05.02.08
Posted in dogs, woohoo! at 2:13 pm by wendy
First, good news:
although I’d been playing the odds and wasn’t really worried.
But it’s good to know for sure that the cat that sank its needle fangs through your heavy jeans and deep into your calf muscle while its claws mauled your hand in a frenzied ball of muscle, bone and very pointy, pointy rage was not afflicted with a disease that will slowly eat your brain.
The rest of that story, and this week, has not been so woo-hoo, although it all ends well depending on your perspective.
Read the rest of this entry »
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04.25.08
Posted in travel at 8:47 pm by wendy
jiggety-jig, Libélula’s a bossy little pig!
Seattle was fun! Vancouver was fun! (but brief. I got homesick. not sure when I became that girl, but there ya go)
I’ve got some pictures up on a flickr set entitled, oh so creatively “Seattle.” Looking through it, I could have called it “Things Which Look Like Genitals and Some Canadians.”
We hit the Space Needle, the Underground Tour, and the Aquarium. We ate, we drank, we browsed shops which catered to a small but apparently well-heeled market, we slept, I forgot stuff pretty much everywhere I went, Ande made out with a bitch of a yarn store employee, we walked a lot, and then we drove north to Canada!
Canada was everything I dreamed and more.
I did learn though, that while Canadians may be famous for politeness and cute police, they are as big a bunch of dorks in traffic as any southern Californian/ San Franciscan. At least, that was my experience in Vancouver on the 99 during the lunch rush hour. Hey Canada! Y’all need more left turn lanes and signals, apparently, because one lane of traffic gets stopped dead while they wait to turn and the other lane goes whizzing by…and even when stopped or slowing down for a light you can’t get over to the active lane because
a) no one will let you in
b) you can’t see far enough back to judge a traffic gap to safely get over because there’s an old lady in a giant SUV on your @ss. I spent about fifteen minutes sitting on the 99 at Prince Edward Ave. Maybe three cars got to turn left, against the light. It felt like being in L.A., especially since the only reason I’m not still sitting there is ‘cuz I gave up the courteous safe driving thing and drove like I was in T.J. (i.e. crank the wheel, hit the gas, and put your fate in the hands of the Blesséd Virgin) like everybody else.
Also, Canada, what’s with the randomly flashing lights? I get that the flashing yellow let’s you know it is going to turn red, but some of the lights started solid green, then flashed. Some started flashing, then turned solid, and some were solid all the time. It’s a little weird.
It was a long drive home because of the Vancouver traffic and then Seattle traffic, but I broke it up by checking out the Weaving Works on my way. Awesome shop. Raw fleece, prepared top, local yarns, huge selection of books, nice range of classes. That and Stitch were my favorites. Stitch had a great class list for sewing and knitting a great selection of ribbons and zippers and fabrics.
I look forward to going back after I’ve burned through a lot more of my fiber and fabric stash…
As far as creative stuff since I’ve come home, not much. I’m tagging and bagging for a craft fair tomorrow. Shouldn’t be too busy, but it’ll be good practice.
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04.19.08
Posted in travel, woohoo! at 10:38 pm by wendy
I’ll be heading up to Seattle at the crack of the a.m., barring any weather conditions, so if you need me, call the cell. 
I’ve never been to Seattle before; I’ll be meeting Ande and Terri on Monday and we’ll be checking out the sights and local yarn shops, then up to Vancouver! As far as I know, I’ve also never been in Canada before, so this is all going to be one big adventure.
But I won’t be back until the 24th, and I’m going no e-mail (or going to try to) so…really, if it’s important, call the cell.
In other news, I still suck at sewing. And I’ve discovered that it is possible here to walk into the emergency room, receive treatment, be discharged, get a prescription from the Rite Aid and be back home all within one hour. I also had to go to the DMV a couple weeks ago and was out the door again within maybe five minutes. Hooray for Yreka!
I love it here.
I also finally got a drum carder; a Louet Jr. which will be part of the rental equipment retinue. I’ve only made one batt so far, but it was fun and very random. More pictures and info if you click the pic.
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04.13.08
Posted in knitting at 9:28 pm by wendy
Last month I finally finished the Bubble Pullover (Ravelry link) from Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan.
I used roughly 7.5 balls of Superwash Cascade 220, and as I am a loose knitter, went down a needle size from the recommended to get gauge.
Because the pentagons, the shape, the color create a very tortoise-y shape, I used pewter tortoise buttons I bought from Lori’s Frames Fibers & Frills in Alpine, CA.
I guess this is really a snapping turtle, even more apropos for me, but the backward flippers kind of freak me out. And make getting ‘em through the buttonholes a bit of a bugger.
This was a super easy project and I can absolutely recommend it for a new knitter who’s not afraid to pick up new skills. You basically knit the same pentagon over and over, knitting from the outside in (so you’ll definitely know how to use circs and dpns at the end, see the difference of a right and left leaning decrease) and pick up stitches along the last one to knit the next one and cast on some new stitches to join in the round. The construction is lovely, and if you knit the sleeves in the round as well, the only finishing you have to do is sewing the sleeves to the body. Then comes the tedious ribbing. Bleh. Everything else went fast with this but the ribbing was dull and I kept wandering off to do other things.
I love this sweater though; it turned out so comfy and warm, and while I’ve already made it all pilly and covered in dog hair, I wear it all the time when it’s cool enough.
When the collar is unfolded, I can cover up to my eyes. I feel very awesomely Yertle.
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04.09.08
Posted in love, sewing at 12:08 pm by wendy
This is the fabric I bought yesterday that I told you about–a very, very Seventies Spree.
The smokey blue at the top is cotton canvas (and pretty thin) and the rest are quilting cottons. I got three yards of each thinking I’d do the pintucked table runner and matching placemats with the the blue canvas on the top and the orange swirly as the backing, with orange rayon thread as the contrasting thread…but I think I was thinking the canvas was more blue than it is. I’m not sure they’ll work together.
So I might try to do a wrap dress a lá Bottega Veneta:
(picture taken by digital camera off a computer screen, how lowtech lame am I?)
I have to admit I’d never heard of him before I saw the ad on the back of the March 10, 2008 New Yorker, and I just fell in love with the dress there. Unfortunately, there’s no good pics online, maybe I’ll scan the ad in. Anyway, the wrap-type looking dress looks like a less challenging place to start. But I guess all those woven leather vinyl and leather bags and wallets and belts and such are his fault. (and best sellers) I think they remind me of those chairs you had in Scottsdale, with the woven Mexican leather backs and seats that were that terra cotta pinky color. Am I remembering them right?
Anyway, at least I’ve got enough fabric to make a few attempts at the dress, we’ll see. 
And I have no idea why I bought three yards of that flowery fabric, holy cow, I think a little of that will go a long way in something. I no longer know what I was envisioning when I picked that up and put it on the cutting table. Crazy person.
Well, I’ll post pictures when I’ve actually done something with them.
I hope you have a great birthday and know that I love you and miss you Grammy!
(Libélula sends her love, Crivens is whining and Tahoe has no idea what the heck is going on, so business as usual up here…give Nick a big hug from me when you see him, the depo was a lame waste of time and state money.)
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04.04.08
Posted in d'oh, knitting at 9:05 pm by wendy
This is what happens when you write a post that says “knitting is so easy and simple blah blah.” The gods of carelessness and blithe misjudgement rise up and smite yo’ ass.
D’oh.
Sigh.
One advantage sewing has is that it is so quick (perhaps if I had paused and used my brain instead of grabbing an idle passing fancy of misguided impulse I would not have sewed my teabag shut) that a mistake can be made, realised and remedied in the space of minutes.
I would be embarrassed to admit how long this took me before I thought, “uh, hey!”
In mitigating circumstances I am retraining my knitting style to be the two stranded knitting norwegian purl and english style instead of my incredibly inefficient (but fast, still pretty fast) throwing style. So that was all good practice I guess, and I’ll get faster and faster. (I hope.)
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04.03.08
Posted in sewing at 6:17 pm by wendy
Originally uploaded by tortadetortuga
(well and just generally sewing too, although I think we are all agreed that sewing is mostly ironing)
I finished something! Actually a bit ago, and finished a sweater as well, but I didn’t want to scare people into thinking the Endtimes are nigh what with all that finishing which I never do and I am a lazy, lazy blogger.
I’m not entirely happy with it, but Nick likes it and it was a good learning exercise.
Lots of pictures in the flickr set, if’n you want to see ‘em just click the piccie.
And a big thank you to everyone who clicked through and voted for my cousin’s band! They won and got to open for Fergie at the Tempe Music Festival, so that was an awesome experience for them and thank you for helping get them there!
Next time, an actual knitting post.
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03.31.08
Posted in sewing at 8:44 pm by wendy
One of my issues with sewing is that there’s no knit-purl.
There’s no basic cast on then some simple repetitive motion that is all you need to do to get an FO. (Okay, yeah, you need to know a bind off, so knit two stitches then slip that first stitch over and repeat, simple as that.)
There is way more washing and ironing and measuring and drafting and testing and pinning and cutting–and then, The Machine.
D@mn! Who the hell said sewing was the easy simple housewife scrimpin’ way to do sh!t?
‘Cuz that’s what I thought.
I was definitely wrong.
Sewing is to knitting like chess is to checkers, you’ve always got to be thinking of the shape you are making and how that’s changing the next shape you’ll be sewing and finishing edges and –it seems you’ve always got to think about the finished product and the steps inbetween.
Of course knitting is so slow; if you find out you messed up and it looks ugly, you rip it out. But you weigh that against the time it took you to get there, and the material takes the damage too. And you figure out where you went wrong and you fix it. So I guess there it’s a bit the same.
The flexibility of knits is multitude. Sewing is a nitpicky taskmaster.
And then there are just plain dumb, stupid mistakes.
See, I was so proud of myself.
I was making a big pot of tea and I thought, “hey, I’ve got cheesecloth, I’ll make a big ol’ reusable teabag!”
So I cut a long rectangle of cheesecloth, I cut a length of hemp cord and even scoured it of any processing cr@p, then laid it in the middle of the rectangle of cheesecloth and folded the cloth over the cord.
So, writing this, I find the next logical step after just folding it over once would be to sew a line underneath that hemp cord to hold it in place, THEN fold the cloth and sew it like I did.
It is so totally completely boneheadedly obvious in retrospect.
But instead I folded the long rectangle of cheesecloth over the hemp cord, then folded it sideways, and then sewed down the side, across the bottom, up the side.
And then because I’m a dumbass, thought, hey, I’ll sew along underneath the cord so it will be all nice and secure. So I did, and sewed the freaking tea bag shut.
D’oh!
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03.06.08
Posted in dogs, sewing at 9:10 pm by wendy
Crivvie got a massage today.
We went after Crivvie with the
Furminator today, as it’s been a long while. This was all from just one side…and no trick photography here, the hairball is bigger than her head (not including needlenose however).
Despite the ‘crazy eyes’ look in the pic, she loves it.
She actually has a type of undercoat, which is kind of unusual for greyhounds. It’s quite soft, but short staple, so perhaps someday I’ll dehair it and blend it with some cashmere or somesuch. Mom would have got a kick out of that.
~~~~~~~~
I was cruising around looking for fabric (I may not sew worth a damn, but I’ve got the stash impulses) and saw this: Knitmare On Elm Street. Might make for a cute knitting bag fabric or needle case.
ETA: when I googled for a better closeup of the knit pirates fabric, I found Alison of Blue Blog’s cool bags.
Speaking of stashing, Nick and I went up to Ashland yesterday and I stopped in at Fabric of Vision. It’s a small shop, but packed with good stuff, and the owner was really nice and very helpful. I bought In Stitches and Sew What! Skirts, and a yard and a half of fabric with which to make a fairly simple A line skirt. I was just checking out etsy, and look, here’s the fabric!
The fabric reminded me of my Grammy Kitchel, something she might have as curtains at the La Jolla house.
Our amazing sheepy bed has arrived (pics in the next post, I promise) and I thought it might be neat to make organic sheets and a duvet for the bed. I googled organic fabric and found NearSea. Wow.
They have a nice selection and good prices of organic and plant dyed yarn as well. I built a shopping cart of about $600, for fabric alone.
Then I bookmarked it and walked away. Thankfully, the cart was not saved. When I have come to my senses, I will return and build another cart.
I, uh, still need to unpack my sewing machine though.
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02.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized, dogs, flying, love at 4:26 pm by wendy
We haven’t been up to much, but we’ve been taking lots of pictures of the notmuchness.
Belu and Crivvie got into it at the fence line in the backyard when they heard the neighbors dog RIGHT THERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OMG! And they got excited and the only one there to take out the excitement on…was the other one.
Belu put a teeny little nip in Crivvie’s shoulder (unusual restraint for her, really, but we’re almost positive she started it. Because she always starts it. And even when she doesn’t, it’s her fault. Now you see why we shouldn’t have kids.) and Crivvie decided to teach her a lesson by putting her head in her mouth.
The long scratch down Belu’s side and one of the little booboos on her forehead seen in the flickr set is from an earlier Peanut Butter Cookie Bag Incident at my grandmother’s.
Unattended bag of peanut butter cookies while packing + two bitches adjusting to new temporary environment = bitches be scufflin’.
(The other booboo in the album (on my foot) was from when I was sleeping and Belu was sleeping, and she had her head underneath my feet under the covers in the bed and then some dipstickbrained but adorable foster dog decided to jump onto Libélula.
Who, me? A dipstickbrain? Wha?
Libélula defended herself by tearing out a chunk from the pad of my forefoot. It hurt. But it happened ages ago, you can bearly see any difference in the foot now.)
Last thing about dog health–we took Belu to the vet because she’d been limping for more than a week for what should have been no big deal. The vet thinks she bruised the cartilage in her shoulder and that we need to keep her calm and inactive for six weeks.
Six weeks!
Six weeks without walkies and frisbee and she may damn near kill us all.
So if I don’t blog for a while, you’ll know what happened. Or we’ve just been busy. Or not feeling like blogging. Whatevah.
Nick’s been growing a nose neighbor! But he shaved it last night, so, it is no more, le sigh. But we thought it was as funny as it was itchy, so we made a montage of Nick doing sexy model faces.
Funny though that his sexy model face looks a lot like his stoopid tired/stoopid drunk face.
And, we’ve started up flying again. With the prep of the move, vagaries of the weather and limited availability of our instructor for certain things that had to be ticked off our school’s list, we opted not to stress ourselves out racing for the finish.
So, yesterday, we took an area familiarization ride/checkout with one of our new FBO’s instructors. They only use a Skyhawk for training, not the 152 like we’re used to, but it’s just like flying a bigger, more powerful pig.
Click to visit the photoset of yesterday’s flight (there’s great pics of bird poop, Mt. Shasta, and Jo Alice’s house!)
The Skyhawk has 4 seats though, so it meant I got to ride in the back seat and take pictures while Nick got the hot seat yesterday, and I did it today. But from now on, our lessons are solo lessons.
Nick took pictures today, and I got to land on a gravel runway! Wheee! It was greenish with all the mossy winter wetness growth. (Nick updated the flickr page, mine start after the pic of him and Vern in front of the Skyhawk.)
It is simply gorgeous here and the weather’s been wonderful.
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