's coming along though.

I was the first person out at the first tournament. Stupid flush. I hit a Q high flush on the flop. Hard to lay that down when only two cards can beat you as of this point. Yep, the guy had the A high flush. Blah. I won the second tourney but was still kinda blah even though I won it. I think work has me down right now.

We have a section meeting today and it concerns me. We have been short on money for some time and I'm just afraid that cut backs will be necessary and that people will be involved in those cut backs (namely me). I know I'm paranoid about such things, but there is no job security when you work on grant money. Right now I would like something solid, something on hard money that is budgeted and that I will know I will have my job for a while. Blah.

Tonight I believe I will go play poker again. It's free and it gets me out of the house. Of course if the meeting does not go well, I may just stay home and pout. We'll see. At least I get Stitch and Bitch this morning before the meeting, so I will be happy going into it. I always enjoy seeing my friends at SnB on Tuesdays, even if most of them are skipping today because of midterms. Priorities, people! Sheesh!

Knit on...

Petting a Celebrity

OK, quirky title, I know. You see, DBF and I have this thing about petting different animals. So far I have pet a squirrel, an elk, a sheep, a rabbit, and countless other pets people have. DBF has tried to pet wild llamas and alpacas while at Machu Pichu in Peru. But our quest to pet wild animals met it's all time high on Friday night. We got to pet Hal Sparks!
Hal doesn't seem to know what to think about DBF petting his hair. Hal's very nice girlfriend was taking this picture and there's a series of them. One funny thing, watch my expression compared to theirs. I just kept smiling for the camera while they just chatted away:
Finally we all looked forward after I think Hal started squirming to get away from the two crazy people surrounding him:

So first, let me say that Hal Sparks is hysterical. He's a great stand-up comedian. DBF and I are still laughing at his routine three days later. I woke up the next morning with this Lord of the Rings-type song stuck in my head because of part of his routine. If you get the chance to see him do stand-up, GO! It's well worth whatever money he's charging. We debated on going on Friday because the tickets were almost 20 bucks a person and, well, we're poor. DBF just started his new job last week, so he hasn't gotten paid yet and I don't get paid until the end of this week. That's what credit cards are for, right?! We went and I'm very glad we did.

For those who don't know who Hal Sparks is, he's from Kentucky (really, as he said, why would he lie about that?), hosted Talk Soup for a while, starred in the show Queer as Folk, and has appeared on the VH1 I love the...series, and Celebrity Duets.

On knitting news, I finished the back panel of my dad's cardigan. I would show you a picture, but you know, bad blurry camera. I'll try to get a picture of it outside when I get home if it's not pouring down rain. DBF and I played Magic most of the weekend. We're trying to get our decks ready for States. I just don't know how to deal with weenie hoards right now aside from wrathing them away. Blah. Hopefully we'll figure out something. If not, then we'll be playing weenies.

Knit on...

Friday the 13th and WIPS

It's WIP it out Friday here at Magic Knits! I know you all can't wait to see the blurry pictures that my camera is so well known for. Well, without further ado, allow me to show you blurry WIP number one:
DBF's sweater with the lovely Aquafina bottle to give you an idea of the size. It's around 6 inches tall now. Here's a blurry close-up of the pattern stitch:

It's multiples of three rows garter stitch, four rows stockinette, and six rows garter stitch. You know, the sweater picture looks good on the model, but I'm just not sure how this is going to look on DBF. If he tries it on and hates it, I'll donate it to goodwill or see if someone else in the family wants it :oP Maybe once the whole thing gets put together it'll look a little better. It's the Cape Cod Pullover from Lionbrand.com.

Finally, last night, in the midst of all my coughing and hacking, I was inspired by the Yarn Harlot to do some spinning. Her scarf came out so well that I just had to pick up my ashford top whorl drop spindle and spin a nice thin single. It's hard to see, but I really spun pretty consistantly on this one so far:

And yes, you have been seeing my voodoo wrist warmers in the picture. It's still pretty cold. I know it's not Canada cold yet, but hell, it's still cold to me, this coming from the former Floridian.

I don't have a picture of it, but I started on my dad's cardigan for Christmas. I normally hate petro yarns, but this wool-ease thick and quick is actually working up rather nice, and well, quick. I just know since this is going to my dad that the thing has to be washable, and it has to be cheap because I don't want to hear him say he stuck a 200 dollar cardigan into the washer and it got destroyed. Maybe one day they'll get something nicer. Right now, as I'm working on DBF's sweater, I keep thinking that I wish I had made it out of alpaca. He would appreciate the alpaca since he visited Peru and even got a nice alpaca sweater while he was there. Maybe I'll find a pattern I like one of these days and make him one.

Anyways, I should get some work done. All the bosses are back from their meetings and I'm sure in typical Friday fashion, they will dump some stuff on me at 3 this afternoon, expecting it to be done by 5, knowing that I leave at 4. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Oh, and don't forget about it being Friday the 13th :oP

Knit on...

I thought I could avoid fate...

But it turns out that despite my massive office lysoling project that I have finally caught the dumb head cold that has been going around the building. Why do people come in sick? Does it make you feel better to pass the damn cold around? If you really feel the need to come into the office coughing and hacking, then please wear a mask and carry lysol wipes with you so that you can disenfect everything around you and anything you touch. Just because you feel that you need to save your sick time doesn't mean that I want to use mine...

Anyways, I am sitting here at work despite my own rant about people coming in sick. Reason being: I just turned in my time sheet and I don't want to go through the hassle of trying to change the formal time sheet. Did that last pay period after the bad tuna episode and it's not much fun. In fact, it's sort of like having to capture a dragon in DnD. It's just something you don't want to mess with unless you want to get burned.

I worked at the Earth Science Week open house that our office held last night. It stormed really good too, so there were very few people there last night at least. I was running the fossil dig for the kids and also running the trilobite mold booth where kids get to make their own cast trilobite off of an original fossil. Terribly exciting. I was stuck in a room with the paleo club and the snake and reptile lady. Kathy was upstairs showing people how we try to get rid of CO2, so I had to just tough it out. I did get some knitting done while waiting for everyone to show up.

When i got up this morning, the cold had attacked in two ways. First, I was stuffed up and hacking up a lung and secondly, it's freaking cold outside. What happened to almost 70F degree morning yesterday down to 35F this morning! I decided to wear jeans since I don't have any decently warm dress pants and all my long underwear is sitting over at my grandparents' house. I think I might need to get some of that tonight. I'm also wearing my Voodoo wrist warmers. They look nice and surprisingly keep my hand almost completely warm. I'm still wearing them in my office too because I'm freaking cold.

I'm going to go hack up a lung again. Maybe once the second one is up, I'll stop coughing.

Knit on...
::hack, cough, cough::

I Heart Peaches

Not the fruit, although I do greatly like a nice ripe peach. I mean the person I was chosen to assassinate in sock wars. I got a package in the mail this morning and upon squeezing it (I make this habit since every now and then people send me yarn) I felt like it contained a yarny goodness of some sort. I assumed it was the pair of socks she received from her target and that I would need to forward those on to Squirrel Girl, but lo and behold...
Sock yarn, point protectors and a lovely thank you card. Not just any old sock yarn either...it was Lana Grosa in a nice fall colors colorway. Gorgeous sock yarn! I loved the little point protectors too. They look like little yellow socks:

Once again, a lovely blurry picture from my crappy camera. Perhaps I will get a new one here soon. Mom has been asking me what I want for my birthday anyways...

I also went out yesterday and bought yarn for mom and dad's presents. I got Wool-Ease Thick and Quick to make a green and a maroon cardigan for each of them. Mom will get the green and dad will get the maroon. Hopefully I bought enough. If not, then back to Michael's I shall go. At least it is washable and it's not superwash merino that will be eventually destroyed.

The highlight of the evening yesterday was going to listen to DBF give a presentation about his year in China. He lived there for a year back in 01-02 teaching English in a little town in northeast China. He is also an excellent photographer, so he gave a wonderful talk. I'm not just saying that because I love him either, he really was good :oP We went to a Mexican restaurant before the presentation, thinking that the travel club met there before the meeting. Turns out they met at another restaurant that night, so DBF and I have a nice dinner at El Toro. Oh well. Seeing the presentation made me want to travel. I've never been out of the country. I've never even been to Canada or Mexico. I've only been to a few states: Florida, Colorado, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, and Georgia. As you can see, I've been mostly confined to the south. One random trip to Colorado as a teen got me semi-west. I want to go everywhere. Wish I could afford to go somewhere at least. Anyhoo...

I crashed early last night because I knew it would be a long day today. I'm working the open house here at work tonight because this week is national Earth Science Week. Go out and hug a geologist, will ya?! The focus this year is on being a citizen scientist and all the things you can do to study the earth on your own and also protect it. Kinda a cool theme, but since I'm a fossil person, I'm more worried about what happened in the past. I'm running the fossil dig pit tonight, so that should be fun. Yea, kids...

I brought my knitting with me in case it's slow. It's raining today and may rain all night too, so it could be a wash for some of the open house people. We'll see. I'll just go pet my sock yarn now...

Knit on...

Behold, A Knitting Post

Lo and behold, I do still knit! I even have a picture to prove it today! It's not all about Magic right now. I have to see if I get some cards off ebay first and then I'll be about Magic again :oP Here's how much I got done at poker last night: It's about 4-5 inches, so at least it's more than I had before.

So last night after mowing the lawn and brushing Spooky for about 30 minutes, I decided that I needed to start taking other things to knit on to poker. I grabbed DBF's sweater and headed out the door to go try and win a tournament. As I knit back and forth on the back panel of the cape cod pullover, I watched the crappy cards just go right on by me. Yep, crap, lots and lots of crap.

I finally decided to play crap and won a hand. I continued to knit.

Final table and I'm heads up against another chick. Hm, is KQ good when heads up? I decided that it was, so all in I go. She calls with QJ. I hit a King and I finish a row on the sweater. Only way that could have gone any better is if DBF was there last night. He started his new job last night and I'm just praying he gets something first shift. Good vibes and thoughts for him would be much appreciated right now.

So as I was sitting there with my two giant wooden dice that I won, I started thinking...what would happen if a knitter won the World Series of Poker? I think it would go something like this:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the final table at the World Series of Poker. Our final two players are Phil Helmouth and Knitting Magic Girl. This Knitting Magic Girl has taken the poker scene by storm. It seems players can't read her because, well, she knits the entire time!"

Phil Helmouth looks down to pocket Kings. "All in" he says.

Knitting Magic Girl looks down to Aces. "Call" she says as she works here K2P2 ribbing.

"Can you believe this? She's got him covered and it's almost all over. That's it, the knitter wins the tournament!"

Next year, you see a whole final table of men and women knitting garter stitch scarves, sitting in silence, making sure they don't drop a stitch. The clicking of needles is all you hear and the TV series is cancelled because people get annoyed with the clicking :oP

So the weekend...

Um, could someone please explain to me where the weekend went? I woke up this morning thinking that a three day weekend would be very nice right now. Oh well, at least some stuff got done this weekend.

On Saturday, DBF and I sorted cards. I was originally going to have to babysit for my thesis advisor, but we got a call about 15 minutes before we were going to have to leave saying that she was sick and that they were going to cancel their plans. Drat to the loss of money, but hooray to a free evening! So DBF and I thought for a while about what to do that evening and then it dawned on me that I had seen an advertisment saying that Alonzo Bodden, the winner of the 3rd season of Last Comic Standing, was going to be at the local comedy club. So on a whim, we drove out there to see if we could get tickets. We did!

So DBF and I went to Tony Roma's to gorge ourselves on ribs. After dinner we waddled over to the club and sat with over 100 other people, probably closer to 200, and waited for him to come out. The opening act was pretty meh, but the featured act was good. His name was John Evans and he was very funny. Go out and buy a CD from him. He's from LA I believe. Alonzo then came out and did this hysterical routine about midgets that either was so damn funny I kept laughing or I was just feeling the three glasses of wine. I'll go with both.

He signed our tickets at the end of the night, so DBF and I were quite happy with that. We might go buy his DVD called Tall, Dark, and Funny. We would have bought it there, but we were short 2 bucks. Stupid expensive drinks! Oh well.

Sunday we continued to sort cards and each built new decks. We have to do some major practising before the State Champs for T2 coming up in 3 weeks. I built a blue/white control deck that I think really does have quite a bit of potential. However, my mana base seems to be off. I keep getting mana screwed, so something needs to be done there. That and I've got to find a way to get rid of weenie hords aside from Wrath of God.

The best card so far in playtesting though that really surprised me? Draining Whelk.

On the knitting front, I have been working on DBF's sweater this weekend. I really need to get that done so I can start working on other Christmas presents. I need to go buy yarn for mom and dad's stuff. I think I've got enough for everything else. At least I can get cheap yarn for them. They won't hand wash anything, so I won't get them anything that would really hurt my feelings if it got destroyed in the washer.

DBf starts his new job today. I'm glad he was able to get a new job, but I wish that it didn't have to be second shift. Hopefully he'll get a better offer here soon.

Pictures of knitting tomorrow, I promise!

Knit on...

Dear Akroma, Angel of Wrath

Why did you hate me so much when Legions came out? I opened up several boxes of Legions and I never even once saw your face. DBF almost traded to get one of you for me because I think I complained enough about not seeing you, but the card up for grabs was pretty beat up, so no Akroma for me. I am still picky when it comes to cards.

I just wanted to say thank you for showing your purple haired face last evening for the first time. You even graced me in a shiny form, and for that I am grateful. Now if you could please send me some dragonstorms, gemstone mines, arenas, and maybe even a shiny whirling dirbish, I would greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Knitting Magic Girl


OK, so I opened cards last night. Are you all surprised? You shouldn't be. I opened two of the three boxes and even a fat pack, so I've got one more to open and savor before the great card sorting begins.

Knitting? You mean you want to hear about knitting? I finished the sock I have been working on last night. My camera died this morning and I didn't have time to go get batteries, so you'll have to settle for pictures on Monday, sorry. Yesterday was about Magic, so knitting had to be put aside until poker.

Knit on...

I came, I saw, I cleaned

That's what I did last night. I cleaned the house. Terribly exciting I know, but it needed to be done. I dried the last load of clothes, I scrubbed the kitchen floor, cleaned off the table, organized the mail for the house owners, picked up some trash in the front room, cleaned up the bedroom, and even did the dishes. I was tired at the end of the night and ended up crashing at 10. It's later than I have been staying up the past few nights at least and I don't feel as tired this morning. I should have taken before and after photos of the cleaning, but I didn't.

I will throw a token knitting picture at you at least today.

Behold, the blurry sock! I didn't work on this yesterday, but I did work on the second panel of DBF's sweater and a little on his pair of socks. Both of these are at home this morning and I didn't feel like taking pictures of them, so I grabbed the sock that was in my purse and took a picture of it at work. There you go, proof that I do actually knit some. I'm trying to get everything organized for Christmas presents. Too many people to knit for.

Today the cardboard crack, AKA Time Spiral for Magic: the Gathering comes out. DBF is picking up the cards at 10ish today, so I'm salivating at opening this new set. I really liked what I saw at the pre-release and can't wait to see the rest. So, I'm actually going to talk about Magic for a minute here. Knitters, you can tune out if you don't like this part. No more knitting news for today unless the ball of sock yarn starts singing to me like it did over at the Panopticon.

So Solar Flare seems to be a huge deck type right now. It Wraths away everything early game so that you can set up the board in your favor with cards like Adarkar Valkyrie, Angel of Despair, and Kokushu. However, the legend lands and Kokushu rotate out at the end of this month. So what will replace that? Akroma maybe? I think we're about to see an Akroma overdose now. That and Psionic Blast. A blue Char seems pretty darned good in this format right now. Hm...blue red maybe?

The reason I wonder this is because the Kentucky State Championship is coming up at the end of this month. It's a T2, so I have to come up with my own deck. I haven't been too good at this lately (Niv-Mizzet, I'm sorry, I really tried to make that deck work!) and have been net-decking for tournaments such as at Origins. Problem is that this will be the first tournament that Champions block will be gone and Time Spiral will be legal. Whatever shall a Magic player do? I guess DBF and I better get to studying and playing some. Maybe this weekend once the cards are all opened.

Anyhoo, that's it for today. Knitting and Magic in one post! Ta-da!

Knit on...

And open up some Time Spiral :oP

Repeat After Me

"I do not have to buy yarn every time I go into a yarn store."

Yet I do. I have to stop that because we're now meeting at said store once a week for the Tuesday afternoon SNB. Blah. On the bright side, it was on sale!

What did I buy? Trekking XXL sock yarn for DBF's new pair of socks since I still haven't brought myself to rip out the other one yet. It's in this colorway:

It's nice and soft and very typical of the trekking line. I like it, so hopefully he'll like it when it gets done.

I went out really quick at poker last night. Barely even had any time to knit on the slipper sock. Oh well.

I have to go work on my presentation for class now. I just got an email from my advisor and once again I have to change a few things...

Knit on...

Curves Update and ::snore::

So I went to Curves after work yesterday and weighed in for my official weigh in time. I'm down another 2 pounds now! That makes six so far and a ton more to go, but at least it's 6 so far. I'm pretty happy with that needless to say.

I came home after working out and had a nice dinner of glazed salmon with DBF. It was pretty good salmon too and I certainly can't beat the company I had with it. After dinner he left for poker and I left for my Curves class. Only 3 more weeks and I can go back to poker on Mondays!

Anyone out there been on Curves or tried their protein shake? We got a two week supply of the shake when we first started up the class, but I ran out (two weeks later, imagine that...) and bought another container of it last night. 20 freaking dollars! So here's my question: Has anyone found a good shake substitute? It's loaded with vitamins, minerals, and of course protein. Should I mosey on down to GNC one day and take my little jug with me and see if I can find something? I like the taste of it, but I can't afford 40 bucks a month for just a protein shake! Any suggestions would be most welcomed.

So after my weight loss class last night (we learned about phase 3, but I feel I am a long way from getting on phase 3), I came home and washed the dishes and packed lunch for today. Now this would normally be a time where I could knit for a while before going to sleep. Did I knit? Nope. Did I sleep? Oh hell yeah.

I went to bed at 9:15ish last night. I have been going to bed between 10-11 most nights, so no telling why I was so sleepy last night. I guess maybe it was staying up past midnight the night before. Oh well.

I'll knit today, I swear. SNB meets at lunch, so I'll pop over there and force myself to finish a pair of socks.

Knit on...

Hiking, a Movie, and Another Motif

This weekend DBF and I drove up to Natural Bridge to hike around and actually get up on the bridge. You can click here for a virtual tour of the formation. It was pretty cool. It fascinated me how the thing formed and just how big it was. Now I know it's nothing like the Grand Canyon or anything, but it is pretty darn cool.

I also did not pass out, which was a good thing. I get really bad vertigo when it comes to heights. I was just happy I could stand to look anywhere but straight down at my feet.

Yesterday we went to go see Jet Li's Fearless. It was pretty good. I'm a big fan of the Chinese martial arts films and this one ranked up there as a pretty good one. I think I liked Hero better from Jet Li, but it was still good.

Not much knitting got done this weekend. I did get one more motif done on the secret project for DBF. It's looking really good now. I need to finish up his sweater too so that I can start working on other sweaters for Christmas presents. I can't believe it's October already. I guess I better get to knitting.

So, I freak out last night after DBF leaves because I completely and totally forgot about the changes I needed to make to my presentation that was due today. I stayed up last night and fixed the thing and then come in to work this morning and lo and behold, the dumb thing got postponed until Wednesday. Figures...

Knit on...