The state of, um, stuff.

I disappeared for five months. Well, not really, just from the blog, I wasn't really invisible or anything. For the first couple months I was licking my figurative wounds. Then I was soldiering through a bunch of death anniversaries. Now, I think I'm finally digging out of the Pit of Despair.

For me, joking about depression is like spitting in the eye of a bully. I'm sort of on a crusade to de-stigmatize several things, depression included. (Also chronic illness, RANT FOR ANOTHER DAY.) No, it's not to be ignored. Yes, it should be talked about openly. Yes, a lot of people need whopped in the head about the idea that a brain chemistry fuckup needs treatment as much as a broken arm would. Many people have names for their depression, I've heard some refer to it in variations of a black dog. For me, it's the Pit of Despair because it reminds me of that bridge scene in "Holy Grail" and anything that's even mildly amusing is a win.

So there.

ANYWAY. What I've been doing. Sadly, we're lacking photo documentation of the summer; I dropped my phone right before Samhain and Broke It Good. All data lost. Bugger. Doesn't matter much, all I really did was sit on the back porch, spin, and watch movies on my net book.

At the Goober's school, they do 'dress up like a book character' instead of full on Halloween. Which they call a harvest festival. The Goob and I got together and dressed her up as Agatha Heterodyne.

I made the skirt, we cobbled together the rest. Yes, she's wearing a trilobite pin at her throat, and those are goggles on her head.

Nobody at the school knew who she was. I mean, okay, not EVERYBODY reads web comics, but in a whole school full of adults who are hopefully at least a bit computer literate, NOBODY?? Seriously. I let the Goob take one of the on-paper books of Girl Genius with her. It didn't help much. She came home disgusted.

Next year, she wants to be Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls. I can work this.

Then came Thanksgiving, and having to make the kid a pilgrim outfit. I sewed the hat and apron, the rest is just black clothes. This led to something of a rant, in which I called the pilgrims a bunch of fascist zealots, which sadly, the Goob did not repeat at school. (I continue to be horrified by the misinformation these kids are getting as "history".)

One of the Thanksgiving assignments was to disguise a turkey. I don't even know. The kid wanted Iron Man, so I hit the scrapbooking store (congratulate me on not spending a thousand dollars), got the papers we needed, and this happened:

Please note the drawn-in goatee and speck of blue foil for the arc reactor.

Honu's doing well. Getting the hang of the lap cat thing.

Although, unfortunately, she seems to have that catly thing for yarn and string, which can be something of a problem:

She also bats at the cursor on my computer screen when it moves, and goes after the stylus when I'm using the tablet. Hoo boy.

My local yarn store, Natural Stitches, started selling gradient fiber for spinning. Unfortunately I lost all the pictures I took while spinning it, but I still have the scarf.

Fiber is "Flame" gradient in BFL from Frabjous Fibers, the pattern is "Volna" from Grumperina, with the fiddly bits on the side left off. I have another gradient in bright rainbow unicorn fart colors I intend to do this same exact thing with.

A couple years ago, my physical therapist told me to start wearing scarves to keep my neck warm. It makes sense, all the pissed off nerves from the RSD run down my neck and into my arm. This winter I started taking it seriously, and you know, I think it works. Not like a morphine lollipop works, but on the other hand, the only side effect is looking dashing.

With that in mind, I lost my head on the scarves knitting, and started Lucy Neatby's "Bubbles" scarf.

Unfortunately I got the flu at Christmas (a tradition I am seriously unamused by) and when the 102 fever hit, I thought probably working on double knitting with an improvised pattern might be inadvisable. I knit a Batkus instead, with Socks That Rock "Holiday Hen". Natural Stitches started stocking StR and I'm gonna go broke now.

Really all I've done is huddle in and knit. I spent a lot of time thinking, both of what to do with the blog, and what to do in general. One of the reasons I haven't blogged is, I feel like I've said everything already. I've joked about getting a tee shirt that says "I wrote a blog post about that". But then I read all my usual geeky stuff and want to post about El Dorado (since we don't know their true name), or political history, or different fibers, and I guess there's still more to say.

If not I can babble something or other.

That's about it from here. The current spin is taking forever:

Mostly because I want lots of yardage and so am spinning it very fine. I'll love it when it's done, but at the moment I'm two thirds of the way through and really kinda bored.

For Christmas, the husbeast got me a beer stein I haven't even been able to use because I've been on antibiotics forever:

He has a keggerator in his man cave. It's quite the sight - the tap is a mermaid (I keep meaning to sneak down there and paint her hair brown like mine), and above it is a picture of the first ship he served on. Very Sailor On Dry Land. I made a joke last autumn that I should have a beer stein since we had a keg, and at Christmas, this happened. Isn't it pretty? It's apparently Art Deco, which amuses me all to hell. Stoneware, salt glaze, tin lid. NEEDS BEER.

New goals? Well, during my 'dig in and knit' brooding, I realized most of my regrets in life are about missed opportunities. I need to take advantage of them more, and I'm working toward that. Short term, I'd be really happy to finish this spin and have some beer in my Art Deco steinie.

Golden Globes Red Carpet!

Well, kiddies, it's the new year, and that means AWARDS SEASON. First up is, obviously, the Globes. We don't care who wins what. It's about the clothes!

Now. I know some don't like the concentration on looks, and they're PEOPLE, not faces, but this is Hollywood. It is a professional event. They have had months to prepare for this. This is not the same as taking a photo of them out for coffee and ragging on their tee shirt. (Personally I think that should be illegal.) Honestly, I don't really even care who's wearing it, I just wanna see CLOTHES.

The only person I'm likely to rag on, as a human being, is Jane Fonda. If she shows up. I'll quit bitching when she's shot for treason. RANT FOR ANOTHER DAY!

So.

CLOTHES!!  WHEE!

(For now, while waiting, I'm watching Leverage. If you've never watched it, you should. It's hilarious. I want to be Sophie Deveraux when I grow up. Heck, I pretend I'm her, now, when I'm talking someone into something.)

(Also, I have a kitty on my lap. Honu's adjusting well, but she's still getting the hang of cuddling.)

Watching E, so I'm gonna have those knuckleheads taking up my bandwidth.

I'll do my best to add pictures where I can find them.

The red carpet goes out to the street and the cars are driving along it. Okay. Wut.

They're pushing a Twitter hash tag.

Zooey Whatsit, in beige. She says it's comfortable. DeLaurenta.Sparkly. Can't decide if that top is flattering or not. She has flowers on her manicure. She matches. Purse, hair flowers (YAY RIBBONWORK!) and dress. I just don't know.

Aubrey Plaza, in a fairly regular dress, BUT IT FITS. Color works on her.

Hayden Paniterre in Tom Ford. Black and white, FITS. The hair looks like she just got out of a swimming pool. But the dress is flattering.

Sarah Hyland, really cute peach orange dress. Pretty. Plain but fitted decently in front, sheer and beaded on the back. "It's from Paris!" She says the hair is inspired by the Valentino runway, but she looks more like Heidi.

The manicure cam may be fucking awesome.

(Oh man, I just had to bump the cat off me so I could type without my shoulders screaming. Damn it, not the way to train her.)

What's with the slicked down hair on women?? It's flattering on maybe 2% of them, everyone else looks like they need a shower.

Margot Robbie looks freaking fabulous. And she did her hair. She must have the undergarments from hell, but the dress is perfect. This is what I'm talking about when I bitch about fit.

Kelly Osbourne going on about her own dress. HONEY, YOU ARE A HOSTESS. IT'S ABOUT THE OTHER PEOPLE.

(Hitting pause to wash the kid's hair and get pizza.)

Ryan Seacrest. Who IS he? I mean, what does he do?

One of the hostesses is wearing another version of Deitrich's nude dress. I'm really tired of unlined dresses. I don't wanna know what underwear they're wearing.

WANT ACTUAL PEOPLE, NOT HOSTS. I'VE SEEN YOUR CLOTHES.

Lena Dunham in yellow. Um. Yellow's a really hard color to wear, especially for people with Euro coloring. And the cups are too small for her boobs. She says it was designed for her... Someone needs a lesson on fitting. Boobs don't belong in your arm pits. I love she's letting the tats show. You go, girl.

PIZZA! Husbeast is awesome.

Vagisil commercial. I can't even.

Now they're talking social media. THANK YOU E! FOR CATCHING UP WITH THE REST OF US.

Interesting architectural dress behind the inverview. Nice hair, too. No idea who it is.

Naomi Watts in silver Tom Ford with sheer cutouts. Still not sure if I care about sideboob or not. Pretty sure not, but the dress is more revealing than it looks at first glance.

Lupita Nyong'o in bright red, FANTASTIC with her coloring. Perfectly fitted. She looks amazing. WONDERFUL. That's how you do it!

More shots of Zooey Deschanel, which is nice, but we already saw that dress. MOAR FASHION DAMMIT.

Aaand another commercial.

Melissa Rauch, also in yellow. Why do people keep wearing yellow? It's the world's hardest color to wear. Great dress, but I think another color would've been more flattering.

Zosia Mamet in a fabulous black and... white? Pale pink? dress. Love the beading, and it's done in an optical illusion flattering way, but what's with the hair??

Elizabeth Moss, beaded dress that must way twenty pounds. Also not doing her hair. WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE. It's nice, mostly fits. She has repeatedly flipped off the mani cam. Haha.

Emilia Clarke, some kind of strapless architectural dealie, THAT FITS. Nice. DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR HAIR!!

Amy Adams in a plunging red dress. HI BOOBS. She pulls it off. She's got the presence. It's backless, and the front goes down to her waist. Yow. I wouldn't have the nerve to wear it, she's advocating good posture, I think double-sided tape and/or super glue is also helping.

Kid now old enough to have opinions. She likes beads and ruffles. Shocker.

Really not liking the hair trends.

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Tina's dress is great, very Louis XVI. She dresses up really well. I like the wrap style of Amy's, too.

They're trying WAAAY too hard to work the social media into this show. They're talking about wedding cake.

Okay, I'm not gonna rag on actors' dates. I'd flip out if someone dragged me across the red carpet. But there is some really unfortunate plastic surgery going on.

Oh my. WHO IS THIS? Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting. Badly fitted corset with lots of skirt. Not sure I like the print, but the fit is... yeah.

I've had dresses fitted before. More than once. I've done it myself. It's not hard, or expensive. Even without a stylist, why aren't they making sure this stuff doesn't smash their boobs?? These women have fabulous bodies that they work like hell to maintain. Why don't they get more serious about actual fit? I don't get it.

Halfway. I'm really tired of these hosts. Blah blah. I just wanna see clothes, damn it.

Cate Blanchett nails it in backless black lace that fits. She also did her hair. When I grow up I wanna be Galadriel. She's towering over Seacrest, which pleases me. She is just so damned elegant. WHOA! The back goes doooown! I hope that's glued, or she doesn't sit down. But it looks fabulous.

Guys wearing tuxedos. Yes. Often nice, sometimes horribly fitted, who cares, NEED DRESSES.

Bradley Cooper. Om nom nom. Y'know, on the right guy, a tuxedo reminds me of a present to be unwrapped. I'm just sayin'.

Emma Watson in simple red with a drape on the back. I think she's adorable. I always do. Wait. It's... pants? Black pants with a backless red tunic thing. She's striking a pose on the red carpet. Honestly, she'd look adorable in a grocery bag. Sort of WTF, but she enjoys pushing the envelope with fashion.

Taylor Schilling in a green nightgown.

Kerry Washingon, pregnant. Everyone should go to her for lessons on how to dress. The color is meh, but the cut of the dress is really interesting, in the best way.

Julianna Marguiles, in black with gold print or applique or something. The full skirt looks... odd.

Sophia Vergara looking like a bombshell. Va voom. The boning in that dress, holy cow. Zak Posen. A cathedral is nothing compared to the architecture in that bodice. It doesn't fit quite right, but who's noticing??

Bono and Edge. And... what is U2 doing here? Oh. Nominated for a song, their songs were in the Mandela movie. They DID do a whole lot to help South Africa. They're saying all that really good profound peace stuff. Didn't Bono get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? Edge is wearing a stocking cap with a suit. REALLY? Come on.

Cate Blanchett and Bono gushing at each other. I want to be them. Or, no, go out for a beer with them.

Leonardo DiCaprio. Feh. Blah blah. Ooh ah. Whatevs. Also, his tux doesn't fit. Teeheehee. As I was typing that, husbeast walked in the room, glanced at the TV, and said "he couldn't find a tux that fit?"

Melissa McCarthy in a really neat black dress with a beaded swish. I wish she'd wear more color. Black isn't slimming, it's just black. And boring.

Olivia Wilde in green with a kajillion beads. Another twenty pound dress, but nice. Those types of dresses drape like damn and require undergarments by Goodyear. But they look so nice. She's preggo. In a heavy beaded dress. I can't even begin to imagine. I'd have been found in the bathroom, puking.

Reese Witherspoon in THE PERFECT DRESS. Holy crap, that's perfect. When I start bitching about proper fit? THIS IS THE IDEAL. Holy mackerel.

Sandra Bullock still has no boobs. The husbeast would like the world to know this. But the dress is nice. I'm so tired of black, but at least there's some color. The pink over the black is a great optical illusion. Still not sure how I feel about the blue at the bottom, draws the eye to her feet, which isn't usually what people are going for in a dress.

Goodyear blimp. They didn't do the tires tonight, they did the foundation garments. Seriously. With these dresses.

Heidi Klum looking like Stevie Nicks.

Julia Roberts. What, the, hell. She's wearing a strapless black corset thingie over a white dress shirt. WHAAAA? I'm looking at it, and I'm still what. Dolce and Gabana. And still, what the fuck. Um. She did her hair?

Julia Louise Dreyfus, in red halter. Yep. It's a dress.

Mila Kunis in silver, really pretty. And she did her hair. She always goes for soft and sparkly combined, I love her looks.

Taylor Swift in 20s style pin curls and a red and black dress. Carolina Hererra. Fabulous. Little bow in the back, a train, which looks great but must be a pain to maneuver in. She looks like she's hunching over to keep her boobs in the dress. I don't know if that's her, or the dress.

Jennifer Lawrence is photobombing her, sneaking up the stairs making faces. Girl hugs and kisses.

Jennifer Lawrence! She's wearing a knockoff of a... Chanel or Vionnet. From the 30s? It's not a knockoff, it's vintage, right? It's supposedly Dior. She's such a hoot, her bracelet fell off, she's pretending to toss it into the crowd.

Drew Barrymore in a dress she had to have chosen for fun more than glamour. And it is fun. I can imagine her saying "I'm pregnant, it's fun, hell with it." It's adorable, it really is.

Jessica Chastain in plain black with long hair. Nice look, if eh.

Sarah Paulson. I wore a pink version of this exact dress to the band dance in 1986.

Lots of repeats and blah blah and I'm burned out. Poking through the 'net for pictures...a lot of these are from the People.com web site.

Zoe Saldana looking FABULOUS. I keep using that word. It's fitted to her, and the ribbon over her shoulders, and the pink with her skin.

So, there you go. Golden Globes red carpet, good fun. Lots of great clothes. Yay, fashion.

Damn it, Honu.

This week we've got a guest cat at House O Samurai. He's about twice the size and three times the weight of Honu. Who apparently, along with no people skills, has no cat skills. Or maybe she's just protecting her food source.

Who can tell, with cats?

Anyway, during one of the mutual hate-fests, I heard this weird humming. I thought it was outside, or the AC system, or the dishwasher. No. It was Honu.

When growling, my cat sounds like a bagpipe drone.

No dignity.

None.

Zie Touren du Sheepenfloofder!

(Still fooling with how I get pictures from my phone to the internet. It's slow going. Right now, I'm having to PUBLISH from my phone, then go back and edit to put in words. Sorry if anyone is getting weird shit in their RSS feeds because of it.) 

The Tour de Fleece. I participated this year, after a fashion. I spun about 750 yards of two ply; all the plying and 95% of the singles, all spun during the almost-month of Le Tour. It's all destined to be entered in the county fair. I finally moved to a place where you can enter spinning! And noticed! (I've been to the fair the last two years and I swear to Arachne I never saw any lone yarn running around the textiles building. Knitting, yes. Crochet, yes. Amazing quilting, yes. Yarn, no.) 

My first project was a Teal to Tangerine gradient from Fiber Optic. (Every year FO goes to the Great Lakes Fiber Festival Gathering Thingie in Wooster, Ohio. Now that I'm hooked, I go over there and loot the booth. This spring I bought a giant bag of fiber at Fiber Optic, and a basket. That's it.) 

335 yards, heavy lace weight, sockish. No idea what I'm doing with it once I get it back from the fair. 

Then, one category of the fair is novelty yarn. To my knowledge, that's all they say about it. Novelty. I can spin the hell out of novelty. 

It's "Fruit Punch" pencil roving from Louet, and I added bright pink nylon sparkles to the slubs because why the hell not? I started with half a pound of fiber, so I got 320 yards of the beehive coil stuff, and 80 yards of plain, which will be handy for casting on and off. Bwahahaha. 

Right now I'm knitting an Aeolian, to, yes, enter in the county fair. My usual attention to detail has been turned up to eleven, and, well. 

It's not going so hot. 

That was 25 rows of what the fuckery. So, now it's gone. I've knit it all back up again already, so I may actually finish it by August 18, when it's due. Or I may not, and just wear the damn thing come winter. THE COLOR WILL KEEP ME WARM. 

That's about it, at House O Samurai. Still trying to spin through migraines with varying levels of luck. I started another Fiber Optic gradient, this one Blush to Celery. 

Ohhhhhmmmmm.

Damn it, Honu.

Changes

It's been a long three months. I'm still digging out from under all the baggage from last autumn. As the Goob so succinctly put it it at a family gathering last week, "Mom's side of the family tree is all dead." So. Yeah. Digging.

This is our biggest change. Meet Honu. She's a tortoiseshell cat, so of course in my brain, the name was obvious - Honu is Hawaiian for sea turtle. (This has led to several rather entertaining conversations with the Hawaiian friends. "Why did you name your cat turtle?" "Because she's a tortie." "...of course. Of course she is.")

When Sekhmet died, everyone wanted to know if I was going to get a new cat. I figured the right one would find us, just like when Sekhmet turned up on our back porch. About six weeks ago, I got a call from my MIL. Her bestest friend had found a lovely kitty on her porch, and I was catless, did I want her? And here we are.

 Honu, bless her heart, is a moron. She was a stray her entire life (8ish months) before turning up on our friend's back porch. She has no people skills. None. Sekhmet knew instinctively that when the hoomins were in a dark room, laying down, it was time to be quiet. Honu? She jumps on my back and screeches. At 3AM. The Goob wants to know when I'm gonna "train the cat like Sekhmet". I'M WORKING ON IT, KID!! But Honu is polite - when playing she keeps her claws in and barely nibbles. Sweet kitty. Just dumb.

 ---

 As always in a crisis, I've been trying to keep my hands busy so I don't kill people. I hunched over my spinning wheel and produced a crapload of yarn: ...well, imagine a big pile of yarn here. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my pictures out of my phone, even with the freaking Google ap. Feh.

 In my own half-assed way, I'm doing the Tour de Fleece; I just finished 350 yards of a Fiber Optic gradient that is getting entered in the county fair, and am maybe 1/4 through a half pound of fiber that will be a "novelty yarn" for the county fair.

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 That's about it, kids. Digging out from The Pit of Despair (you gotta make fun of it) and trying to get back on track. Maybe I'll figure out how to post these spinning pictures. :)