Baby Blanket?

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As some of you who talk to me on a regular basis already know, my cousin Kristen just had her baby, Evan. Well, when I say “just” I mean on February 7th of this year. Why this idea didn’t occur to me earlier (say, when she was pregnant?) is anybody’s guess, but I’ve decided to knit her a baby blanket.

I’ll admit, I know little about the construction of baby blankets, but I have a few things in mind:

1.) It has to be large – My mom tells me that her pet peeve when I was little was the fact that her baby blankets were too small to really wrap me up in… in order to get them to really cover me she’d have to tuck in all the corners in some crafty way and hope they didn’t pop out.

2.) It can’t have holes in it (aka, no lace) – Obviously we can’t have his little fingers getting caught in it.

3.) It can’t be too dense/heavy – I’m kind of guessing on this one, but I’m assuming a lighter-weight blanket would do better in California, especially considering that we’re coming up on summer, and it’s going to be big anyway.

Anyway, keeping those points in mind I’ve picked this free pattern, and I’m going to use the suggested yarn in either Soft Aqua or Teal Lake. It should be pretty. Tomorrow I’m off to call the Fiber Gallery in Seattle to see if they carry those two colors… hopefully I’ll get a chance to look at them and feel (read: fondle) them before I make my final color decision. That, and I haven’t been to the Fiber Gallery yet, but my mom (who’s been there twice) says it’s really fun. Here’s to knitting baby blankets!

Applebee's?

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It seems that I’ve been eating there a lot lately.  I say “a lot,” and really mean “at all,” because I don’t usually go there.  But Josh’s grandparents got back from their Florida trip last night and are going out for dinner with his parents, and of course we were invited to go along.  The free food should be fun at least.

Although, I just read an article today about a woman (I’m not sure where) who found a grasshopper leg (a large one) in her salad.  By crunching down on it.  Oof.  That’s more grasshopper than I’d like to deal with thank you.  I was telling Josh online a few minutes ago that it’s not exactly the best type of article to read right before going to the aforementioned restaurant, but hey, like I said: free food.

So that’s the plan for tonight.  Friday my dad wants to get together for breakfast again, which should include a decent amount of yummy.

Oh, and I had coffee with my mom this morning.  I called her at about 7:30am because I couldn’t get back to sleep after Josh left for work, and she thought it’d be a good idea.  It was fun to talk, although Laura & Gordon seem to be having some “issues” with their daughter Nikki, which is amusing enough for me.  I don’t think I’ll talk about it here though.

The 90's!

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Does anyone else think that 90’s music sounds so “old school” these days? Right now I’m listening to the “Top 200 Hits of the 90’s”, which is quite fun, but at the same time odd. I know most of the songs since I used to be a big radio listener during that period… this is one of those playlists that evokes memories when listening to it. Of course, some of the songs are either R&B or Rap, which I don’t have much knowledge about. But I certainly know who The Verve, the Spice Girls, and Natalie Imbruglia, and Savage Garden are.

Speaking of Ms. Imbruglia, I’m sure you’ve all seen these two (1, 2) videos roaming around the internet, right? If you know her song, it’s hilarious stuff. Well, even if you don’t know it well. First video is just David Armand himself, and the second is a different performance, but this time he’s not alone. Both are great… I’d suggest checking out the first link, well, first, if only because you can see the performance a bit better.  I have way too much fun with this.

John Varley's "Mammoth" Pt. 2

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I finished my first John Varley book today (Amazon), and I have to say that I quite enjoyed it. Tom Clancy had good things to say about him as an author (as evidenced by the quote on the front cover), and while I wouldn’t go so far as he did, it was a fun read.

The novel as a whole seemed a bit… thin… but that didn’t detract much from the fun involved. After all, this is a novel about time travel and mammoths. It was exciting enough toward the end, and I was caught at Tully’s trying to finish it before I left. Luckily, although our main character is a bit of a “supergenius” when it comes to physics/math, you don’t get bogged down with detailed explanation of the nature of quarks or anything similar. It was a bit of an obvious attempt to dumb it down for the readers by essentially only having our main guy explain such things to his animal-trainer friend, but it’s easily overlooked.

This definitely isn’t one of those books I know I’ll read again, but it’s one I’d suggest to friends for some light, fun reading. I have a hard time ridding myself of my books (not helpfully influenced by Josh), so I doubt I’ll be putting it up on BookMooch anytime soon.

Hey, the return key worked this time! Firefox just barfed on me twice for trying to hit it, heh.

If anyone wants to borrow this book, shoot me an e-mail. If you don’t have my e-mail, ask me in the blog, or give me yours.

Stargate!

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We’re on Season 8 already… oof!  It looks like we’ll be spending all day today and tomorrow finishing out what episodes we have here at the studio.

Speaking of things to watch, has anyone had a chance to see The 300 either yesterday or today?  Sure it’s early, but some people are bound to be fanatical, and if I know one of them I’d like to see what they thought.  I’m off to see it tomorrow night with Josh I think… his friend Brian called and invited us, and it looks like we’re going unless I tell Josh I don’t want to go.  I think it’ll be us, Brian, and someone else and his girlfriend, no idea who they are.  Josh has met the one guy once.

I’ll have to write about what I think of the movie when we get back.

I love my shuffle.  Shuff shuff shuff!

Shuffling Along

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Josh came home today with a surprise for me… an iPod Shuffle! -grin-

It’s a blue one, and was on refresh. And of course, Josh gets his employee discount on top of that, which is why he bought it. Apparently, back when V-day was around, he was planning on getting one for me then, but since none showed up on refresh at the time he didn’t bother. Might as well wait for a discount eh?

Anyway, I’m totally excited about it… and it’s really cute. I’ve already loaded it with “Top 200 Hits of the 90’s”. Should be lots of fun. Woo!

Birthdays

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No, it’s not mine, but it is my good friend Lisa’s. Or at least it was a week or so ago (hey, this is the first time she’s been back in WA). I’m excited today because I get to give her the felted bag I made for her, and see what she thinks of it. -grin- I was going to try and wrap it up in some string/yarn to keep it simple, but as soon as I removed the books from the bag that were helping shape it, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to fold the bag up the way I was thinking. Sure, these bags are quite durable, but I just “pulled it out of the mold”, so to speak, and I really don’t like the idea of potentially messing with the shaping that (right now) is so nice.

It’s a good shape for a book bag I think… and so far thee strap on my bag has been nothing but strong, so I’m hoping that it’ll be able to hold what she needs. And yes, I am aware that she’ll only be in school until this summer and then she’s done, but it could serve as an overnight bag too, couldn’t it?

It should be really cool either way. I put it on my shoulder and almost didn’t want to let it go, haha.

In other knitting news, that linen stitch scarf is still slow-going. For some reason I can’t keep up a good rhythm on it. I keep stopping for a few minutes after 4 rows or so. It’s a bit odd. I love it, but I think it’ll take me awhile to finish. Maybe if the next scarf is twice as wide I’ll have better luck staying on track.

Mornings

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For me, I think I’m affected by the weather in a big way. They say that people feel more depressed during the winter, and happier during the summer. I think that’s true for me, although I never realize it until summer comes along.

Point is, I have a major headache that I’ve had since early this morning. Josh got up to leave for work, and I had enough of a headache that I figured drinking tea and staying up might be the solution, because often I get headaches because I sleep too much. Well, it didn’t quite work out, and at this point it’s not quite bothersome enough that I want to take advil, especially since we’re down to 4 pills and haven’t gone to the store to grab some more.

In other news, they’re doing a fire alarm test in our apartment building today, which can be anywhere from 2-5pm, so Josh has suggested that I meet him at work at 2. Apparently he has something he says “isn’t that exciting” for us to do while we’re waiting… which is totally fun for me but at the same time a bit odd, since I have no clue what this “unexciting” thing could be. Either way, I’ll have to start getting ready soon.

I’m going to go take some advil.

Stashin' It

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I didn’t get any new knitting done today, other than the odd row on the linen stitch scarf that’s been in the works for at least a few days now.

But I did do something productive when it comes to knitting though. I revisited a long lusted-after yarn website, called HandPaintedYarn.com, and it is wonderful! Their yarn is much more inexpensive than your local LYS is likely to be. And the colors are great. I did a bit of online research on them, and most people seem to be really happy with the service. The forum thread was from back in early ’05, right after the site was featured in a magazine review, so at the time shipping was slow do to the influx of orders. Something like 6 months’ worth in 10 days.

Check it out if you’re interested in yarn… as soon as I have the resources I’m going to go and buy a boatload! *slaps wrist* No! No more yarn until you use up some more of your stash!

Ah, well. That’s it for now.

(I started typing this entry up yesterday, but didn’t get around to posting it, so if this and the next entry show up back-to-back, it wasn’t my intention)

Private?

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I used to have a LiveJournal, and I used to write a lot of private entries. Not for the first couple of years mind you, but I definitely did later on. Now that I have this WordPress account, I’ve been trying to find ways to import my LJ posts, which has led me to read a few of the old ones. Oof! I want to be able to use whatever my current journal is to write “in the moment” angry-at-the-world posts every once and awhile… but that will be hard unless I can find an easy way to make entries private. I know there are some plugins for making individual entries private, but I need to make my whole Archive category private (the one that will contain my old LJ entries).

Who knows what I’ll end up doing. I’ll have to talk to Josh about it tonight, and in the meantime get on with the knitting!