I wanted to register knitwitch.net - or knitwitch.com or whatever, but they were taken. *sigh*

That sucks.

But knitwitchery.net is for sale. Hmm… Decisions, decisions…

Thirteen Things I Anticipate This Spring

1. Chickens! Yes. That’s my big exciting thing coming up! I’m getting some peeps!
2. Growing daylight. It’s nice to wake up after a long day of sleeping and still see some daylight. Makes me feel less like a vampire. (Not, mind you, that I have anything against vampires…)
3. My first-ever big veggie garden. Last year, I could just do some herb gardening in pots. This year I have a huge garden plot, and I can’t wait!
4. My first ever flower garden. Maybe this year, my father won’t stop by with his super herbicide and kill them all off in his quest to rid the world of weeds.
5. Warmer weather. I’m looking forward to shedd the long sleeves and scarves and the heavy coat!
6. Better fruit selection at the stores!
7. Rain that doesn’t turn into ice or snow. One of my favorite scents is the way the air takes on that ‘it just rained’ scent. That’s one thing I miss terribly about Washington. It just doesn’t rain enough here.
8. New Clothes. I’ll be needing a few new shirts and things this spring or early summer. Woohoo!
9. The lack of credit card debt! Extra money! I’ll be putting most of that toward new furniture. I need a couch and a bed and a decent dining table, and maybe some new end/coffee table type things.
10. More energy. Something about this time of year just gets me going on all my projects.
11. The return of greenery - things will grow! Grass and leaves and flowers. Oh my.
12. Cleaning out the garage. I both loathe and look forward to this. The place is a mess, but it’s just too cold and dark right now for me to do much about it.
13. If I’m lucky, a week-long vacation!

1. Ingrid 2. Mama Duck 3. christine 4. Raggedy

5. Mark Caldwell 6. Terrific teens 7. Henderson Real Estate 8. phentermine

9. Entre Card Contest 10. You're next!

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Just when the weather warms and short sleeves sound nicer than a sweater, and the air is still cool but refreshing, and the sun eases the winter’s chill from your bones, and the grass begins to sprout green, and you start to think that maybe, just maybe, the end of winter is here… you look out the window one morning at the end of march and say:

So here it is at last! Photos of my SP10 package, which was sent uber early because it was my birthday on the 26th! Hurrah! And indeed, I got it that weekend, and was terribly excited!

That’s the full list - Jojoland Melody is the yarn, and it’s sooo pretty. Very casual jeans-y, the sort of thing to wear with almost anything. I’m planning a shawl of some sort from it, since I have five balls! It’s a fingering weight wool, not terribly soft, but plenty soft enough to be a lovely wrap, I’d say! And I’m in love. It’s already in balls, too!

Moving on, I’ve completed exactly half of my Backyard Leaves scarf, thank god. And unfortunately, I do not have enough yarn to complete the second half, so I’m gonna have to take my chances with ordering another ball and hope I get the same or a similar dyelot .Er. Yay. Not.

Bloody pattern said 4 balls, but I most definitely need five. How. Lame. The one time I don’t buy too much yarn….

Moving on, I’ve realized that time is flying, and I hadn’t even STARTED my grandmother’s birthday gift, so I rushed through and did this last night:

That’ll be the gift bag from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I’m in love with the yarn. I’ve got one skein of it, which is supposed to be enough for both the small and the medium bags. It’d better be enough. Grrrrowl. And I still need something to put in it! Sorry if it’s a wee bit blurry. My, uh, flash did not pop up all the way. I took another photo, where the flash worked right, but it was all… harsh, and this was prettier. It’s not /entirely/ the right color - I reserve artistic rights to make the yarn look peachish even if it is a pale, pale baby pink. Comprendes?

Oh, and that card? That’s going out either tomorrow or the next day for my secret pal. But shhh.

And one last photo, because it’s cute.

Tsuki loves her pi…

I was totally completely rocked when I checked the mail yesterday and got this super cool package from you all out of the blue, and gosh, so FAST! Made my day. Hell, it’s still making my day! I LOVE the yarn, and the tea smells good, and that candle is yummilicious, and was just in time, as the sewage pond is thawing here and… well, let’s just say that’s a bad smell.

I’ve been charging up my camera battery, and now it’s all dark, so no pictures yet. I’d like to get a picture in sunlight if I can - makes everything look better. So hopefully in the morning it’ll be bright and sunny, and my camera will be charged and ready, and then I can post some lovely photos with more detail!

Thank you thank you thank you!

Photos coming…

Sometimes I feel like that guy on the cell phone commercials, talking into thin air. I blog fairly frequently, but generate few - if any - comments, and most of the comments I do generate come from Thursday Thirteen, and are limited strictly to those TT posts.

Steph at And She Knits Too asked an interesting question the other day, and it generated a lot of interest on why people blog if they don’t get any comments.

I guess I thought I’d answer that here, though I did comment over there, too. I don’t blog for an audience. I blog as a personal journal of sorts, a place to record accomplishments and thoughts, to post photos where I can find them, to play with web design, since I have nothing better to do. I blog for fun of it.

I don’t really check the stats often. Right now, it says I’ve had 849 unique visitors, but I’m skeptical. 849 unique visitors, and only a handful of comments on the TT pages? Must be a mistake. Or robots. Though I think those are counted separately… Maybe not, though. In any case, I don’t check them, because I don’t know whether they’re accurate or not. Clearly, I have a silent readership, if there is a readership at all, but since I didn’t start blogging with much intention of gathering comments, I’m not too concerned about it.

Steph mentioned that blogging is a discussion and a community activity. I suppose that’s true… if you have a readership. If not, it’s more like a journal. But sometimes, I, too, wonder why I bother to blog if no one ever reads it. Comments are a nice ego-boost, and frankly, one of the reasons I participate in TT (though I didn’t this week - too much going on.)

However, I’m also a person who rarely comments on another’s blog, though I read a couple dozen. I have little to say, and more, I generally read through a feedreader, and clicking over to the website just to drop off a blah comment like “Ooh! Pretty!” seems lame enough to me… (though funny, I never think it’s lame if I /get/ a comment like that… but maybe I would if I got 30-40 comments a post, I don’t know.) And commenting on super popular blogs (the Harlot, anyone?) seems just as pointless. Putting effort into being lost in the crowd over a comment that really has little enough worth to begin with doesn’t seem like it’s worth the time. I guess I was never someone to chime into the discussion at school, either, though. If you have nothing worthwhile to say, I thought, why bother saying anything?

So I understand both sides of the question. But I wonder… is anyone out there reading this? Drop me a line if you are!

Kitty Pi is done and blocking as I type. I knit furiously, running through six balls of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes, plus almost a full ball of Twilly’s Freedom Wool for trim. Pre-blocking, it looked like a giant’s hat, or a tote-bag with no handles, or something really freaky.

I knit it longer (taller) than the pattern called for, concerned that maybe it’d shrink too much and be a kitty pancake like some of the gallery photos seemed to be. Then I tossed it in the wash with a pair of dirty jeans and some soap, and felted. Twice.

And the result?

Perfection.

Though it’s not quite /round/. I didn’t have anything round. So I blocked it on an oval hamper. Sue me.

The beasties don’t know what to think much, yet. It sure smells… sheepy. Blech. Wet wool is not a pretty perfume. But it has intrigued the monsters. This one jumped up to check it out during the photo shoot.

Think they’ll like it? I hope so. I’m really pleased with how it turned out! I think it reminds me of a prairie - first, dark, rich soil, then topsoil, then green grass with some wildflowers poking out the top in a splash of color. Here’s to kitty-love. Though I guess if they don’t like it, I can always use it for a basket!

Light overturns darkness today, and I’m glad for it. We now have twelve hours of darkness, twelve hours of daylight, and it’s growning lighter every day. I’m feeling it in my bones, feel life returning to the earth with every passing day. I’ve been growing restless, wanting to do something, wanting to create, wanting to grow, wanting ot change, wanting to live and laugh and breathe fresh air and see the sunshine again.

Spring is here, though where I’m at, it’s still in its early stages - freezing hard at night, but drifting slowly into warmer days. This time next month, I’ll have a brood of chickens and will be planting potatos and lettuce and chives, and a month later, all my seeds will be in the garden, hopefully beginning to sprout.

A month after that, and I’ll be regretting it all as I struggle through hot days and the drone of the air conditioner and a scant few hours of good sleep every day as I try to keep the house cool enough that my body doesn’t mind sleeping through the sunshine.

But until then, I’m soaking it up.

Did a tarot reading. Celtic cross, the new deck A gave me for Christmas. I gifted oats and milk (okay, okay, half and half… even better!) to the garden plot, and dug up a bit of dirt for the altar. It’s still pretty frozen, so I’ve gotta let it thaw before I can do anything with it.

The sun’s just coming up, and I’ve gotta go to bed now, get a few hours of sleep, and drive to the big city to keep my mother company. Grandma goes into surgery today, and I’m gonna be there for a night to keep her company. Must remember to bring my knitting - and lots of it.

I checked my email tonight (okay, okay, I check it every night, practically - hell, it’s set up to notify me the moment anything drops by, and usually, I’m on top of it within minutes), and happily, there’s another email from my SP10 spoilee and another from Shelby, my hostess, who’s set up the first of three contests for this round.

My sp10 questionaire is over to the right and should be easy to find, so yay - first part done. And second, I am to discuss my favorite thing on the needles at the moment.

Hard to choose, because I alternately love and hate it all. *laugh* I have two things on the needles, and a single mitten awaiting its mate. It doesn’t count, since said mate is not on the needles. The other things on the needles are my Kitty Pi and my Backyard Leaves scarf.

Hmm. Well, I admit, the scarf is my favorite at the moment. I mean, it’s nicer to knit. Okay, it’s a pain in the rear to knit, but I loooove the product, and I’m not quite so in love with the brown mud pie kitty pi. And besides, Aurora 8 is soooo much nicer to knit with than Wool of the Andes, which is a bit rough on my skin at this time of year, when my hands crack and I’m slathering on herbal salves and Aveeno.

Rant//
(Did you know that Aveeno tests on animals? I did not until recently, and even though this does not make me happy, I’m not going to stop using it because… it /works/. Really really well. Damn. Why must their product be so good for me, and not, say, someone who doesn’t test on animals? Now, I’m no animal rights freak - and no offense to those who are, but it just isn’t me, I was raised in too rural an area, I suppose, where we depend so much on animals for various things to ever be a big animal rights fangirl - but testing freaking cosmetics on animals pisses me off. It’s unnecessary and cruel. Especially considering its ultimate purpose. But I guess it doesn’t piss me off to use an inferior brand, so I guess I should shut up, eh?)
//Rant

Anyway. Back to the point of the post. Backyard Leaves, from Scarf Style (or, since I don’t actually have that book, though I want it, from Holiday Gifts, or Knits, or whatever the holiday issue of Interweave 2006 was called) is probably my favorite thing on the needles. I’m using size 7 needles (and boy did I have to dig those up from the bottom of my drawer… A has my usual pair) and Aurora 8 from Karabella. Pictures are… a few posts down from here. I’d post them, but honestly, I don’t want to repost the same ones, and the scarf really hasn’t changed much. It’s only a few repeats longer.

I’m really, really hoping I have enough yarn.

Stole this from here while checking out a 52 socks in a year knitalong that I love the idea of, but could never possibly complete. Hmm. Another good booklist. Will have to work on it sometime!

Look at the list of (100) books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you own.
Movies don’t count.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible (not all of it, though)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) (reading currently…)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)