rock and roll prom, baby gifts (oh, and a little bit of knitting)...

first off, i am rather freaked out by this whole swine flu thing. the thing that frightens me is realizing how easily a virus like this can spread across the entire world in such a short period of time. it doesn't take much. you look at maps and see flagged cases popping up in the most random of places. only it's not random. that's the interesting part, from an epidemiological standpoint. of course, it's also a good thing that, so far, at least, it appears that it is mostly just making people ill. here's to hopes that deaths continue to stay low (says the girl who will be traveling to new york city in a few short weeks).

anyway... i finished off the day at work, which included a lot of swine flu updates, then headed out to find a birthday present for my brother and some mother's day goodies for mom. i decided to give my brother a gift card and then send him some more baby stuff. i got a 5-pack of onesies at target, then some iron-on printable transfers at hobby lobby. i give you THE cutest onesies on the face of the planet:


another tree.


"they call me munchkin." and mama and baby elephant.


the back of the munchkin one.


and for kicks and giggles, i've gotten addicted to tiltshiftmaker.com. here's a recent one: a photo of my sis-in-law, the mom-to-be, at moraine lake in canada.


also? rock and roll prom was a few weeks ago. the theme was "talk nerdy to me," thus some of the outfits. here's my favorite photo booth shot: this was immediately after i accidentally elbowed megan in the face bouncing on the bed. why do i look so happy?


oh, and finally, a knitting project. i've been going nutso with the baby knitting lately, but i also have a top secret lacy tunic in the works. the body is done - now i just have to get onto the neck-wrappy part. here's your sneak peek:


it's been a while since i bought new yarn, like, online. i've been to the yarn store off and on, but even that has been a while. i've used up some of my stash yarn on baby stuff. i swear, i've been good! yesterday, though, i bought some lovely wine-colored yarn to make this: the great gatsby dress.

and i just now bought some hemp yarn in a (hopefully) nice chestnut color on ebay to make this: sunshiney summery awesomeness in shirt form.

i think i'll be starting with the dress... oh, right, once i finish this hat i'm making and the lacy tunic and this baby sweater on the needles. too many projects in the works!

watch my garden grow...

i can't remember if i posted a month or so ago about going crazy in my two little backyard garden plots. i tore the heck out of them, weeded, poured on new, yummy soil, and planted a bunch of seeds. well, late-march in southern indiana really isn't the time to plant seeds - at least, not outside of the house. we had some freezes, some ice storms. lovely, right? now it is fully sunny and warm out, and i decided it was time to reassess the garden. not much really survived the freezes - except for some little, baby sunflowers, which are looking rad. so i decided it was high time for a trip to the farmers market to get some stuff in the ground. ran into marc on my way between getting money from the cash machine and picking up some iced coffee, then forced him to stop at every plant stand with me. and there are a lot of those this time of year, people.

all in all, we have pansies (i think? or were they violets of some sort?), some flowery succulent whose name i can't remember, a gerber daisy, lemon verbena, a BIG BOY pepper plant, fennel, and monkeyflower. my original plan was to do coneflower, black-eyed susans, sunflowers, and a bunch of herbs and veggie plants. why are there no coneflower or black-eyed susans at the farmers market? hmm? they're native perennials, for goodness sake!

whatever. i will find them, and i will have them. oh, yes, i will.

here's one of my baby plots, half-planted with purty flowers. don't know what will go on the other side just yet.




look! baby sunflowers! grow, sunflowers, grow!


big boy pepper plant (big b!) and lemon verbena in the terrarium, waiting to get a little bigger. you can see out onto my back porch here, too, where the garden is. they can look out the window every day and dream of the day that they, too, are planted.


and finally, i stole a broken off piece of equisetum/horsetail when i was in san diego. this is one of my favorite california plants, and i had to have it. i didn't know if it would survive the trip home in my suitcase (particularly after i got stuck in denver and my suitcase probably sat on a freezing tarmac for 12 hours), but i plunked it into some water. lo and behold, it started growing roots and new shoots! i am so excited.

works in progress... always a work in progress...

tonight. tonight was a good night. me and one of my favorite people tried to make temporary tattoos of yoshitomo nara pictures, and it failed miserably. that was sad - i was so excited for my yoshitomo nara tattoos! c'est la vie. they smeared all over and still aren't "setting" four hours later. whatever, temporary tattoos. you suck.

but then we went to an art show, and i was thoroughly excited by kevin's paintings. thomas and i discussed buying the one that cost, oh, $2,300 and sharing it - just toting it between houses every month or so. just beautiful - just a picture of a guy sitting in his living room with his foot up on the top of a little television, but oh. so nice.

then we got dinner, because, lordy, hunger to the nth degree. then to a show at the video saloon. sadly, i just was not feeling social. it was one of those evenings where you end up seeing all sorts of people and being glad to see them, but not really feeling like interacting. you know? which is difficult in a noisy bar.

self portrait day today: outside the indiana university art museum, reflected.


and works in progress. i decided to try my hand at recycling yarn. my goodness, what a pain in the ass it is to unravel a sweater! however, i did get a lot of nice, ivory colored cotton yarn from a massive men's sweater for $1.50. i'm making myself a cabley dress, darnit!


and this is a long overdue selbu modern hat for a dear friend. i fear the purple and aqua parts are going to be too subtle.

mustard, saffron, butterscotch, turmeric...

call it what you will, i've got a new, lacy top (partially) in that color. it makes me so happy. i think this is my new favorite knitted object.

this project was also entirely born of the internets. well, okay, a lot of them are, but it was also born out of someone ELSE bringing it to my attention on the internets. which i think is just rad. girl reads other girl's blog; girl sees pattern; girl thinks, "other girl would totally dig this;" other girl concurs heartily and jumps right in. and here we have the finished project. i just think that's cool - way to go, internets.

so i give you: the pegboard lace tunic!


really the colors are more accurate in the WIP post below.


buttons! i couldn't for the life of me figure out the neckline and i was really partial to the tie top neckline anyway - so i sewed buttons along the top edge (because i thought they were cute), then partially sewed the tie on. i love it so, so much.


and zee back.

on my hermitude of april 2009...

warning: nearly all non-crafty stuff here! general life stuff follows.

i have some wonderful people in my life. i mention something about "quitting" on facebook, and less than 24 hours later, i have words and thoughts and actual, physical gifts on my doorstep to help cheer me on. more about that in a bit.

what am i quitting? smoking. that's right - i'm a smoker. have been for nearly half my life now, more or less. isn't that awful and hideous? i kind of think it is. see, i don't WANT to be a smoker. i haven't WANTED to be a smoker for probably 8 to 10 years now. i have never smoked at work or when i visit my parents; i have always been embarrassed by it and didn't want to be identified as a smoker. i recognize it is a completely idiotic habit (okay, addiction). it's also ridiculously expensive... and stinky... and generally pretty gross. and yet i haven't been able to come even remotely close to quitting except for one three-month period where i was climbing mountains and hiking 30 miles every weekend. so why now? i think i'm just fed up with myself. there are, to be sure, things i like about myself. there are also a number of things i don't like about myself, and i had a wake up call of sorts with a good friend this past weekend. and *palm to forehead* i realized, quite suddenly, that while there are things i don't like about myself that are not easily fixed, there are quite a few things i can do to be a better person, a better friend, a better me. quitting smoking, cutting back on booze, and being a better friend are all things that i can do now and feel good about. really, i guess i finally had it with myself.

you're probably sitting there thinking, well, duh, christie... if you can quit when you visit parents, go on work trips, etc., what's the big deal? the big deal is i am seriously my own worst enemy. if left to my own devices, i could play on the internet and chain smoke for hours. so this week, i have decided to either be a hermit or to hang out with non-smoking friends. during my hermit hours so far, i have a) put on very comfy clothes and my bunny slippers, b) watched countless hours of bad television on hulu, c) knitted a sweater and started a hat and a dress, d) paced the apartment, e) gone to bed at 9:00 just so i wouldn't have to try to function anymore, f) stopped drinking (i have poor impulse control when drinking), and g) eaten what seems to be about my body weight in sherbet (speaking of, i'm out of sherbet - must run to the grocery store!).

so what if it's only been roughly 43 hours since my last cigarette? back to the "i have the best people in my life" comment at the beginning. i got home from work and was warned there was a present waiting for me on my doorstep. what could that be, you ask? RED VINES AND CHOCOLATE PRAYING JESUS HANDS, of course! and, because the gift giver is crazy awesome, the jesus hands come with a whole PRAYER written on the inside. ridonk. is that sacrilege to eat jesus' hands?


do you know how much i love red vines? so very much. they're my favorite candy in all the land. i love that i have friends who love me so much that they know of my love for red vines *and* will go out and buy them for me.


judging by my excitement over these two items, my general need for sherbet, and general oral fixation issues, i'm guessing i might gain a bit of weight. not the best thing in the world, but at least my lungs will be nice and pink again soonish.

butterscotch kind of day...

i have found that i've been really drawn to butterscotch-related colors lately. mustard, butterscotch, whatever you want to call it - warm, brownish-yellows are calling my name. in fact, as i type this, i'm wearing a butterscotchy cardigan. hmm... strange, that.

i have finished the body of my very own pegboard tunic, and i am still in love. it's currently blocking, and i'm working on the neck tie at the present. i really do NOT understand the construction details with the i-cord and buttons and such. and, really, i like the look of it with just the plain old neck tie part, so i'm omitting all the i-cord stuff and keeping it simple, stupid. plus, i-cords and i are not friends. i hate i-cords.

so we have some progress pictures.


lacy!


just look at that yummy, yummy yarn. i really should do lace more frequently - it knits up so FAST with all those open spaces.


the rest of today? i'm going to see if there's some baseball on and continue work on one of my longer term projects - getting all of my photos from my european adventure last year into a scrapbook. i'm up to paris! i think it's almost time to move on to venice! then there's just rome to wrap up. yeah... i've got my work cut out for me.

oh, and in music news, i've been listening to this song obsessively lately: "photobooth" by death cab for cutie.

self-portrait day ramble blah blah blah...

i saw lou barlow at landlocked today. i use the term "saw" loosely... i heard him and sometimes saw his fluffy hair and big, bad glasses between the heads of other people. it sounded beautiful, though, and my love for lou barlow has been reclaimed after a decade of having issues with him after an absolutely god-awful show in boulder, co, in, oh, 1998 or so. i've loved sebadoh, sentridoh, folk implosion, basically any incarnation of lou barlow since i was 15 years old (in other words, about half my life). and yet that one show really made it hard for me to listen to him much for, well, a long time. funny how that happens. the same thing happened after i saw cat power at pitchfork a couple of summers ago - i can't stand her anymore. so sad. but lou... oh, lou, it was just beautiful.

gracias.

self portrait day: 4.9.09.


outtake.


in knitting news, i am making this, and i am in love. i'm knitting it up in butterscotch, teal, and purple yarn (basically, the leftovers of my selbu modern hat). i'm making it extra long... which is a bitch, because i want it DONE. like, now.

in other news, i'm going to philadelphia and new york soon. i can't wait. i need a change of scenery, of company. don't get me wrong - i have excellent company here, and i love, love, love it. i just need... something else for a brief moment. about a year ago, i was traveling to europe all by my lonesome, and i think i'm hitting the point where it's "christie-epic-vacation" time. we'll see if this tides me over until i really can do epic vacation again/greece-croatia-italy-spain.

everything's coming up christie...

life is a-ok today. i slept in, drank some coffee, then ran out to try to find a dress suitable for both rock and roll prom and kim's wedding in philadelphia in a little over a month. i started with the vintage stores... definitely no luck whatsoever there. i found myself dreaming of the vintage store in louisville over by lynn's paradise cafe (matador omelette FTW!), wishing i could swing in there and just KNOWING they had The Perfect Dress waiting for me. c'est la vie. then i ended up in the store with the amazing shoe selection and the cute/artsy/hideous/expensive clothing selection. i found an amazing silk tank dress that was just, well, amazing. fanastacular, one might even say. but $260? yeah, right. instead, i found this little number, which i think i will get a lot of wear out of. innit cute? now to find some heavy opaque tights and a wedding-appropriate sweater of some sort. it's a little short, but i love it anyway. also? it has pockets. i'm a sucker for a dress with pockets.


all right, all right already. on to the knitting. i finished two projects recently, and i love them both for different reasons. first, we have a baby sweater for kerry's little man, knit up with leftover blue cascade 220 wool. i love, i love.


i just love the colors. so vibrant. and check out my new terrarium. thus far, it only has two plants in it. i'm going to fill it up with succulents and bug eating plants and such.


next we have a tank top. that's right, i knit myself a tank top! i love the front...


the back? a little wonky, but it does show off my favorite tattoo rather nicely. i'm going to have to figure something out with the back/straps. buttons? ribbon? a big old bow hanging over the whole mess? we shall see.


it also might need some *ahem* lining of some sort.


finally self-portrait day, back to thursday, 4/2/09. all day, i dreamed of being in my bunny slippers. and then i got home, and i was in them. it was like magic.