A formal proclimation first: Happy Birthday, Little Prince! Your Aunt Ava (yes, he and his sister call me that as his father, MC,was nice enough to point out) is crap at sending out birthday pressies on time and probably always will be, but something is on its way to you very shortly. Now, on with the knitting.
Stupid writers' strike . . . not that I am blaming the writers for wanting a fair stake of media moola, but seriously I can't take much more of the crap that the networks are churning out. I fell in love with Pushing Daisies and that seems to be, well, pushing daisies for the time being. Luckily for me there was Eli Stone last night so all is right with Ava's quirky side. Jonny Lee Miller? Hello, my pretty. Victor Garber? Sit down a spell while I knit. George Michael? Just stay out of the parks and we'll be fine.
Look at Lola's needles and you will see just one thing . . . one fucking thing. Mine? Sure there are several items listed, but I lie. You could conceivably add five more to that list and you might just scratch the surface. Why do knitters do this? When you find out, let me know and then we'll do an expose for Interweave Knits (and no, I wasn't impressed with the preview). For now, I am trying to concentrate on three things: the Mars baby hoodie, the trellis and leaf shawl, and Beaner's sweater. Did I forget to mention that socks don't count? I did? Oh, socks don't count . . . they keep me sane and sanity is a good thing.
The Mars sweater is progressing nicely. I opted to use the yarn called for in the book - DB's Cashmerino Aran. Was it a splurge? Yup. Do I really, really like the mother-to-be? You betcha. Is she a knitter? Affirmative. Am I mortified by my one error? Kill me now. Apparently, I forgot to do a decrease and so I dropped the stitches down and now it looks all wonky. Hopefully she will be kind enough to overlook it or even lie and say, "Why, no, Ava, I don't see that glaring error on the front of the sweater very near the top and the button. What ever are you talking about?" While I enjoy the yarn, I remembered yesterday why I don't knit very many Debbie Bliss patterns: no schematics, confusing directions, and a lot of assumptions. I called Lola in a near panic last night about the hood. Couldn't I just increase around the hood section instead of casting off 35 stitches and then casing on 60 stitches? My theory made sense to the both of us, but in actual practice it looked like shit so I ripped back and did as Debbie said.
Lola and I always go back and forth about telling our mom about the blog. It's been really hard sometimes to keep it quiet, but so far we've been "good" about it. Our big fear isn't about our mom . . . it's about our other sister. Let's face it, when you call a person the "other sister" there is the misconception that we don't like her. Nothing could be further from the truth . . . we love and adore our sister, but she doesn't knit and sometimes our views on life conflict with hers. Everyone has a role in their family whether they want to admit it or not. Our sister was always the "nice" one . . . we're still not quite sure what ours are. Pain in the ass? Smart mouth? When our family finds out - and truly it will happen at some point - we fear our sister's wrath more than Mom's because it will be one more thing that we didn't share or include her in. Trust me, I tried to teach her to knit, but she didn't want to. So, for the record, we love, love, love the other sister and always will . . . even when she is pissed at us about the blog.
Enjoy your weekend! Watch Groundhog's Day tomorrow. Eat enough wings and drink enough beer to feed a small village on Sunday. Oh, knit more.
Ava
PS - Um, if you didn't catch the "naughty influence fly into town" reference in Lola's last post, I'll be winging my way to C-bus on Friday. Tuck has a doctor's appointment, and I'm there to help. Besides, what are sisters for if not to influence their siblings a little bit? I hear the Malabrigo calling now. The yarn in question above? STR's Rolling Stone and Tlingit . . . apparently they love Betty's boots as much as I do. And yes, the "real" camera will be back as soon as the battery recharges. I might replace the photos as soon as that happens.
Have to agree about the Interweave preview. There's lots of love for it out there on the internet, so I guess they won't miss my 6.95.
I am delurking because of the post's title. Is that a reference to the Shawn Colvin song? It's one of my favorite songs and will be in my head all day now. (No complaints). If it's a Bon Jovi reference, it will be best not to disillusion me, I think.
Good luck on the baby sweater!
Posted by: Kate | February 01, 2008 at 03:38 PM
i was surprised by how much i enjoyed eli stone. glad for some decent tv as well. i just heard pushing daisies wouldn't come back even if the strike ended soon because they won't have enough time to film. boo.
Posted by: amy | February 01, 2008 at 03:42 PM
Seriously Johnny Lee Miller is welcome to come over whenever he wants. Yum. I watched the Flying Scotsman the other week and liked it not only for the pretty Scottish scenery and accents, but also 'cause of the pretty JLM. HAha I feel so Tiger Beat.
I am always disappointed w/ IK. I don't know. I'd rather buy a pattern here and there.
Oh and both the STR are very pretty.
I wonder if I can add another acronym. IDK. ha such a dork.
Posted by: Shannon | February 02, 2008 at 12:50 PM