No matter how deeply engrossed you think your significant other is involved in a video game, he/she will pick up on the words "hit the garage with my car yesterday morning" out of your conversation. Several strenuous minutes will ensue.
Speaking completely hypothetically, of course.
Looking back on this past weekend, all I remember was a lot of episodes of CSI and lots of knitting. Stressful week demands that I have a weekend to unwind, and that's exactly what I did for three days.
First off, I finished a pair of socks. I really tried to get these two socks to match up perfectly, but wasn't as lucky as my last attempt with self-striping yarn. Ssshhhh...these are a present that will be going in the mail tomorrow.
Plain ol' stockinette almost-matching socks
Grrr.....Madder Socks
Ready for Row 25, only a bajillionty left!
MMMMM...cabley goodness
With a title like "Gamerz" how could I pass by this movie?
Today's theme from "No One Cares What You Had for Lunch" is to say thanks. This afternoon, I'd like to extend a big thank you to Bandit. After spending several hours working from home, he quietly demanded that I spend time with him. Sometimes, when life has me all stressed, it's too easy to forget to sit back, relax, and spend time with loved ones.
Twas the night before Winter-Een-Mas and all through the house
All the controllers were charging, but not my mouse (it's not wireless)
The games were laid out with much care
In hopes that Winter-Een-Mas soon would be there.
Tomorrow evening, I'll celebrate my first Winter-Een-Mas. It's a week-long holiday dedicated to all the facets of gaming. I'm planning on playing some Viva Pinata, Oblivion, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Magic, and some board games. Let the games begin!
I have an updated version of the old adage "The cobbler's wife has no shoes". Newly updated to "The sock knitter has only crappy socks."
Today's the second day within the past week that heels in my store bought socks have had major holes develop. Friday, my poor crummy old socks blew out clear to my ankles. So glad I wore pants that went to the top of my foot. Today's heel mishap was confined to the bottom of the sock's foot and less conspicuous.
One of these days, I'll buy some more socks for myself. Just one of those things you shouldn't put off too long :)
I started working on my New Year's resolution to get organized this weekend. My poor knitting supplies were strewn all around the house, and I couldn't find where I hid them all. Saturday, Kris, Chelsea, and I hit Bed, Bath, and Beyond looking at different storage options, and we hit the jackpot.
Finished the first sock Saturday night during a Ghosthunters DVD marathon
Aren't they purty?
It followed me home. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!
I am constantly amazed by the relationships with others that I have forged online. Nowhere have I felt more at ease than with my guild, Immortal Crusaders, in the online game, Dark Age of Camelot. I have not logged into the game for well over a year; yet, I maintained a pulsepoint on the comings and goings of the IC family through our guild's message boards.
We received the news today that one of the members of our little online family has untimely passed away. Though we never met him in person, we're still very saddened, especially for his family's loss.
Farewell, D. You are sorely missed. :(
The Illusionist outpaced my expectations by a mile. I honestly do not remember seeing any in theater commercials, and I rented it on a whim at Blockbuster. What I got was one of the best movies I've seen in quite some time (and have since purchased on DVD). The underlying star-crossed love plotline wasn't contrite nor overly mushy; romantic movie watcher I am not. Seeing the lead character, Eisenheim, use his knowledge and skills learned from his tradesman family to challenge the tyrranical prince of Vienna was inspiring. I tend to like movies that depict characters rising above adversite to stick it to "The Man". Excellent movie with stunning visuals.
Overall Rating: 5/5 Stars. Excellent movie.
Knitting Rating: 2/5 Skeins. Best suited for mindless stockinette in the round. The visuals distracted me from a relatively simple, repeated pattern.
This week's From the Book Friday prompts me to fess up to one of my shortcomings. (No, this post will not be about my relative lack of height...)
One of my biggest shortcomings is my inability to keep any vegetation alive. Apart from the funky pink mold noodles I grew in the fridge over the course of two months. No signs of a green thumb can be found on me, not even a green pinky or toe. I affectionately blame my routine killing of plants in my care on my Thumb of Death.
New hearty poinsettias, 20 year old cacti, and most of the lawn have all fallen victim to the Thumb of Death. It changes its preferred manner of attack on a random basis - killing it with kindness, neglect, overwatering, incorrect sunlight. I vowed my freshman year of college to keep a poinsettia alive beyond the month of December. I named it George and even took it home over Christmas vacation with me. (Looking back, I really needed a pet of some sort through college.) One sunny post-Christmas day, I set George on the enclosed backporch to catch some rays. And forgot about him until hours later. George was frozen, damn.
Again, I'm tempting fate with a mountain laurell my mom brought back from Pennsylvania in November. It's transplanted to our front lawn area (taking the spot of Bandit's beloved dead pee bush) and is hibernating in a flake of hay and a burlap sack. Hiding it is, from my dreaded thumb of plant doom!
I started a few new projects this weekend. First onto the needles was the North Star Scarf from Arctic Lace.
Start of the North Star Scarf
Big surprise, more socks!My final planned weekly blog feature is Words of Wisdom Wednesday. I'll share my wealth of knowledge gleaned from years of learning from my mistakes. Plenty of blog fodder with this topic.
Today's words of wisdom are this, "Let sleeping blogs lie." After moving to the new version of Blogger, I updated my blog's template. In my overzealousness, I altered my blog's name. Which caused my Atom feed to be completely FUBAR-ed. Atom feed issues equate to a non-functional site feed which you, dear readers, use to be notified of updates to Knotts Knitts.
I have a working site feed now, but it has a different address. If you subscribe via Bloglines or other feed aggregator, you can re-subscribe by clicking the nifty subscribe button to the site or manually add the new feed address, http://knottsknitts.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Biggest apologies to my 8 subscribers; I just had to try out all the new "features" of the new Blogger version. :(
Today marks the start of another new weekly blog feature, Movie Musings Monday. Since August, I've had a Blockbuster Online account. Couple that with an all-consuming knitting habit which works best with me in front of the TV, and I watch a ton of movies and TV shows on DVD. Of course, my reviews will have a slant towards knitting, so I won't be duplicating existing movie review sites. Without further ado, below is my review of Nacho Libre.
I confess to enjoying brainless comedies - the Griswold movies of the 80s, Euro Trip, American Pie, to name just a few. Nacho Libre tried very hard to have even the brainless-level of comedy and missed. Hubs fell asleep during our Friday night viewing; that's the first time in almost 13 years that I've known him that he's fallen asleep during a movie. I started a charted lace project, yet I did not miss any of the movie's plot. Under-appreciated, poorly stereotyped Mexican priest takes up wrestling to help the orphans that live at the monastery and falls for a nun. Add in an a village idiot tag team partner and some poop jokes, and voila, Nacho Libre.
Overall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars. I rented this movie with a free coupon, and still felt that I was due a refund.
Knitting Rating: 5 out of 5 skeins. Complex lace or cable charted projects are a perfect fit with this movie. Even with higher levels of concentration needed, you won't miss much.
A few months ago, I bought and read the book No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog by Margaret Mason. Its chock-full with teasers to write insightful, coherent blog posts that (hopefully!) are enjoyable for readers.
This week's topic will delve into my irrational fears.
In all honesty, I could make an entire weekly blog feature on my irrational fears. I'd rather not get all Freudian, so I'll stick with the humorous and odd ones.
One of my fears that impacts me the most is my fear of house fires. My grandparents lost their home in the 70s while they were vacationing in Florida to a house fire. As a result, I grew up with a healthy respect for fires and was used to a routine of ensuring heaters were clear, water heaters were turned off, amongst others. As the old saying goes, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Here is where the paranoia starts for me. Every morning, I use a hair iron to straighten my hard to manage curly hair. The iron rests on my wooden vanity when it's not immediately in use. Correction, my slightly scorched vanity from a few days in 2004 when I was very distracted and forgot to turn the hair iron off. After I saw the stripes of burnt brown vanity top, I freaked. Now, every morning before I drive to work, go to bed, or leave the house unattended, I have to check that my hair iron is off. I even check it when I haven't turned it on that day. Guess I'm a bit OCD, at least it gives Hubs a good chuckle.
Whew! As you can tell by the new look of my blog and the obnoxious spamming of XML updates to Bloglines, I've moved to the new Blogger. The move itself was simple and gives me access to labels. Look for lots of label usage. :)
Further redemption was found last night when I finished Grandpop's socks around 2 AM. I'm not a bad granddaughter after all.
Er, backblog. Thus far, I'm falling quite behind on my blogging goals for 2007. Unfortunately, that's on par with the rest of my life this year. As of this week, I am:
Since the day after Christmas, I've been hooked on an XBox 360 game, Viva Pinata. In a nutshell, it's similar to The Sims, but with a garden. The premise is to continuously improve your garden plot to attract new and improved animal pinatas as visitors and residents. On the first in game day, you attract worms and birds to eat those worms. The game just snowballs from there. Many, many in game hours later, one of my chicken pinatas hatched a dragon egg. I named him Trogdor. Now to attract a unicorn resident...
Complete apologies to The Beatles for hacking "Revolution" lyrics to come up with a snappy title.
In no particular order, here are my resolutions for 2007:
1. Get organized. My knitting supplies and yarn are a mess, and I can't find a damn thing. DVDs have taken over our house since our DVD holder is very much past its maximum capacity. Get a new cabinet and organize console games and DVDs. Don't even ask about books, need to organize those somehow, too. My poor bookshelf is three books deep on some shelves. Time to get it under control.
2. Keep up on voicemail better. I'm a diligent (ok, addicted) email checker, why do I let voicemail messages linger for more than a week?
3. Be a diligent blogger. I created this blog on January 2nd of 2006, it's high time that I start a regular post schedule.
4. Prioritize. Know that family comes first and everything else can be sorted out. :)
5. Get over my fear of knitting sweaters. With "Knitting Without Tears" and EZ's percentage sweater patterns, I hereby resolve to knit a sweater this year!
If today is an indication of how 2007 will progress, it will be a year of karmic balance. Hubs was awakened early this morning by Bandit wanting to go outside. He let Bandit out on a leash, noted that his paws weren't muddy, and proceeded to let Bandit off the leash. Bandit pounced right back into our bed, exactly on Hubs' side of the bed and settled in. As he did so, he smeared crap that was stuck between his toes on our sheets and comforter. :-/ Luckily, Hubs smelled it before laying back down. A few minutes of cleaning toes and starting a few loads of laundry later, all was well. What a shitty start to 2007! (Bad pun completely intentional.)
