~ a Changeling's Diary ~

I've been knitting rather obsessively lately. It's a good distraction for when the hamster in my brain is running frantic circles on its wheel, when the new-home search isn't going well (or, at the moment, is completely stalled until my agent calls back dammit).

Third pet blanket is almost done. It has more errors than the second, partly because I tried something new and different and switched yarns while working on it. Overall it's not hideous, though, and again I don't think a fostered cat or dog is probably going to care much about the flubs.

Also found out that the local Michael's craft store collects 7" x 9" squares of knit or crochet, and every so often holds a get-together to piece them into blankets/afghans for local homeless shelters. That's probably where my smaller bits of leftover yarn are going to go, when I finish this project.

Kaitou talked me into joining Ravelry. I feel like the worst poseur in the world for being there when I've only been knitting 2 weeks, but it's fun to see some of the amazing projects other people have posted on the site.

While at Fort Fest last Saturday, I decided to give knitting another try.

Now, I used to be able to sort of kind of, in a lame-ass "what is this 'purl' of which you speak and oh yeah I can't cast on for myself" fashion knit as a kid. A little bit. Not very well at all. But at least it wasn't a completely foreign language to me?

Over the course of a couple of hours, my friend Beth taught me to get the yarn started on the needle all by myself (and made it easy), reminded me of the basic straight-forward knit stitch, taught me to purl, and even showed me how to cast-off, or get your piece of knitting off the needles without unraveling the whole thing. She said that my gauge was very tight (apparently a common beginner mistake), expected that it would loosen up over the course of the practice swatch (...it didn't), and told me that I had the most even stitch size of any newbie knitter she'd seen (yay!). And all of this working with needles a size or two too small for the weight of yarn I had brought with me.

Sunday afternoon I ran out to the fabric store, bought myself a pair of average-size bamboo knitting needles and another skein of inexpensive yarn (in prettier colors), and set out to prove to myself that I could repeat what I'd done the day before.

Well, it has no few silly beginner errors in it - and will be donated as a "cage comforter" to a local animal shelter where its recipient won't care about said errors - but my second attempt at knitting is now about 10" wide by 9" long. 3 more inches or so, and I'll close it off and start another.

There will be pictures when I get home tonight!

Many, many wishes for a very happy birthday to the fabulous elionwyr!

What are your plans for the weekend? May I take you to a movie? :)

Y'know how I just posted about the marrow donor results two days ago...?

Left my cell phone at home today (d'oht); came home to find a message from the NMDP. wanting to know if I'll hold myself in reserve as backup donor for the patient they tested me for back in April.

Basic translation: they're still going with another donor as the primary, but they want me to be ready to step in at any point if the primary should have to cancel/drop out. O,o

Will find out more when I call them back tomorrow.

::ETA:: The official term is "Hold for Workup." I had the unofficial translation right, though: "If anything goes wrong with the primary donor, you & your marrow please be ready!"

I just now realized that I never posted the results of the tissue-typing for the possible bone-marrow match.

Just like before, I would have been borderline acceptable, but they found a better match for the patient.

There's been a lot going on the last few weeks, and I'm not ready yet to talk about most of it. Between that and play practice for this year's ConFluence musical atrocity parody, I've been busier than expected - and not in the mood to blog a lot.

Worked the local polls again this past Tuesday; it was a much MUCH slower day than last November, for some strange reason. (Primaries were only for local & judiciary posts - which people really should care about, but not many do.) We topped out at a grand total of 98 voters, disappointing when I really really hoped we'd at least break into triple digits.

Two different people I hadn't seen in 6 months since the general election both said I look like I've lost a lot of weight - only I haven't. O_o I've dropped five pounds tops - if even that much. Sweet of them to think so, though?

Not shiny enough, not confident enough, not interesting enough, not generous enough, not outspoken enough, not psychic enough, not considerate enough, not assertive enough, not uninhibited enough.

Not strong enough.

( Tweets behind cut )

Actually finished the pouch last night; will put up photos when I've had time to yoink them from the memory card & resize for web. Woo!

I can't sew a straight line without a ruler, either. *grumpf* Have the outside seams of my first Spirit Jump gift done; will have to flip it right-side out, iron it, and close the last seam when I get home tonight.

Note to self: find bag of ribbons and cords for finishing!

And ( Day-old tweets, slightly stale )

No, I haven't found another way to go skydiving already darn it. Spirit Jump is an online program that directly connects a gift-giver with a person battling cancer.

I know there are a lot of creative-type people on my friends-list. Visit the site - whether it's something as simple as a card, to more involved gifts like a crocheted hat or piece of jewelry, Spirit Jump is a way to remind someone who's struggling against cancer that they're not alone, that somebody out there cares and is thinking of them. You could help out, in a battle where hope can make a big difference.

Check out their website, and see what you think.

( sneaking in my tweets )

* 10:51 I did not spend my weekend catching up on sleep, and desperately wish I were home comatose right now. #
* 14:57 Couldn't get my hair to behave at all today... and one person has asked if I got it cut, another *complimented* it. WTF? O,o #
* 16:07 @etacar11 Only if we make sure the riders *rest* instead of getting so tired they turn stupid - the ending was so pointless ! >,o #
* 16:08 @etacar11 (no no, I'm not a long-time Pern fan at all, why do you ask?) #

I really didn't expect to get into a brief Twitter conversation* about Moreta, but yeah - that's my side of it before the talk got moved to direct-message. Heh.

* Is there any other kind? O_o

...from over the weekend (Friday through Sunday)

( Here come da tweets )

We had a mostly-quiet Sunday morning & afternoon with orenda before she had to head back to Michigan; Renda hon, I'm glad you didn't have to head out right away in the morning, it meant I didn't lose the whole visit with you to skydiving insanity. ♥

I still haven't quite caught up on my sleep yet, though... and with play practice, probably won't do so tonight, either. *sadface*

I not only survived my Operation Freefall jump, I enjoyed it beyond the bounds of what most of my friends would probably consider sane. ^^;;

( LONG rambling description under the cut )

Thank you once again, Hugh, for dinner afterward!

And for those of you who just want to see pictures: ( Need I say, image-heavy? )

I kind of wish it weren't such a bloody expensive sport, because I already want to do it again. >,>

Also, I have a short video which I may be able to used Windows Movie Maker to pull from the disc and post up, later.

Okay, so I don't look as alert as the icon image.

I am, however, out of bed, dressed, and ready to go grab my coffee before I hit the road. ~60 - 90 minutes to pick up my partner in crime, just under three to get to the drop zone, so we should get there two hours before elionwyr's jump time. We do need to call the drop zone and make sure the weather's going to cooperate, before driving that three hours - it's supposed to be mostly sunny, but I'm not sure at what point the wind becomes a factor.

Can't say I'm really nervous even still (although I do have a bit of "yay I get to go on a roller-coaster" anticipation lurking) and I slept fine last night.

Wish me blue skies, everyone!

( April 23 Tweets )

Saw a kitty in the window (and apparently missed a second), and followed a morning rainbow on the way in to work today. Heard thunder walking from garage to office, just barely missed getting rained on, and apparently there was BB-sized hail in the area but I didn't see that. O_o

I have a half-day at work today, then home to get ready for Renda's visit and prep for the Big Drop tomorrow. Still have to finalize carpool arrangements with elionwyr, too!

I got frustrated last night because I spent hours working in my room, threw out a bunch of stuff and tried to reorganize like mad... and it hardly looks like I did anything at all. *facepalm* I'm hoping to get a lot of old stuff cleared out of my closet this afternoon or Sunday and Freecycle anything that still has life in it; maybe then it'll look more like progress.

( ...yesterday's twitterings )

Let me see how quickly I can recap last night: ran errands, had appointment, came home, ate soup (mostly standing over stove), tried to do some cleaning, fell down early.

Big excitement, huh?

( Yesterday's tweets )

...I spent too much time on Twitter yesterday. >,>

( Tweets first! )

As for "Kak kak kak," I am fanatically watching the Pittsburgh falcon cams at the Gulf Tower and Cathedral of Learning again this year. Tasha2's eggs at Gulf should hatch any time now, and for a while right after lunch I thought I'd actually seen a little bebbeh falcon - but it was a false alarm, Tasha has a patch of light feathers on the side of her wing and that's all I saw. *sigh*

...yup, she's off the nest for a moment; definitely no chicks yet.

Soon, though! Soon there will be little white fluffballs in the two nest-boxes again. ^_^

Why yes, yes I can has one. Somehow I managed to not get the Friday email containing the day's schedule for the drop zone I'll be at. Obviously the coordinator has psychically intuited that I'm one of the people who doesn't mind heights (or even being dropped from them), because I'm in the last pair to jump for the day, at 4:00 pm. (EDT, so if you happen to think of it around then, spare a sigh and a shake of your head for the crazy woman who's probably shouting out "WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!1!" in demented glee as she plummets toward the ground.)

( Twitter Nonsense Goes Here )

So, the kimono exhibit. We got up Saturday morning, rented a minivan since there were 5 of us from Pittsburgh making the drive over, and headed out. Picking up the van got us off to a later start than hoped, so we made the drive there nonstop (also non-coffee *tear*). And while still too large for my personal tastes, a Toyota Sienna is a pretty cushy ride.

Between Slow-Agency-Is-Slow and a patch of construction along the route, we got to the museum half an hour behind schedule, hungry, and thirsty. Collected Kaitou from where she'd perched outside to knit while she waited for us, and grabbed some snack-type foods to hold us over until after we'd seen the exhibit.

The line to see the kimono wound through a large room with first a display of Japanese pottery, and then panels explaining Kubota-san's history, and examples of each various step in the process of dying and texturing the silks used. It felt a bit like being in an amusement park's "mickey maze," only with much better things to look at while waiting, especially since at the end of the line a museum worker played gatekeeper and let only about 10 - 12 people into the exhibit room at a time.

The first room contained 10 non-related kimono, many of them shown at the bottom of this page - numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9 I remember for sure. There were three kimono not shown here, which depicted different interpretations of Mount Fuji, from very stylized to practically photo-realistic (or as close as you can get to it using dyes on silk).

Then came the second room, with the Symphony of Light... thirty of these oversized kimono, hung almost sleeve to sleeve, with an overall design that flowed from one onto the next and through different times of day from autumn into winter. I can't even begin to describe how incredible they were. I got about 10 kimono into the panorama and had tears running down my face, from the scope and beauty of them all.

Browsed the gift shop after, walked a few blocks to check out the studio of a friend from Twitter (okay okay, so mostly her cat is a friend of my cat, but you get the idea), and had a very good lunch at a restaurant called "The Iris" before heading home again.