Tired...

I'm tired of the election. I wish it were over. I wish that we could vote tomorrow so that there was no chance of McCain catching up to Obama and that we'd have our president and that we could move on. I'm especially tired of the election here in California. We have a couple of hot tamales propositions this year, that also have people worked up, and I'm not sure I have any more strength to argue about them. And you know what I'm the most tired of? Being told I have to accept other people's beliefs. That I have to tolerate other people's beliefs. What?! You say... Cassandra, that's not very open minded you say. Fuck it. These freaking people with their damned views that are trying to take other people's rights away are going to lecture me about acceptance? I'm so tired of it. I accept that their are people out there that are against the idea of homosexuality. And they can continue to live in their delusion world where god will damn the gays and send the bigots to heaven. I don't give a damn. I also, incidentally, accept the presence of neo-Nazis. What I won't accept is the idea that these people can take other people's rights away. On November Fourth we have a chance to give an entire group of people equal rights in this state, no matter what other people think. Equal rights, regardless of anyone's personal views. It drives me absolutely insane to be told I'll have to accept what happens because in the end it's about the majority - let's take those neo-Nazis for a moment... if there were a lot of them (say, they were the majority) and they suddenly put up a ballot to take away Jewish rights, would anyone be telling me I'll have to accept the majority. And it's their right to try to take away a Jewish persons rights? No. No one in their right mind would be telling me that. And the complacency with which people, even people I love, are just standing by and letting Prop 8 stand without speaking against it is driving me crazy. Not to mention prop 4... and Sarah Palin's creationism in schools rhetoric, and John McCain saying of course this is a christian nation. Fate help us if those two get a crack at running this country. I will never raise children in a 'christian nation' and I will never accept a country that makes abortion murder. Stay the hell out of my life, and I'll stay the hell out of yours. Thank you for your time.

In order to combat all of these distractions I should be working on my thesis. Instead, I'm blogging, knitting, playing on ravelry, and gardening. Great! I may not finish my thesis in time, but hey - I'll have cabbage



and lettuce



and red onion



and chives and hopefully garlic and maybe even some peas, if the seeds work out right...



I'm very proud of this little winter garden and hope I get at least some veggies out of it - you'll notice my herbs as well. Those are growing nicely, the bare spot is where I finally gave up and tossed the basil that was being suffocated by a caterpillar that I could not find. I continue to forget to look for an organic insecticide for the garden - so if I can't find the little bastards they eat my veggies. I did find one in the cabbage and I hope his last meal was good!

Meanwhile, my husband put sod into these little patches of dirt we had in our driveway and look who's decided those are fantastic beds -



As soon as you let her outside she heads for that patch of grass lies down and looks as though she has staked her claim. She's so cute - oh, to be a dog and not have to worry about anything but protecting your little patch of grass!

In knitting updates, everything has been frogged back to their appropriate place, and I am making some slow progress on Serenity. It has to be done by December 1, so that's the priority for now. I also finally blocked the red scarf and will be mailing it this weekend. Yahoo!

10 Great/Awful Things About TV Today

1. Awful - Brain damage that occurs from watching
2. Awful - Celebrity gossip/reality shows
3. Great - Deadliest Catch
4. Great - 30 Rock
5. Great - Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impressions
6. Awful - 24 hour political commentary
7. Awful/Great - Commercials (ok, sometimes those marketing people are witty!)
8. Great - Fall Footbal - which my husband loves, giving me ample time to knit!
9. Awful - marathons of House, SVU, Monk, and Psych which I get sucked into, which in turn causes brain damage (see #1)
10. Hmmm.... don't know if it's awful or great - Project Runway. I watch it - but perhaps to my own detriment?

Updates and Rants

Updates on the knitting - so, here's the deal. I'm working on getting better with my knitting skills, and I finally joined Ravelry, and I love learning new things, but I have so many UFOs I'm getting irritated with myself. The scarf has yet to be blocked which is driving me batty, I need to fix the Isabella, and now, I've discovered I've made a mistake somewhere in the Serenity baby blanket. Which means now I have to frog back on two of my projects, and I just have so little energy for backward projects. This weekend I have a ton of commitments piling up on me but I am determined to get some of this stuff taken care of.

I am exhausted from all of the election business. I take politics very seriously, and truly believe that our civil liberties have to be protected against extreme Religious beliefs. In addition to having a Republican, anti-choice, creationist on a major ticket, here in California, they are trying to take away gay marriage rights, and erode abortion rights further. I'm having a hard time withstanding the hits from so many directions. And I'm really tired of being lectured about acceptance, and accepting different viewpoints from the very people who would propose to make this country less free. It's depressing me, and to be honest I just need this election to be over. So, hurray for the coming of the weekend, and the coming of the fall weather, which sounds like heaven to me... Here's to November 5th - salud!

Ten on Tuesday

10 Things That Scare You/Freak You Out

1. Sarah Palin
2. The extinction of polar bears
3. Creepy men on the train
4. Religious nuts (no matter what religion)
5. The state of popular movies in the US
6. Loud noises (I'm sort of jumpy)
7. Marx's theory of alienated labor and succumbing to it.
8. Peeing in the dark
9. hmm... now that I think about it - The dark
10. I mentioned Sarah Palin, right?

Knitting! (and a shocker post on Wednesday)

Last weekend I visited the fabulous Village Knitters in Santa Rosa with a friend of mine. We bought lots of stuff, met some great ladies, and I found some great yarn for the Serenity blanket (as I mentioned earlier). Here it is -




I really like this pattern. I made an error when I started and have since decided that it is best to only work on this project when no one is talking to me - but I didn't not frog back and repair the error. I decided it's character building. Plus, now that I've got the pattern down it's coming along great and I see no reason to undo all of that work. I hope they like it.

My garden is growing! My peppermint is psychotic (I think it may be mutant peppermint) and the parsley survived the white flies, and the dill is making a push. But my basil is dying a slow, sad death. This weekend I am going to rip it out and replace it with one of the two peppermints. Hopefully, if I move the mutant peppermint, it will give the regular peppermint a chance to get big too.

Next weekend, I will be planting a winter garden - and I am super excited to get started. Now, if only there was a way to win the lottery and then I could knit and garden all day long! That sounds like a nice aspiration!

Ten on Tuesday

It seems like I only get around to blogging when I do the Ten on Tuesday - oh well - c'est la vie. All projects are still in the same condition they were in last Tuesday - except I started a new one and finished the beanie for DH. The Serenity blanket has been started and I think it's fabulous - I've made an error inside one of the first lace cables, but I've decided that for my first lace cable pattern there isn't anything wrong with a few misplaced stitches - plus the recipients really won't give a damn... they're the type of folks that will decide the mistake makes the blanket better because it's one of a kind.

10 Great Things That Happened this Summer...

1. I went to Jenner. I heart Jenner. I heart the Russian River. I wish I lived there.
2. I gardened with my mother-in-law, thus beginning to bridge a strange gap between us that sprang from no where.
3. I went to the farmer's market every Thursday and bought a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie from a bread maker in Davis.
4. I've increased my skills as a knitter, and become unfortunately obsessed.
5. I read Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood.
6. I realized I don't love summer as much as I did when I had them off.
7. Fall comes after summer.
8. I think that number seven explains why 8, 9, and 10 are blank!
9.
10.

In other news, I'm finishing up my master's and cannot wait to be done with school. I don't know what I'll do next but I'll be glad to have that monkey off my back.

Something May be Wrong....

I think I may have lost my mind. I've suddenly got so many projects cast on, I sit down and don't know which one to work on first. But! Before I get to that... here's my red scarf project.



So. I need to weave in those ends and block that baby and it will be ready to send to OFA! WooHoo! My first charity knit. I began working on the Perfect Fit Skirt, and I really like the striping of the yarn. It's very pretty. Right now though, my perfect fit skirt looks more like a really slutty tube top...



Sadly, here is my Isabella.


Something went horribly wrong. I messed up the decreases on the right front top panel, and now I need to frog back to the beginning of that section of the pattern. I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet though. I made a deal with myself that I would work on my smaller projects in between every ball of the skirt. And I finished the first ball of the skirt yesterday. So I cast on this...



So much for working on the Isabella. That little circle is a beanie for the DH. He's been asking for a beanie for a very long time, since I learned to knit. A. very. long. time.

So, you see. I think I may have developed a problem. I'm losing my mind. All I can think about lately is knitting! I think I caught a virus from you knitbloggers!

Here's my Ten Simple Things That Make Me Happy

1. Books
2. Cheesy food
3. Quiet Time
4. Nice Weather
5. Learning something new
6. Making new friends
7. French fries
8. French language (I don't know how to speak french, but it is so pretty)
9. Fires on a cold night
10. Knitting (I'm putting this at the bottom to combat this addictive behavior of late!)

FO!

Yeah, my Red Scarf Project scarf is finished... but I have no photos to show you. Sorry! Perhaps tomorrow I will remember to take some photographs. I've started a new skirt - which I'm loving.

Not much to say, but if you haven't seen the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler skit from last weekend's Saturday Night Live, go to youtube directly and watch! Cracking me up!

Who's a Gifted Gardner... ummm...

I am probably not a gifted gardner, but I'm giving it a go regardless...

This is the side of my garage. There used to be a rock, and a broken clay pot sitting on those shelves. From the previous owner, I might add. So, I bought those pots on sale at a local nursery and added those things with the petals to give it some flare. I am in love with the yellow pot with the purple flowers. It makes me smile, so I suppose if this experimental dip into gardening ends up being a complete bust I can at least say that I've gained some smiles.





We also cleaned out the area to the side of our house. This area was so disgusting that not even our dogs would go back there. It was fully covered with dead leaves, some old ground border stuff, some old cracking plastic piping, and two tree stumps that had to be axed out...



And one day the whole side yard will look like this...



I've also decided to give a go at having an herb/vegetable garden. I've planted no veggies yet, as winter gardens don't plant until late-september, but I did put the herbs in some dirt and damned if they didn't attracted some f-ing white flies two days later. I am in a fight to the death with these white flies, and something much larger than a white fly is eating my basil... but I have hope that I will prevail. Bugs be damned!



In non-garden news, I was forwarded this link and think that it's important we all remember that our predecessors did not fight for our right to vote so that we could blindly vote for anything with tits... this lady's a lunatic!

On the push-up front, I made it to ten in a row baby!

No real new knitting news... except that I've finished the third ball of yarn, and only have one left so hopefully the scarf will be long enough. The goal is to finish the scarf and the Isabella top before I go to Jenner so that I can buy new projects while I'm out!

Mia and Merlin hope you take their lead and sniff out your favorite buddy this weekend! Happy Friday!

Mosaic

I'm not on flickr, don't know enough about cameras, pictures, or flickr to be on flickr, but I saw a meme once that I thought produced the greatest little about me in a twelve picture flash, so I did it... and here is my result.



To do...

Go to flickr, type your answer to the following questions in the search, and choose a photo that comes up - but you have to choose one from the first page of the search results. Fun!

1. What is your name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. Where did you go to high school?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. Where is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What is your dream job?
10. What do you love most?
11. One word to describe you.
12. What is your flickr name (I used my first name again and chose a different photo)?

So - I think it turned out quite nice. I especially love the apple pie. In other news, I've started school so knitting is slow. Still working that red scarf. It's so pretty and easy to do. I need to find a knitting group so that I can sit down for a good couple of hours and get it done! I want to send it in a pretty package with a gift card and all that - but if I don't get it knitted it'll be all for naught.

Is it me or are there about a million too many great things on this issue of Knitty? I want to knit them all - I especially want to knit Camden and then be skinny enough to look good in Camden!

10 favorite movie songs

Now... this is a Ten on Tuesday I can get my head around! Once, in Mexico, we played a game at the bar and had to name the movie that the songs came from. I think we only gave up two points. I am a soundtrack crazy person.

1. I'm Hooked on a Feeling - Reservoir Dogs
2. Tempted by the Fruit of Another - Reality Bites
3. Jungle Boogie - Pulp Fiction
4. Tiny Dancer - Almost Famous
5. You and Me - Romeo & Juliet
6. Let's Stay Together - Pulp Fiction
7. I Know - 10 Thing I Hate About You
8. Sweet Jane - Natural Born Killers
9. Voodoo People - Hackers
10. Creature of the Night - Rocky Horror Picture Show

Ta da! Also, the new Knitty is out - who's stoked?!

We're Gonna Win!

I know that this is supposed to sometimes be about knitting, and today there will be some knitting chatter, and some knitting pictures, but for now I just have to say - We're gonna win! We're totally gonna win, and I am so excited. I cannot wait for the debates to start. This is going to be great! And - I'm starting to have faith in my state again too - polls are showing that the ban on gay marriage is losing ground - so ha! I stick my tongue out to all the crazies that think it's ok to take away people's rights. We're gonna win! I want to do the happy dance!

Here is my work on my Red Scarf Project -



The top picture is very close to the right color. I love this yarn. It's sort of washable, but has just a touch of cashmere in it so that the fabric is very soft. This is the second time I've used it for a scarf. One of my biggest complaint about scarves is that no matter how soft the yarn, scarves start to get itchy - but not with this yarn. I don't think that I purchased enough yarn though - so I have to go back to the store and pray that they have more! I hope that the pattern doesn't seem too girly - I dont' think that it is, and when I block it I'm going to try to keep the diamonds close together. I've learned also, that I need to get better at taking pictures if this is going to work, those aren't that great, are they?



I've stalled on finishing the Isabella top I started because I made a mistake, and now I have to take time to focus on my frogging and make sure I have the right amount of stitches when I'm done to start over. Which sucks because I was on the very last part before blocking. So. I really do knit. Ha.

Them Dems...

So, here's the deal fellow libs - we can squabble and bitch and once again lose the freaking election... Or we can vote for Obama in the election and move on to better leadership. Seriously, these people who are sticking to their 'convictions' with the Hillary thing are starting to drive me mad! The policies aren't all that different between Obama and Clinton, which is part of the reason the primary was so close. And it floors me that people are talking about not voting for Obama, just because they're upset about Clinton losing. Are you really willing to risk having an anti-abortion, 100 years war, 'maverick' sell out as our president just because your candidate lost? Let's focus people! Even the Clintons, who are fabulously stubborn recognize that this election isn't about Hillary anymore - it's about getting the Republicans out of the Executive office. Eight years... we've spent eight years with a president that has started two wars, eroded women's rights, eroded environmental protections, and doesn't even have a commanding knowledge of the English language! Eight years - and you're going to risk another four just because she lost? It's time to get it together!

oh yeah, and in other news, but just as important...





I swear... nothing is sacred! I saw a JC Penney commercial the other day using remakes of scenes from the Breakfast Club... They make almost every book I love into a mediocre movie, and now this! Good. Lord.

Ten on Tuesday

Hey all,

I can't wait to start blogging again! As I say, I love to knit and can't wait to get better at it and meet some new knitting friends! I'm an avid reader and am politically liberal so - if you don't believe in women's rights, gay rights, the separation of church and state, etc. you probably aren't going to like this blog very much. My friend Jean-Marie and I also have a blog over at Hey You...What's Up? but she hardly ever posts, so this will be all mine (evil cackle). So - to get the blog started with a bang - here's my 10 on Tuesday!

10 Things You Didn't Like About School... I really liked college so these are all the things I hated about H.S.

1. Math
2. We had a terrible art department.
3. A lot of the other students
4. Gossip
5. Drama (not the class, the drama caused usually by number 4)
6. Teachers who wish they were still in high school.
7. Crazed parents (not mine, you know those ones who were psychotic at their kids sports games and used to be on campus all the time for god knows what)
8. Dances
9. The salad was the most expensive thing to buy at lunch.
10. All the people that cried at graduation.