Thursday, November 01, 2007

Stuff That Rules:

1. People:

Me and Aimee!

See, we really HAVE met in real life!

Me and Lani

Buy a wheel! BUY A WHEEL!!!

Yay, people!

All photos are too dark...except for this one:

Blurry Happy People

It's just too blurry. I rule.

2. Fiber:

Fleeces!

(There was way more later.)

I still have purchases from Rhinebeck and SAFF to photograph - I can't seem to get home during daylight hours when it's not pouring rain or horribly overcast...but one of these days I'll share. (By then I'll have already spun up half the fiber...but I'll get there.) I have a lot of things I'm putting off (hi, PlazaJen - prize much? I must commit to my contests.)

3. Kinnearing someone in a kilt:

Kinnearing guy in a kilt

4. Subsequently Kinnearing someone who's explaining Kinnearing to a Kinnearing newcomer:

Kinnearing Trillian while she explains Kinnearing

5. Being approached about workshopping at next year's SAFF already. (Yay!!)

Instructors' Dinner

(The instructor's dinner. You can see my mom's hand...she's not big on being photographed.)

6. Having my spinning instructor's husband/assistant come to the workshop coordinator, announce that their spinning teaching assistant had to cancel on them last-minute, pointing at me and saying, "We need a helper. She's good. Is she available?" He remembered me from last year's class. How he knew I was good? Dunno. But unfortunately, I had workshops to teach and wasn't available. Still, it made up for the fact that I tanked in the skein competition and that someone had approached me in the Spin-In to see if I had just bought my wheel. (Do I look that green when I'm spinning?? Maybe my wheel just isn't ageing fast enough. Wrinkle, Lendrum, wrinkle!)

7. Getting a third-place ribbon in the Novelty Yarn skein category.

Look, Eling!

(Notwithstanding the fact that I'm almost completely certain there were only three entries. Whatever, I'll take it.)

8. Chalking the fact that I tanked in the spinning competition up to my complete and utter failure to read the rules. I choose to believe it was my mislabeled skeins, not my spinning quality, that left me sad and (mostly) ribbonless. (And thank God I have that to fall back on. If everything had been labeled perfectly and I'd had to face that maybe I wasn't much of a spinner....well, that would be heartbreaking. But each entry noted that I hadn't labeled the skein with its intended purpose - uh, to be used as yarn? - and I lost points. Boo. I have also determined that it appears the judges might prefer more natural-coloured or solid-coloured wool, and more fine-gauge yarns. But now I know for next year to actually plan and spin for what they might want to see, rather than just grab four skeins of whatever's finished on the way out the door and label them in the car on the way to the arena.)

9. Oatmeal Cookies:

Um....why?

I...um, I have no idea.

10. Here's your number ten, okay? I forgot to renumber - I'd already blogged 10 yesterday, so I ditched it. But fine, #10 for Stuff that Rules today....let's go with Tupelo Honey Cafe and the Tupelo Tomato Sandwich, fried green tomatoes with goat cheese grits, and chocolate peanut butter pie. (Photos are all on the SAFF Flickr set linked below, if you dare. I don't want to make you feel like YOUR lunch is inadequate.)

11. Travis giving himself away to Rosi by using Cristi's phone to text Rosi, but using Cristi's name AND misspelling it. (Hint: even people who refer to themselves in the third person usually SPELL IT RIGHT.)

12. Speaking of whom - Travis has been made the official SAFF mascot, I think.

13. The Ravelry meet-up. Or so I hear. I wouldn't know since I was so slammed busy I didn't even get to GO. (Boo. Boo hoo.)

14. The fact that not only do Travis and I make "The Face", my now-trademark idiotic-excited photo stance (in which sometimes my teeth look really messed-up only they're not):

We make faces

...but so does my cat:

Kitty makes The Face, too!

PS: I think I'm retiring "The Face". It annoyed me to discover that I didn't take one single photo of myself looking like a normal, sane human being. A little of "The Face" goes a long, long, long way. So look for a new Trademark Look for Wool Season '08!

15. The amount of crap, animals, and people one can cram into a Prius for a ten-hour drive.

ton o' crap in the car

Crap.

Well, we USED to love car trips.

Animals.

Brodie caught me taking pictures of Travis and the cat:

Somebody up here takin' pictures??

"I can haz attenshuns?"

He's such a camera whore.

And this is what Rooster looked like for the three seconds he had his mouth closed.

"I hate you with all of my soul"

Feel the hate.

And this is what Rooster looked like for the entire rest of the trip:

MMM-OW!  MMM-OWWWW!!  M-OWWWWWWWWW!!!

(Meow! MEOW! Mmm-OW! MMMM-OWWW! He got more insistent with each passing moment...but he did calm down eventually. On the way up. On the way back? He never shut up. NE.VER. And yes, we tried that. We tried that too.)

There are, believe it, more pictures from SAFF. See the photo set here.

16. Halloween, and the freakin' awesome pumpkin my best friend and her fiance carved. The theme of the pumpkin is "They Eat Their Own!" I love it. It makes me chuckle every time I look at it, and it's now my desktop wallpaper.

Speaking of whom, again - my best friend and I have designated Halloween as our friendship anniversary, since it's our favourite holiday and one we try to spend together every year, when we can (stupid weekday Halloweens.) So I got a really sweet voicemail from her yesterday that totally made my day, and this weekend we have big fun plans for Epcot Food & Wine Festival! Yay!!

17. The new Britney Spears CD. (Shut up!! You SHUT UP!!!! I love it, I love pop trash, I love Euro-tracks, I love that she's too methed-out to even care about her weave - by the way, forget about having your kids taken away, it's the weave. THAT's how you know you've hit rock-bottom. Even dirty hookers get their weaves fixed.) But still...the music is trashy, skanky, dance-y fun. I can't help myself.

Go knit! Happy November - I'm looking forward to maybe a little bit of a mercury drop. Cross your fingers for me.