runaway weekend

so, this weekend i did the usual, which means i worked. BUT, i also did the unusual, which means i got out of town. a friend of SOP was having a surprise birthday party up in Heber (near park city). well, HE wasn't having it, as it was a surprise, his wife was putting it on, but you get the gist of the matter: we went up to a "cabin" in heber for a weekend birthday party. i put the word cabin in quotes in the above sentence because this place was about 4000 square feet and had so much stuff inside, that it does not qualify as a cabin in my mind, but i think they like to call it a cabin instead of "second home". anyway, the "themes" some pillow fluffer decided to cover every square inch of wall- and shelf-space in this place with ranged from medieval (tapestries, cherubs, suits of armor) through southwestern (large native-american-stylized prints on a hallway wall so that you couldn't see them anyway) to outdoorsy (hunting and fishing paraphernalia accompianied by birdhouses). The interior and size of the place aside, however, this was a beautiful place to be. right out the back door you could go cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. had i brought my tele skis it would have been even better than the XC skis, but who cares?! it was so much fun to be outside in the hills and snow!

sop and the object of celebration:


sop on the ridge with Chad and Charlotte


the least-decorated room in the house (the mud-room, as we prepare to head out skiing). the lack of whigmaleerie must disconcert the owners every time they come into the room:


and my favorite shot, taken on the way up the canyon, of a blurry, bouncy, blue, clear sky:

today's weather

crystal pollution
masquerades as winter snow
flakes in atmosphere

hallucination hump day

hmm, are you wondering what some of the hallucinations were? yes, i've been bad at actually clueing you in. i know. slap slap. so here you go:

the hallucination from 12 jan was taken from a piece of bark i found on a hike last spring. the bark is about 8 inches high and has curled up inside out on itself. it is about 7 inches in circumference. i saw a couple of things in that one. a little mouse or owl peering out of a cave alternating with a hitler face.

the hallucination from 5 jan was firelight reflecting off a crack in SOPs fireplace screen. i saw the outline of a head (can you see the ear bump?).

now today's hallucination, well ... i'll tell you about it next week!

strange dreams

ok, by now, you may know that i often have some rather odd dreams. this past week, for example, i had a dream where i was going to a job interview where i knew they were offering me a job and had brought my office stuff (a box of sand) with me. at the last minute, though, i left the box in the reception area so it wouldn't appear that i was definitely going to take the job. the big pluses were that i would be paid a real salary again and that i would still be able to walk to work. everyone seemed to be wearing the blue shirt/grey pant combo - including me. that reminded me that i would be back in the 'real' world again.

but that is not the dream that i want to tell you about. no, the dream i want to tell you about, although without a box of sand as office supplies, is much more odd.

you know eye boogers? the things you get in the corner of your eye? sure you do. and, do you know how you get white blobs of moisturizer and such in that same corner? well, in my dream, i had white pellets that i was pushing out from the corner of my eye. they were rather large pellets, very firm and very white. soon, in that area in the bottom lid, i was pressing out sliced jalepeno peppers as well as these white pellets (cylyndrical in shape). i'd get a couple of peppers out of my eye and then more pellets, and then peppers again. hmm. perhaps i have been making tortilla soup too often?

today's weather

brought to you by smog™

politics as usual

i keep trying to forget that the man who continually lies to the people that vote for him; who pledges more money for AIDS prevention in public and then decreases the amount of money for AIDS prevention in memos; who can't get enough armored vehicles for the troops, but can order more armored vehicles for his celebration; who says he is a war-time president, but still holds inaugural balls and events, was elected this fall. but it is true. he is a man of the people: the people whose pockets he rides in.

today i will do great things

and then i will go out and play. - my niece

and monday was a great play day for me and SOP! we went up into the Uintas to go cross country skiing along the beaver creek. it was clear and beautiful above the haze of the salt lake valley and i have not had this good of a day in ages! we went to the bagel shop (the only one in town that still boils their bagels, which means the only real bagel shop in town) and then hit REI to rent xc gear for me. Then it was out of the smog and into the mountains!

we took dogie, not knowing how well he would do on a long hike: he's still getting his leg strength back since his surgery, but he did quite well! that was good news. i'd tell you more, but words cannot describe how fun and beautiful the day was, so here are the pics of some very happy beings:


nice profiles, don't you think?

my inner goth

inspired by my niece's gift to me of nicky epstein's knitting on the edge, i made myself a pair of wristlets using the petite bell ruffle for the edge. this used up some blue skys alpaca i had (ooh... soft...) although i made them using some 4.5mm metal needles as my wood ones were in use. yuck. never again. alpaca yarn + metal needles = trip to hell and back.

what do i love most about these items? well, i love being able to knit while wearing them on the cold walks in to work. the fingers on my 'fingerless' gloves are a tad (just a tad, mind you, but still a tad) too long to allow the yarn to thread over my finger while wearing them, these wristlets do not pose that problem.

now, you can wear these as the knitting gods intended them:

but you might want to turn the cuffs down:

and if you are all about the frill, and don't want to hide that frilly goodness while wearing a swetaer, then... ooh, yeah, i am all about the frill (free belly shot included)
these beauties are sure to bring out your inner goth (trust me, i have the black eyeliner to prove it)

it's about time...

so, in reply to a comment i posted on jessica's blog about the garter ridge cuffed gloves from melanie falick's weekend knitting, i realized i had never posted a finished picture of these gloves, nor had i posted my comments on the pattern. so, here we are.

first the comments:
1. i made these with a yarn not suited to the gauge of the pattern and, rather than resizing the pattern, forced the yarn to do my bidding. as a result, these gloves are pretty stiff.
2. i goofed on the cuffs and made then too short
3. however, the hand increases occur right after the cuff which, due to the length of the palm, makes the wrist above the cuff too large. if i were to do this again, i would shorten the palm so that the cuff ends where the palm starts.
4. i added extra rows around after creating the pinky finger, which means i created the fingers in a different order than the pattern. why anyone would create a glove with all the fingers starting at the same point is beyond me. have they never looked at their own hands? do they wish they were actually amphibious?

so, the pictures. crappy and small, i am afraid the second one is a blow-up of part of the first and therefore quite pixelated, sigh. might i be falling out of love with these mitts? one thing i know is that they keep my hands warm! love that angora (used elsebeth lavold's angora yarn in bronzed green).

hallucination hump day

i spy with my little eye...

i am home sick today. bleagh. left work early yesterday, too. and instead of teaching someone to knit tonight as i was planning, i will be heading back to bed, because, you know, 36 hours of sleep over two days is not nearly enough!

thank goodness for hump-day, the hallucination may be the only thing that keeps me going. BUT i DO have knitting pictures that i hope to get up tomorrow!!! (don't you hate it when people tease....)

things i do not understand

1. wearing the whole 9-yards of makeup while skiing or boarding


2. mini-skirts over clunky pants


3. velour jumpsuits

hallucination hump day

now it's up to you...

from the ashes

last year i got it into my head that i would like to make an urn for R's ashes. i have the container from the funeral home, a lovely mdf box with a contact-paper-esque veneer, but i wanted something a bit different. since r loved the smell of cherry blossoms, and since it also echoed his interest in japan, i decided to make an urn out of cherry wood.

first, i went to arborcare, a local tree care and removal company, and found several cherry stumps. i picked up 5 for $5, but keep in mind this wood is not dried so you have some risk.

wait, actually, first i went to sop and asked if he could help me do this. you see, sop knows wood. he is a woodworker by trade and if it can be done, well, he probably can do it.

so, now we are already at number three, where i chose a stump to start out on and took it to the woodshop up at school (the university where i work). then sop helped me put it on the lathe.

next came ripping off the bark and starting to get it in the general shape that i wanted it. the wood was very wet and smelled of spiced honey as i turned the wood. every so often i would just stop and hold my face up to its surface.

the ends of the wood were checked and started cracking more and more as we went along. i became worried that this might not work; that it might fall apart. i just kept reminding myself that i had 4 more stumps in the basement and i could try again if this didn't work out.

the design in my mind was a sphere, slightly wider than tall. the lid would join evenly with the sphere, looking almost a part of it. sop didn't tell me until the end how tricky this would be: he just thought of ways to make it work.

the very last night of turning was tortuous. i had the sphere where i wanted it, the surface was sanded and smooth, i was just going to cut off the lid and then reshape the base to accont for the material lost in that cut, but as we cut off the lid (sop in charge on this bit), the saw blade caught and broke and edge on the lid, meaning the entire piece would have to be reshaped. i about gave up at this point, thinking that the lid was going to be some dorky-looking thing sitting on top of a larger bottom, but sop helped me out and i got the piece where i wanted it and it was time to hollow it out.

hollowing was a blast. i could apply pressure and just get into a groove. the smell of honey came up again as the wet center wood came out. and then it was done. sanded. oiled. beautiful. i took it home and filled it with oil to help catch any more cracking and hoped that it would hold.


uh oh, the lid...

yes, the lid is still cracking. i don't know yet what i am going to do. i need to talk to sop. i think it might need to be redone, but that's okay, i can do it.