Love More

Kevin made a lovely post last night about his heroes, starting off the Jim Henson, and the song "It's in Every One of Us".

There's a recording of that song on the Muppet Christmas Album, from one of the Muppet/John Denver Christmas specials. We have the record, which we bootlegged into a tape before letting go of the record player. I tear up Every Single Time I hear it. But it's a good thing.

I only see Kevin a couple times a year, less now that he's not working at AOL anymore, but I honestly think he isn't as far from honoring the ideals of his heroes as he thinks. Which is not to say he should stop striving to be better - we all should. That's how the world becomes a better place. It was a good reminder.

Also, if I had any stamps in the house, I'd be mailing off for a "Love More. Fear Less." bumper sticker RIGHT NOW. Must remedy that.

(This blog post blatantly ripped from the comment I left on Kevin's site.)

Ressurection of a UFO

October seems like a good time for the resurrection of the dead, that is to say, a UFO (UnFinished Object), right? I was packing up to head to San Francisco, thinking about how the weather has turned all autumnal in the last few days, and wondering what I should take to wear that was dressy but still warm. While hunting for my belt, I came across this unfinished scarf hanging in my closet.

I started this waaaaay back when I learned to knit (the second time, 5 years or so ago). I went to a fancy yarn store for the first time and was overwhelmed by the variety of yarns that were available... having only been to craft stores with Red Heart and Lion Brand, the variety and luxuriousness of the fibers overwhelmed me. I immediately conceived of a scarf made of a variety of different textures, all in the same color, and bought a handful of different yarns. I set to work, and created what you see there. The variety of textures are indeed striking - it manages to be soft and flashy at the same time. However. I had not yet learned the glory of swatching, and in my haste to get started, I simply threw some stiches on and went at it. It ended up a tiny thing, both skinny (the chenille had way less yardage than anything else) and short.

I've been unable to bring myself to do anything with this - the yarns are all cut, so pulling it out to start over wouldn't put me much ahead (though admittedly, my technique has improved quite a bit). Weaving in the ends - many, many ends - seemed to be admitting that it was finished, and unable to be improved.


Today, as I was looking at it, I realized what it really needed was tassels. I have long been anti-tassel, some think strangely so. But. In this case, it would flesh out the length of the scarf and make it wearable, at least for a short person like me. Digging through my stash, I found that most of the yarn that went into making this scarf was used up (in the case of the chenille) or had long since been appropriated to other projects. But I have a secret stash of spare ends, where I keep the leftover balls that are too small to make even wristwarmers with, but large enough to maybe be incorporated into some sort of stash busting project some day. Or... for an occasion like this. I dug through it looking for red.

Ah ha! I found one yarn from the original project (the burgundy ball pictured above) and two others that had different textures, which would blend in with the yarns from the original project. I would make tassels out of these yarns, and as I knotted them on, incorporate the dangling ends from the original project, thus not only saving myself the trouble of weaving them in, but blending the tassel yarn with the yarn from the original project. I apologize for the bad photo quality (laziness dictated the use of my webcam instead of a real camera), but you can somewhat see that the density of fiber hanging from the end makes the difference between "unfinished" and "I did this on purpose."

And here is the finished project. Now you can see both how short it was, and that the tassel solves that problem and makes it look more finished. If you saw it in person, you'd see how the varied texture of the original scarf made subbing in new yarns an acceptable solution, and that the dangling ends help bridge everything together.

I'm quite happy with the way this turned out. It didn't even cost me anything, other than the original sunk cost of the yarn, from 5 years ago. The other yarn I used was waste yarn from other projects. And now, I have a dressy yet warm scarf to wear this winter. I think it will be perfect for the holiday season.

Blogkeeping

It's like housekeeping, only online. I've taken down some of the linkage and whatnot in the sidebar, and added a Flying Spaghetti Monster banner (motivated by this story, because seriously, how awesome is that? hat tip to Ari) and a master map of all my tags. It's an enormous list, which meant that then I had to go back and re-sort things to remove a lot of the one-offs. I didn't start with a plan, I just kind of made them up as I went, and you could tell. All the onesies should be gone now except for Music and Theater, and I'm keeping those because I want more music and theater in my life. If I succeed in that, I'll have more posts under those categories.

(Oh and Creepie Crawlies is still there because I love it as a tag name. So, uh, yeah. Maybe I'll post about that salamander E and I found a while back. It belongs under CC for sure. )

Yes, I AM supposed to be writing a paper. Why do you ask?

Escape Opportunist

Loki got out this week - I apparently neglected to make sure the back door was completely latched. One assumes he had a merry old time, because ever since he has been INSUFFERABLE. He goes from door to door, meowing, and scratching at them all to make sure he can't pry them open. It might be funny if I weren't trying to work on my portfolio and feeling irritable.

This cat needs more space than I have in this tiny cottage. He is stir crazy, and he wants me to know it.

Strange Dreams

I had a string of crazy dreams last night, from electric flying sheep with extension cords stashed in the stomach compartment (no one in town knew where they came from) to a toy you could use to chase your vacuum cleaner around (when scared enough it would change from moaning "noooo" to singing a placating little song "bread and honey butter time"). I also dreamed that E cut off his ponytail, without warning anyone, and got a buzz cut.

I don't know where my brain goes when I sleep, but it's a strange place.

In other news, I have an enormous zit at the end of my nose. At 34 years old, shouldn't I have outgrown that sort of thing by now?

Reflecting on the Day

I have to say, this is how I felt most days, in my old job.

I love Garfield Minus Garfield.

Breakfast Adventure

Proof, if I needed it, that the "bar fridge" I'm using is not as good as a regular refrigerator. I poured myself some cereal. I took out the milk, and looked at the date. September 7th, plenty of time. Not even necessary to smell it. I poured... and it came out gloppy. There was much frantic "ew ew ew"ing as I scurried to get the contents of the bowl (and the carton) into the trash.

This is not how one wants to start the morning, and proves quite a contrast to delectable eats of last weekend's Slow Food festival.

Now I'm making toast.