the darkness has not overcome it

last night i dreamed that i flew to va and hung out with sunmother and extended family and came up with food ideas for the holiday coming up...only i wasn't there for the holidays yet. i had to fly back. and i ripped the butt out of my jeans. so mom too me to the mall to this custom jeans maker and it took forever. and i missed my flight.
it was a pretty rotten dream.

but the preceding weekend was mostly good.
i went to the mall before going to drunken knit night on friday, in hopes of finding shoes. i had no luck on the shoes, but did get some piercing studs, which revealed that my earring holes have NOT all closed up after my surgery (when i had to take the earrings out and couldn't put them back in again). everything is open in my right ear and the left ear is more open that i had thought. all very good. also picked up some stocking stuffers for ross. then i stopped at borealis. that is always dangerous.
( damage beneath the cut )

heather and deborah both cancelled for drunken knitting night, but that was probably good because it was PACKED. i did get to hang out with renae. there must have been more than 30 people there. there were also bagpipes. it was a good time. i realised that "thumb gusset" sounds like a dirty thing to call someone.

saturday morning was spinning group and heather keiweg came and it was totally enjoyable. i haven't gotten to spin for a while now because i've been so focused on getting xmas ( knitting done. )
anyway, i almost filled my bobbin. i believe i have gotten my mother of all tightened down enough that ross may stop making suggestions about dado-ing my spinning wheel as well. that would be very good because i think putting a dado in would drastically reduce flexibility if i wound up getting a different flyer.

then corrin came over and we made jelly. two different kinds, habanero cranbery raspbery and pomegranate raspberry. both are completely made of awesome, especially the pomegranate raspberry on ice cream.mmmm... we canned a little over a dozen jars and i got my hands all full of habanero oils and had to wash my hands about 50 times and even then my hands burned just a little bit because the steam from the canner was hot. but it was mostly a good kind of burn. we had to do part of the cooking of the habanero jelly outside because the habaneros are so potent.

sunday ross and i went to see the new bond film, which neither one of us was impressed with. bond was good, m was good, but nothing else about the movie really hung together or was compelling. i don't expect depth from a bond film, but i do expect a good story.
then we went home and watched the spiderwick chronicles and that was very good. i got a lot of knitting done on the cabled scarf i'm making for my brother. i will likely finish it this week. the cabling looks awesome but the scarf badly needs to be blocked.

yesterday i stayed home from work because my neck was all wrapped up in muscle cramps to the point where i was fairly useless. hot showers, extra sleep, heating pads and lots of alleve seem to have calmed it down enough for me to be at work today, but it still hurts. i don't know if it cramped up because i slept on it funny or because of the sudden lack of stress in my life. either way i wish it would go way.

tomorrow i'm getting the oil changed on my car and today i am going to the butcher and we are having friends over for dinner. at some point i need to get my xmas candy done. it is going to be a busy week.

friday was great big sea.
and they were fantastic. well worth the 2 hours i sat in traffic and scrambled to find parking
to get the tickets. the scrim was ugly. the lighting was terrible. the sound guy had no clue
what he was doing and you could barely hear the harmonies.
they did a lot of stuff off their new album, fortune's favor, that i frankly think is crap.
the only whiskey being sold was jack.
and it was still a fantastic show.
it says a lot when a band can do that.
also one of the new t-shirts for them has a big octopus on it. tentacles FTW!

ross didn't have as good a time as i did, cuz he wasn't feeling very well. but i think he was
glad he went.
susan and her friend will and salsa and another feste we knew(but who's name i can't
recall) were there as well.

mostly it was a relaxing weekend for me. not-so-much for ross, as he was working on setting up
a triple-boot on his new work-laptop.
we picked up my car (new front tires, front-end alignment) from the shop. i need new brakes
and my rotors checked, but as it rained pretty much all weekend, that wasn't about to happen.

i talked to the cat lady on friday and found out that they are getting their last shots this coming saturday. i can pick up our kitten monday!!!

i also made ketchup.
from scratch.
( it was terribly fun. )

ross fixed my computer in addition to his laptop, and set me up with a new install of ubuntu, which
neither of us have ever used before. so far i am very pleased. i am going to be able to finish my letter
for my dad now. it's fast. and there are programs for
everything (typicaly linux). and there are even some podcasts out there to help me learn to use it.

( linux podcast woes )

the rest of the weekend was mostly spent relaxing, staying up too late reading, and watching sopranos episodes
with ross (while he worked on his laptop and i knit or spun).
i have started a new pair of fawkes socks (named for dumbledore's phoenix). they have been waiting to be knit
for a while. the yarn (fleece artist *swoons*) has been sitting in my yarn basket....and moreover, the maple
leave socks are giving me fits.
i frogged them out once because they were too big and started them again at a reasonable size...but ultimately
the problem is that this yarn just doesn't work witht his pattern.
the maple leaves are so cute and i want them to pop out visually. this yarn isn't doing it. i will frog them and
make something else with it and find some other yarn to knit the maple leaves with. i might even do it in a solid
and then hand-paint the leaves so they stand out. some people on ravelry have done that and it looks great.
i also finished heads and bodies for 2 knithulhus this weekend. i need to make the wings, stuff them and put them
together and they will be finished. i could probably finish both of them AND the one that just needs wings tonight.
but i have other things to do like getting cat food and picking up a package from UPS while they are still open.