Dainty Kitty

Kitschy Crewel

I spotted this from across the room, high up on a shelf at the Salvation Army (which used to be a dance club/skating rink called the Bus Stop because the dj booth was the front of a school bus and the back end stuck out into the parking lot).  I walked across what used to be the skating rink, sure that it would have a large price tag because a.) retro is "in" and b.) the Salvation Army puts stupid ridiculously high price tags on some things but was delighted to find that it was in excellent condition and the frame was just as unique as the piece itself.  And what's the price on that little blue sticker?  $4.99?  Hooray! 

I love this nearly as much as I love my scrapghan.  No, wait...I might actually love it more.  Maybe.



This kind of kitsch is representative of how I'd love my entire apartment to look.  I've always loved that seventies look even though you'd never know it to see my apartment now.  My last apartment, that is, since the current one is a serious work in process.  I also found the most amazing hide-a-bed couch at a second hand store a few weeks ago.  I nearly purchased its green, yellow and white flowery goodness.  It was a bit steep at $250 but it was in fantastic shape and, honestly, how great is a hide-a-bed?  I'm sure someone snapped it up but it's been on my mind like a boy I met at a bar, talked with for hours and then let get away without a name or number.   Finding that bed, this picture and starting that afghan has made me think about how I thrift shop (mostly books) and I think I might focus more on this kind of stuff - the stuff that makes me happy. 

Fun Flickr Game

One more post this morning!

Found via a wonderful blog I recently discovered, A Pillow Monster a Day.

Here is how you play:

• type your answer to each question below into Flickr Search
• using only the first page, pick an image
• copy and paste each of the URLs for the image into fd's mosaic maker

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in your life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr Name.

 

1. Roses for Emily! 2. Dance 3. Red Flower 4. Frog 5. Actor 6. love you water. i miss you diet coke 7. things in life are free 8. Meltdown 9. Antique 10. Family 11. yawn 12. bertha-final

Here's what's really funny about this: when I posted my little retrospective, my friend Bertha of Karma Kitties commented that she'd participated in the first round of Back Tack as well.  I'm 95% sure we hadn't met on LJ yet so it was funny to type in my Flickr name (daintykitty of course) for this meme and see her project pop up.  They had mistakenly posted that her finished products were going to me! 

2005: A Retrospective

I spent a little bit of time organzing some files on my office computer this morning and came across a slew of photos I'd kind of forgotten about.  They're from when I was digital camera-less and borrowing a co-worker's to sneak (really lousy) shots.  I had my hands in all kinds of crafts then.  I was sewing more and had just learned to knit.  I can't believe I've only been knitting for three years.

I'll start my little retrospective with my very first scarf.  I must have picked up a dozen extra stitches by the time I got to the end of it!  I think I wore it twice but, even though it's pretty hideous, I'll never get rid of it.

A couple of scarves later I made this for Debbie's dog Roxanne for Valentine's Day.  She couldn't wear it until it lost the scent of me because I, for some reason, really excited her. 

For the same Valentine's Day I made a bunch of little Sculpey devils named Boris and sold them to a coworker.  My first real sale!  I hated making the same thing over and over so I really haven't made anything to sell since (except for some bunnies for the same coworker).

2005 was the only time I participated in A Month of Softies (that's the old school, non-Flickr link).  It was a Self Portrait of the Artist as a Child theme.  The tiny fingers were a bitch to turn.

I'm quite a bit happier with this doll I made for Mom that same year.  I think this is one of my very favorite projects and I've been meaning to make one for myself ever since. 

Before I get into more sewing, here's a matchbox shrine I made to, ahem, Elvis Costello.  Can't you see I could be, I could be your spooky girlfriend?

That lyric still stands true for me!

Here are a couple of bags I made.  I still carry both of them once in awhile.  I made a few of the Dainty Kitty ones to sell at a jewelry show at a friend's house.  I didn't sell even one at the show but she bought all three after.  I had big aspirations for that show - I even bought a display trunk - and was going to make several sized bags as well as some embroidered buttons (because I was into that craft,too) but...I got bored. 

I especially love the Strawberry Bag but it got snagged on something last year and I'm going to need to do some repair work before I can use it again.  That's the business card Big gave me when we very first met peeking out of the pocket.  It showed off the pockets of several projects around that time even though moving to Columbus was partially to get away from memories of him.  Believe it or not, I still have that freaking card.  It's in the drawer of a little spice cabinet which was packed up last night.  Kind of sad but...the memory of the night he gave me the card is still a very sweet one. 

And I'm a sentimental pack rat. 

2005 was also the very first round of Back Tack.  It looks like it's been a defunt project for a little over a year now but it was a lot of fun and I'm glad I got to play the first time around.  It's particularly special to me because it's how I met my friend Delly.  You sent fabric and other notions to one partipant who then made a sewing case (at least) for another participant.  Delly sent me the goodies I used to make these as well as the sewing case that I never really got a good photo of. 

So anyway, that's a little glimpse of Dainty Kitty three years ago.  It was kind of fun to recall some of those projects.  :-)

LibraryThings Meme

Swiped from Mary (I owe you an email!) --What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

I'm just thankful I've read more than I've left unfinished!

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera (currently reading)
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

A Lunch Ruined

I had big plans for my lunch hour.  A cup of tea, a Kinder Happy Hippo biscuit, a page turner (Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill - I love that Stephen King's son decided to use my dad's name as his pseudonym), the park, a chair and a rock to put my feet up on.

I parked in my usual spot and found that a family was fishing off my rock which was okay - the kid was cute with his little fishing pole.  I thought a picnic table would do just as well as a footrest but as I put my stuff down I heard something strange.  Drumming.  Insistent, consistent drumming. 

I wandered to the other side of the pond, trying to escape it.  Nope.  So I got into my car and drove to the other side of the park where, for some reason, it was louder.  And it was echoing.

Finally I just gave up which was just terrible and frustrating.   I love my lunch hours at the park.  When the weather is dryer and warmer, I like to spread out a blanket because for some reason a picnic lunch just seems to feel like it lasts longer than an hour.  Some days I can't even read because the squirrels or the frogs or the blue jays are just too entertaining but it's always quiet.  People strolling with their kids or walking their dogs, people planted here and there with a book in hand...it's lovely.

As I left the park I found the source of the noise.  A man had set up FOUR DRUM SETS at the top of a hill overlooking the amphitheater.  FOUR!  FOUR SETS OF FOUR DRUMS EACH!  I realize it's a public place but, really, who brings FOUR DRUM SETS to a park on a Wednesday afternoon, for Pete's sake?!  Okay, maybe one set...no, not even one.  A set of bongos to play in your lap, sure, but not four sets of four drums.  I just don't get it.

To top it off, all of the searching for a quiet place to read caused me to forget about my tea which had steeped a bit too much and turned bitter.  Yeah, bitter like me and my ruined lunch hour.

It may have been juvenile and only adding to the issue but...I laid on the horn as I drove by.  Of course, I was paid back for this by the song that was on the radio, 32 Flavors by Ani DiFranco, the end of which sounded vaguely like the annoying guy and his four sets of drums.  Nice.

SNL & the Googly Eyes

I rarely ever watch Saturday Night Live - I can't stay up to see it through - but I made a special effort to watch last night because Christopher Walken was the host and I love him.  Unfortunately, his performance was pretty awful - he didn't even try to hide the fact that he was reading every line straight from a cue card - but I had to laugh at "Indoor Gardening Tips from A Man Who's Very Scared of Plants" about a man who put googly eyes on all of his plants so that he could make eye contact with them and feel more comfortable.  It seemed awfully familiar....I think the SNL writers found my Googly Eye Caper photos! ;-)

What Can Brown Do For You?

Luckily, this box only contained one skein of yarn.

The above photo is proof that I occasionally do actual work during the day.  That's me getting a package ready to go out. 

Good news is that I can finish the other Mrs. Beeton now - that is, once I finish the other mitten which is using my six dpns and the button tab hat I started last night with my sevens.  I've been doing a lot of knitting, sleeping and watching season one of "Bosom Buddies" on dvd.  And, unfortunately, not doing much cleaning.

Farrow Rib & a Jalapeno Smack Down

I cast this scarf on last night.  I'm not using a pattern, though, I just cast on 25 stitches and am knitting it in the farrow rib stitch (which the owner of my LYS also said she's heard called the mistake rib - it would be hard to spot a mistake).  I'm using Suri Merino in Donegal Green Heather.  I made Dad a scarf with Suri last year and I'd forgotten how good it feels and at six bucks a skein it's an easy purchase.   Look how pretty....

And when I bind off this scarf, I'll have a tale to tell you.

Here's a little tale to tide you over until then: I had a very bad run in with two jalapenos this evening.  I was making jalapeno chicken corn chowder which calls for two chopped peppers.  I was very careful because today was a really bad allergy day for me so my nose was raw and 100% vulnerable to capsaicins.  Yet - even after I washed my hands - when I brushed the area near my nose, my face caught on fire.  I ran to the bathroom to splash water on it but that only made it worse - I think no amount of hand washing can save you after you've chopped a pepper. 

My entire nose was red as well as about an inch to two inches surrounding it.  It went through my head to take a photo for pure posting pleasure but I couldn't stop trying to make it stop burning long enough to pick up a a camera.   I've never been seriously injured so I don't have much to compare things to when it comes to pain but I'm pretty sure this was the worst I've ever experienced. 

I doused a cloth with milk (because you're supposed to drink milk to cool capsaicins if you're eating an overly hot pepper so why not apply it if your face is experiencing the same kind of pain) which helped a bit.  Then I smothered my face in aloe which, if it were at all possible,  made it even worse (I think it was just a case of more fingers touching the face).  I finally called my mom and she told me to put ice wrapped in a wet washcloth on it and that it would probably just have to burn for awhile.  I was freaking out by this point and trying to stay calm.  Seriously - this was unbelievable pain.  The washcloth helped, though (lesson: always fill your ice trays - I was down to my last two).  She called back a few minutes later to suggest the milk so I didn't feel quite so silly about trying that. 

I'm still really tender, though and I'm afraid to take out my contact lenses.  Every time I chop jalapenos I remind myself that I need to pick up some gloves for that express purpose but I always forget.  Not this time.  This incident is burned - no pun intended - into my brain.

So, in order to avoid taking out my contact lenses I'm going to watch an episode of Veronica Mars and knit.

Oh, farrow rib pattern - in case you're curious and not familiar:

Multiples of three plus one
1. k2 p1 end with k1
2. p1 k2 p1 across
Repeat to desired length.

Knitting With Balls

If you're looking to get fired up or perhaps you'd like a good laugh, check out this article by Debbie Schlussel.  I'm not familiar with Ms. Schlussel's work but here she talks about "our society's largely successful attempt to feminize America's men"...through knitting and the book Knitting with Balls.  Seriously.  The article is titled, "Men, the New Women, Alert: No, Balls of Yarn Are not Cojones" if you can believe that.

Other choice phrases -

"Just when less and less women in America are knitting, we compensate for it by . . . having young boys knit?!"

"Here's a note for those who mistakenly think knitting is for men: It ain't. Despite the title of this book, cojones do not equal balls of yarn and two wooden sticks. And the same holds true vice versa."

And in closing, "For the record, I do knit. Or did. Takes waaaaay too long to make anything decent. It's strictly for the very bored, IMO."

And this was my favorite - left by Ms. Schlussel - in response to a comment, "THEY'RE SLACKER DUDES BEING ENCOURAGED TO DO SO IN YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO BLUR THE GENDER LINES." 

Go over and read the article.  Then read the comments.  They're great - nearly all are in support of men who knit and full of all kinds of interesting information.   I'm actually glad I found the article (through the blog of a male knitter, by the way) for the comments alone. 

Then leave a comment of your own.  I did. 

Seven Random Facts*

I'd be embarrassed to admit how old I was when I finally got over my fear of calling to order pizza.   

"Candy Everybody Wants" was my first solo karaoke song.

At the Circleville Pumpkin Festival several years ago I ate a gyro, a slice of pumpkin pie, a caramel apple and a bag of kettle corn all by myself.  That list seems a bit short, though.  Anyway, my friend's boyfriend was really impressed.  I shouldn't be proud of that fact - but I am.

I love banana waffles from Trader Joe's.  I may have to have one as a bedtime snack now just because I mentioned them.

I very recently found out I'm suddenly mildly allergic to celery.

I'm also allergic to avocados (and dandelions). 

I have had the same box of freezer pops in my fridge for seven or eight years.  That box has actually traveled to a new apartment with me - twice.  Now I can't bring myself to throw them out even though they take up precious space.

*By the third random fact I realized there was a food theme and ran with it.