Month: February 2011

meme

10 on Tuesday

Jen1 Comment

You had to know the memes were coming. It was only a matter of time, really. I’ve been following the Painted Sheep blog for a while and she does this Ten on Tuesday thing from Carole Knits so I figured, why the hell not? So here goes.

This week’s theme is 10 Favorite Oscar-winning movies. I tried (unsuccessfully) to keep it to Best Pictures only. So here they are, in order of release date:

  1. Gone With the Wind (Definitely one of my favorite movies of all time.)
  2. West Side Story (It has some of the best music to come out of the musical era of Hollywood.)
  3. Amadeus (Always made me wonder how close to real life the move was.)
  4. Rain Man (the height of my Tom Cruise crush. I’m over him now, but back then? Yum-my!)
  5. Dances With Wolves (Back when Kevin Costner was cool.)
  6. Silence of the Lambs (Oh Anthony Hopkins, you were so delightfully and frightfully evil!)
  7. American Beauty (An all around great movie.)
  8. Chicago (First musical to win since Oliver!)
  9. Slumdog Millionaire (The contrasts in this movie were so striking and the tale was artfully told.)
  10. Ingourious Basterds (The only one on my list that wasn’t a Best Picture win. Which is too bad, really. It was a really amazing movie!)

We love movies in our house and we watch a lot of them. Not all Oscar quality movies either, hah! What Oscar winners are your favorites?

life

Good day, bad day.

Jen3 Comments

Good day: Overnight, I made broth from the carcass and bones of last night’s leftover turkey. I woke this morning to the most delicious aroma of rich turkey broth which I then made into an easy turkey-noodle soup for tonight’s dinner.

Bad day: We had the HVAC guy over to do our annual tune up of the heating system and while he was here I had him take a peek at our hot water heater (which has been seeping water for a little while). It turns out that the upper heating element is totally corroded and therefore the whole hot water heater must be replaced ASAP (as in tomorrow and there’s no hot water tonight) before a catastrophe occurs.

Good day: A hot water heater catastrophe has not occurred up to this point.

Bad day: Preventing a future hot water heater catastrophe costs a lot of money.

Good day: While we don’t have the cash on hand in the form of savings, cash can be gotten relatively easily in the form of credit.

Bad day: This means more debt. :-(

Good day: The turkey soup was awesome.

yarn

My First Yarn Tasting

Jen5 Comments

So my LYS had a nifty yarn tasting today, which featured yarns from Bijou Basin Ranch. I have seen them at Rhinebeck, but their booth is either too full of people for me to get into, or they don’t have any yarn left for me to fondle (or to sell me), which is why the yarn tasting was such a treat!

First I knitted with the Yak/Bamboo blend. It was soft and drapey. The Rep had knitted a Pretty Thing cowl from it (see it in the photo there, just behind the yarn ball?) and it took all my will power not to tuck that Pretty Thing into my pocket and sneak out the door with it.

Next up was the Cormo blend. It was soft, light, and very very smooshy. A hank of it may have found its way into my shopping basket.

Oops. But least I ignored my baser desires and actually paid for it! *laugh*

Lastly, I sampled the 100% yak lace weight. Loved. It. It reminds me a lot of qiviut fiber in that it definitely has that softness, but it’s not quite as pricey and, as such, is much more accessible.

The Rep also brought along a sample of the yak down which had been processed for spinning, but since the shop doesn’t actually carry spinning fiber I wasn’t able to bring any of that home with me. (boo-hoo!) Luckily, it’s available on their website! (yay!)

All in all, I had a really nice time. The shop owner is a lovely woman who you can tell just loves yarn and The Rep was a very enthusiastic lover of all things Bijou Basin. It was fun to sit with them and the other yarn tasters and bond over our love of string! Yay yarn!

Further, a certain knit blogger you know may be teaching a sock class there in March. I’ll keep you posted.

Lolly

Happy Caturday!

Jen4 Comments

Knitting

Onward: Blue Blossom Shawl Again

Jen1 Comment

Arg, it’s getting difficult to come up with interesting blog post titles. I highly suspect I will have to resort to plain post numbers soon.

[ravelry]

I am pressing forward with the Blue Blossom Shawl again. I love this part of it. In the beginning, it’s small, so it goes relatively quickly, and the pattern is easy to memorize so I don’t make any make fewer mistakes. I see a long knitting-filled weekend ahead of me. :-)

Also, don’t forget my formspring.me account! Want to see me blog on the topic of your choosing? Ask me!

links

Linky Thursday

Jen6 Comments

It’s been a lazy day here. I had to get up early to chisel our car from its icy tomb. Then I took a nap, after which I knitted my Baktus while watching the protests escalating violence in Egypt. Also, I surfed the web. Here’s some stuff that amused me.

And how was your day?

Knitting

Cheeky! (A Finished Object Post)

Jen7 Comments

What do you do when you’re stuck inside because of the ICE STORM OF DOOOOoooooOOOOOooooOOOOM and while watching the country of Egypt fall into civil turmoil? Why, finish your knit-for-pay project of course!

[ravelry]

I had originally tried the Studio Shorts pattern, but the more I thought about it after my friend had tried them on, the more I realized that they were, indeed, too large, so I frogged them back to the legs and started the butt part over following Elizabeth Zimmermann’s instructions for Nether Garments. Elizabeth Zimmermann FTW! (Holy run on sentence, Batman!)

I’m so thrilled with how they came out!

I’m sure she’ll like love them.

 

 

life · TAS

Fatties Run Around Outside and Have Fun

Jen2 Comments

Cross posted from Fat Sisters because I am a lazy fatty fat. ;-)

Getting in some exercise doesn’t have to be the torturous chore it so often is (for me anyway). We have had an inordinate amount of snow around these here parts so these two Fat Sisters went out this weekend and hit the local sledding hill.

When we were done sledding, we had a vigorous snowball fight. It was truly joyful movement and a good time was had by all. Anyone else out there having fun in the snow?

*the title of this post is a phrase that was uttered a few months ago on a Two Whole Cakes Fatcast by Lesley Kinzel as she described her idea of a perfect Fat Camp. Sounds pretty good to me too.