Hear me roar!

I have this fantastic car that is now 12 years old and still runs like a dream. But it is starting to show wear and tear. Most noticeably, the side mirrors were cracked/missing. So I bought some replacement parts on eBay and -- I'm so cool!!!



Seriously. Someone bring me a Bud while I scratch my butt.

I'd talk about the cat, but...

At the yarn store on Saturday, Lee said she never sees a knitter's blog which doesn't have pictures of a cat or two on it.

Is there something to that, I wonder? Do knitters HAVE to have cats? Surely there must be some knitters who don't have cats, but maybe none of them blog.

I love Erte tremendously. The Father of Art Deco does such wonderful things with lines and colors, half-fantasy, half The Cruel Shoes. I have a scarf with his print of a knitter on it, and, you'll notice:



Yup, there's a cat.


Also, I got my cat and a took up knitting within a short time of each other. The worm. The spice. Is there a relationship?

I went to ask Musetta what she thought, and it turns out she did give me an answer in her own way.


It's not just that many knitters may have cats, but that cats become a part of knitting. They love the yarn, they invite knitters to make ridiculous things for them to destroy. They're so warm, and and they're so fun to stroke and cuddle -- yarn and cats both. What are you looking at?

Of course, knitting and cats are both a way to snuggle into one's home, great enhancements to one's domesticity. They are sources of tactile delight as well as demands upon one's care and attention. They can both be incredibly pissy, and they both tend to react poorly to water. Maybe cats were God's first knitting project.

Speaking of, my own blue yarn project is coming along nicely.


I'd really like to get this one to the wearing stage as quickly as possible. The lattice design took a little getting used to, but now that I've mastered the knitting/purling motion while keeping the cable needle in my left hand, it zips along pretty well. I think I've got another three or so inches to the back (I always make the first piece the back piece, for obvious reasons), then I can start the front.

So...I thought I'd teach my mom to knit

Mom's pretty handy with handicrafts. She does needlepoint and cross stitch and she's hooked a rug and chrocheted, etc. So when I got into knitting a while ago, Mom thought it looked like fun. I got her some yarn and needles, and she started on a sweater (she decided to skip the scarf stage).

When the sweater turned out to be a pain, she started on a pair of socks...then a tank top in ribbon yarn. Then...well...


Mom has decided it's just not her thing. However, she bought that yarn, and since I, er, encouraged her so much, she's now returned everything tain -- uh, touched by her knitting experiment to me in the mail.

I'm doing the ribbon tank top first.

I feel so smug -- don't spoil it

Diana, owner of Garden District Needlework, pulled out a skein of Noro Kureyon a couple weeks ago and told me to work up a Christmas stocking pattern for it. (Well, she asked/told me, if you get me.) I decided that this challenge was really about making the EASIEST Christmas stocking pattern, and therefore, was much knitting and purling and frogging and gnashing of tongues and eating of orangutans, until I came out with what I'm fairly certain is the easiest way to produce a stocking (not one you could really wear, but good enough for hanging on the fireplace). And there was much rejoicing.

What do you think?

I think I will keep him and love him and name him George.

Er, actually, I think I'll name it the "In a Twinkle Christmas Stocking" and put the pattern up in the store. (If anyone reading this wants a copy of the pattern just say so.)

Now, I know for a fact someone else has come up with this simple slip-short-row pattern, but I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT. Thanks right. I'm feeling all smug and proud that I invented something, so I don't want to know about the 1,000,000,000,000 knitters who have come before me and figured it out already.

I celebrated my triumph over the stocking by starting up a new project. Can you guess what it is?

A little zen to start off the rest of the day

If you understand, things are just as they are; if
you do not understand, things are just as they   
are.                                             

- Zen proverb

The First Thing I Did this Morning

...after coffee, anyway.

I spend way too much time just goofing off on the Net, and one of my favorite waste-times is Fark.com. So there's a link to a story about a fat hedgehog, and someone starts fooling with the fat hedgehog's picture, like it's a Photoshop challenge, and suddenly I'm doing one too.

I can't remember my last date. Coincidence? I think not.

Tea at Windsor Court

Most people visiting New Orleans know all about Bourbon Street and the music and Commander's Palace, and all that. But one of my favorite things to do when I have guests (as I did for about a week) is to take them to tea at Windsor Court, New Orleans' five-star hotel.


My guests were my mom (on the right) and mom's friend Pat (on the left), who was a total hoot. They were both total sweeties, and they treated me to breakfast at Brennan's and lunch at Commander's in addition to the tea, so I made out like a bandit.

First, if you get the Royal Tea, the waitress offers you a choice of bubbly wine, chardonnay, or sherry. Then you get to pick a tea from the selection, which includes Darjeeling and jasmine and (my current favorite, even though I usually hate fruit-flavored teas) peach-mango. Then you get crustless sandwiches, scones, and then sweets. At first, you look at those little sandwiches and scoff, "Oh, this is hardly any food!" But, inevitably, by the time the sweets come around, you're all full and holding your belly. I don't know if it's how rich the food is, or all that tea, but very few people leave without a doggy bag.

I was sad to see them go, but now I'm absolutely buried in work I should have been doing. Bad Julia. No more treats for a while.

DONE AT LAST!

Seriously, between the scarf and my basic laziness, I thought these would never be done!

They look pretty good, and they feel great, but, actually, despite careful measuring on my part (by which I mean eyeballing it a couple times), they're not as long as I wanted them to be. I'm thinking about maybe picking up the stitches at the top and doing a couple more inches.

Hm.

Speaking of the scarf...I'm happy to report that it got there on time and passed muster. My younger neice, Isabel, looks about as much like Dawn Pokemon as a 3D figure can.




































Meanwhile, my older niece, Jenna, was a fabulous witch.