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2011: 1/3 Gone

Since I last posted on the 8th ( a MONTH ago), I was STILL SICK for almost another week, and went to Disneyland with Abby. On the 9th, my mother came by the house for a "fitting" (she was making me a shirt) and took one look at me and was like, "I am going to buy you drugs, lots of drugs," because apparently I looked like Death Warmed Over or something. But she got me some Robitussin and Airborne, which really helped with my recovery – on Sunday I was able to go to Jason's for one of the final family meetings (to take possession of what artwork was to be salvaged; as family archivist I will be photographing each item carefully prior to redistribution) and I was able to pick up a few other things from the house. My house is now a total disaster of Nice Family Photographs and Nice Family Paraphernelia that I need to find homes for. Sigh. Well, it's been a total disaster since approximately January 5th anyway, so whatever.

Anyway, so then after that I was FINALLY starting to feel better after 2 weeks of the plague (for which I blame coworker Christopher, *shakes fist*) which I was starting to get worried about because Abby and I had our Big Plan to drive down to Anaheim for 2.5 days of Disneyland adventuring. Luckily was pretty much fully recovered by the time we left at 6 a.m. on Thursday. Why so early? Well, I wanted to stop at Sarah's for lunch so I could meet her new baby David! David is completely adorbs and I got my requisite baby cuddles in – and unlike the first time I met his big bro Will, David did not explosively poop all over me! (Yay!) Hee. Anyway, Will is three now (oh how time flies!) and he actually remembered me, I have once again become "Lissa" to a small child, which just fills up my heart (I love hearing my name come from a small kid, is that weird?). Sarah dressed up both kids in nerd wear I got for them – the Star Wars onsie for David and the robot tee for Will. I'm enjoying my role as fake auntie to these boys, buying them all the cute stuff I can! I try to avoid toys, as they have more than enough, but I do like buying cute little boy clothes for them, and books.

We went to lunch at Denny's not far from Sarah's house, where Will wanted to sit by me, and he passed out grapes to us all. This amused Abby, who had not met Sarah's kid(s) before, and Will was climbing all over us before settling down for lunch. Ah, three. Great age! (Can you tell I don't have kids.)

So, after that we headed down to Anaheim, stopped at Walmart for sunscreen (and I found awesome fit-over-your-glasses sunglasses – SO stylin', hahaha!) and checked into the hotel, the Ramada directly across from the entrance. Where I discovered that I had not brought my bag of shoes, and had, stupidly, worn my Chucks down in the car as "travel shoes"; they are not very good walking around shoes for me. I so should have worn my regular sneaks but for some dumbass reason I did not. ANYWAY so what we had to do was go buy me new shoes. UGH. So we headed down into Anaheim proper and located a Payless where I found a nice pair of flip flops. The Payless was right across from a CVS, where Abby popped in and bought me some Blister Block or whatever – it's made by Band-Aid. You apply it to areas that may be forming blisters, and darned if it doesn't work! (I kind of wonder if it would work for thigh rub, which would solve a big part of my I-Hate-Wearing-Dresses situation. TMI? Oh well.)

After that, we finally headed over to Disneyland! Or rather, California Adventure, where we picked up our picnic lunches that came with Fast Pass Tickets to the World of Color…

I described the show to Malvina as "The Bellagio Fountains on Disney Crack" which seemed apropo. I would have enjoyed it more if the night hadn't gotten inexplicably cold, so when the middle section full of FIRE happened, I was appreciative of the added warmth, hah. But it was pretty cool, and definitely worth your time if you're a big Disney fan (I am not, as I have mentioned before I am a DisneyLAND fan, which I realize doesn't make a lot of sense but whatever.)

The next two days were spent gallivanting around the two parks and trying not to get blisters. The blister block worked like a charm; I was so glad.

I managed to get on Tower of Terror twice before Abby had had enough of that ride (it's one of those herky jerky zero gravity rides, oh how I love it! After the first ride I squawked, "Again! Again!" and Abby obliged, but refused to go on after the second ride. I could have ridden it ALL DAY, I am telling you. Though nothing compares to my and Sam's epic four-times-in-a-row adventure a few years ago, haha).

Abby and I discovered the Bug's Life section of CA Adventure, which I don't recall having been to before. I photobombed her picture of herself while in line for Heimlich's ride (you sit in the body of a caterpillar).

I want you all to take a moment to admire my super sassy old man sunglasses that fit over my actual glasses. I know you are jealous of my untouchable style. Also note fluorescent shirt and margarita.

Anyway, trying to get back on the blogging horse here – I met my friend Amy's brand new baby Colten a couple weeks ago and I also attended the first ever gourmet food truck event in Sacramento last weekend. Finally, I survived another family tragedy this week.  I unfortunately lost my other grandfather this week. You can read the obituary here, if you'd like. We were lucky enough to celebrate Easter with him before he wound up in the ICU the very next day with sepsis. Once I found out what sepsis was, I realized it was only a matter of time before we lost him.

So that's been the last month in a nutshell. More frequent postings soon, I promise.

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Stitches West 2011

This weekend was Stitches West, and as usual, my mom and I headed down there for two days of wandering around the market, buying stuff. No, we don’t bother with classes, we’re in it for Stuff Acquisition. Friday, we drove down with my aunt as well and stopped at Kinokinuya in San Jose as well (and we got caught in Friday commute traffic coming back up). Saturday it was just my mom and I and we also stopped for In-N-Out burgers.

Here’s what I got:

Oh DEAR that is a lot of yarn.

From left to right: Sanguine Gryphon Skinny Bugga! in Ruddy Daggerwing, Sanguine Gryphon Bugga! in Lubber Grasshopper, Wool Candy in Capsicum (?), Skinny Bugga! in Boxelder Beetle, Bugga! in Pink Dragonfly, Creatively Dyed Yarn Sami in Falling Springs (the picture does not do this yarn justice – it’s a deep magenta that glows in the sunlight), Miss Babs Yummy Sock yarn in Indigo Bunting, Sanguine Gryphon  Eidos in Antlia, Eidos in Hydra.

Yeah yeah, six skeins of Sanguine Gryphon, whatever. 😉

It’s a favorite, what can I say? Their booth was really great, and it was so nice to see all the yarn displayed in real life as I have only ordered the yarn from the internets before.

Incidentally, I finished my Brandywine shawl out of Skinny Bugga! and wore it on Day 1. It got a ton of compliments and there were many grabby knitter hands feeling it up, haha! As one lady said, “It’s the knitter’s handshake!” …heh.

It’s awesome.

I only did one mod and it’s not really a mod – for the main chart I did 18 repeats instead of 15, simply because I wanted to use as much of the yarn as possible. And I wound up with very little, so it worked out great.

Anyway, here’s the other stuff I got, mostly a ton of patterns!

Don’t you just LOVE that sweater on the newest Norah Gaughan collection? I sure do. I will have to figure out what I want to make it with. However there are a couple of patterns in the other Berroco booklets I got that I want to make first – they will be totally doable on the knitting machine, as will the White Lies Designs t-shirt pattern in the first pattern photo.

Tonight I cast on for the Bellingrath shawl above, though not in Stitches yarn – in Madelinetosh Sock that I got recently (Christmas-time-ish, I think). Not sure yet what I am going to do with all that gratuitous Bugga up there, but I am sure it will be awesome.

And now I can’t buy yarn for ages. (Except I totally ordered new Felici from Knitpicks today as I needed some needles. Whatevs. Shut up. I had an extra paycheck with overtime on it.)

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and all the trees in the field clap their hands

This month I have been through a lot, to say the least. I spent a lot of time with my cousins and drove around in the fog, in a fog. I bought two pairs of jeans off the internet that fit great, especially one pair was hemmed up by my illustrious momma. I went to Disneyland for seven hours and two baby showers. I saw Black Swan and ate a lot of Handi-Snacks. Readjusting my life has taken some… readjusting. I’m working on it.

I bought this on one of my mall trips:

Stretchy, plastic beaded bracelets, for about five bucks or so. I like the For Love 21 store, the accessory store for Forever 21. It has a lot of cute, cheap, junk that I don’t mind taking apart and making into things that are better:

Furthering my descent into plastic-mania (a long no-no in this household, but a rule I’ve been breaking lately), I bought some plastic flower things from Michael’s in the scrapbooking section and started gluing them on things:

Inspired by that success (I am using Aleen’s Jewel-It glue, which is pretty strong and seems to work just fine in terms of bonding plastic to metal) I ordered a bunch of resin cabochons from Snapcrafty on Etsy.

Those are so getting the glue treatment, believe you me. I love how they make easy statement rings.

I also got a bunch of bezel rings from Michael’s from the Industrial Chic line, which for the most part hasn’t interested me much (I’m not into found object stuff, to each their own), but I had purchased a resin kit at BABE! in November that I still haven’t used, but thought would be cool to try in the rings. I am not sure how that’s going to work at all, but I’m going to try it out later in the week.

This weekend I will be in Sacramento visiting with my friend Margie who is in town for training from San Antonio, and I plan to stop at U Bead It, my favorite bead store, for additional brass supplies to set the cabochons in.

Margie and I went to San Francisco this weekend. I don’t normally go to the city if I can help it, but we had fun. I hadn’t ever been to the Golden Gate Bridge recreational area, so we stopped there and then headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39, where we went to the Aquarium by the Bay. That was a little pricey but if you’re a fan of the underwater tubes where sharks and fish swim all around, I definitely recommend it.

It’s kind of amazing the sheer amount of things I packed into January. I can’t believe it’s February already.