Dainty Kitty

First Snow Funk

Our first snowfall of the year.  Two to three inches - just enough to make the trip to work a white knuckle experience.  I slid into the curb at one point but was smart enough to avoid the giant hill.  It's beautiful but people seem to forget how to drive at the first sign of snow. 

I am in a terrible funk, though, and have been for several days.  I'm tired (and went to bed last night at nine if you can believe that) and incredibly cranky.  Usually my kind of cranky is like Brady Bunch Cranky - barely visable - but I've gotten a couple of remarks so I know that it's out there waving its arms and jumping up and down.  "I'm a bitch!  I'm a bitch!" 

I haven't done any housework and I do little other than sitting on the couch with my knitting and a cat while watching a movie. 

It's a little bit of PMS, a little bit of the sun withdrawal.  I've got to go home tonight and force myself to attack the giant pile of laundry and other things - no couch for me. 

Good Things (Well, and One Pain in the Ass Thing)

It's a Wonderful Life in the theater.  Wonderful.  That's all I can say.  There was applause at the end - that never happens.

Gluten Free Girl.  Special ordered and finally picked up on Saturday (they never called to tell me it was in).  I'm not even taking it out of the bag - instead I'm saving it for the drive to Virginia for the holidays. 

Movies.  A gut of dvds.  The Life Aquatic and Zoolander.  Sunday I finished up And Awfully Big Adventure (I was disappointed by this film - love Rickman in it but...that's about it) and then watched Marie Antoinette (better than I expected), The Ladykillers (the original with Alex Guinness, thank you very much) and Mrs. Brown (loved this).  Obviously, no housework was done this weekend.  After two days of lounging my apartment is borderline embarrassing. 

Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joes.  I'm going to buy several more boxes of these this week.  A couple to get me through the holiday season and a few more to store in the freezer for future peppermint cravings.  I ate a ton of them Saturday night but managed to allow myself three of them on Sunday.  Delicious.  I love the generous amount of filling. 

The Chullo Hat.  Now appearing with capital letters.  After swatching it last week, I added six extra stitches to the original pattern.  Well, I meant to add six extra stitches - somehow I managed to only add two which explains why my adjusted chart wasn't working.  I've knitted the same two rows at least three times.  Today I made a chart on Excel that shows exactly what I'm doing for each stitch (the one I was using only showed 30 stitches and I was adding two rows). I was pretty aggravated with it last night but I'm still excited.

My Christmas tree.  It's still leaning a bit (I guess it settled or something) but I did finally cut a bit off the top and put the star it its place.  If we ever see the sun again, I'll take a photo.  I love my tree. 

Anyway, all in all it was a good weekend - I hope everyone enjoyed the same!

Cookies for Santa

Last night I made Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies from Orangette's recipe.  Her blog was the first food blog I read regularly.  It's wonderful and even her words make you come away smacking your lips.

Unfortunately, my brain was on backwards last night and I made a huge mistake.  Two mistakes, actually.  I didn't check my oatmeal and when I pulled it out of the cabinet I found I had about a fourth a cup of oats left.  Off to the store (for the second time in an hour).  When I got back I had oatmeal on my mind and tossed the required amount along with the chocolate chips in with the egg and sugar mix...completely ignoring the bowl of dry ingredients sitting there on the counter.  So I didn't quite mix it together the way I was supposed to and I think that may  have caused them to be so dense.  Next time I'll actually pay attention to what I'm doing.  And I might also make them a bit smaller - a fourth cup of cookie is a lotta cookie.  I ate one last night after dinner and I couldn't even think about eating a second one.  Granted, I was also also sipping on a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows....

I'll try to take a better photo in the morning - I'm not fond of the fact that it's dark by the time I get home but I didn't want to write yet another photo-less post.

Now I'm going to settle into a night of knitting with my recent Netflix deliveries: Mrs. Brown (thanks Kim!) and An Awfully Big Adventure....

edit: I completely forgot that these cookies help out with my 101 in 1001 list!

44. Try four new cookie recipes (1/4)

Ups and Downs

Downer: This afternoon sucked.  Sprint charged my debit account twice for a payment I made on Sunday.  The fourth person I talked to about it today gave me some random fax number to send my bank statement to and told me it would take ten to fifteen days.

Upper: I threatened to cancel my account and was transferred to another customer service rep who guaranteed the funds would be back in my account within 48 hours and also credited me thirty-five extra dollars.  Oh, and she also told me I was fun to talk to.      

Upper: I spent an hour cleaning my craft room and it looks a million times better.

Downer: It's not finished and I own a lot of junk.

Upper: House was really good - I'm excited about the new team.

Downer: No new episodes until after the first of the year.

What else?  Oh, I still haven't finished putting up the Christmas decorations. Meh.

Learning to Love the Wart

This is my wart.  If it weren't so late, I'd take a better photo since this is over two years old and wasn't taken at the best angle.  Then you could see the true beauty of my wart.

I've had it as long as I can remember. 

Several men have been bothered by this wart (some have also been bothered by the fact that I wear something on my left ring finger - I've since retired the LOLA ring and now wear the braid on my wart thumb).  One wanted to rip it off with duct tape and another asked about having it frozen.  Sure, there was a time when I bought one of those Dr. Scholls bandage kits to try to remove it myself.  It took too long, the tape kept falling off and it was icky so I just gave up.  I've also talked to my doctor about it but that's as far as I've gotten. 

I've also thought, "What if I get married and want to have one of those photos taken of just my left hand?"  Could it be taken from a different angle?  Could they airbrush it out?

Of course, these thoughts never go anywhere because I can't imagine my hand without it.  What if, like Chandler on Friends who thought he'd lost his funny when he had his "nubbin" removed, I loose some part of me by having it zapped?  What if I forget how to spell or I no longer recognize my family or my voice changes to something that sounds quite like Tiny Tim? 

I think I'd much rather live with the wart.  No one has ever developed their own wart by touching it - that's gotta be a myth - and it's not really hurting anyone (except me when I hit it on something every once in a great while).   It's been a part of me for at least twenty years - probably longer - longer than any man anyway.  I don't think I'll make a move to have it removed any time soon.   

The World is Your Snowball

Bing Crosby is singing "A Marshmallow World" in the other room and it's taking me so much longer than I remembered to decorate the tree.  I hit a speed bump right away when I opened up each of the three boxes and found no lights which meant a quick trip to Target.  The lights are my least favorite part but after that it's...well, it's like Christmas, pulling out all of my ornaments, as I've forgotten some of them - especially those bought after Christmas last year- and love to see others that I've had for years.

Tonight is my fourth and final Thanksgiving dinner.  This time I'm getting together with my zombie friends.  That is, if I'm not already asleep by six o'clock.  That's very likely.   This girl just can't stay up as late as I did last night and I can't sleep in like I used to.

Sigh, but I might just have to extend this decorating break to include lunch and nap.... 

The Killing Time Hat

This is my Killing Time Hat for two reasons:

1. I started it last night and finished it up this morning, all while watching Dexter, a Showtime series about a serial killer (a damn good series, by the way).  I've actually named it Dexter.
2. It killed an evening and a good part of the morning. 

It's actually the Cranium hat from Crochet Me.  I used the wool I received for my birthday, doubled.  I thought doubling it might make it too big but, Goldilocks, it fits just right.   There's a larger size included with the pattern which I might make with the rest of the skien and then felt.  I've been working on a bag with another skien just like this (knit, knit, knit - too boring, I haven't worked on it in months) that I'm going to felt and now that I've finished something and see how pretty the colors turn out I'm sort of anxious to felt something with it.

Well, that really did kill a good little amount of time: downloading the photo to Flickr, putting it in Ravelry and then posting it here. 

Lars and the Real Girl

Tonight I went to see Lars and the Real Girl.  I laughed so hard I cried and I can't believe I didn't cry when it turned serious.  I'm a crier, that's for sure.   

I don't like to use the phrase "poignant" when describing a movie but this was certainly poignant - and sweet and amazingly funny.  Ryan Gosling was convincing as the delusional Lars and I hadn't seen Kelli Garner  in anything else but she was wonderfully awkward as Margo.

Oh! And there's a scene where a few women of the town are working on various projects - one knits, one crochets, and the other is embroidering.  Plus there are a million knitted hats, scarves and mittens...none of them memorable but certainly noticeable!   

A Notch on My 101 Belt

71. Take three three day weekends for no reason whatsoever (1/3)

Christmas Tree Tradition

I found these guys lounging outside my apartment one night after work last year.  It's not a great photo but I had to take it because some creative kid did the best he or she would with limited resources (i.e. not a lot of snowfall). 

Besides turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving means that's it acceptable to start decorating for Christmas.  Although, hooray for my neighbors who already have a pink tree up and decorated in their window. 

I haven't had a live tree in five or six years.  It used to be a staple - my family always had a live tree.  When I moved out, I went to the tree farm with my parents and picked out my own.  Eventually my parents bought a fake tree but then there were boyfriends (one of which is married now and made it his own tradition) to help me pick out trees. 

One year I was at a Lowes after Christmas and spotted a skinny fake tree that was the epitome of what I looked for in a live tree every year.  And I bought it.  I haven't had a live tree since and really don't feel all that guilty about it.  I don't have to water it or worry about the mess.  It's perfect - no holes or a branches that stick out too far - and, best of all, I never have to water it or worry about the needles it leaves behind.    Plus, my cats are much less interested in climbing a fake tree which is a very good thing. 

But I'm feeling a pull I haven't felt in a long time.  A pull to bundle up and spend a hour hunting for the right tree, to drive home with that smell filling my car and then filling my apartment.   I think I want a live tree this year.  I think it started back at Fulton Farms in October when I heard a fellow pumpkin picker mention coming back to put a tag on their tree for Christmas.  I'd never heard of "tagging" a tree ahead of time and it's probably a lot more pleasant to look for a tree on a mildly chilly day than a downright cold one but...I think part of the charm would be lost. 

I'm not exactly committed to the idea yet.  I could certainly see myself shrugging off the pull and putting up the fake - I have pine scented candles, after all - but I don't know.  We'll see.