Spend Some Time Between Dodridge and Lane

Dudes,

Hey, Columbus! It's really, really bumming me out the way the city is driving half of North-of-Campus out of business with the High Street construction. I'm hearing rumblings of lots of closings, and it's no good. It's really annoying to go anywhere between Dodridge and Lane. I know all about it. Do it anyway. This construction isn't gonna be done for another YEAR, and all those little local shops are suffering, even institutions like the Dube. It would make you sad if these places closed.

Reasons to Take Your Ass to the Construction Zone

I'm already sad because I heard a rumor that Black Market is going under. Guys! Kelly Martin is our local fashion hero! Why aren't we buying all her dresses? She was just on freaking Project Runway! Go to her shop. Go there. Buy dresses. She's a cool girl and it's a cool shop.

There's that new little restaurant, Sage, which is really good! And Clintonville needs restaurants. But they're going to die if we don't brave the construction and eat there.

Did you know Taj Mahal has a bar in it? It's open til 1. Here's my review of Taj Mahal: Food: pretty good. Patio: excellent. Weird, unexpected lounge: RAD. You don't think about going there. It doesn't occur to you. But you should. I think no one is going there, so maybe you and your friends should. We went there Sunday night (Sunday is karaoke and ladies night in the Taj Mahal lounge. The ladies night drink specials are nuts--I got both KT and myself DRUNK for 12 bucks, girls. THEY'RE CRAZY FOR LOW PRICES. Take your titties in there and get some cheap drinks.) It's cool in there. It feels kind of like Inarra's whorin' shuttle on Firefly. I'm sort of obsessed with Firefly right now, though, so maybe it's just me. But it's all red and there's couches and stuff. It's like you're having drink in someone's really cool living room. We parked on Oakland. It was easy!

You can go to our local hardware store, Schriener Hardware, where once the man who worked there gave me a huge discount on a knife because I told him I wanted to carry it for self defense. (Then this partially reformed Mexican gangbanger that I used to know (Where did you go, Isaac? Hope you're ok.) taught me all these knife tricks.)

You can rent, like, any movie at North Campus Video, and yes, that old man with the pierced cheeks will be mean to you, but isn't that part of the charm? He's been being mean to me since I was 18. It's sort of comforting at this point.

And Smoker's Haven! It smells so good in there, and even though I don't smoke I spent something like 20 minutes looking at cool pipes and smelling tobacco and talking to the nice man who worked there. He told me that it is cheaper to smoke a pipe than a cigarrette, and it's not addictive because you don't inhale on a pipe. Maybe I should smoke a pipe.

I don't need to remind you about the Dube, right?

Dick's Den. Why Not?

Cazuela's! It's open AFTER THE BARS CLOSE on the weekends. You can go there for fourthmeal.

A lot of places down there have parking lots. It's not so bad, it's just unpleasant on High. You can handle it. You do unpleasant things every day. Come on!

Owly Pally

Me and Brax and Cabbage are makin' some Owl Sweaters.

Mine is out of O-Wool Legacy Bulky. It's organic! And lovely. Can I talk for a sec about O-Wool? The yarns--all of them--are gorgeous. They are also tough little workhorses. Organic workhorses.


That's my sweater. You know what it is? It's chewy. Chewy. Laugh it up, fuzzball. I just want to scrunch it.

Brax's is out of Cascade 128 (also very nice). I forget what Cabbage's is out of, but she is adjusting gauge for a smaller yarn. Smaller yarn? Not me! Brax and Cabbage are both doing theirs as cardigans, but I love me a pullover. So that's what's shakin' here at Wine Lips. I've been pouring hours and hours of time and yards and yards of yarn into this twisted rib sweater, which is supposed to become a pattern that I can sell or give away or publish in some capacity. It's beautiful. If the bust and shoulders work out how I want them to, it's going to be a pretty rad sweater. I've been working on it for a while, though, and I'm a little bored with it, and also I'm kind of at an impasse with the bust shaping. So it's pretty nice to follow someone else's instructions and work on a US 10.5 and have inches of sweater just--POOF!--materialize on your needles.

Owlies!

Happy 75th, Glo!

Thanks for spending a lifetime fighting your heart out so Brax and I could do stuff like open our own yarn shop and not get beat by our men. Thanks for teaching us to fight too. Thanks for writing Revolution From Within because it taught me how radical and revolutionary it is to love yourself. Your work has tangibly affected my life and the life of every woman in the US and beyond. My generation of women grew up assuming an endless universe of options, and that's because your generation of women tore down every wall you could.

Thanks. Happy birthday.

Some things:

1. I found my keys! But not before I managed the throw out the sad story to enough people to get several drinks bought for me Monday night. They were in a bowl on the kitchen table. Under some apples. Sigh.

2. It's raining today. I was trying to think of the last time it precipitated in a not-frozen way. It was a while ago. This feels like a spring rain, and it's nice. It's a good day to sit in the yarn shop and drink coffee and listen to jazz, which is exactly what I'm doing.

3. Fibre Co. Organik feather-and-fan cowl. This yarn is pricey, and for good reason. It's 70% organic merino wool, 15% baby alpaca, and 15% silk. It's certainly one of the loveliest yarns I've ever knit with. I've been just eyeballing this yarn for months now, and finally, the day I lost my keys (AKA the day of self-indulgence) I decided to work out a one-skein project with the stuff.

That scratch on my cheek is where Chester pretended to be loving me but then scratched my face. Kittens suck.

I Had a Bad Day, I Deserve Luxury Yarn Cowl

Materials
Yarn: Fibre Co. Organik, 1 skein. Color shown: Jungle
Needles: US 9 16" circular
Gauge: something like 4-5 sts/inch in st st. Gauge is not critical in self-indulgent bad-day projects.
Size: adult medium. (To adjust sizing, add or subtract multiples of 18 sts.)

Pattern
CO 108 Sts. Join for working in round, being careful not to twist. PM for join. Work Feather and Fan lace as follows.

Rnd 1: Knit
Rnd 2: Knit
Rnd 3: *(K2tog) 3 times, (YO, K1) 6 times, (K2tog) 3 times* Repeat from * around.
Rnd 4: Purl

Repeat rounds 1-4 seven times. Cowl will measure about 4" long. BO all sts (try and BO on row 4). Weave in ends. Voila!

I finished this in an evening, and I had exactly 24" of yarn left over.

Everything is hard.

Brax,

I am addressing this to you because it is a straight up rant, and I know you will understand when I tell you about my day. Goat: got.

I can't find my keys. They're nowhere.

I will retrace my steps for you: Last night, Matt and I walked up to our local hippie grocery store to buy fake meat products and organic cream because I wanted to make cream of carrot soup. I took only my keys and my phone, which I stuck in the canvas shopping bag. On the way back, I fished out my phone because I am literally physically addicted to it. So there my keys were, under our hippie groceries. We got home. We tried to go in the back door, but then I remembered I'd locked the screen door from the inside for reasons that made sense, at the time. So we went around to the front. Matt unlocked the door. We went straight to the kitchen and started dinner. Matt unpacked the groceries. He remembers seeing my keys in the grocery bag and removing them, but not what he did with them. Logically, he would have handed them to me or sat them somewhere like the kitchen table.

The keys are nowhere. Here are the places I looked, in the order I looked in them:

1. Kitchen table
2. Under the kitchen table
3. Kitchen Counter
4. Grocery bag, purse
5. Behind the coffee maker and all the flour-sugar-coffee canister things
6. Stove area
7. Coffee table
8. End tables
9. Mantle
10. Couch
11. Chair
12. Dining room table
13. Bookshelves
14. Nightstand
15. floor around nightstand
16. in the bed
17. In the laundry pile
18. Husband's desk, chair
19. bathroom window sill, shelf
20. medicine cabinet
21. pockets of my coat, Matt's coat
22. Kitchen window sill (I even opened the window to make sure the keys were not in between the screen and the glass.)
23. refrigerator, freezer, including the drawers and underneath frozen pizza
24. kitchen bookshelf, including behind the cookbook I used last night.
25. dishwasher
26. all kitchen drawers
27. under all cushions in living room
28. under all living room furniture
29. in purses which have not been carried in weeks.
30. inside washing machine.
31. inside dryer
32. underwear drawer
33. dishwasher
34. under apples in fruit bowl.
35. inside TV cabinet
36. mailbox
37. pockets of husband's pants
38. knitting bags
39. pile of clothes on bedroom floor
40. under bed
41. garbage can
42. dumpster. Yes. I went through the damn trash in the dumpster.
43. all of these places again and again. except the dumpster, I only did that one once.

When things like this happen, the lost object is always, always somewhere completely stupid, like underneath a hat you tossed down on the bed. But I didn't toss any hats on the bed. Where are my keys? Where? The kitten is too small to bat my big, heavy keyring very far, and I think I would have heard any key batting. Plus I looked under most things. Oh, balls.

So when I couldn't find the keys, I started calling Matt because I knew he was the last person to see the keys alive. But his phone does this THING. There is a button on the outside of the phone which turns off the ringer, and he puts the phone in his pocket and the button gets hit somehow, and his ringer is off. It always happens when I, like, really need to talk to him. Last time it happened I was supposed to be calling him when I got off work at the restaurant, so he could come get me. I was calling and calling and calling and calling, and he was just sitting at home watching TV, blissfully unaware. Meanwhile I'm sitting at the bar at work, after a long night, with no ride home, and all the boys at work (whom I adore. usually.) are saying things like "MAAAAAAAAAN, Matt is in the DOGHOUSE tonight!!!" and "Hey, Bruce, you gonna tear him up when you get home?" With a little bit of glee, because they love it when someone besides them is in trouble with their lady. I finally called Topher to get dressed and come get me.


So naturally, his phone was doing that thing this morning, when I was running around half hysterical and terribly late. I left him some excellent voice mails. (Eventually I did get ahold of him and he was very helpful.)

Anyway. So I'm making do with borrowed keys today, but I cannot drive anywhere, so don't ask me to. When I get home tonight I'm going to tear the house apart, but I cannot imagine where the keys could be that I haven't already looked. Probably in hiding with my white full slip, which went missing right about the time it got warm enough to wear dresses.

OH YEAH! Speaking of clothes, here is the other thing that happened to me this week. I got home from work at the restaurant on Friday night, and I undressed and found that I had a rash on my knees, ankles, elbows, armpits, and around my waist. I was pretty horrified. The next day I talked to my mom and she suggested that it was a detergent allergy, and when I thought about it I realized that the rash was all in places where my clothes were tight against my skin. Turns out I'm allergic to 7th generation liquid detergent. Sorry, environment, I'm going back to Tide. The rash is already mostly healed.

I guess that is enough bitching for today. Things have turned around. KT and the Science Pirate came to see me and brought me mexican food and a rice crispy treat, and now we're getting some lottery tickets so if we win, drinks are on me!

Luv,
Bruce

P.S. readers, Brax and Cabbage and I are doing an Owl Sweater Knit-Along. Exciting! Excited! Don't be grumpy.

New Knitty

I haven't liked an issue of Knitty this much for a long time. Very nice. Although, as Micah has pointed out, there's not much in this one for the boys.

Anyway, this is adorable. I know a certain bun in the oven who will be getting one, if I happen to get my druthers before the timer goes off.

Spring knitting! Not bad!

ETA: Hate weaving in ends? checkit out...Russian Join. (Sometimes I think we should rename this blog "let's all avoid finishing."

-Bruce

sometimes I want to talk about fashion.

A brief aside:

The fall '09 runway shows started a few weeks ago, and I've been watching, eagerly, hoping for somebody to blow my mind. I enjoy being a fashion spectator, and I want what's on the runway to be obviously unaffordable, impractical, inaccessible, a little bit scary, and completely fabulous. I want to have to look to find the wearable elements. I would like, please, for your models to look like aliens. I want your chief stylist to be a homeless conceptual artist from Prauge. YES. Please.

So I've been pretty disappointed so far. I don't know if you guys pay attention to this stuff, but you can view most of the collections here. Meh, mostly. BUT. Then. Finally, Alexander McQueen came along and saved the day. Look! Here is a summary. And here is the whole collection.

Prayers: answered.




Beautiful, distinctive designs. GENIUS styling. Alien models, scary makeup, weird things stuck on the models' heads. YES, PLEASE. I'm pretty much 100% behind everything he sent down the runway.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled knitting blog...

Bruce