Sea Anemone Knits

Liz (sadly blogless & pictureless) told me last night that I happen to be pictured on the Mary Charles website. Kinda ironic since I totally dished out a nasty little post about them. Go check it out. Watch the pictures. I’m wearing a blue shirt with curly hair.

Check it yo!

So last Thursday, I went with a bunch of the girls to see the Astros v. the Cardinals.

We were all spread out in groups of three and four or so. Staci and Sharron had their husbands there and Liz (sadly, blogless AND pictureless!) went too. I sat with Jennifer (another blogless! methinks I see a trend!) and Jet who are both Cardinals fans kept leaning over and saying things like "It’s ok, we still like you, even if you ARE rooting for the wrong team!" I have one response to that… 

::ahem:: the Astros kicked the Cardinals BUTTS!

Shawls. I started knitting the Swallowtail shawl from IK Fall 06 on Thursday the 14th. At the end of the knitting group, the shawl looked like this:

Yes, I am in fact flipping off the picture, albeit completely unintentionally. I was trying to take a picture people! Cut me some slack. Almost two weeks later, the shawl looks like this:

By now, I’ve added the first chart of the Lily-of-the-Valley lace and am going to be starting the second chart of it as soon as I update this. Then I have the peaked edging and its ready to be bathed and blocked. So basically, I have about 26 rows left. Woo! According to the shawl percentage calculator I am 93.5 percent done. double WOO!

So, we’ve been very industrious in my family. This past weekend, I picked up my cousin at the airport and we spent the night over at my Aunt’s house. My other two uncles came into town too and all of us gathered at my Grandfather’s house at some ungodly hour of the morning to begin the long process of cleaning out the house. While there, my Aunt and Uncles agreed that I could have the loveseat and matching armchair as I did not have any living room furniture. Literally. I had a couch frame with no cushions, and a stack of big floor pillows. I thought that was really awesome of them. My Papa and brother brought them over to the apt for me yestday and when I got home from work, like magic, I had furniture!

There were some hijinks going on at the house though.

Exhibit A:

My dad found this old coat and immediately put it on and was all like "How do you like my coat??" It was a lot funnier than it sounds when I write it. I guess you would have had to be there. Or know my dad…

I cleaned off a bookshelf and began wiping it down. On the bottom shelf, I encountered a species that before now was only a mere legend. Everyone has seen the "dust bunny." Dust bunnies are the more common cousin to this phenom. Behold, I present to you new photographic evidence of the existance of… DUST BUFFALO!!!!

If you look very carefully you will see a sponge carefully descending upon the herd of dust buffalo. Mere seconds after I snapped the only photographic evidence of dust buffalo the sponge swooped down and wiped the entire herd completely out of existance. Sadly, I report that an entire species is no more. A moment of silence please.

My uncle called me late last night. At least he’s not in any more pain.

So Thursday, before I left the office, I called Cafe Express. I just wanted to know if we could expect to get shafted and kicked out of our room again. I mean, hey, we HAVE been meeting up back there for more than two years you know? We kinda have dibs on that back room. So they put me on with Del. He’s the General Manager there. Really nice guy. He gets on the phone and is very interested in accomodating the group and wants to know if we’d like them to reserve the room for us. I’m all like, no, you dont have to reserve the room, i just wanted to know if anyone else had. We talk another minute and get off the phone.

I get to CE that evening. They’ve pushed a bunch of table together along the back wall bench and slapped a reserved sign on them. I immediately know that this is for us. So I sit down to knit and wait for other knitters to show up. Del comes over and introduces himself. We talk a bit and he’s very interested in what I’m doing and in the group, etc. Then, he informs me that he’s put two bottles of wine on ice for the group, on the house. I’m floored. So we had a lovely smooth Pinot Grigio at the group this past Thursday. How lovely is that? I’m always so thrilled to experience the niceness of people. It makes you feel very welcome.

Saturday afternoon, I went and saw A Prairie Home Companion with my Papa and Annie (his girlfriend). It was really good. I love Garrison Keillor. I’ve been listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio since I was a little girl. It was constant background noise at my grandparents house, and always on the car radio when we drove anywhere in the evenings. That, for me, is part of what home means. The movie does not disappoint. Except for names like Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, John C Reilly, Lindsey Lohan, etc… all of the people are people who actually work on the radio show. So the sound was authentic PHC. It was so cool. Afterwards, we went and had dinner at the Black Lab. It’s on Montrose and is an English restaurant. Right down to the strange English meals. For dessert, they really will serve you something called Spotted Dick. SD is some kind of pudding dotted with cinnamon, raisins and currants. What an unfortunate name for something that is probably really good.

Later, I went out with Susan to Pappadeux’s where I sat and worked on the koigu Mom sock and she had dinner. The waiter was hot. And flirting with me. I’m still feeling saucy with this haircut. Tis a goood thing. We finished there and went to grab Jet to go see a movie called Little Miss Sunshine. Its about a dysfunctional family and how with as much as they fight and squabble amongst themselves, when outside forces come to pick fights with them, they all pull together. Its a sappy idea for a movie, but we saw it at the River Oaks theater (the one slated to be closed down! find a petition, sign it!) and it was a tiny movie room with a tiny, packed audience and we all laughed really really hard pretty much continuously. Then, after the movie, the three of us started laughing our asses off in the bathroom at Lord only knows what and practically had to gasp for breath we were laughing so hard. I don’t know what we were laughing at, but really, I don’t think it mattered. We had fun with it.

We also attracted some attention for having our knitting at the movie. This chick sitting in front of Susan was enthralled and wanted to know if we could teach her. Sure! So we told her when and where we have meetings and to come on by. Hopefully we see her. She seemed like she’d fit in nicely with the group.

And because y’all have been so patient with the non-knitting posting lately, I thought y’all might enjoy this:

Doggy Raincoats!!

Ok, let’s be brutally honest. If I were to show you a picture of The Hour right now, you’d wonder why I thought that I’d made any progress. I’ve done another inch, but she still looks the same. So I won’t waste your time or mine. Please, thank me later. Really.

So, you might remember Tuesday when I mentioned in passing that I might cut off all my hair and you chuckled? Ok, well be truthful, raise your hand if you thought I wouldn’t go through with it… Jeez, that’s a lot of you. Have some faith people! 

Let’s go with your standard crap, “Before” photo:

Not real great. And to think when my hair turned out decently curly that day in Austin meeting the Harlot, I thought to myself, gee, that looks pretty good.

And now we can enjoy 4 pretty “After” photos:

Thank you Mo, I love love love your stylist.