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A pile of lovely orange Manos has been staring at me for months, begging to become a cozy fall sweater. And lookee, there - November is NaNoSweMo. The perfect excuse for the Central Park hoodie to skip to the head of the to-be-knit line.

Competing for my love and affection will be brooklyntweed's Koolhas. I literally gasped out loud as soon as I saw it. Heads will roll if my copy of IK isn't in my mailbox when I get home. I'm not cool enough to be allowed into Ravelry yet so I'm mentally searching my stash as we speak to see if I have anything worthy of such lusciousness. What was that? An excuse to buy yarn? Hush! Don't tempt me.

In the meantime, Lady Eleanor is on the needles. Entrelac is so frickin' addicting, man.

i don't got nuthin' but I don't got much, either.

this here pirate hat is part of my year of color work. i was going to give it to a pirate-philic friend for her birthday with matching mittens for christmas but i think that's a little much, even for her. so only the hat for christmas since i missed her birthday and talk like a pirate day. even though i finished knitting it months ago, it took me this long to document it. and the ends aren't woven in yet. cuz i'm lazy like that. arg.


i got two marathon training souvenirs this weekend. the first in the form of our team t-shirts. light blue wicking material with the office logo on the front and "run wild" on the back, both in navy. rico suave.

the second came in the form of two skinned knees. oh, graceful-one tripped over a tree root whilst running and removed the outer epidermis layers from my knees. i looked all bad-ass running with blood dripping down my legs but now it's all oozy nastiness. yum. thank goodness it's long-pants season!

as further evidence that i'm losing my mind, i completely forgot to move my car last week and got a generous parking ticket from the kind folks at dc dmv. doh! you'd think i would have remembered after over two years of the same street cleaning schedule, but no.

i held a pelican. poor girl wasn't feeling well so we had to catch her up to take her to the vet hospital. only she got a little feisty and didn't want to go so we had to corral her into a corner and grab her. try holding onto a large bird who doesn't want to be held. good times.

that's all folks. more news to come next week.

my friends are so generous. and crafty! how crafty, you ask?

i give you exhibit a:

a bugheart original. it's a beaver, people! a beaver!


exhibit b:

handpainted yarn from the soon-to-be-named master herself. not only did she teach us her craft, but she willingly gave away some of her spoils.

the bulky, think/thin smooshiness will become....something. i'm not sure what yet but it's already been wound into a ball for me to drool over.

did i mention generous? because this is the second treat from said master.

i already whipped up a pair of tropical aquarium monkeys with a previous gift. aren't they fab?

thanks, g and t! i lurve them!

great, now my rent's going to go up or something. but three cheers for eastern market and elmwood village!

The American Planning Association Announces the 2007 Great Places in America

ms. hudak graciously offered to teach us the ways of the dye master. one fine sunday afternoon, we descended upon her yard to absorb her knowledge. rummaging through my stash*, i came up with four balls of Rowan Polar and leftovers from a sweater project ripe for over dying.

first step (after tying the yarn into neat skeins) - soak that puppy in slightly acidic water. wring it out as much as humanly possible and situate over plastic. beer helps.
then apply your colors. i liked the blue ok but i wanted to kick it up a notch so i went with shades of blue, aiming for a semi-solid look.wrap that sausage up in plastic and layer it in a pasta pot for steaming. keeping with the outdoors theme, throw that puppy on the grill until it's good and hot. after steaming it looks...exactly the same. i rinsed it out a bit and hung it to dry in the warm sunshine.reskeined, it looks...exactly the same. with hints of other colors. nothing flashy. i like it but it's very subtle. i'm still brainstorming what to do with it. more than a scarf's worth, less than a sweater's worth. so far i'm thinking either blackberry sans bobbles or my so called scarf or elf cap and flip-top mittens set from handknit holidays or a stole like this one or a seafoam stitch scarf/wrap like thing. what do you think?
the sweater leftovers turned out exactly as i'd hoped. i'm collecting pink/mauve/magenta/yellow/gold/beige yarn for a blanket/afghan project. brilliant!
and because i couldn't stop, i bought a pair-of-socks worth of undyed yarn from mel and threw some of the remaining dye on it. i hope the rainbow stripes rather than pools.

more dye day action seen here.

* I rummaged because my undyed yarn order didn't arrive in time. In fact, it still has arrived. Me thinks it was pilfered.

i'm reading eat, pray, love for book club this month. i'm in the praying in india section at the moment. at one point the author is meditating outdoors and uses the annoyance of mosquitoes as motivation to clear her mind. if she can meditate through the pesky insect bites, she will have made progress in her abilities to stay focused.

i've been spending time in my yard this summer. thanks to my landlady's stagnant pond and shady trees, there is an abundance of mosquitoes. big, zebra striped suckers that descend upon you in swarms as soon as you step outside. i've gotten accustomed to dousing myself with insect repellent before i even open the door (pushing aside my fears of bioaccumulation and chemical toxins is meditation enough!). but even that isn't enough to deter some of the minuscule vampires. so.frickin'.irritating!

a couple of nights ago i decided to go all zen and meditate on the mosquitoes - try to ignore them as i enjoyed the last rays of summer. as expected, a brave few ignored my eau de deet and attacked my legs. in my calm, i let them feast. fatten them up for the spiders (have i mentioned how many spiders i have in my apartment? and how many spider bites i've woken up with lately? they're neck and neck with the mosquitoes at this point).

a few more bites on my legs, most of which don't itch (too badly), and all was well. until the morning when i caught a glimpse of my back in the mirror after my shower. apparently a strip of skin between the bottom of my shirt and the top of my pants was exposed when i was sitting down. a strip of skin i neglected to cover with bug spray. instead it was covered in bug bites. so many that i couldn't count them all because they were overlapping each other. i've never seen so many bites it one place. way more than the 20 ms. gilbert got in india.

i should open my own ashram right here in dc. offer yourself up to the mosquitoes and reach nirvana! it'd give the quaker meeting house across the street a run for its money.

UPDATE: Shameless plug - pleasepleaseplease give Mike's frog a 10!


That would be my friend's photograph...on National Geographic's website! I mean, really, does it get any cooler than that? I'm so uber proud of him!

On my way to work yesterday I had to cross the street to avoid what I thought was Eastern Market construction. On the way home I was confused as to why there were flower and clothes vendors in the morning's construction zone and, hey, that bank had a different name before... All of the stores had different names. And were selling different things. And those large trailers don't look like construction vehicles. "It must be for the movie," a passer-by said. "What movie?" I thought.

I walked stright through the set for Body of Lies this morning. If I had known Leo and Russell were in town I would have called in late to work so I could gawk for a while longer. Not that I could see anything other than a pile of extras and production assistants anyway. Cool beans, though.