You can't take us anywhere.

I have no knitting to show off today. I need to finish the Clown College (aka Auspicious Coincidences) Sweater by Sunday but I hate working on it so I have no idea if that will happen. I've been adding an inch to the sleeves for the past two days but that means they're only 3" long now. Too many ends. Never again! Since I have no knitting to speak of I'll tell you about my weekend in Maryland a few weeks ago. I went out to visit my friend Tonka who's going through a hellish divorce. The blonde in the picture with him is his cousin who for the duration of this story shall be known as Syrrah (she's from Texas, as is Tonka) because throught the story I'd like to tell she was hammered, though you could probably tell by the fact that she's trying to do bunny ears on him from like 25 feet away. Anyway, on Saturday night Tonka decided we should all just drink. That was the plan. I am not good at adhering to any plan no matter how simple. In order to foul up this very simple evening I got another friend of ours who lives one state over to drive down and hang out with us, Garrison Keillor (so called because of his very soothing almost condecending NPR type of voice). That in and of itself didn't ruin Tonka's evening in the bottle, it was the fact that GK arrived hungry thus forcing us all to go eat something which involves driving, an activity that is notoriously incompatable with drinking. Well, Kaylee (a lightweight) and Syrrah had both had a few drinks before we left and Syrrah only weighs about 12 pounds so she was tipsy, add to that some kind of fruity pink drink at the restaurant and you have a recipe for entertainment value. Especially at the place we went to: a Japanese Hibachi place where the chef cooks the food at your table. If you haven't been to a place of this type I'll describe it for you: The hibachi table sort of 'C' shaped and the chef stands inside of it at the grill which is a stainless steel sheet. Around the outside edge is a counter/bar where the patrons sit. There was room at our table for eight people, since there were only five of us another (unfortunate) couple had been seated at the other end. The chef will make all of the food with great showmanship, spinning and cracking eggs with his (butcher's) knife and chopping up an onion and stacking it so it looks like a volcano (they spray something flamamble in it and fire shoots out the top). Seating chart: Veggie Lady, Veggie Man, empty seat, Kaylee, GK, Me, Syrrah, Tonka So we're all sitting at this table with some people we've never met and come to find out that the couple is vegetarian and won't eat anything that touches our food because it ours has meat in it. Kaylee mocked those people for the rest of the night. I'm not sure whether or not they heard her. Now you as readers of my blog, know that I can be an asshole, what you don't know is that Kaylee is never like that. She's sweet and wonderful and generally the kind of person that you want to hate for her multi-multitalented ability to do absolutely anything but you can't hate her because she's just so damn wonderful. It would seem that hard cider really takes care of that because she was just merciless with her comments all night. Made funnier by the fact that she was using a poor stage whisper to say them which I couldn't hear since she was on the side I don't hear well from so then GK had to repeat it all for me. Meanwhile, Syrrah is sucking down her fruity pink drink. As the chef, a terse but otherwise pleasant Japanese man, finished up our food and packed up his cart to move on to the next table Syrrah says to him, "Uno mas onion volcano!" in her flat voweled Texan accent. The confused chef looks at her bows his head and keeps going so she shouts after him, "UNO MAS!" and continutes to shout it about three or four more times as he walked away prompting me to turn to her and remind her that he probably doesn't speak Spanish as GK and I laugh uncontrollably. For the rest of the night we randomly shouted out "UNO MAS!" whenever things were getting dull and started cracking up all over again. After dinner we gathered at Tonka's place for the drinking to commence and ended up playing Asshole, a drinking card game which no ammount of explaination could make Syrrah understand. I won't go into the specifics of the game but if you've played it you know about the ranks and everything. She was the asshole for most of the game and just couldn't stop running her mouth to the President. I think she went and passed out at like 9:30. And that's what I did on my summer vacation.

I finished things!

Two whole knit projects DONE! As my four year old would say, "BOOYAH!" We've been VERY busy. Last week I had two knit projects to finish (and start) but also we had out of town guests (guess who the projects were for). I have TONS of pictures to share so I'm going to have to spread it out since blogger takes forever to load pictures. Today I shall give you the Saga of the Alien. So I decided to make a Kate for Tonka and Cathrine the Great's little boy but I didn't want it to be girly so I decided not to do the stripes, I'd just make it blue. Also, I didn't have any safety eyes so I had to just embroider a face (if you can call it that). Lastly the blue yarn I had wasn't worsted weight it was dk so I went down a needle size and hoped. As it turned out, Kate didn't end up Kate. What I ended up with looked more like a little alien so that's what I made him. Antenna instead of ears. But my poor little alien had another problem, his skin was see through! You could see his stuffing! Now that wouldn't do at all, so I decided to help him by taking him to a special alien skin fortifying clinic called My Kitchen where he could be fixed. First my little alien friend had to be fitted to the proper sized treatment tub. After several tries we found the perfect one just for him (an ex-potato pan). And he seemed pretty excited about starting his treatment, well that is until he realized that we were going to fillthat treatment tub with boiling water and a bit of woolwash (just a bit to kill any alien diseases he might be carrying). He wasn't to sure about that (the hot tub not the disease control). Our little friend was brave though and soon hopped right into the tub where he discovered that hot tubs are fun! He was happy to hang out in there for a few minutes while I went to go get him a medicinal margarita. True that at that time of the day he should have had some other medicinal "m" product... Ahem, anyway. He had to spend quite some time in that hot tub and I think he fell asleep in there. Good thing he doesn't need to breathe because he slipped right under the water and took a nap! Or he may have passed out from his medicinal margaritas... Uh, are aliens supposed to drink tequila? Oh well, too late now. After awhile it was time for step two of the treatment: a quick rinse so that he was cool enough for his human helpers to move him with their hands instead of tongs which, by the way, are not the best way to move heavy, wet, boiling-hot wool aliens. Human handlers should instead proceed to the sink with the tub in hand and dump the whole thing into the sink without ever attempting to manipulate the alien as they will have plenty of oppertunity to do so after he's cooled to a point where he will not scald you. Perhaps this human should have read the handbook. Oh well, next time. So, quick shower to rinse out the disinfectant (Kookaburra Wool Wash), to cool him back down, and sober up the little drunken lout. Just look at him! What a sloppy, sloppy drunk. Lying there all passed out in the sauna (uh, scroll back up a sec, see drunk as a skunk), limp as a rag doll. Tsk-tsk. Can't hold his liquor at all, that one. And on to the next, and final, phase of treatment: the sauna. Now this treatment facility has a very state of the art Kenmore sauna with a tumble or no tumble option. Since this little guy had opted not to have a fuzzy coat, we chose the tumble-free option and he sat very happily in there for a good two to three hours. Woolly (woolley? wooley? Seems like there should be an 'e'. Eh, I'm to lazy to look it up some one will comment about it, I'm sure) aliens take a LONG time to dry! But it was all worth it in the long run because his skin was beautiful when we were all done. Nice and tight and firm but no felting in sight! Congratulations little alien friend, you are a translucent freak no longer.

Half-assing my way through life

It's going to be another week of scant posts. NO! Not scat posts, scant posts, meaning few and far between. Maude, get your mind out of the gutter. I have out of town guests coming. I'm so excited! My son's godfather (who is one of the main factors that got Red Todd Kidd and I together) and his wife are coming for a visit. Now I'm faced with a conundrum: he goes by a nickname so when I blog about him do I use his nickname or do I make up a new nickname? I actually have a couple of people I've never nicknamed on my blog because, well, I don't really know. Wow, anonymity is hard. Eh, I'll just go with Tonka. Anyway, Tonka and his wife, (uh... name for her, I need a name for her...crap I'm really stuck here...) Cathrine the Great, their son, and Tonka's mom are coming out for a visit. I haven't seen him in four years and I haven't seen Cathrine the Great in three. Plus since they're coming a bunch of our other friends are coming too: Fuzzy Tail and her boy toy, Stripes, as well as The Single Letter and Kaylee. I'm totally excited, can you tell? The point of me telling you all this was to let you know that I'm not going to be around much. Especially since it's going to be The Single Letter's AND Tonka's mom's birthday while they're here so I'm baking two cakes and trying to quickly make one of those little cable knit purses that everyone has made. Oh, but I can't just follow the easy pattern, noooooooo. I had to decide to pull a cable out of my new Viking Knits book and try that. I'm about to go rip it out and start over to add some extra selvedge. Why do I do this to myself? Sometimes I think someone should just strangle be with my circs and take my stash. (The picture above is The Single Letter and Fuzzy Tail from a couple years ago)