Which doesn't make much sense since I got rid of the post entitled "Not Me" along with all the others that weren't about knitting or were primarily about Japanese boy band idols. I haven't forsaken them - the links were dead anyway. But, yes, I feel pretty much back to normal and I've been knitting again. I have a different blog for the fangirling that you will NEVER EVER see. I like my life compart-a-mentalized, thank you very much.

I wanted to write something ironic/funny/contemplative/profound since I've been gone for so long, but I don't have one of those posts in me right now. I can only offer pictures of knitting. Imagine. Knitting. On a knitting blog.

OK, that was ironic/sarcastic/bewildered because I was going through all the links on the sidebar and discovered that a few of my old favorites have switched to sewing or cooking and one is now a blog entirely about her puppy. I cleaned house a bit and updated the layout and style. New beginning = new look.

 OK, knitting:

Pretty, ne?

Oops, there's some of that Japanese sneaking in.  You knew it would.

Pretty, right?

It's Koigu PPPM done in the Lady Eleanor Stole pattern from Scarf Style on size 3 addi lace turbos.  It will be a scarf for my Dad for Christmas.  I began it on January 31st so I could say I started my Christmas knitting in January.  Actually, this alone is pretty ambitious and I have to do something for Mom, Sis and B-in-Law as well, so an early start was proactive and wise.  *nods round-eyed in solemn manner*  Yes, very wise.

So, please let me know if you're still there.  A smiley face will do.  I'm curious.

If you'd like to follow my trip to Japan, go here:

http://jenngoestojapan.blogspot.com

(Maybe I'll be back to this blog once this whole Japan thing is over. I'll have time to knit again, then.)

I'm still here. For a bit. At the end of this month I'll be going to Tokyo for two glorious weeks. That's about all that's been on my mind. I miss you guys - I truly do. I haven't missed knitting. I stopped a while back and just the other day cast on a simple scarf to work on during the trip if I find myself without anything to do with my hands.

Anyway, that was it. Bye.

Sorry to be so absent, especially if you're really wishing that the pretty boys would drop down the page. (But you know they'll be back, so... get over it.) Anyway, I've been really tired lately. Now, I have friends who have really serious conditions that exhaust them, so I'm not saying my tiredness has been a big deal, but the labs came back saying that my thyroid meds had been doing nothing for me. They changed me from generic to brand name and I should be feeling pretty good in a couple weeks. But it does explain why I haven't felt like doing much.

To update you, I did go to Disney World, where I got quite teary with nostalgia, but it was mostly work and I won't bore you with all the reasons that version 5.5 will rock my world and make my clients very happy, and how after hearing how the KBM works in version 7.6 I'm not as scared of it as I was. Yeah, that kind of stuff. One funny story though. I'm at the first of many receptions, vodka tonic in hand, and I look across the courtyard to see a very attractive man. He's tall, bald, clothes hang great on him, long hands... Sound like anyone I've mentioned before? Anyway, this one's not a monk, so he's better. (Not that the other is a monk anymore either, but that's a VERY long story which I probably shouldn't tell because I signed a non-disclosure agreement to study with him. Yes, I did. Totally serious.) Anyway, so there's an attractive man 20 feet away and I gaze at him for about 45 seconds and then I get over it. Having spent a lot of time looking in the very large and very unforgiving hotel room mirror, I wasn't going to make a fool of myself. So, the next morning I'm sitting with my coworker and I mention that I saw the hottest man at the whole conference last night and if I see him I'll point him out. Coworker is male and straight and married, but we were running out of conversation topics before the whole keynote address thing started, so what the hell. They finally do get started and the MC eventually introduces the Executive Vice President of the company - the big chief of the whole shebang - and guess who gets up on stage. Uh huh. Can I pick 'em or what? I can find the money, I tell 'ya. I can't get it, but I can find it.

Oh, and I met the blind man who climbed Mt. Everest. And the tallest summit on the other six continents too. Pretty cool.

What else to catch you up... I am no longer a SP Loser and my pal has received her first package. Two more to go.

I joined Weight Watchers. (See previous paragraph re: hotel room mirrors. Add how all the other trainers I met were a size 2. And I met a BLIND man who CLIMBED EVEREST. I'm losing this stupid 80 lbs.)

Oh, I promised that this post would have knitting, didn't I??? Well, I finished Clapotis, but can't take pictures until this weekend. And have you been to the post office? The Christmas stamps this year have KNITTING on them! Yes! Knitting Postage!

OK, will that do you until this weekend? Cool.

Mai tagged me for the latest random things meme, but I don't do those. I already tell you all everything you need to know. But Mitsy is basking in her renewed internet stardom and suggested I give you facts about her and Maggie.

rules: once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. then post the rules before your list, and list eight random things about yourself. at the end of the post, you must tag and link to eight other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they’ve been tagged.

1. Maggie and Mitsy have the same father but different mothers, and their mothers were sisters. So they’re half-sisters and cousins at the same time. Only in the 4-legged world or in some southern states is this acceptable. Even before I brought them to live with me, out of the 6 kittens frolicking around my sister’s house, they were buddies. I picked Maggie and Mitsy picked me. Maggie was the only tabby of the six and I just had to have her. A week later, while contemplating getting a second kitty so Maggie wouldn’t be lonely, tiny 3-week-old Mitsy fell asleep in my lap. Who could resist?
2. Maggie was named for the French author Marguerite Duras. (She wrote The Lover among other things.) Mitsy was named for Mitsy Gaynor, an actress popular in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
3. When drinking water from the bathroom tap, Mitsy prefers to lick the faucet while Maggie prefers to drink from the bowl. I know they’ve been hydrating if Mitsy has the sniffles (it went up her nose) or if Maggie has a wet head.
4. While Maggie will only eat cat food, but any flavor of cat food, Mitsy will only eat certain flavors (chicken or turkey) but will also eat rubber bands, bologna rinds and a few other things that we promised never to speak of again.
5. Mitsy owns the entire apartment with the exception of the couch and me. Maggie gets those. Not a fair distribution of territory, it would seem, but they make it work. Well, they really don’t, as Maggie is often found under a chair hiding from Mitsy after daring to nap in a different part of the apartment, but it would seem that if Maggie wants to sit on the couch with me, Mitsy has to get down. And she does. Cats are weird. But if there’s a real mouse in the apartment, they tag-team.
6. Mitsy loves toys. Maggie prefers to watch Mitsy play. No amount of cajoling or purchasing of 2 toys and presenting them simultaneously or even putting Mitsy in another room will get Maggie to play. She’d just rather watch. (With the exception of a couple of toys with bells, the sparkly fish from SP11, and she’s been known to pop bubbles if I blow them at her.) And they share the mice.
7. Since they were kittens, if they truly treasure something, they’ll put it in or near their food bowls. They hadn’t done that in a long time, but the sparkly fishies were there a day or two after they received them. High praise for my secret pal’s taste in cat toys. If they treasure me on a particular day, they put their toys in my shoe.
8. Maggie is quite happy being a cat. She wants to eat and sleep, preferably undisturbed. Her needs are simple and few. Mitsy, on the other hand, seems to be watching me and taking notes on how to be a person. I’m quite confident that she’ll be homecoming queen in her next life. I hope for her parents’ sake she’ll have given up climbing out of windows.

Maggie tags Duncan and Mitsy tags Riley and Ziggy.

Guess who finally made her escape today?

OMG I have never known such terror. I come home, drop my stuff on the floor and start eating dinner (conveniently picked up on the way) while I check my e-mail. Maggie is extraordinarily annoying. Meow meow meow. Whine whine whine. First in my lap, then behind me, then on my ankle, around and around in a circuit. I finally put the laptop down and pick her up and say, "What the f*ck? Why are you so annoying today? What do you want?" And she just stares at me with these huge green eyes, looking very intently at me like she's trying to communicate telepathically.

And then it occurs to me. I haven't seen Mitsy. So I call her. I trained them to come when I call when they were kittens (the kitten books says to, in case of fires, etc.) And they always come when I call (unless the doorbell goes off at 4 am and I run through the apartment like a tornado.) I check the kitchen, the bathroom. No Mitsy. I check my bedroom even though the door is closed and I said goodbye to her this morning in the living room. No Mitsy. I go downstairs and check the basement. (Maybe the landlords were here and let her out.) No Mitsy. By this point I'm panicked. I call the landlords. No, they weren't here.

Now I am seriously panicked. I even go downstairs and ask the trailer-park-neighbors if anyone was around or if they saw her. No. And she proceeds to tell me a story about how her cat was caught in a dryer for 5 days. Not what I needed to hear. At this point I am really crying. I come back up and start pulling the drawers out of the kitchen cabinets and looking under the couch, hoping that she isn't sick or hasn't choked on something. Still no Mitsy.

Now I can't even think and I want to hold Maggie for a minute. And I can't find her. So now I'm calling Maggie too. I'm thinking to myself, "Surely this is too weird to be happening. Candid camera? No, too cruel. There's no way that they're getting out. I just don't understand." I'm sobbing and standing in the dining room and then I see Maggie sitting on the desk. Next to the window. With the air conditioner in it. And there is a 4 inch gap between the air-conditioner-accordian-side-thingy and the side of the window.

Oh my god.

I run downstairs and into the little alley between my building and the next. I'm relieved that I don't see a little pile of fur under the window, but even more horrified that I don't. It's dark, with only the light from the streetlight, and I don't see anything but wet pavement.

And then I see the swish of a fluffy tail in the basement windowsill. And there she is. Safe. Unharmed. Perhaps even a bit triumphant. She just sits there as I scoop her up and checked her all over, sobbing and asking her if she's OK. I cry the whole way back to the front door. She jumps out of my arms to run up the stairs, straight to her food bowl and the litter box. I have no idea how long she was out there. Now that she's safe even more terrifying scenarios are running through my mind, like what if I'd left town on business today.... Horrible thoughts that will keep me up tonight, I'm sure. I can't believe she jumped from the second story window and is OK.

My heart is still pounding. Feeding her a whole handful of treats has made us both feel a little better.

And Maggie? I'll never call you annoying again, baby. I promise.

This is quite possibly the funniest thing I have read in a very, very, VERY long time.

The Bible for Lolcats

For example:

Genesis, chapt 1, verse 26: An Ceiling Cat sayed, letz us do peeps like uz, becuz we ish teh cute, An let min has dominion An stufs becuz tehy has can openers.

I haven't been to knit night in a long while. Usually I'm driving back from Cape BFE on Wednesday evenings, so I've been absent. I went into Knitorious last Sunday for the anniversary sale, and was literally astounded by how many people asked me where I'd been and if I'd been doing OK. Sometimes I forget that I'm in other people's viewfinders they same way they are in mine. Weird, tres spinsterish, but true.

So last night I went, toting along my freshly begun Hexagon Blanket and the Debbie Bliss Rialto that I'd purchased on Sunday for it. I'd done two hexagons so far, and was already concerned. I really liked the first one (on the far right) but the second wasn't doing it for me. Two more hexagons later and I knew that it just wasn't turning out like I'd hoped.

The pattern, from this book:

is designed around 7 colors, like this:

I wanted to follow Moonstitches' example and use more colors, rotating them, and create a larger blanket. I liked the color palette I'd chosen:

but it just wasn't right. It was looking way too ... granny. Like it had been assembled from scraps rather then a carefully chosen group of colors. So I thought going back to 7 colors might be a good idea, but which 7? This is where a knit night is the greatest thing in the world. Mindy and Kara and Deborah and Kathy and Ann and Fiona and Kim and the new Sarahs (do they have blogs? Why didn't I ask?) and everyone else offered opinions and suggestions. Here are the final options:

All pretty, all do-able. I couldn't decide. I declared that I'd put the pictures up on the blog and let the internet pick for me. (Not really thinking at the time that pretty much everyone who reads my blog was already there.)

So I took a little ramble around the store, sipping the coffee that Tammy (bless you!) had offered me, and thought about it. Eyed the Malabrigo Aquarella that I ended going back for today. Spotted Rachel's amazing new yarn which I won't tell you about because I want it all. Seriously. I'll tell you when I've got mine. (Alpaca Lips! Hah! OK, that was a hint. But that's all you get.)

By the time I finished the coffee I had scooped up this Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Patine and when I held the balls together and walked back into the room, the collective sounds of approval convinced me.

This was much better:

Thanks to everyone for your help, and hopefully I'll see you next week! (That is, if I don't get on the bus with the Black Crowes tomorrow night. It could happen.)

*Yes, the post title is a song title, which I don't often do, but which is in honor of Kara who bravely endured the Lane Bryant jeans sizing adventure before me, and inspired me to endure it to buy a friggin' pair of jeans so I could look nice at the above-mentioned Black Crowes concert.

The Queen of lace, that is. Fleegle has left me absolutely speechless, but at least I can point and make ooh and ahh sounds. Please take note of the size of this incredible piece of artwork, the Black Widow Spider King Shawl.