Yeah, yeah. Other Things have been keeping me busy recently, so there hasn’t really been much in the way of knitting and whatnot. I did, however, whip out this sweater (in two days, no less) for the newly hatched little boy of one of CritterBoy’s imaginary friends. Long story, don’t ask.

But see? Cute as the dickens.

I’ll see what I can do about getting a better pic of it before it gets shipped off. You know, better background, better color representation, some detail maybe… blah blah blah.

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Let’s start with George Lucas. Really. For fuck’s sake, man. GIVE IT UP. A talented script writer you are not. Nor, really, are you good at picking actors. Directing? No, really, leave that to the professionals. PLEASE. Special effects? Yeah, you got that DOWN. The rest of it, though, is bloody fucking awful. Just sayin’.

Hayden Christensen? Give up “acting” now. Please. Spare us all. Same goes for you miss Portman. I realize you both has some crap-ass directing to try to work around, but it’s too much. Way way way too much. Enough already.

And then we have the asshats who sat next to us at the theater. No, the movie wasn’t bad enough on its own. You had to add FISH AND FUCKING CHIPS to the mix. OMGWTFBBQ! People, please. Think before you act. Packed movie theater + warm evening + bad movie? That equation Does. Not. Need the addition of super duper stinky fish and chips. Nor does the sound track need your smacking of the fish grease off your lips. That? was fucking nasty. Smacktards.

Now that you’ve had your daily fill of angst-filled ranting, you can all safely return to whatever it was you were happily doing before reading this.

Piece out!

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O’s Rogue is finally done! This project took me entirely too long, all things considered. I think, though, that for fall I’m going to get some Peace Fleece in the same color but the heavier weight and make her another, heavier, larger one. I’m reasonably positive that this one won’t fit her anymore come winter. Sad, but there you have it.

Anyway, some photoz for yer viewin’ pleasure:
All pinned out and blocking:

The hood:

and the grafting on the hood, which turned out better on hers than it did on mine:

I’ll see if I can’t get a picture of her in it before she outgrows it…

And they put the witch in a barrel full of nails and rolled her down the hill. The End.

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*MD is for Mother’s Day in this case, since some of us (who are. not. bitter.) didn’t get to go to that little sheep thing back east. So there.

Where, oh where, shall we start? Hmmm? ooh! Cake! Yes, let’s start with CAKE!

What you can’t quite see is that the sprinkles on top spell out “happy knitting”. The Booger made that and brought it down for me. It’s got everything a cake should have. Cakey goodness, lots of frosting, Teddy Grahams, and sprinkles. Sweet!

The other thing she brought with wasn’t quite so sweet. At least not quite so sweet smelling…

and let me just say that it’s a damn shame that computer monitors aren’t scratch n’ sniff, ‘cos that, my friends, stinks to high heaven.

Stinky up close!

O and I spent about half the day Saturday washing half of that fleece. For size comparison, the tire and bumper you see in the corner there are a full-size Dodge pickup. That fleece is huge. And did I mention the stinky part? We’re pretty sure that one is from one of the Scottish Blackface rams on the island. They’re fairly wild critters, roaming freely in the woods most of the year up there, so the fleece is chock full of vegetable matter and is kind of matted in places. And it stinks.

Decatur has a sizeable herd of sheep going at this point. Most of them are Scottish Black Face, and a few are Dorsets. The annual island sheep shearing was the last weekend in April, and since they just give away all the fleeces, O asked for and got some. Ten of them. TEN. Eesh. That’s a LOT of stinky. She has big plans for all of it, though, so it’s all good.

Speaking of stinky things that come in groups of ten…
Chicklet update!

They’re continuing to grow, and DAMN if they’re not cute anymore. So sad. Chicklet gallery updated with current pix. Enjoy.

And, just to prove that I haven’t totally lost interest in spinning…

That’s spun up from some mystery batts that I got from Franquemont Fibers on eBay. It’s lovely stuff that’s been a joy to spin. And it has sparkly stuff in it, which is a total bonus. No clue what was in the batt, but it’s mostly wool with some other stuff.

There’s been more, I just don’t have pix to show of any of the rest of it. O’s Rogue is coming along - we’re down to one and 2/3 sleeve left. She better not outgrow it before I finish it…

So there. I may not have gotten to go to MS$W, but I had a damn fine MD weekend anyway.

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Eesh.

I’ve been working steadily on a Rogue for Booger, and it’s been kicking my ass. Mostly because I’ve been tired and stressed and not paying enough attention. Hem to armpits went pretty smoothly, and things just went to hell from that point on.

I had finished the front from the armpits up to one of the shoulders, and was starting the other side of the neck when I realized that I had been doing all of the damn decreases backwards, so instead of a smooth line, it was all jaggedy and totally not working for me. So I tore the whole top half of the front out and redid it.

Then, over the weekend, I realized that as I was nearing the top of the hood, where the cable is all fiddly and wide and complicated and you actually have to pay some modicum of attention to the charts, that I had, WAY back down just above where the hood joins the neck, crossed one of the cables the wrong way. ON BOTH SIDES. FFS. So, yeah, you guessed it. RRRRIIIIPPPPP.

I’ve managed to get about half of what I ripped out reknit, carefully checking the damn cable crossings every row to make sure I’m not screwin’ it up again.

And just ‘cos I’m way too lazy to look back through the old posts, just in case I haven’t mentioned the Booger’s Rogue before, she saw mine, and desperately wanted me to make her one. I looked around for the perfect yarn for it for a couple of months, and tried to decide if I wanted to try and do the math to make it smaller in the same gauge as the pattern is written, or if I wanted to make it up in a finer gauge yarn at a smaller gauge. I opted for the finer gauge yarn (Peace Fleece sport weight in Kamchatka Seamoss) and leaving the pattern exactly as written. So far it’s working beautifully, and the test fitting last weekend went well. She was not groovin’ on the texture of the totally unwashed Peace Fleece, until I showed her my Everyday Cardigan that’s been washed a couple of times, and is ohmygod soft.

If I can just keep from screwing anything else up on it, I should have it done by the time she gets down here this weekend. Which would totally rock. Mind you, I was too tired and in too much pain* to do diddly with it either last night or this morning, and haven’t done much of anything since I got home today other than take ibuprofen and a nap, but… yeah, hopefully I can get it done. We’ll see.

*Hugo wasn’t the only one with issues this weekend. I managed to totally hose my back by being an idiot and picking up a VERY heavy basket of laundry by, you guessed it, bending at the waist… Who says stupid doesn’t hurt?

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Let me preface this with a warning: this is gonna get nasty. If you’re squeamish, or easily squicked out, or sensible, then stop now, and go read Lauren’s, or Norma’s, or Kimber’s blogs or go buy some new stitch markers. Or get some advice from the Pope. Just don’t keep reading. And for fuck’s sake, don’t click the photo links. Seriously.

Now that we’ve gotten *that* out of the way, look what $800 at the vet’s office will get you!

Poor Hugo. It’s not like he didn’t have enough issues to begin with, but Friday one of his anal glands had gotten thoroughly impacted and had swollen up to the size of a baseball. It was, according to the vet who removed it first thing saturday morning “about to blow”. Ew.

Hugo got to spend Saturday unconscious at the vet, having bits removed from both ends - they removed a fang that he had broken in half last summer while they had him knocked out (they had been waiting for the tooth to either wear down to the point that something needed to be done about it, or for him to need knocking out for something else to deal with it). We got him back last night, stoned out of his poor little mind, with a nasty, leaky rear end, a sore mouth, and a truly lovely cone to keep him from licking his wounds, as it were.

He apparently doesn’t like the cone. He’s embarassed by it. As soon as the camera came out, he laid down on the floor, hiding his wounded butt and keeping his head turned away and hidden behind the counter. It took the better part of 5 minutes of coaxing him to get him to turn toward me to get this one:
, and then CritterBoy foolishly opened the door, and Huge tried to escape:
.

And the hell doesn’t end there! Oh no! Twice a day for the next few days CritterBoy gets to put hot compresses on Hugo’s ripped-up butt. And twice a day for the next fifteen days I get to cram a pill down his throat. Tuesday he gets to go back to the vet to have the drain tube removed (that should be all kinds of not fun), and he gets one more day of the (apparently) great pain meds.

Did I mention that he’s living locked in the bathroom for a while?

Poor kitty.

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