Finally!

Every Halloween I try to put on false eyelashes. I end up with a bunch of glue all over my eyelids and in the corner of my eyes. All I've managed to do is cut the corners of the eyelashes off and just glue those on. Yesterday while Ross was in class I managed to glue the right eyelash on with very few problems. The left one on the other hand took at least 10 tries. I wore them around the house, and to Wal-Mart, but by the time we were ready for ice cream my eyes had had enough and I took them off. I don't think you can tell in the photo--but these eyelashes were spotted feathers.

Pumpkin Carving 2011

Last night we had our annual pumpkin carving gathering. I made some butternut squash soup and Texas garlic toast. We (mainly me) also munched on jalapeno poppers. Monica and Ainsmar joined us. We missed  having Richard. Everyone's pumpkins turned out nicely. Ainsmar carved the Mummy. Monica carved the Great Pumpkin. I carved the Bats, and Ross carved Mike. After pumpkin carving and photos Ainsmar, Ross and I went to the Dairy for ice cream. They had pumpkin ice cream. Perfect! Ross and Ainsmar had the pumpkin sundaes (with a snickerdoodle, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin butter, caramel, and cinammon crunchies) and I had plain pumpkin ice cream. I think a good time was had by all.

Puss in Boots

I decided yesterday that I wanted to go to the movies. That's pretty rare for me. I wanted to see Puss in Boots. It was playing at the drive-in, but I didn't think I had the stamina to sit through more than one movie, and it was cold out last night. So we went to see Puss in Boots at the regular theater. I'd seen a couple of trailers. I was worried that the theater would be packed with little kids, but the theater wasn't packed at all. Why? We went to see it in 2-D. There was only one overly-enthusiastic child was shouting and hooting and hollering through the first part of the movie.

Ross and I were happy that they hadn't shown the whole movie in the previews. In fact, we had no idea what the plot was or what other characters were in the movie. It wasn't the best movie ever, but we laughed our butts off a couple of times. There was a great dance scene and I think Ross and I were laughing harder than anyone else in the theater. There were also a couple of adult jokes that cracked us up.

I'm glad we went. It was good to get out of the house and have a good laugh. Now we're wondering if they are going to have a Donkey movie.

Nightmares

Yesterday I watched a David Attenborough show on deep sea creatures and it gave me nightmares. The animals that live at the bottom of the ocean are scary. I was dreaming about mollusk covered train cars and three-fanged worms. The angler fish was crazy icky. I'm surprised I didn't see any of them in my nightmares.

Oops, I Did It Again

I gave into temptation and bought this tiny orchid at Trader Joe's this weekend. I love the color of the tiny little flowers. I put Penny in the guest room. I'm hoping the cooler air in there will make her bloom. In the meantime I'll enjoy my new orchid. I think I'll call her Maggie.

Obsessed, but Unfocused

I'm obsessed with knitting lately. I even dream about it. I'm knitting a pair of socks for Ross to wear while snowboarding, and they are coming along nicely. The thing is, I spend a lot of time looking at knitting things on the web instead of actually knitting. I start thinking about what I'm going to knit next. What I'm going to knit for whom, and looking for patterns. I'd be a lot further on these socks if I just focused. I think I'll knit a longha (muffin top) warmer next. That will be easy, mindless knitting, so it should go quickly--if I can stay focused. My list of things I want to knit keeps growing, but I have a strong policy of only working on one project at a time. Otherwise I'd have a pile of half-knitted things. So I'm going to try and focus a bit more on these socks, then I'll decide what's next.

Me Want Afro

Okay, squint your eyes a little so that it doesn't look like such a fake photo. How do I look?

I'm at a kind of transitional place right now with my hair. I don't know if I want to cut it off or grow it out. Lately I want an afro. I met a woman with a great afro this week and it made me just want to chop up my hair and see if I could get it to stand up like that. 

I don't know what to do with my hair, but right now I just don't like this in between length.

Leather and Cashmere

I go to the Nearly New Sale at GBMC twice a year with my friend Amy. It is the perfect place to find great deals on clothes and things for the house. I usually go with Amy on Sunday afternoons, but we decided to go yesterday morning. Wow. The place was a madhouse. We could barely walk around and didn't even see half of the place before we called it quits. We went back again today, and there was hardly anyone there. It was so much nicer.  All in all I spent less than 50 dollars and came home with:

a pair of black leather pants that I will probably wear to Ross's company Christmas party

a black cashmere sweater (Bailey and I loooooove cashmere.)

a jenaer glas cappuccino cup that I'll be using as a bowl

a small, really cute depression glass pitcher

a metal pitcher

a new powdered sugar shaker for Ross (We can't get our old one open to add more sugar!)

a Japanese tea set for two

a tie for Ross

a pink ball of yarn

a set of yarn for darning

a white designer purse--it had pen marks on it, but I've already cleaned it up and it looks great

a ceramic pot for my imaginary ginkgo bonsai

thigh high stockings

Recent Knits

 I've gotten back into knitting again recently. It has been helping me stay away from ebay I guess. I decided to knit up a scarf with the leftover yarn from my knitted bonnet. I wanted an interesting texture, but not anything I'd really have to concentrate on.  Ross loves hexes, and I like them too. I found this pattern in an online stitch dictionary. It is very easy. I just knitted along until I ran out of yarn.

I decided to use some 100% angora yarn that I bought at an estate sale in Texas to make a kerchief. Just a little something to keep warm. In the end Ross said I looked like Jeff Goldblum in Buckaroo Banzai. Nice.




The kerchief turned out to be a pretty easy knit. I even added beads, but they are hard to see with the fuzziness of the yarn. The pinkish yarn fibers get everywhere. They are worse than cat hair. I still have a lot of yarn left over, I have no idea what I'm going to make with it.

Next up: socks for Ross. I'm going to try two at a time toe-up. That way he can try them on as I make them and I can knit until I run out of yarn. I've already got the yarn, and I have gotten some new circular needles---I just have to figure out what I'm going to knit. I found a pattern that I like, but it is for a size 12 foot, and Ross is closer to a size 10. So I'm not sure if I'm going to try and knit it on smaller needles or subtract some stitches or what.

Collection: Ginkgo Leaves

I started collecting leaves in 2005 and taping them to my plain vanilla lamp shade to kind of spruce it up. I collected all sorts of leaves, but I'm especially attracted to ginkgo leaves and I still collect those. I love the shapes. I like how some of them are split, and some aren't. They also aren't necessarily symmetrical. I really, really want a gingko tree. I want to get a small one and see if I can turn it into a ginkgo bonsai. Maybe I can grow one from seed.

My ginko collection is mostly on the sewing machine under a sheet of glass. I've thought of scanning them in to make a pattern that I could embroider on something. I'm not good at embroidery though. I even have a ginkgo leaf that I picked up in NYC in a frame with a picture of me and my mom at the Statue of Liberty. The sewing machine is getting full. I'm thinking maybe I should start putting the leaves in a book and label them with the place and date I picked them up. All OCD like.

Unlike my shoe collection and my hanky collection my ginkgo leaves are pretty much useless. Maybe I can get a couple of small leaves and shellac them and make earrings out of them.

NYC: Quick Trip

Valerie and I took a quick trip to New York City this past weekend. It was a whirlwind trip. We were there about 24 hours.

Our first stop was to get some food at Peels. Valerie had the shrimp and grits and I had the gobblecado sandwich. We both enjoyed our food. We also had drinks. Valerie went with the traditional Bellini and I had the Jasmine Cooler--very refreshing.

I wanted to go the Crafts on Columbus street fair, so we headed uptown. We took a walk across Central Park--and that is when the rain started. It came down really hard. Despite our umbrellas we were pretty wet. My purse (huge purse) was sticking out, so it was soaked. We waited under some scaffolding for a while, then walked to a couple of stores. The rain eventually let up and we went back to the craft fair. I didn't see the vendor I was specifically looking for--lots of vendors left early because of the rain. I did find some really nice earrings made from Victorian spoon handles. I bought them. The same vendor also had really neat bracelets made from old typewriter keys.

After changing our hotelroom--the first one reeked so badly of smoke I was crying--we dragged ourselves out to dinner in Little Italy. Of course we got some dessert across the street at La Bella Ferrara. We headed up to Times Square, where I guess we spent a long time, because we didn't get back to our hotel until after midnight!

On Sunday we slept in and then went to Ess-a-Bagel for breakfast. We ended up standing in line for 45 minutes and just got (bagel) sandwiches to go--it was almost lunch time. The bagels were huge! We made our way down to the bus stop, and that was the end of our trip. I was able to sleep both ways on the bus. I credit my noise cancelling headphones. I love them. This was a great trip. It makes me want to go back for another quickie trip.

Two new things that I'm obsessed with: getting a bigger, better umbrella, and finding some cool tights. Lots of ladies were sporting fancy tights around the city.

Oh yeah, we walked 5.6 miles!