Christmas in July

I forgot to tell you. I got new shoes yesterday, and they are super cute! My pictures may not be the best, but I'm really happy with them. Some of the people that I used to work with had given me a gift certificate for Macy's. There were 4 of them, and they got me a $50 card. I had been planning on just using the card to get face care stuff, but when my old shoes gave out I came up with a new plan.

As soon as I saw this pair of shoes I fell in love with them. These shoes only cost me $4.11 from my checking account, which is freaking awesome! They are Sketchers, just like the last several pairs of sneakers I've shelled out money for. (These are by far the cheapest.) I continue to be happy with how comfortable and cute Sketchers shoes have been for me.

I Knit Socks

I like knitting socks. I have no where near what could be called too many socks, so knitting socks is both fun and practical. There's also the fact that I'm decent at knitting socks. Although it seems that lately I've had issues with them coming out a hair large, of course those haven't been washed yet and may have a bit of shrinkage when they do get laundered.

I also like to knit bags, but I do have entirely too many bags. So I mostly work to knit bags for other people now. Hats are fun, but there's only so many days in a year in which to wear a hat in Texas. I suppose I could knit enough that I could wear them once and then donate them to someone less fortunate, but I don't know that I like knitting hats that much.

I've tried to knit other types of clothing and I'm not having the best of luck. I knit a tank top that looking back on was not a good material, possibly had a bad pattern, and definitely lacked in the execution department. I've torn it apart, and rescued what I could of the yarn. If I'd come to terms with its suckage before I did a border on it and wove in all my ends (in the ghetto way I do) then I may have been able to save more of the yarn, but I don't care. I'm just glad that it isn't in my closet mocking me anymore.

I'm currently supposed to be knitting a cardigan type thing. It's going to be beautiful (maybe) and soft (oh yeah) if I ever get it done. Thing is I cheesed out on a yarn join when I ran out of the first ball. I told myself that it would work out okay, and then I told myself that I could fix it so it looked less like shit. I was wrong on both counts. The blue bastard is currently sitting on my washer waiting for me to get up the nerve to unravel almost a ball's worth of knitting to get back to that join and start afresh. *cry* I don't want to do it. It's one of those things. You tell yourself that you like knitting, and that redoing it is just more knitting, but I don't like screwed up knitting and I hate admitting defeat.

Still, I have knat socks. I completed my green pair of socks that were made with TOFUtsies yarn. It's 50% Superwash wool, 25% Soysilk, 22.5% Cotton, and 2.5% Chitin (from shrimp and crap shells). I decided that I don't like knitting socks out of a single color, because I get bored, but at least I picked a simple pattern so they were finished in a reasonable amount of time. This yarn feels a bit like linen during knitting, and the strandedness of it reminded me of the linen also. I haven't washed or worn the socks yet, but when I slipped them on for taking pictures they felt pretty good. I did a stockinette foot, and a 3X2 rib leg with a 1X1 twisted rib cuff. They were knit toe up on two US 1 circulars.

I'm currently in the process of knitting another pair (knitting both socks at the same time, instead of one after another). I'm up to the heels on these, and I'm not sure I like the color. I'd try gifting them to my sister, but they're pretty damn pink and she's told me repeatedly this year that she hates pink. Maybe when they're all done and I see them on I'll change my mind, but keep up your eyes open. If I still don't think they're for me then they may be up for free grabs. Here's a peek at what the foot(s) of this new pair look like. PINK!!!

Zombie Kitteh

Oh I do love the lolcats. I am helpless against them.

It's Almost Over I Swear

The latest installment of my vacation tale has been posted here. I also added a link to the right for the entire Flickr album of our vacation.

4th of July Post

I just updated my vacation log with the 4th of July stuff. If you're curious then you can go check it out. I think there's some nice pictures. However you can always wait until I've finished compiling the pictures into an album on Flickr.

A Wizard Did It

Just to allay any concerns you might have, I won't be posting any details found within the latest Harry Potter book The Deathly Hallows. So don't worry if you haven't read it, you won't find spoilers here, but be careful on the rest of the internet.

Last night Jeff and I went to Borders to get our copies of the book. I'm supposed to be at work today before the bookstores start opening, so we figured what the heck. Man, that was a long wait. They had all the people that had pre-ordered the book or not getting colored wristbands, and then let each section of each color group get in line as they were called. After waiting about 20 minutes I was almost ready to bail on the idea, but I went to go look for the Yarn Harlot's latest book and ran into Erin. Erin and Ian were both at the store too!

This made the night go by much more pleasantly. We had a lot of fun looking through the presidential doodles book (we were camped out in the history section). We also chatted about Harry Potter a bit, and Jeff warned everyone that Wikipedia is not safe for the time being, there are spoilers waiting to jump out at every corner. The people watching was superb. It's really a shame that I didn't bring a camera. There was a girl that was dressed up with a carrot hat, 1 good stab at Luna Lovegood and a bunch a twats with non-matching shoes, tons of cute little tiny Harry Potters (like age 5 and under), one family with 3 kids had dressed the youngest (2ish I'd guess) like a house elf, some old guy in his finest gold SCA outfit, a chick dressed as a quidditch player that had the coolest boots, and more fake wands than you could shake anything at.

Finally around 2:30 in the morning all 4 of us had our new books (at 40% off - $20.99 +tax) and a poster (that I haven't looked at yet) and we headed to our respective homes. I forced myself not to read a single sentence of the book last night, because I wanted to get to sleep as early as I could. I'd taken a small nap before we went to the store, but not enough to get me through a work day. Speaking of which, I need to wrap this up so that I can get to work. The last thing I want to post is an excerpt from the ad for the BookPeople event (that we didn't go to, because we didn't get a voucher in advance so we weren't getting a copy of the book there).

This is from the Calender section of the Onion:
"Harry Potter dies, okay? Now that that's out of the way, maybe you can get on with your life. Better yet, spend one last evening talking children's literature with other people who should know better at this fete for the final chapter in J.K.Rowling's boy wizard saga. To help bide the time before the midnight sale of Harry Potter And The Inevitably Disappointing Conclusion, BookPeople is constructing its own "Diagon Alley"..."

Rain Rain Go Away

Jeff and I had an exciting moment during the drive to work this morning. ... Okay, let me back up because I'm getting side tracked by my own brain. I have to make sure and complain about how people in Austin drive in the rain. They are not the best drivers in any type of weather, but everything really goes to crap when it rains. It's like they are actually scared of rain itself, not the effect it has on driving conditions, but more that they have a terror of these strange wet blops that fall from the sky as if their god was weeping and who knows what that could mean??? If you happen to read this and haven't been to Austin, you should know that this is not some sort of desert climate that rarely gets rain. Austin gets rain, lots of rain, not Seattle type rain or anything, but enough that it really shouldn't terrify people anymore.

The end result is that we were cruising quite slowly on the freeway, because there was rain, and we've discussed rain in Austin. For once I'm glad that everyone practically comes to a stand still when it rains. In mid-stroke the driver side windshield wiper just flipped upside down. Somehow the whole thing had come partially undone and the little clippy bit just let it pop away from the window and flip over. We were able to pull over to the side, Jeff hopped out, flipped the wiper over, and locked it back into place, and then we were back on our merry little way. I think maybe 3 cars managed to pass us before we were ready to roll again. (Not cause Jeff was fast, but because traffic was that slow.)