From the Ridiculous

GROSS!!!

To the sublime??? (kind of creepy, really)


What teenager wouldn't want this on display in their car?

To the .....REALLY??? People buy these???

Hey! I wonder if this thing works?


Now this I could use....
Ah, the Christmas season. You never know what the mailman might leave.

Catalogs, anyone?

[all photos from the unsolicited Harriet Carter catalog]

Happy Wednesday

[From the New Yorker Cartoon a Day Calendar]

Well, Good Morning to Me

This is the headline I saw when I opened my IGoogle page this morning:

(CNN) -- Galileo's missing fingers found in jar.

Well, that's a relief. I had been wondering about those fingers. And...euwwww...

And in other news - bumper stickers I saw during my drive over the weekend:

Save the Ta-Tas (I don't want to know.)

I Heart Jet Noise (Gosh, who doesn't?)

Bob Dylan for President (Does Bob know about this?)

I am always on the lookout for unusual bumper stickers, those other than My Child is the Most Brilliant Child in the World (Sorry, that would be my grandchildren) and
My Such-and-Such Breed Dog is Smarter than your Honor Student (Could be, I don't know either of them, but again, my grandchildren are the smartest), and those are the only three I saw in my ten-hour drive.

And that's the news!

You Can Thank Me Later

Because I'm selfish, I want to get rid of the image of what I originally thought to be a hairball that I found this morning. I gagged, picked it up with many pieces of Kleenex, all the while wondering why there was an eyeball looking back at me....... and then I noticed the tail.

Ickkkk...........It was a slaughtered mouse.

I screamed like a little girl, called for DH to take away the remains, and am now sharing this with you in the hopes that doing so will make the picture in my mind GO AWAY!

Now I'm off to NC for pleasanter things.

Have a nice weekend! :-)

Another Odd Business

Younger daughter, who lives in LA and who has introduced me to odd little-known businesses, told me about a van she saw driving through the city. On the side is a sign saying Post-Rapture Pet Care.

No joke. I looked on Google and discovered that there are post-rapture pet care businesses all over. I even found one in the UK.

I am not a rapture scholar, and so I don't know much about it, but what I can figure out from reading some of the advertising is that when the rapture happens, all the good people, the true believers, will go off someplace (the sky?) and the pets they own will be left behind.

To the rescue come the atheists. A number of the ads promise that the staff are all atheists, and since they will be left behind too, they will take care of the pets of those who have been whisked away.

Sort of brings to mind what has been mistakenly attributed to P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute, ..."

I do wonder if they actually have clients.

[photo: Google Images]

My Sparkly Christmas Socks

Whew...just in time for .......Thanksgiving? I just finished these from yarn older daughter gave me a couple of months ago. You can't tell from the small picture, but these socks have silver in them and they sparkle!

It's Dream in Color Starry with Silver sockweight yarn, Lipstick Lava color. It's a nice yarn to knit with, and there is quite a bit left since the skein had 450 yards on it.

The rest will go into older daughter's circular blanket, I think.

I'd Rather Be Knitting

than sewing what I've knit together.

As would most knitters, I think. I have taken a finishing class, taught by Jan, our guru at the LYS, and I don't know that she would approve of these seams, but I tried my hardest...I really did!

Now I am hoping that the saints of the miracle of blocking will make everything just fine.

[S-the sweater really is brown, not gray, as it looks to be in these pictures!]

The Koigu Puckered Scarf

is finished and I love it. I'm starting a second soon, once I

a. finish younger daughter's sweater, which just needs to be sewn together
b. finish the second sock of the pair I started a month or so ago.
c. start the scarf/shawl I'm making out of the natural wools I bought two years in a row at SAFF.

So off to work!

Welcome Home, Knittergran

Welcome home, indeed. I finally arrived from Austin after 11:00 last night, thanks to weather delays caused by Ida, and this is what I found. Odd looking laundry room, you say? Well, that's because it's my FAMILY room, now storing my washer, dryer and other odds and ends from my former laundry room. Dh put a tile floor in the laundry room over the weekend while I was in Austin. But the grout is not there yet, and Dh isn't either. He's away on business. So this is what I live with in the meantime.

And how did Dh move the washer and dryer by himself? Did he buy a dolly from Lowe's, which is less than two miles away? Silly, silly question. Why do that when he has a perfectly good skateboard saved from his childhood?

But on to happier subjects. This is the world's sweetest one-year old granddaughter! And boy, oh, boy, did I spoil her!!! I gave her her first piece of candy corn, her first sip (many sips, actually) of a strawberry fruit smoothie, her first maple syrup, and so many other firsts (most involving sugar - I know how to win grandchildren over) that I can't remember them all. But she loved them all, and now, she loves her Gran.

This is grandson. I tried, really, really tried, to get a good picture of him, but he was having none of that. He's three, and a funny, funny boy. He also seems to have unlimited energy.

The two older girls, ages 9 and 6, weren't interested in having their pictures taken, so they miss out on being on my blog. Poor girls.....

Another treat while in Austin: We went to hey cupcake and bought the most delicious cupcakes ever (according to my older granddaughters). It was raining when we were there, and the place stayed really busy. With good reason! The cupcakes are wonderful, and of course, buying them is so much easier than baking them myself.

hey cupcake is across the street from my favorite Austin knitting shop, Hill Country Weavers, and we went there the same day. Even my granddaughters couldn't help themselves and bought yarn. Both girls knit now, and the older one (9) figured out by herself how to decrease stitches to make a triangle-shaped cape for one of her critters. She's addicted now. heh, heh, heh.

And as I posted before I left for Austin, I washed my hand-knit socks on the delicate/hand wash cycle of my magic washing machine with the invisible agitator and it worked GREAT!!! No damage, no shrinkage, no felting, and no colors running. (And the turquoise/brown pair usually runs like an escaped convict.) No more hand-washing of socks for me.

It was, however, hot in Austin, so it sure wasn't sock weather.

And now I'm off to call my most-favorite neighbor of all times to see if I can use her washer and dryer.

Dance With Me

I am experimenting and washing my hand-knit socks in my magic washing machine with the invisible agitator. I've set the machine for delicates so I'll see what happens. Normally I would wash them by hand, but I'm getting ready to go to Austin tomorrow to spoil play with help with my grandchildren, and I'm rushing to get things done.

Lily, six years old, is currently running a 101 degree fever and doesn't feel well, so my fingers and toes are crossed that it's a twenty-four hour bug and not H1N1. I'm not brave enough to brave that.

I'm doing a little "Get Better Lily" dance and a "Don't Ruin My Hand-Knit Socks" dance. Anyone care to join me???

[photo from Google Images]

Book Quiz

From my younger daughter who got it from older daughter:

Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback?
Almost always hardcover. I just love books!

Barnes & Noble or Borders? It used to be Barnes and Noble, but a smallish Borders opened about 1 ½ miles from my house, and they keep e-mailing me 40% off coupons, so I go there to use them.

Book mark or dog-ear? Book marks! Remember? I love books - wouldn’t think of dog-earing them.

Amazon or brick-and-mortar? Well…..both? I love looking through books, looking at what the staff recommends, but lately I’ve been reading the book review section of the Sunday New York Times and ordering books via Amazon from that. So - why not both???

Alphabetize by author, or alphabetize by title, or random? Not alphabetized at all and not random (oh, the horror!). I group by author, and then by category – history, Irish literature, French-related literature, British, current, etc. I always know where every book I own is in my bookshelves.

Throw away, or sell? Keep, unless I hated it. I lend books, and ones I don’t want I take to a used book store for credit, but I never get books from there. Go figure…

Keep dust jacket or toss it? Keep it. Always. But I might let younger daughter have the jacket from my War and Peace, since she lost hers and loves the book. I can’t get past the first 70 pages.

Short story or novel? Both. I really love short stories. They are such perfect little worlds if written well.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? HARRY POTTER! I read the first Lemony Snicket and flat out didn’t like it at all.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? At chapter breaks.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”? “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Buy or borrow? Both, but usually buy, because I might well read any book more than once.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations, or browse? All three.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger? Tidy can be sort of too tidy sometimes. So cliffhangers are good too; the reader gets to think about what might happen.

Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading? All. But I might have to think about more books on tape, since reading and knitting compete. It would be really difficult to switch to books on tape. I like re-reading really good sentences and passages, making notes in the margins, and underlining things that jump out at me.

Stand-alone or series? Stand alone, except for Harry Potter and John Updike, although I don’t know if his Rabbit books can really be called a series. Maybe….

Favorite series? I really haven’t read that many. When I was young, I loved The Little House on the Prairie series. One of my elementary teachers read aloud from them daily and that got me hooked.

Favorite children’s book? I don’t think I have one.

Favorite YA book? Probably Gone With The Wind.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? Well, maybe A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. It’s a weird book and it fascinated me.

Favorite books read last year? Wow. I can’t choose.

Favorite books of all time? Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. There are passages in this book that are so beautiful that they are poetry. I’ve read it several times. Another favorite is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. I’ve read that several times too. And of course, there is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s in the top three on most Best Books lists, and everyone in my family but me hates it. I used to read it once a year. Now just every few years.

What are you reading right now? The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed. It’s really a history book, not a gossipy Entertainment Tonight sort of story. It’s really a very interesting social and legal history of slavery before and during the life of Thomas Jefferson.

What are you reading next? Probably Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Favorite book to recommend to an 11-year-old? A Brief History of the Dead? No, just joking. I don’t really know. The Harry Potter series? But I think all 11-year olds may have read it already.

Favorite book to re-read? See the answer to Favorite Books of all times. But I do re-read many others. My favorites are listed above though.

Do you ever smell books? Huh? Although I suppose a store of used books smells different from a Barnes and Noble, I’ve never really thought about smelling books…weird question.

Do you ever read primary source documents like letters or diaries? Well, if they are part of a book, although I once read a book of letters written by Mary Todd Lincoln, and then found out years later that they had been written by someone else, supposing what MTL might have written. I felt cheated, although it was sort of my fault for not paying enough attention to the sourcing.

And that’s all folks!

Yep.

My third post about Leonard Cohen. And until a few months ago, I hadn’t even heard of him, but the audience at the sold-out performance the week before last at the Fox Theatre sure had. Mr. Cohen walked on to the stage and everyone stood up, applauding and whistling and shouting. What a welcome…

He was great. His back up singers and his musicians were all great too, and we know this because Mr. Cohen is a generous performer. Each of his singers and musicians was given his own chance to shine. Mr. Cohen’s show itself was three and one half hours long, with one hour of that comprising three or four encores; I lost count.

His show was wonderful; I’d go see him again in a heartbeat, but he said that he didn’t know if they would be this way again. He is kind of older-ish, and looks even older than his age. But he promised they would give their all, and they did.

Three and a half hours of MUSIC!

(photo from Fox Theatre website)

All I Want for Christmas

is my laundry room floor. I have two front teeth. (Four, actually, but you know what I mean.)

The linoleum, or whatever it was, was torn out a month or so ago, and because of an impasse on what should replace it, the floor is still just plywood.

I want a single, solid piece of vinyl that will absorb nothing that the cat does (I promised not to write about that again) but dh wants tile. Why? Who knows?

a. Because tile is more difficult to install?
b. Because tile is more difficult to clean?
c. Because the project will take longer with tile and annoy the bejeebus out of me?

I don’t know.

But I’d like it before Christmas, please