Procrastination is My Constant Companion

Uhhhh...I desperately need to clean house. Tomorrow night my cousin, whom I haven't seen in over a year, is coming to visit. She has spent the last 13 months in Germany getting all wordly and seeing Europe (geez..) Ah well, I'm not that jealous. I did leave Arkansas for the excitement of the west coast, after all.

Anyway, I digress. For the past few days I have been making mental notes of everything that needs to be scrubbed, dusted, vacuumed, etc.. and now the time is upon me..but I'm having a hard time getting started. Instead I have spent the morning gawking over FO's and potential future projects on Ravelry.

Well, that's not all that's happened. I did get around to coloring my hair again. My feelings on it are....meh. The box was full of promises of shine and shimmer. Honestly though, my hair looks exactly the same except that the horrid blonde chunks are toned down to a light brown. Good enough for now. As I sit here, the tv is playing TLC on mute and Nick Arrojo is styling some lucky woman's hair. Oh, how I wish that Nick Arrojo would do myyyyy hair. The hair styling segment of What Not To Wear is always my favorite part. And I am always green with envy when I see the final results, especially when the "contributor" on the show doesn't like her new hair cut and complains that too much was cut off. It makes me want to throw things and yell at the tv, "SHORTER HAIR IS BEAUTIFUL TOO!!"

Ohh, now I really digress. Okay, what I need to do is put on a playlist that moves me to get up and dance and then get to gettin'. Maybe I'll use knitting as a reward afterwards. I've been heavily eyeballing Coachella and already have just the right yarn.

A (small) Plethora of Thoughts

There are some things in the world that I can't get enough of. A catchy tune, for example:



More accurately, it's the artist that I can't get enough of. He makes being a musician look so damn easy. There is a very long list of things that I wish I could do, and being a pianist/acoustic guitarist/vocalist is at the very top. But my singing voice is for shame, and if ever there was an appropriate time to purchase an instrument to learn on, well that time is definitely not now. Sigh..

In unrelated news, I have just recently taken my first tip-toed steps into the world of hair color. The best advice on the subject is to not do your own hair at home. Well, I reject that advice on the grounds that I can't afford the salon and that other women seem to be perfectly capable of doing it themselves. So last Friday I attempted to put a few sparse blonde highlights into my hair. The results were certainly eye-catching...much in the same way that a derailed train is eye-catching. A basic summary would say that the back of my hair ended up yellow, the right side streaked, and the left side looked almost untouched. I'm just not a fan of the big chunks of fake blonde "highlights" on dark hair, which is what I got even though it's the very thing I tried to avoid. Now a second box of hair color is sitting on my dresser, waiting for me to grow the gonads to attempt to cover my disasterous highlights with Deep Bronzed Brown. All of my fingers and toes are crossed in hopes that I won't bungle it all up worse.

New Look

Well, for the umpteenth time I have changed the look of my blog. It seems that my ability to not change it is pretty sad and sorry. This place will probably be a construction zone for a while longer. My deepest, sincerest, crossing-my-fingers-est hopes are to get some good photos posted...(photos that my husband will take, because, as should be a well-known fact, I am clumsy and unskilled with the camera.)

Fair Isle!

Well, after finishing my two Ravelympics projects early and not having the yarn to make my mom's blanket yet, I raided the stash and chose this Fair Isle project for my nephew. It came out pretty well :) I'm actually proud of myself for doing the two-handed stranding and frogging this thing until it was to my liking. Now that the little boy is getting a hat, my little niece will need one too!

Ravelympics FO #2

My spankin' new purse has arrived (or more accurately, has been completed.) Voila...






Complete with a cotton liner and zipper. Oh, the sewing!! But it was totally worth it. Even my husband likes it. I will be carrying this thing around until it wears out.

Hellz Yeah

One project completed for Ravelympics 2008.



Natalya gloves for Sister. She will like these. Hell, I like these. She picked out the yarn herself, so these will be replacing Evangeline as her Christmas gift. (It came to my attention that she doesn't like to wear wool...now she gets Caron Simply Soft.) I might try to knit her a hat based on this cable pattern since there will be plenty of yarn left over. Go Team Red Sox :)

Out of the swing of things

There hasn't been much knitting in my house lately. The hanging dish towel that matches the dish cloth from the previous post is just so boring..and is therefore still sitting on the needles. However, Ravelympics begins on Friday and I will be knitting my little heart out on a cabled purse and another pair of fingerless gloves.

So, if there has been no knitting, what has there been? Well, a couple of weeks ago on my husband's birthday, we took a trip up to Anaheim to see the Red Sox play the Angels. It was my first time at a pro baseball game and it was utterly awesome. The Sox lost, unfortunately, but it was a fun day anyway.

And last weekend marked the first time that I ventured out into the big Pacific Ocean past my ankles. I've always kind of had an unreasonable fear of the ocean in the same manner that some people are afraid of heights. Okay, so it's really not that unreasonable. I mean, there are plenty of things swimming about undetected that wouldn't mind to bite or sting me out of curiosity or spite. And I figure that if I were meant to swim in water I would be equipped with something other than obvious land-dwelling accessories such as legs and lungs. Anyhow, the trip out into the water was preceded by a lot of Frisbee throwing, catching, missing, and chasing on the beach. That was a pretty good day.

So I still haven't gotten a job yet and as delightful as staying home all day can be, I don't have much interaction with other people these days. My goal this weekend was to temporarily fix that problem. We invited over some friends, I made dinner, they brought libations, we listened to an array of 80's music, then somehow ended up at the karaoke bar down the street. We sang, I danced in cute but horribly uncomfortable heels, and, well.....the day after was an unpleasant one. Today Husband and I both seem to be fully recovered, though.

That will teach me to cram a bunch of fun into one night to make up for all of the other long boring days at home.

Oh yeah, I just found out that Jason Mraz is going to be playing locally on Oct. 31. Totally going.