The Things I Do For Money

This is part of an actual email I sent for work:

"If you don't carry the Pipe Dreams 'Fatty Patty' could you please recommend another midget blow up doll that's around the same price?"

I can honestly say I never thought those were words I'd string together.

My New Bike

Rob and I bought a bike for me on Memorial Day. I'll confess I picked it because it's totally girly, which isn't like me, but it's also super comfortable.

I've set a goal of riding 30 miles a week. The idea is to run all my local errands on the bike. In theory, if I ride that much, in a year I'll recoup what we spent on the bike (and accessories) in savings in gas, wear & tear on the car and parking meters.



Here's how I did the first week:

Tuesday: The Bank: 4.5 miles

Wednesday:
UPS, Fred 62, Grocery store: 3.1
The Bike Shop: 1.6 miles

Thursday:
The Bike Shop: 1.6 miles

Friday:
Two Boots Pizza: 8.3 miles

Sunday:
Caffe Etc. and the Farmer's Market: 4.6 miles
Los Feliz 3 Movie Theater: 2 miles

25.7 so far..and then jury duty started and I haven't pedaled since...

My First Socks

I started these socks for me late last summer, so I'd have practice before I attempted Rob's Christmas (okay, birthday) socks. I got one done and then stopped. Rob didn't love the yarn -- I'd originally bought it for a sweater, but he'd strongly discouraged that. I wasn't in love with the pattern and I thought the finished sock was too long in the toe and too tight in the calf. Rob and I joke that I have 50 pound ankles, but it's kind of true. I was thinking about frogging it, but then I tried it on again and decided it wasn't bad. Maybe I'll get around to knitting the other one...

First Garden Harvest

Yum!

How Do I Spin This?

This is how much Idget sheds in just a couple of days. He's not a very large dog, about 15 pounds, but I'm convinced that it would only take a month to get enough yarn for a scarf if I only knew how to spin it!

It Doesn't Get Any More Local Than This

In a month, my beans have grown this much...










I'm so happy that ugly wall is getting covered. Best of all, I've even got a couple of beans coming in. Woo-hoo! I'm betting they'll be ready to eat in about two weeks ago -- right before the "Keep It Local" challenge ends.

Local Challenge

A friend in Chicago invited me to participate in the "Keep It Local" challenge run by Erin Loughlin. Erin started this challenge because she wanted to challenger herself to eat locally and thought it would be fun to have some company while doing so.

Part of Erin's inspiration came from this fact: "If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels." Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. (2007) p. 5

We only have to do one local meal a week, but I'm an overachiever and have been doing more than that. Here's a few photos of my local meals so far:













(sausage and bell peppers on sourdough bread, black bean and sausage stew, bison and root vegetable stew.)

Living in California, and being a devoted shopper at my farmer's market, I thought that it'd be easy to find local EVERYTHING. Since starting the challenge, I'm beginning to rethink that. I've realized I don't know where half the farmers at my market come from (although by law, it has to be within the state of California.) But that means the food could be traveling up to 725 miles and, while that's still less than half of the 1500 miles the average American meal travels, it's still not exactly local. With this in mind, I'm going to start paying more attention to where the farmers I buy from are located.

I've decided for the last two weeks of the challenge, my local meal has to be vegan as well since the United Nations has found that almost a fifth of all global warming emissions comes from livestock production.

Just in Time for Summer -- Part 2

I made these gloves as a Christmas present for one of Rob's friends. They were a tad too long in the fingers, so I took them back to shorten them and just now got around to finishing. Yikes! Good thing he lives in Southern California where gloves are just for fashion -- not necessity.

Per Janice's Request....

A photo of me in my new hat!

This pic is after felting. The ones in the previous post were not. Felting smoothed out a lot of the rough edges and took out the curl in the brim that had been caused by my uber tight tension.

Just in Time for Summer

When I showed Rob the pattern for MK Carroll's Matilda hat, he said, "That looks like a hat you would lose."

He had a point. When we drove across country to see my family for Christmas two years ago, I left a very similar brown cloche in a pool hall in Memphis. In a strange twist, I found the exact same hat two days later at the French Market in New Orleans, only to leave it in a restaurant when we got back to Los Angeles.

Undeterred, I ordered enough black yarn last summer to make one for my business partner and one for me. I finished hers in a week, but as of March, I hadn't even cast on the one for me. I just couldn't bring myself to knit it in black. Brown is my color of choice for a cloche and I'd knit mine in brown no matter how much it tempted fate.

I had some chunky alpaca laying around that I'd been meaning to find a use for. I knit it on larger needles and used black to attach the brim to the top, for a slightly different aesthetic. I felted it slightly and will post pix of the final product once I get Rob to snap one of me wearing it.

I have a pretty tight tension, so the edge of the brim rolled a bit, but it worked itself out in the felting process! One bummer is that I ran out of brown a few rows before the brim was done. I used black for those last rows instead and wear the black patch over one ear. Surprisingly, it doesn't look like a mistake!

The View From Here

Rob and I have taken to hiking in Griffith Park on the weekends with the dogs. Well, we've gone twice but, as far as I'm concerned, that's a pattern.

As much as I like to complain about our neighborhood, this is a stone's throw from where we live.

Photo credit goes to Rob. I tried, but only succeeded at scaring a lizard sunning himself on a log.

No Comment

Earth Hour

Earth Hour just ended here in Los Angeles. I'll confess I didn't start on time, but once I got my act together, Rob and I walked the dogs and then had a drink on our apartment balcony until it ended. We had a candle lit and I do wonder how much that contributed to global warming.

While walking the dogs, we saw our corner store was open for business, but with the lights off. If I'd had to guess who in the neighborhood would participate, I'd never have picked this store. To me, that's the most encouraging part of this exercise -- finding out people I never thought would care, actually do.

Overall, I didn't notice a big difference in the amount of our neighborhood's light pollution, but here's a couple of pictures of Griffith Park Observatory, with and without lights.

Phone Etiquette

Since I do sex toy parties for a living, I have to call people all the time to set dates, follow up on orders, etc.

I make these calls as a group. If I don't reach someone, I leave a discrete message and dial the next person on my list. Sometimes I go straight from my work calls to calls I need to make for the animal rescue I volunteer for, or during the presidential election, calls for the campaign I was supporting.

Invariably, someone will call me back and demand, "Who is this?" without identifying themselves. If I ask, who they are, they ALWAYS say, "You should know, you called me."

Not really. While I did call you at some point, you're now calling me, and because you're a total dumbass and didn't listen to the message I left (hm, what do you think the voicemail option on your phone is for?) you're now calling someone whose name you don't know, for a reason you don't know. Not exactly a productive use of time and I shudder to think what Miss Manners would have to say.

Of course, I can't say that. Instead, I explain that I make a lot of phone calls to know why I was calling you particularly, I need to know who you are. (Can you imagine the political fallout if I mistakenly told a registered voter I was calling about the "dildo party"?)

Usually, that explanation is enough to jog the caller into the world of common courtesy and to actually IDENTIFY themselves. Every now and then, however, a person will refuse to tell me unless I tell them who I am. In those cases, I give my first name and when that produces the expected "huh?", I tell them I need to know who I'm talking to so I can figure out why I initially called them. (All the while, biting my tongue so I don't say, "LISTEN TO THE MESSAGE I LEFT YOU, YOU MORON!!!")

This week, however, I got a total psycho. Even after I told her my name, she refused to say who she was. Finally, I hung up.

But then she called again, and again. My phone was turned off while I was at yoga and a meeting and in that interval, she left 3 messages, all demanding to know who I was, but never giving me her name. I finally matched her number to one of my lists and she was a customer. And she booked a party. Yikes!

Presenting...

...the first tri-color Pentapus. I made him as a baby shower present for my friend Jennifer and he was the only hand-made gift!

"Model" Dog

Here's Idget modeling the sweater I designed for him. Rob calls it his fag sweater because I made the neck so big it slides down for an "off-the-shoulder" look. Oops!

I made one for Toaster, too, but he has a heavier coat and doesn't get as cold as Idget, so he rarely wears it. I'll dress him up some time soon so I can get a picture up here.

And by the way, don't let Idget's, "I'm cute, yet suave" expression fool you. Ten minutes before I snapped this, I'd come home to find he'd gotten into the recycling bin, shredded a milk carton and pooped on the couch. Sigh.

Pretty

Rob bought me this orchid for my birthday. FOUR years ago. Our apartment has bad light for orchids, but I FINALLY got it to rebloom. Woo-hoo!

Rob's Socks

I started these socks as a Christmas present for Rob. And then Idget broke one of my DPN's. And I won't mention what he did to the WIP. So then they became a birthday present. Urgh, were supposed to be a birthday present. I did FINALLY manage to get them done in time for Rob to wear to the opening of his recent art show. Is that normally a gift-giving occasion?

The pattern's available here.

What Would You Knit With...

this, gorgeous, gorgeous hand-spun yarn? Rob bought it for me a couple of Felt Club's ago from a vendor named Rapunzel's Threads.



I've never knit with hand-spun before and I'm just stumped about how to work with the varying thickness. It's wool with a silk wrap and I have 62 yards of it.

On size 10 1/2 needles, 14 sts and 18 rows equals 4 inches and creates a pretty solid piece of fabric. I borrowed a pair of 17's from my friend Nora. On those, 4 inches equals 10 sts and 12 rows. This is a pretty open swatch with noticeable spaces in some of the stitches.

My friend Cybele suggested I make Calorimetry, but I think I'd rather use this as an accent on something. Any ideas are welcome!

Does My Car Have A Bull's Eye on It?

First the swastika, then someone decided to use my license plate for origami and now this. Is that V for victory?