totally unrelated to knitting...

...I'll explain tomorrow, promise. In the meantime, enjoy some of my favorite music videos!

1. Eels - last stop:this town


2. Blur - Coffee and TV


3. the killers - bones


4. Jamiroquai - virtual insanity


5. gorrillaz - 19/2000

Bundles of Love

Guess what I got in the mail? A package from my sockpal! I confess that there might have been some giggling and jumping up and down when it arrived. So...here's what I got:


Socks (obviously), which I'll get to in a minute, a flower pin, and grape licorice from a winery. How cool is that? It's actually really tasty, like twizzlers, but less plastic-y and more fruity.


About the socks...they are awesome. They fit perfectly (which I'm really excited about because I'm still learning how to make mine the right size, much less a total stranger) and are lovely. I'm not sure what the pattern is, but it's kind of like a lacier version of the Monkey pattern. I really love the yarn. I'm not sure what it is, but it goes from gray to a bright pinkish-red, to black and back again. But my favorite thing about them? The picot edge.

So, basically, mad props to my (get from) sockpal! You know, in all the hurry to make/finish/send off socks to my (give to) sockpal, I kind of forgot that the whole thing was reciprocal. Literally, I forgot I was going to get a package until it showed up. And the main reason I signed up for sockapalooza was to get socks!

Anyway, that's most likely going to be the highlight of my week. Mittens got a bundle of love of her own:


Awhile back, I bought sock yarn for my friend Van, and in the process of rolling it, half of it was turned into smallish balls (as is right and proper) and the other half was turned into a huge, messy knot. After three of us tried to unravel it, I deemed it a knot of Gordian proportions and abandoned it. And then Mittens claimed it as her throne. So she's having a good week too.

In actual knitting news, I've been working on Rusted Root for awhile and I'm making good progress. I bought the pattern and yarn in a kit from kpixie because I was bored. It's really simple, so I've been using it as my in-between project for when I just want to veg out and knit while I'm watching America's Next Top Model marathons. Which are on all the time. Which may be why the Root is already to the waist decreases.


So far I have kind of a love-hate relationship with it. The yarn is Karabella zodiac, which is a mercerized cotton. I've never worked with it before and while I really like the color and sheen it has, I would have preferred the fluffyness of regular cotton. I think something about the firmness and the shine of the yarn made it look really weird in the lace stitch written in the pattern, so once again, I replaced it with a cable panel. Or maybe I just suck at lace knitting.

(On a side note, this picture of the cable was originally grass green! I had to spend a solid five minutes messing with the tone and saturation and the like to get it anywhere close to the actually color. Why do cameras do that? It's maddening.)

The other thing is that I love that the pattern is basically a cute, puffed-sleeve t-shirt, but I the specter of a baggy Root drooping under the weight of the aformentioned yarn that was haunting me. So I decided to throw in some heavy-duty shaping and rely on the Negative Ease Gods to keep it from stretching out into wonkiness. While this is great for me, it does make me kinda hate having even bought the pattern since I've now reworked, like, 89% of it. It's cool though.

And now, I'll bid you adieu so that I can keep working on my now very shapley Rusted Root and watch the first part of ANTM Cycle 5. I've seen the rest of this season, but not these first few episodes, and I must rectify that.

FO: Orangina

Presenting Orangina:

(Click for bigger)

This is the last surprise FO for awhile, I promise. Remember when I said in my last post I hadn't blogged awhile because of some major facepalm moments? And that one of them entailed a major gauge error? Well, that would be the summertime tunic.

I kind of fudged the gauge swatch and never realized it because of the way it was bunched on the circular needle. I worked on it at the beach, at the movies, while reading the last Harry Potter book, and then I checked it. It was about 10 inches long and I was all "hmmm, I wonder if it's time to start the armholes," so I put it on scrap yarn. And then I was like, "my hours of long, tedious work have created a gigantic, shapeless sack....DAMN YOU, GAUGE! DAMN YOU AND YOUR SICK, TWISTED SENSE OF VENGEANCE!"

It was literally 10 inches long by about 48 inches wide. And I admit I am a bit busty, bit I'm no Dolly Parton. So after carefuly measuring gauge as if I had just made the world's biggest gauge swatch on purpose, I ripped it all out and sat on the yarn for a few days, humbled by the defeat. I also came to the conclusion that the summertime tunic would probably look terrible on me anyway, and make me look more frumpy than carefree. I'd bought the orangina pattern awhile ago and decided to use the yarn for that instead.

Yarn - 5 skeins of Knitpicks shine (60% pima cotton, 40% modal, 110 yards), sport weight, in cherry. This yarn is awesome! It's really soft, and (perhaps not shockingly) shiny, and totally worth getting since it's super-cheap. The downside is that I have 4 skeins of this yarn leftover, and I'm not really feeling making another tank top out of the same exact yarn.
Needles - 29" size 6 Inox circular, which gave me a gauge of 20 sts x 28 rows = 4 in stockinette.
Pattern - Orangina by Glampyre. I'm apparently working through her entire catalog. The gauge I got was significantly looser than what was listed in the pattern so I calculated the number of stitches needed to fit my bust size (200ish) and made the size that came closest to that number (XS, with 206 sts). Here are my other mods:

• I worked it bottom-up, not top-down as written. I did this mostly to start in the round and to get the ribbing out of the way. I also wanted to eliminate seaming and be able to kitchener the shoulders together.
• I made the ribbing 5" long and the lace section 16" long, which is longer than specified for the XS size.
• I have tiny, wee little shoulders. They also slope down kind of dramatically. This means that I have issues with bra straps falling down, the straps of shirts and dresses being to long, and that I get a weird wing effect with square cut tops that have no armhole shaping (like this one). When it came time to separate the front and back to make armholes, I bound off 5 sts and then alternated knitting 1 row plain and decreasing 1 sts on the edges until a total of 9 sts were decreased on both sides. I basically eliminated and entire lace repeat this way.
• I grafted 3" of the shoulders together instead of 2".
  

FO: Baudelaire socks and Saartje's booties

Whoa! Sorry about the absence. I'll get to that in a minute though. First, take a look:


Yep, I've fulfilled my obligations as a part of Sockapalooza 4, and then some. I was working on the socks and periodically checking my pal's blog, and then BAM! Out of nowhere, she had a baby. So, instead of doing important grad student type things, I made the baby booties. I finished them about a week and a half ago and mailed them a week ago. Here's the info for the socks and the booties:


Yarn - 1 skein Yarn Botanika Radiance (merino/tencel blend, 400 yards) in bluebells. My sockpal didn't give me any direction in terms of yarn or pattern, so I scoped out her blog to get a sense of the kinds of colors she likes. She seemed to gravitate towards sky blues and pale greens, so I went with this colorway. you can't tell because I took these pictures with my photobooth camera (my real one's back now! yay!), but it knit up in a mottled, not-pooling not-striping way that was just fantastic.
Needles - 32" size 2 addi turbos. This was the recommended needle size for the pattern, so I used it, but were I to knit with this yarn again, I'd probably go down a needle size. they turned out the right size for Sockpal's measurements, but I'm afraid they're not the most durable socks.
Pattern - Baudelaire from Knitty. I picked this because Sockpal said she was "adventurous" when it came to patterns and this one features lace and cables! Lace + cables + fancy shmancy merino/tencel yarn = adventurous, right? I hope so. As for the pattern, I followed it as written for the large size, plus an extra repeat on the leg.


Yarn - I had some aqua and gray Dale Baby Ull laying around, so I used that. I have no idea about the actual yardage, by roughly 6.5g of the aqua and 4.5g of the gray made this pair.
Needles - size 1 clover bamboo dpns
Pattern - Saartje's booties They came out absurdly tiny and cute. Now I kinda of want to knit a lot of them and scatter tham around my apartment so I can pretend helpful elves (who go about barefoot) secretly live in the cupboard.

Ok, so now that that's done. About the lack of blogging: I'm sorry. Besides my inherent sloth, the major culprits are 1) Harry Potter and 2)lack of knitting progress. I figure I get a free pass with Harry because, come on....last book! And the lack of knitting progress has gone a bit like this: I work on something, then look at it and realize it's waaaayyyyy too big/oops I changed needles and messed up my gauge in a totally noticeable way/is a hideous color for my skin...::facepalm:: Literally, all of those things have happened. I'll cover them one by one, but see? My knitting mojo got all wonky and unblogworthy. I think I have it fixed now, though, so no worries.

In other, more competent, non sockpal-related news, I fixed a sock!

See that? I brought it back from the dead, people! I'm pretty thrilled. They're my first pair.

And on the reality TV front, Bear Grylls is my new hero. Seriously, I have seen this man drink his own urine and sleep in a tent he made out of a dead reindeer. Bad ass mofo, that one.

Totally unrelated....

....but while anxiously awaiting the last Harry Potter book, I've started rereading the His Dark Materials trilogy (which if you haven't read, you totally should). I found this quiz you could take on the film's website that tells you what your daemon (for those of you who don't know, this is the physical manifestation of your soul in animal form) would be and ...... ta-dah!



Meet Erasmus the Chimp. How perfect is that? I really like Erasmus, so I chose to settle him into final form immediately, but you have the option of letting people who know you really well can take this quiz to see if your daemon really fits you. You have 12 days before it settles into it's final form, but I didn't want anyone messing with his chimp-ness. So there.

Surprise FO: One Skein Wonder

Look what I made on the sly:

(click for bigger)

I know it's crafty (oops! no pun intended) to have made this entire thing without blogging about it once. Mostly it didn't get blogged about due to bad timing and it's inherent quickness. I started it the day before we left to go to the beach (you know, the beach house with no internet access) and finished it on the drive there.

Yarn - Now, this yarn is something special. It's handpainted, handspun yarn from Perchance to Knit in the Summer Heat colorway (100% South African wool, about 100g but I can't remember the yardage). The colors are so rich! It moves from a really bright, almost neon, yellow to a super-saturated pinkish red. My favorite thing about the yarn is the orange creamsicle color where the yellow changes to red. Here's a closeup of it's yummy goodness.

I've had this yarn for awhile and I've been sitting on it waiting for a really good project that would show it off. It ranges from lace to sportweight, so I considered socks but then thought it might be too nice to go on my feet. Even though I do love socks. I settled on this because there was just enough yarn to make it and the stockinette would show it off so well.

Funny story, though, I actually bought this yarn twice. It was listed on Kpixie and I bought last fall as an impulse buy. I got an email back saying they couldn't find it anywhere and that I could buy whatever I wanted instead. And then, a few months later, I was surfing the site and it had been found and relisted, so I snapped it up before anyone else could.

Oh yeah. The edging is about 20g of black Noro cash iroha (40% silk, 30% lambswool, 20% cashmere & 10% nylon) I had leftover from these armwarmers I made for my friend Jennie.

Needles - 29" Inox size 4 circulars

Pattern - the One Skein Wonder from Glampyre. I do seem to be knitting a lot of her stuff lately. I wasn't totally convinced that I would wear the teensy cap-sleeved version (Jon joked that everyone needs a toasty wool tattoo cover-up for the summer), so I wanted to eke out longer sleeves if possible, hence the black edging. Aside from that, and adjustments for a tighter gauge, I basically followed the pattern as written.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it, especially the longer sleeves. I am seriously considering picking up another skein of the cash iroha and turning it into a modified version of the two-tone shrug from Fitted Knits. You know, since I'm making just about everything else from the book.

And that concludes the parade of FOs. Next time, I'll have knitting progress to report on.

FO: Puff-Sleeved Cardigan

Presenting the puff-sleeved cardigan:

(click for bigger)

It's actually been finished for awhile, but I needed to block it and get buttons. I ended up ordering the buttons from earthenware studios and had to wait for them to make them and ship them. I blocked it and sewed the buttons on a couple of days after I got back from the beach.

All in all, I really like the way it turned out. It's kind of a departure from my usual style in color and shape, so I'm not sure how much wear I'll get out of it, but I love it anyway. I'm considering making a long-sleeved version for a winter jacket.

It was really fun to knit, as well. I've been in kind of a funk lately, with plenty of The Weirdness, and I'm finding myself more drawn to plain stockinette and ribbing than crazy textures and cables, so most of it was good mindless knitting. I also learned a lot about shaping, which was cool. What's especially great about this peice are the details. I really like the collar and buttons! And the puffed sleeves! And the peplum!

See what I mean? Ok, less rambling and more gory knitting details.
Yarn - about 7 skeins of Vermont Organic Fiber Co. O-Wool Balance (50% organic wool, 50% organic cotton, 130 yards) in Amethyst. This is really nice yarn with a lovely tweedy texture. I also like that it's half cotton, which makes a short-sleeved cardigan much more wearable than an all-wool one.
Needles - 29" Inox size 6 circulars. The pattern calls for smaller needles too, but I ended up not needing them.
Pattern - Puff-Sleeved Feminine Cardigan from Fitted Knits. I really like this pattern (again, all the little details!) and it's really what made me buy the book. The rest of the book is awesome too, and I've already cast on for a second project from it. But, as with any pattern, there were modifications:

• The biggest mod I made was reworking the length of the garment, because I'm really short, and really short people tend to have petite wee little torsos. I'll cover that in three sections:
• shoulder to bust: I separated the sleeves a bit sooner than the pattern and then added some extra increases along the sides to accommodate my boobs. I don't know about the rest of you, but the widest part of my bust isn't right up under my armpits. why are patterns always written like that?
• bust to waist: More than just being petite, I'm ridiculously short-waisted. I do have one, though, so I needed to cram a more waist shaping into a smaller space than called for in the pattern. I started them just under the bustline and continued right to the peplum, even though the pattern calls for you to knit an inch or so straight.

• Waist to hip: The hip increases in the peplum are made with the lace insets, which is really clever. I scoped out some of the finished cardigans on other knitblogs and saw that the peplum really flares out. Now, I'm more top-heavy than pear-shaped, and don't really need that much hip room, so I only worked 2 repeats of the lace pattern instead of the 6 or so called for in the pattern. I placed the lace right on the sides of the cardigan.
• I only worked one band of reverse stockinette on the sleeves, peplum, and hem. A big part of omitting the second reverse stockinette band had to do with the shortness of my torso.
• I knitted on the button bands as I went and made a 1-row 2-stitch-wide buttonhole every 15 rows. I did this so I wouldn't have to pick them up later and change ot smaller needles, because I am lazy.

I think that about covers it.

FO: Pomatomus Socks

Presenting the Pomatomus socks!

(click for bigger)

Once again, my deepest apologies for the shoddy photos that were once again taken with the teeny camera on my macbook. They actually are very nice in person. I really, really like them.

Yarn - 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock (75% wool, 25% nylon; 215 yards) in the black Pearl colorway. I luuuuuurve this yarn. I got it way back in January and have been sitting on it while I tried to find the right pattern. My one concern with the yarn is that it's not particularly soft, probably due to the nylon. I'm hoping that it will soften up after a few washes.

Needles - 47" size 0 Addi Turbo circs. These are becoming my go-to sock needles for skinny yarn like this. I have to watch it though, because I'm noticing that my freakishly strong hands (seriously, I have some mad hand strength. I always forget and shake hands way too firmly. I once screwed up a job interview that way because I scared the would-be employer.) are bending the wee needles.

Pattern - Pomatomus by Cookie A. for Knitty. I adore her sock patterns. Like most of her stuff, this pattern has the virtue of looking a lot harder and more intricate than it actually is. The only tricky part is the modified chart for the top of the foot, but I figured it out pretty quickly. Here are the modifications:

• I worked them toe-up using the figure-8 CO for the reasons described here. I also did the toe-up version of the heel flap (from Widdershins) with the twisted ribbing written into the pattern. Can I just say that ribbed heels rock for people with narrow feet? Cause they totally do. The nice thing about doing these toe-up is that I didn't have to rewrite the lace pattern since it looks the same right side up and upside down. See?

• Since the yarn kept going and going and going, making the socks taller and taller and taller, I added some calf shaping. I did it by adding and extra repeat of the lace pattern by working an extra YO without an accompanying decrease over 12 rounds, and working the stitches according the pattern. It fits well, but the extra stitches shifted the yarn from striping itself to spiraling.

The red arrows show where I added the extra panel. See what I mean about the spiral?

Hello again

I have oodles to share with you! Lots of new stuff I'm working on, some stuff I've finished, and even stuff that's not knitting-related. We'll start with the non-knitting stuff because it kinda leads right into the WIPs.

My computer's back! It's actually been back for awhile, but I went on vacation basically as soon as I got it. I went to my friend Tamar's beach house in Amagansett, which for those of you not born to the WASPish upper-crust, is in the Hamptons. Anyway, me and my grungy, dorktastic friends hung out there for the better part of last week, being loud and uncouth in ways that I'm sure pissed off the classy neighbors.

I have pictures and all, but at some point, my camera got messed up. Not seriously so, but enough that we're taking it in to get looked at. Some luck with electronics I have, huh? Kinda brings out the Luddite in me. Once it's fixed and all, I'll post them so that you can live vicariously through me. Anyway, that brings me to the knitting. Since my camera's out of commission, you'll have to suffer through the sub-par picture I took using the photobooth feature on my recently repaired Mac. On to the handiwork!

I. Sockpal news
Check it out! I started my pal's socks. I'm using the yarn I posted about before and I'm making her Baudelaire socks from Knitty. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the gusset so far.

I know that there's been a lot of Murphy's Law happening to me of late (arguably there's a bit going on in the start of this post), but these socks are positively serendipitous. I'm working the large size on 2's...which is exactly the right size for her feet! And the yarn isn't pooling or striping as I feared it would! Though I may have terrible luck with expensive electronic equipment, I take heart in the fact that my knitting mojo remains intact.

II. Beach knitting
I started the Summertime Tunic from the last issue of Interweave Knits while on vacation.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through. I have to say, it's perfect beach knitting what with it being mindless (just endless amounts of stockinette in the round) and cool to work with (I'm using a cotton blend, Knitpicks Shine Sport, so it's not unbearable to work with outside). Now that I'm back from the beach, I'm going to make it my movie theater project.

III. Craziness
I'm working on a sweater. I know that doesn't sound too crazy, but wait for it....the sweater is made from mohair and wool and is a densely cabled super-cozy winter sweater. See the crazy now? See how crazy it is that I'm working on it when I have the air conditioner going full blast and I'm still sitting around in my underwear? Yeah, thanks Muse of Badly Timed Inspiration.

But if you can get past the seasonal craziness of it, it's actually kind of cool. I decided I wasn't that happy with the mohair sweater after all and ripped it. I thought it might be cool if paired with the gray tweed I got on sale a few months ago and started swatching in the round...which turned into a sleeve. I basically made up the cable panel as I went along, but really liked it, and expanded and elaborated it to make the center panel of the body. Now I'm about halfway through the body.

Check out my guns!


I tell you, this baby has a life of it's own. I'm calling it the Eton pullover because the more I work on it the more it seems like the person wearing it should be a scrawny upper-class British boy playing cricket at an elite boy's school. Which, you know, means I'll be pretending I went to Eton whenever I wear it despite my gender/nationality/build/atheleticism.

Updates

Sorry for the absence of late, the last week has been kinda weird. Despite the non-blogging weirdness, I do have some recent developments to report!

I: I'm a joiner

Well, I joined the Fitted Knits-Along. I'm making a lot of progress on the puff-sleeved cardigan, and you can see it here.

II: Sockpal Yarn!

After much deliberation, I orderd the yarn for my sockapalooza socks online last week, and it came in yesterday!




It's Yarn Botanika merino/tencel in the colorway bluebells. My pal really didn't give me much to go on in terms of pattern or colors, so I scoped out her blog and saw she tended to gravitate towards pale greens and sky blues. I think this yarn fits the bill. Now, I have to figure out what pattern to use.

III: Cat update



The fat one's still fat, and has taken to sleeping in strange locations of late. Which is really cute.

Murphy's Law revisited

This morning started out really well. I woke up at a decent hour and made myself some tea, and starting surfing the web until Jon woke up. I was planning to eat a quick breaskfast and then hunker down and do loads of stuff that needed getting done. I've had a bit of trouble jump-starting myself after taking a week or so to myself to unwind after all the research and writing and traveling on delayed flights and all, but today was the day I was going to get back in the competent-grad-student-saddle.

Then my computer froze....so I restarted it thinking it was a fluke. And I got the typical start-up Mac chime, a gray screen, and....nothing. Just a horrible clicking noise that (I swear to sweet baby Jesus) I'd never heard coming from my computer before. Trying not to panic, I tried restarting again. This time I got the gray screen and a folder with a question mark. Which I took as a bad sign.

And I was right. Several phone calls to Mac helplines and visits to computer people (all done by the generous and stalwart Jon, because I was, you know, panicking) revealed that my hard drive was completely, totally, irrevocably fried. No data can be recovered and I need a new one. I now have a brick. There went my productive day.

I decided to take the day off. Last week when I got my stipend, I ordered all of this from Adagio Teas:


A package with that mug with a cool strainer/steeper thing and sample packs of teas in a bunch of different flavors to try out came yesterday, and I was thrilled. I've been trying to distract myself from the fact that I just lost the entire contents of my hard drive (I mean, I have the really important stuff backed up, but still) by drinking a lot of tea, re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and knitting the puff-sleeved cardigan. I'm half-way done on the yoke now.

Sigh.

The return of knitting content

Ok, as promised, here's some actual knitting content!

The Exchequered scarf is clicking along at a decent pace. I'm now to the checkered midsection, and I'm planning to keep chugging along until I'm out of yarn and then graft it to the other end section. Since it's a ridiculously easy pattern now that the check is established, and since I kind of totally hate knitting scarves (the length! The utter lack of any variety! Gah!), I've decided it will be my travel knitting. There's no real rush for a squishy double-knit scarf now that the temperatures in the mid-80s anyway, right?

Since the scarf is on the backburner, I started a couple of new projects. First, I'm working on a pair of pomatomus socks. I started them last week when I was sick and have since already completed the first sock!

(click for bigger)

I've been wanting to make them for awhile, and the pattern has not disappointed me so far. I also decided to use this as an oppurtunity to further my appreciation fro toe-up sock construction. I wanted to be able to use the entire skein for once, and not get left with a whole lot of yarn at the end. Man, this puppy turned out tall! Also, the cats gave their stamp of approval when they carried it off in the middle of it's inaugural photoshoot.

I also started the puff-sleeved cardigan from Fitted Knits. I bought the book originally for this design, because it's just so damn cute. I'm using the organic wool/cotton yarn I got awhile ago that I originally planned to make into a Ribena-inspired vest. I swatched and cast on for the vest no less than 3 times, and it just wasn't working. It seems to have taken quite nicely to the cardigan though.


I'm about 1/3 of the way through the raglan increases. I ended up reworking the pattern a bit because my gauge was larger than the pattern called for. Which was soooo easy! Not only is it knit top-down in one peice, which automatically makes it customizable, but the author included a section in the book on how to resize garments....and used this sweater as an example! Funnily enough, I'm more or less following the directions for the 36" size, even though the finished product will boast a bust measurement of 43".

On a somewhat unrelated note, look at those stitch markers! I love them. Jon's mom got them for me when she was up in the Upper Peninsula. Heather, if you're reading this, I'm also grateful for the saffron bread you left here when you passed through last. It did not last long.

In really exciting knitting news, I now have knitting buddies who don't live hundreds of miles away! I went to brunch with a wonderfully sane and funny person in my program (which, I'll have you know, is quite a feat in my cohort. Some of them are just nuts.), a friend of hers, and her sister. It was lovely and refreshing. On the way home I cut through the market and picked up this geranium.


It's a present for Jon. Our friend Van has several houseplants and each time we've visited Jon's mentioned wanting to get some for our apartment. I have no knowledge of plants and asked the woman selling them what would be best for an apartment and she suggested this. Jon was thrilled and has dubbed it Francis. Long live Francis!

PS - We've already established that I have a deep, abiding love of reality TV. Its not surprising, then, that I have become obsessed with So You Think Can Dance? It's got everything you could really want: acrobatic moves that make someone getting hurt a real possibility, attractive young people in ridiculous outfits, and a judge that is quite probably drunker than Paula Abdul. Seriously, Mary Murphy is just insane! Lots of weird screaming and swaying. I feel bad for the judges sitting on either side of her as she must smell like a barrel of paint thinner.

Movie list...but still no knitting content

Tomorrow, I promise to post actual knitting content.
In the meantime, movie time! I got this list from CynCyn, and like her, the ones I've seen are bolded and the ones I own are italicized. Lift it, read through, and indicate your own seen it/own it status and then add 3 at the end!

01. Trainspotting
02. Shrek
03. M
04. Dogma
05. Strictly Ballroom
06. The Princess Bride
07. Love Actually
08. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings
09. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
11. Reservoir Dogs
12. Desperado
13. Swordfish
14. Kill Bill Vol. 1
15. Donnie Darko
16. Spirited Away
17. Better Than Sex
18. Sleepy Hollow
19. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
20. The Eye
21. Requiem for a Dream
22. Dawn of the Dead
23. The Pillow Book
24. The Italian Job
25. The Goonies
26. Baseketball
27. The Spice Girls Movie
28. Army of Darkness
29. The Color Purple
30. The Safety of Objects
30. Can’t Hardly Wait
32. Mystic Pizza
33. Finding Nemo
34. Monsters Inc.
35. Circle of Friends
36. Mary Poppins
37. The Bourne Identity
38. Forrest Gump
39. A Clockwork Orange
40. Kindergarten Cop
41. On The Line
42. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
43. Final Destination
44. Sorority Boys
45. Urban Legend
46. Cheaper by the Dozen
47. Fierce Creatures
48. Dude, Where’s My Car
49. Ladyhawke
50. Ghostbusters
51. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
52. Back to the Future
53. An Affair To Remember
54. Somewhere In Time
55. North By Northwest
56. Moulin Rouge
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
58. The Wizard of Oz
59. Zoolander
60. A Walk to Remember
61. Chicago
62. Vanilla Sky
63. The Sweetest Thing
64. Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead
65. The Nightmare Before Christmas
66. Chasing Amy
67. Edward Scissorhands
68. Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
69. Muriel’s Wedding
70. Croupier
71. Blade Runner
72. Cruel Intentions
73. Ocean’s Eleven
74. Magnolia
75. Fight Club
76. Beauty and the Beast
77. Much Ado About Nothing
78. Dirty Dancing
79. Gladiator
80. Ever After
81. Braveheart
82. What Lies Beneath
83. Regarding Henry
84. The Dark Crystal
85. Star Wars
86. The Birds
87. Beaches
88. Cujo
89. Maid In Manhattan
90. Labrynth
91. Thoroughly Modern Millie
92. His Girl Friday
93. Being John Malkovich
94. Run Lola Run
95. The Color of Paradise
96. Ghost in the Shell
97. Tron
98. Tomb Raider
99. Almost Famous
100. Alice in Wonderland
101. Dr. Strangelove
102. Kairo
103. Stir of Echoes
104. Lilo & Stitch
105. Brazil
106. Heathers
107. Talk to Her
108. Memento
109. Young Frankenstein
110. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
111. Mulholland drive
112. Dogville
113. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
114. Lost in Translation
115. Some Like it Hot
16. Punch-Drunk Love
117. Gohatto
118. Full Metal Jacket
119. Death on the Nile
117. Practical Magic
118. Amelie
119. Butterfly Effect
120. Cast Away
121. Tangled
122. Frequency
123. The Others
124. American Beauty
125. The Last Samurai
126. Ghost World
127. Taxi Driver
128. The Royal Tenenbaums
129. Cube
130. Nosferatu (Herzog version?)
131. Nuovo cinema Paradiso
132. Koroshiya Ichi
133. The Thing (John Carpenter)
134. J?bei Ninp?ch? (a.k.a. Ninja Scroll)
135. The Kingdom (all parts)
136. Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo
137. Secretary
138. Hellraiser
139. Avalon
140. Heat
141. Out of Africa
142. True Romance
143. Goodbye Lenin
144. Vengo
145. Pulp Fiction
146. Crazy/Beautiful
147. Grease
148. Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
149. Four Rooms
150. Festen
151. Tillsammans/Together
152. Central Do Brasil
153. Closer
154. Rounders
155. Sliding Doors
156. Stand by Me
157. The Shawshank Redemption
158. The Green Mile
159. Velvet Goldmine
160. Dracula 2000
161. King Arthur
162. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
163. Top Secret!
164. The Virgin Suicides
165. Camelot
166. The Emperor’s Wife
167. Gormenghast
168. Singin’ in the Rain
169. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
170. Team America: World Police
171. 42nd Street
172. Crossing Delancy
173. 50 First Dates
174. Iris
175. Ella Enchanted
176. Garden State
177. Titanic
178. The Bumblebee Flies Anyway
179. Billy Elliot
180. Meet the Feebles
181. Passion of the Christ
182. Brassed Off!
183. when Harry met Sally
184. Before Sunrise
185. Dead Poets Society
186. The Black Stallion
187. Lord of the Flies
188. Sense & Sensibility
189. Robin Hood Prince of Thieves
190. The Talented Mr. Ripley
191. The Indian Runner
192. The Faculty
193. Interview With The Vampire
194. Formula 17
195. Frida
196. Grave of the Firefiles
197. Big Fish
198. The American President
199. What About Bob?
200. Crimson Tide
201. Pieces of April
202. Resident Evil
203. Walking and Talking
204. The Notebook
205. Amadeus
206. Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion
207. Batteries Not Included
208. The Emperor’s New Groove
209. Adventure’s In Babysitting
210. Better Off Dead
211. Legally Blonde
212. Shrek 2
213. Seven
214. Bound
215. Blue
216. White
217. The Red Violin
218. Cat Balou
219. Breakfast at Tiffany's
220. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (the original)
221. Neverending Story
222. The Terminal
223. The Last Unicorn
224. The Color of Fear (documentary)
225. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
226. The Seven Samurai
227. The Big Lebowski
228. City of God

Warning: No Actual Knitting Content

Guess what! I'm not dead....just lazy! Basically, I meant to write this post, like, a week ago when I got back to Ann Arbor, but my natural slothfulness took over. My apologies. Let's play catch-up!

Part I: Continued Adventures in Minneapolis
Even though we were sick, as detailed in my last post, Dani the Wonder Friend decided that we should spend our time together doing awesome fun stuff! I had my reservations (being sick and whiny and all) but she did eventually convince me to leave her apartment and venture out. We went shopping at a super-cool vintage store where I got these goodies:

Despite the terrible I-took-this-in-a-tiny-changing-room quality of the photos, they're actually quite nice little dresses. The brown one has a lovely brocade pattern and Dani and I decided that next time we're together we're making our friends have a proper fancy-dress sit-down dinner to show off our new duds.

Then we went to lunch at a nice Thai place where I found the cure for headcolds:


Behold Tom Yum soup! Seriously, it was perfect. It's lemon juice and chili pepper, so it clears out the sinuses and perks you up. Next time you get a cold, I strongly advise you to check this stuff out.

We caught a couple of movies before I left, too. We saw Waitress, which was actually really adorable without being saccharine, and Pirates of the Carribbean. Pirates was alternately awesome and really kind of painful, so I kind of half reccomend it? If you've got a spare three hours and you don't mind unresolved plot lines? This week (sadly, not with Dani) I saw 28 Weeks Later, which I totally reccommend if you liked the first one. Awesomeness abounds with killer zombies.

Part 2: Taking a Turn for the Worst/Self-indulgent
So....after having a blast with Dani despite the massive production of mucus, I got to the airport praying that at least one of my planes would be on time. They weren't. Because apparently I'm cursed with the planes. I mean, seriously, I calculated it and in the last month I've been on 8 airplanes form 3 different airlines, and every single one was delayed at least an hour. It's getting hard not to take it personally.

But I digress. I got there, only to find out that the plane was going to be delayed for, oh, about 2 1/2 hours. This is how I responded:


I was all annoyed and stuff until they got back on the speakers and said, no actually, our "wheels-up" time will be 4 hours late. 4 hours! How ridiculous is that? So I responded like this:


Luckily everything was so delayed in Chicago that I actually made my connecting flight. Thanks plane gods for throwing me a bone, even if it did mean I rolled into Ann Arbor at 3 in the morning.

The next day I woke up feeling aboslutely wretched, probably because I'd spent so much time not eating or sleeping and breathing recycled air in airports and planes, which can't help you get over a cold. The bad news is I spent the last week shuffling around my apartment wrapped in a balnket clutching a box of tissues feeling to pissed off at airlines to blog about it.

But I'm back! The good news is I'm okay now. And I promise that I'll have plenty of fun knitting pictures for you next time I post.