ok, i've started 3 times. i don't know what to say.

good: quick trip down to palo alto to visit the fabulous grace and attend her housewarming party. saw lots of people, had lots of fun, drank lots of good wine.

bad: received horrible news about my self-proclaimed canine godson. he's quite ill. more info will be had tomorrow.

more soon, it's just been verrrrry busy. and i'm totally distracted waiting to hear news on poor mr Z.

oh, and weekend before last we took betty out on her re-maiden voyage. great weekend of camping on the penninsula at the real beach, buck loved it, we celebrated b's bday, and it was a stunning drive.

Posted by talkingcrow at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

the aliens really need to wipe my credit card number out of my memory. cause until then i will keep getting things in the mail. like yarn.

I really haven't bought much yarn lately at all. I have a million projects and plenty of yarn. But it's sock yarn. And technically I only sort of have enough for all the socks I want to knit. Wait. let's try that again. I have some sock yarn. some of it is almost finshed into socks. the socks that rock is destined for either pomatomus or beaudelaire. which leaves a spare pattern there to get fiber for.

then there's some groovy opal that is for b's socks. i started them a long time ago, but frogged them during some severe frustration. (sorry honey) but they'll start again soon. and then there's some other koigu that i got on sale, but that's IT for sock yarn. and i have to have something good started by the time yarnharlot comes to town, and and and... ok, I'm a total asshat whiner saying I "only" have koigu. but the colors... they have to speak to me and tell me they need to be a certain pattern. omg. now that i think of it, well, i have more opal too. stuff for b. god knows. it's probably breeding in those huge tupperware boxes anyway.

but see, i just wrote to ask about yarn that she was out of. the kind of mail you don't really expect to hear back on right away, maybe ever, but these are knitters who know the sound of hunger. so of course i hear back the next day saying "well as a matter of fact i do have a few skeins of the color you want in stock".

could you throw in some of that other one too?

Posted by talkingcrow at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My knitting story of the week... So, I was at the doc (short story is that I'm not actually anemic, blood worrk was gloriously perfect, and this latest round wasn't allergies, whatever it was it's now pneumonia) and I got there a little early, and I was looking forward to settling in to do a little knitting whle I waited. The second Leaf Lace sock is going very fast.

I didn't realize how serious the docs office was about not waiting. They are serious. I was six stitches into a new row and the girl came to get me to go back. She saw the knitting, and asked about it, so I showed her the completed sock.

She complitmented me on how nice they felt, I tried to tell her they were merino wool (koigu) but she kept going... "those are really nice, that's nice fabric, those are like socks someone would pay FIVE DOLLARS for!" I looked at her in stunned silence. She continued "I heard that there are actually FIVE DOLLAR socks at WalMart! Can you imagine paying FIVE DOLLARS for socks?"

I muttered something as I put the knitting away. Not even knowing where to start. Most of my socks are minimum five bucks? Had I not got the Koigu on sale the socks I was knitting would have been 20 some odd dollars in yarn? I has taken me a couple of months to get these done, so that work would work out to about a penny or two an hour? Not to mention that WALMART IS SATAN and I wouldn't go there if everything was free?

If I've learned anything, it's to just shut up sometimes. She meant it as a huge compliement, and I'll just take it that way.

Posted by talkingcrow at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

hey you. yeah, mr crankypants getting all in a twist about something that isn't accurate. i've known more than a couple people in the military over the years, and the reference to "someone I used to know" wasn't about you. i still know you, or maybe i've un-earned that. none the less it was about someone i was close to for 16 years, best friends with for much of it, who decided he didn't need me in his life anymore. NOT YOU.

ok?

and in general, and less cryptically to my broader audience (of 6 i think), the cars are slowly getting fixed, betty is even now getting a new engine, and assorted other things that they keep finding need to be replaced, but the glory of betty the westfalia will be re-instated by the end of the week. sweet. the first weekend that we can we're going to take her out to the coast and have some overdue romantic beach champagne. with a wet dog.

my ugly little beasty got new tires. some sweet sweet high traction in the rain kind of tires. it was overdue, and now it rides like a frickin nascar zippy beast. the next thing is to get engine work done. after i get done helping to bankroll betty we'll take a look at the car not cool enough to have a name.

the summer of sick continues. i briefly hoped i could blame all this crap on allergies, but no, i can't. i have a cold again, either that or b. caught my allergies. but we found a new doc and hopefully all will become clear. i'm waiting to see if he can help with the 9 or 12 other major issues.

and so it goes.

and mr crankypants? remember. NOT YOU. hugs, and lick the dog for me.

Posted by talkingcrow at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There *was* a story number 2. I had plans. Now, some weeks later, that has apparently been overridden, or more likely, abducted. But I remember number 3, for the rest of my life I will remember number3.

The story is PROOF OF ALIENS

We recently decided to get the trim on the house painted. B. knew a guy through work, so that's who we hired. Like all contractors he has disappeared 3/4 of the way through, but I've also found that to be a requirement of being a contractor. I digress.

One weekend he was here painting (a lovely Benjamin Moore shade of olive-y sage green). And we were talking in the yard. We were talking about where we had lived, how we ended up doing what we are doing. I made some comment like "yeah, where are the time machines when you need them".

He became animated, he said, BUT THERE ARE TIME MACHINES! "You know how people see UFOs? Those aren't flying saucers, or spaceships, they are time machines coming back from the future. The aliens are just people from the future. I've been abducted more times that I can count. Yeah, they take you, then poke you and prod you and stroke you (his words), and then they put you back".

I decided to play along. "Really, that's crazy, but how do you know?"

Mr Painter continues "Oh, I'm positive of it, and the thing that gives them away? They don't know how zippers work. When they put your clothes back on they never know how to zip up pants. I can't TELL you how many times I've been walking around and found my fly down. Those motherfuckers abducted me again."

You see why this story stuck.

Posted by talkingcrow at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)