A Few Things

::Wow, time is FLYING by! I am getting further and further behind in my knitting schedule. This does not please me.

::one of my photos taken in San Francisco has been short listed to be included in a Schmap! I don't get paid, but it does indicate that someone thought I took a good picture of something, and this pleases me to NO END.

::Maya got a doggie ski type vest for an early Christmas present (don't laugh; she is a short coated little girl that gets cold at night). She looks super duper cute in it, and is sort of learning to function in clothing. What a good girl.

::Yesterday Maya ate a corner of the coffee table. What a bad girl.

::Sew, Mama, Sew has announced that there is a Holly that won a yard of Heather Ross' Nicey Jane fabric. I entered the giveaway, so I am hoping against hope that it's me. But I bet it isn't.

::Have I told you to go read Ricë Freeman-Zachery's blog lately? I know i mention it occasionally, but lately she has written a series of wonderful posts on organizing and decluttering. Perfect for a great start to a more organized life that leaves you time to make art and do the things you love. These posts have been of huge value to me lately, but one on purging things really stuck with me. You can find it here. The remark about not using things or throwing them away because you may not have them later or have money to get more absolutely shook me to my core. That is my main self defeating behavior with regard to creative endeavors. I took her advice to heart, decided to live life from a place of abundance rather than fear, and i cut up some felt and had a fabulous time doing it. So go give it a read.

::I got a new phone. It's a Blackberry Curve. It's orange. It has an Amazon app. This could get ugly REALLY fast.

Randomly

I don't really have a whole lot in the way of organized thoughts, but still had a few things I would like to share nonetheless.

::Moving:: We found a house! To rent, not buy- for now. We love love LOVE this house. I even love almost all the colors that the owners chose for every single square inch of space. Wow, are they not afraid of color. It's really conducive to the things I have and want to keep and the things I don't have and have wanted to buy for a while. I'm excited about redecorating. I will have My Own Room. The dogs will have a yard, the boy will have a garage for mannish things, and we will have a big deck, a sunny yellow sunroom, and a huge kitchen and living room conducive to entertaining. I am so, so, so happy. September, I know I said that I would try to live in the moment, but you have to go. Seriously, get out of here.

::Listening::
Oh, how I love this album and this artist. And now, at long last, I will be seeing her in October. Live. With nothing but her keyboard, her amazing voice, and my undying adoration. I. Can't. Wait.

::Knitting:: Although I haven't taken any pics of it in a while, I have actually finished quite a bit of knitting lately. A pair of mittens that are slightly (okay totally) not the same size, some green mitts that were just sort of languishing, and an adorable little white capelet-- my very first wearable thing. I think you would call that a garment. Yes, a garment. I have one now. I'm also working on a baby gift that is so cute you will throw up on yourself when you see it. And now I get the hype of baby knits-- when you make clothes in miniature, it doesn't take so very long at all! Unless you are almost bested by tiny little shoes. Anyway, I hope to finish it over the holiday weekend. Out of things I already had at home, no less. Do you feel smug like I do when you realize that all that hoarding has FINALLY paid off?

::Obsessively Reading:: Design*Sponge online. Not sure if this is telling about how exciting I am, but their before & afters every Thursday are a bright spot in my week. I just love them! I have always loved befores & afters, but it's so cool to see how a coat of paint, a bit of wallpaper, or some upholstery can make something truly gag-worthy into something fabulous. Not to mention, the Design Guides are great. I think it's the re-decorating bug that's got me.

::Loving:: Maya's new trick. Now when I come home, every day she runs to greet me, jumps for attention, and wags her tail. Just like normal dogs do. I'm sure it's terrible and selfish of me, but I like that this joy is only for me, and that I am the one person in the world that she is that excited about. Wonders never cease with that little dog.

::Anticipating:: A holiday weekend, apple season, and the return of Dog Season on the beach. I am ready to do some packing and organizing, make applesauce, and walk my dog on our favorite beach once the tourists go home and she's allowed in the sand again.

What are you doing?

Kerry Got Me

I don't normally do these things, but for Kerry I will.

THE RULES:

Rules of the game: Respond and rework. Answer the questions on your own blog; replace one question that you dislike with a question of your own invention; add one more question of your own. Tag some friends to keep the flow going, let them know they've been tagged.

THE QUESTIONS:

What is your current obsession?
Knitting socks. I think it's just magical. And I love sock yarn. I like that sock knitting enables sock yarn buying. So I think that it's fair to say that stalking etsy and Ravelry for indie sock dyers is my current obsession. Oh, and my new camera. You could call me a fairly obsessive person.

What is your biggest pet peeve?
People who don't use their blinkers. Also people who drive in the left lane on the interstate, and aren't going at least 5 over the speed limit. Or are just cruising in the left lane. MOVE OVER!!!


What was the last thing you bought?
I bought two eyeshadows and a shimmer bronzer on etsy from Colorfulsheep. They are all natural and don't have the ooky stuff in them that regular makeup does. I am very excited to try them out.

What are you listening to right now?
I'm with Kerry- I am stuck on the Kings of Leon album, Only By The Night. I'm also stuck on the new Ray Lamontagne, Gossip in the Grain, and have renewed my love for the Dresden Dolls' No, Virginia. It's just so great.

Favorite vacation spots?
hmmm, that's tough. My favorite vacation ever was the week I spent in Paris. But I also loved Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, and Bermuda. For a quick getaway type trip I love the NC coast and the NC mountains. I'm pretty much a carolina girl to the bone.

Do you have any strange phobias or fears?
(This is the one I changed.) I am afraid of damaging my teeth, DEATHLY afraid of snakes, and the remote fears that I have are: clowns (especially Pennywise), my house burning up, the IRS, and being scalped or horribly disfigured in some freak accident. Swine Flu is also creeping it's way up the list.


What four words would you use to describe yourself?
Hmm, I would say Funny, Imaginitive (not the same as Creative, I think), Crafty, Dichotomous

What is your current guilty pleasure?
sock yarn, Ben & Jerry's ice cream. They are guilty pleasures because i don't need them, but man I can't seem to have enough.


What would you do if the internet was irreparably damaged and you had to find another way to connect?
I'd go out a lot more. I would go hang out at the farmer's market, the yarn store, the dog park, and my favorite place to see music. Maybe the internet should die.


Where are you planning to travel next?
At the end of July I will be doing the West Coast for two weeks: San Francisco up to Seattle, with lots of stops along the way. I can't wait.

What was the best thing you ate or drank recently?
That would be Sunday dinner. It was a belated birthday dinner, and it was awesome: Beef tenderloin medallions, stone crab claws, cheddar mashed potatoes, and grilled veggies. So. Good.

What flower are you most anxious to see bloom this spring?
All my favorites have already come. I love wisteria and it's sweet smell, and tulips are my very favorite flower.

What are you most happy doing?
Knitting or sewing quietly alone, walking with my dog on the beach, traveling and seeing new things, spooning in bed, seeing live music

Care to share some wisdom?
No. I don't have a blog called Wise Is The New Awesome, after all.


I'm not tagging anyone. If they don't do the survey, i will feel really sad, and I'd rather spare myself the disappointment.

Generally In Lieu of Blogging

I figured I would just sort of neatly summarize why I have been so terribly absent. Lots going on here presently, but none of it interesting enough to warrant its very own post. So we'll just list and then move on.

• Maya. She is peeing in her crate again. Sometimes peeing and pooping. Nothing has changed; I am not sure why this started up again. Maybe her meds aren't right anymore. I had this whole bout of melodrama where I wanted to shake her, and felt like I was failing her somehow, and why me?!?, and so on. I am over it, and I am determined to keep trying, keep loving her to bits, and dwell on the improvements she's made, and not the puddles.
  

• Um, hello- Spring?!?! Yeah, I have actually been out in the sun and fresh air, enjoying the warmth and neglecting the computer. This has done wonders for my general outlook, despite what my sinuses may tell you.
  

• Consequently, spring has me feeling sort of wound up and domestic. I think that the impending arrival of BF has something to do with it too, but spring cleaning has started around here. You can't really be present at the computer when you are scrubbing baseboards, windows, and cleaning out and organizing drawers, can you? And no, I will not come to your house to clean your windows and baseboards.
  

• I've discovered sock knitting. Things will never be the same.
  
  • 

That's really it. Not such an impressive list now that I think of it. But hey, at least you know now that it hasn't been all crappy reality tv. Some, but not all.

I am now beginning my mini-cation. I took a few days off work to form an extremely long weekend. During this time, I need to make half a closet in the bedroom, make at least some space in the bathroom, and find some way to share the office- that part hurts my heart just a little. Anyway, there's that and then there's a trip to see my mother and some friends and then home for more feathering and fancifying (shut up, I don't care if it's not a real word) of my little nest here. Perhaps I will have a whole sock to show you when I get back?

Oof.

Well, here it is almost a week since I posted. And lord knows I have not been good about showing what I am up to.

But I have an excuse.

My power supply fan is about to shit the bed completely. You should hear this thing wheezing, groaning, and huffing and puffing along while I am on the computer. It's dreadful and there are times where I think that the computer may just completely lift off- not kidding. So yes, I know that it is a terrible reason, but I have been delaying the inevitable by simply not even turning it on. This is just to buy me some time till my Personal Computer Geek (BF luckily) orders me a new fan, tells me how to install it, and so on. Oddly enough, a by product of this unfortunate computer situation is that suddenly my free time to actually make things seems to have tripled.

A sad by-product of this is that I forget to tell you awesome things as they happen. Like the other day, i think it was yesterday but it could have been the day before, Maya wagged her tail at me for the first time inside the house. There were no other dogs around, and we weren't playing, but I asked her if she wanted to go potty and she smiled and wagged her tail at me a few times. It was cute- I have had her almost a year and now she is finally starting to come around enough emotionally to communicate with me. Oh and in case you were wondering, Operation Anxiety is going very very well. We haven't had a bad crate report in weeks, I think. She still randomly does naughty things, but overall she is a much happier dog, and I am a much happier person. Thank you, Modern Medicine. And thank all of you for all the comments and advice and support.

So anyway, i am still here, all is well, the Use Me Up Challenge is going fantastically, and I am making things. I have lots of posts that I hope to work on in draft over the next week or so, and I hope to post them here and there so that this place isn't so...quiet. It's just not in my nature.

Oh and the final count for the neuter-a-thon: 165 cats! One hundred sixty three boys, one girl, and one boy-girl. All sterilized in roughly 5 hours by two vets, with no known complications at this time- everyone woke up, no one has come back for infections or problems with their incisions, etc. So I guess you could call it an overwhelming success. I can't wait till the next one.

That's really all the news that's fit to print, at least until I make the Mother of All Confessions this week. I fell off the wagon, and hard.

Emotional Enemas

Today was the ultimate in emotional enemas.

Have you ever had an enema? Now I realize this may well be TMI. But you know what? I'm gonna go there. I had one once, when I was a little girl. I went to the emergency room for what would turn out to be kidney stones. At the time though, they thought I was constipated, and so they gave me one. I'll spare you any further details, except to say that I imagine if you actually need one, they are very, erm, cleansing and theraputic.

I think that the collective heart of America got an enema today. I feel like mine did. I feel like the past 8 years I have just had to Tamp It Down. Let's get into a Make Believe War that carries a real body count. Tamp It Down. Let's bully the world as a whole. Tamp It Down. Let's pretend that pillaging the planet and consuming purely for the joy of consumption is without consequence. Tamp It Down. Let's do it all over again for four more years! Tamp It Down. Let's monitor the innocent, torture the accused, and use hate and intolerance as a unifier. Tamp. It. Down. There's only so much bottling up of emotion you can do. Even when people have written letters, made signs, and shouted in the streets, we Stayed The Course.

And then we got an enema today, and all the shit was flushed right out. And it felt really, really good.

I really hate (although it's very fitting) that for all the emotions that I've felt and the things that I've thought, that all I can distill it into is a poop metaphor. Well, a leopard doesn't change its socks, does it?

No, it doesn't, but every so often it gets a shiny new President. And that's good.

Right Now

:Reading:
:Listening:
:Watching:
:Cooking:
a huge pot of chili. the most exciting thing about this chili is that it is made with sirloin tips, zucchini, and a can of Guinness (among other things). Delicious.

:Drinking:
More chai tea. And the verdict is in. I think that soon I will make another batch, this time with white tea. Then I'd like to mix the two together. I like the black and white tea based versions equally, but for different reasons. I think too much about tea.

:Hoping:
For certainty, peace, and improvement. The first one is probably an illusion but having a bit could make me eat less Tums. You could should a cannon at my leg and the cannon ball would bounce right off it, I'm sure. That's how fortified I am with calcium. Also, hoping that the fan in my computer holds out, and BF hurries up and sends me the extra hard drive and RAM so I can spiffy this computer up. It's got oogie boogies in it, and it's high time they got out.

:Knitting:
a Banana Republic Knockoff Hat(it's going to work this time, I know it) and a Prismatic Scarf, which I am enjoying so much it's hard to put it down. I love that.

:Sewing:
a checkbook cover, a quilted rug for the kitchen, and some throw pillows, oh and some rice heating pads- all in various stages of completion.

:Stewing On:
my word for the year, Kerry's post, and something I hope is a heart's whisper and not just a bug up my ass. Also, hand sewing. I did a smidgen of it last week while finishing a project, and I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did.

:Waiting For:
the triumphant return of the best show EVER, Lost. It appears that the premiere will actually be TWO episodes. I can't wait to crack out on the pure genius that is this show. Also, some packages. I cracked under the pressure of fiscal conservation and bought some happies. Hurry up!




^^I love this pic, and I just think it's so odd. I took it at a Bojangles in Columbia, SC. It distrubs me because Bojangles is a chicken-n-biscuits place and the chicken is holding a sandwich- likely a chicken sandwich. Why? Is he a cannibal? A sell-out? I'm both lost and sad, but not enough to not get some chicken and biscuits there from time to time.


Have a Bo-rrific (I just noticed the misspelling of the made up word, and I want to drive there and repaint it in the night. It should be Bo- riffic, dammit!) Day.

If I Had Known You Would Be Stopping By, I Would've Put On Pants

Um, so ok.

I went on Google Analytics today and had a look at what's been going on here lately. As in, who is silly enough to read this nonsense and laugh at my fail projects, and where those people are. Yep, I seeeeeeee you! Well, sort of. You're orange dots on a map, and I know how long you are here, what brought you here, if you are sleeping or awake, and if you've been naughty or nice. Well, not all of that. But still, Google Analytics shows me that my suspicions were correct- people read this.

You fucking terrify me, readers. There, I said it.

I had a look at how the Magic of Google led a few of you here, and I gotta say: I'm SORRY. There was a poor visitor who typed in "awesome sewing" and got my blog. Don't worry, they didn't stay long. I would ask why, but I know that the answer is in posts like this. I had to laugh at that. Sorry that happened. Some other, uh, interesting search terms were "looking for god and finding no one's there" and I feel pretty sad about that. I am sorry that someone was looking most likely for answers to life's questions and wound up here. I mean, what does that say about me when someone goes to The Google and says "show me proof of the results for a search for God" and Google says to them, "Hey! Speaking of proof that there is no God, we have this girl Holly here and man! you should see some of the shit she has made lately!" Ouch. Then I felt better about the person who was looking for a "cat goes to the vet song" because that doesn't sound like the makings of a good song and they are probably better off here than somewhere else. Anyone who's anyone knows that you could very easily just write your own Cat Goes To The Vet Song. It's not rocket science, people.

So. Good thing I decided to tidy up around here, huh? Don't worry, I'm working on a hotsy totsy banner for the top too. It promises to be just like my typical style of anything I make up myself. Great in theory, but fatally flawed in every other sense.

Miscellany

mis⋅cel⋅la⋅ny

 

–noun, plural -nies.

1.	a miscellaneous collection or group of various or somewhat unrelated items.

2.	a miscellaneous collection of literary compositions or pieces by several authors, dealing with various topics, assembled in a volume or book.

3.	miscellanies, a miscellaneous collection of articles or entries, as in a book.

No posts in a week, and my triumphant return is tidbits of a miscellaneous nature. Oh well, it's my blog, I do what I want.

First of all, a good bit of my silence is due to a serious case of Creative Constipation. I have had so many ideas, so many lists, so many lists of lists and random piles, collections and what not- it was all starting to get backed up. Something had to give. I think that I just had some sort of idea overload, and no real logical way to pick what to do next. So I did what any sane person would do:
I took a pickle jar, wrote down some things I want to do on scraps of paper, folded them up, and stuffed them in. Sadly, this is just a sampling of the things from the 'Things To Make' bookmark folder that I have on my computer. This is stuff that I either have laying around or am willing to go out and buy pretty much right away. Oh, and there's some creative equivalents to FREE SPACE in there too- they say Knit! or Cast on for Something New! which should be fun. the pickle jar looks kind of imposing from that angle, huh?

I am taking the Freeze your Buns! Challenge and I finally turned my heat on yesterday. We have had a cold snap the past few days with highs only in the mid 40's! That's pretty effing cold for here, and this time of year too. Now I have the heat set on 60, and it has kicked on once since I have been home tonight, and it was very breif. It was on quite a bit this morning, but oh well. Getting out of bed is hard enough as it is without it being like 50 in my house when I wake up. Just when I was about to crack the other day, my power bill came in the mail. Forty five bucks! That renewed my determination.

I mentioned lists before, and after reading a post on a random blog that I think was linked to from JC Handmade (thanks for the tip Kerry!), I also found a way to start tackling the things that have been causing me tons of anxiety, and proving how consistently fail I can be sometimes. It was on the nature of lists. I love lists. I love making them, crossing things off of them. One more than one occasion i have made lists of lists to make! Anyway it all gets overwhelming, and allows no time for anything other than doing stuff. So now I have like 5-7 things on the list a day. They are including a self pampering/maintenance thing, a cleaning thing, an organizing thing, a creative thing, and a purging thing, and a holiday/errand/random task thing. It's fun! I like seeing my to do list look like tomorrow's: paint toenails, wash windows, clean out nightstand drawer, work on rug for kitchen, clean out underwear drawer (what?!? don't act like you don't have to go through now and again and get rid of the ones that are past their prime!), gather up sticks for starting fires (only in my fireplace, I promise!). Anything else I do is icing on the cake. Anything else I don't do is no big deal at all. I like setting myself up for victory.

Um, what else?

I am heading to my dad's for Thanksgiving. I only see him once a year, at Thanksgiving, so this will be nice. It will be a full house, but the holiday is always really laid back with lots of just hanging out. i plan to be computer free and spend a lot of quality time with my knitting. I have three projects that I will be taking along, so I hope to have a few things to show for being gond so long. I will, however, miss my animals terribly.

Upon returning, the full fledged mania of Christmas crafting begins. I know that I said that I wouldn't be making anything this year, but I feel like I have to. Part of the specialness of the season is the giving, and although things are tight this year, it just wouldn't be the same without sending gifts off in the mail. I have a few things planned out (and put in the pickle jar!), and the majority of them come from stuff I have pretty much readily available at the house. I will still get jolly if it's the last thing i do, dammit!

Yeah, that's really all I have to report for now. I hope you all are staying warm and gearing up for the holidays!