FINALLY!

One weekend, I said "enough is enough, it's time to finish this thing!" And I did. And it's done. It's DONE! This is the Furuba bag that was originally conceived as the "Punk Rock Backpack" in Stitch 'n' Bitch. Long ago, I knit all the separate pieces and was just beginning to join them together before I remembered that I really don't like backpack purses. 'So I'll turn it into a shoulder bag,' I thought, 'easy!' And it would have been, if I hadn't kept changing the dumb design. I probably redesigned it four or five times, and the poor thing has spent the vast majority of nearly two years as an "on hold" project, because I kept getting angry and throwing it in the corner. But I sure learned a whole lot from this project: intarsia, duplicate stitch, picking up stitches, backstitch, buttonholes, and extending. I also relearned how to make and sew in a fabric liner. Whew. The picture doesn't show it, but the bag closes with a flap in the back that buttons. If I could do it again, I think I'd have it close in front for convenience's sake.


You can see that it's pretty floppy, but since the yarn is just cheap acrylic, it doesn't block very well. Whatever. I'm just happy that it's finally done and I can use it.
I keep thinking, though: how old is too old to wear this type of stuff? When we're young, we can get away with almost anything, but at a certain point it just starts to look ridiculous. Someone please tell me when I reach that point.

Killed by...

Zetta sent me this one. Get some cheap thrills by googling "[your name] was killed by", and seeing what wacky (or depressing) stuff pops up. My favorites:
1) Lainey was killed in the siege of school no. 1.
Sounds exciting.
2) Lainey was killed in a car accident involving an eighteen wheeler.
Gee, I wonder whose car was more damaged?
3) Lainey was killed by another of Liams' hired assassins in order to get to Henry.
Damn you, Henry!
4) Lainey was killed by NutraSweet.
That's just pathetic.
5) The baby survived, but Lainey was killed by the intense cold her baby produced. Even the delivery doctor had frostbite on his fingers after the delivery.
One more reason not to have children.

whoa.

Wow, I just remembered that I have a blog, and it's been about three months since I updated it.
Don't worry, readers, you haven't missed much.
It was school, school, work, and school for awhile there, and I had no energy for anything else. I'm on winter break now, and catching up on my zzzz's and the rest of my life. Right now I'm busy with new year's cleaning (out with the old dust bunnies and junk mail, in with the new).
I vaguely remember having some resolutions last year, so let's see how well I kept 'em:
1) Learn to crochet.
I made it under the wire for this one. I figured out how to do a crochet border on a knitted piece a day or two before the deadline.
2) Finish all abandoned knitting projects (I have at least 5 going right now).
I think I'm down to two abandoned ones, and one I'm starting up again soon.
3) Drink more water, and cut back further on soda.
Done and done. I'm down to about one soda a month.
4) Start experimenting with dying yarn at home.
er, forgot about this one.
5) Work on my sewing skills (they're really pathetic as of now, so this one won't be too difficult).
I took a crappy summer class, which I dropped out of, but at least I leaned how to operate the dang machine. I'm continuing my education by experience.
6) Eat more fruits and veggies (obligatory health-related resolution).
Failure.
7) Acquire permanent job.
Sweet success. The cherry on top is being named employee of the quarter. Woot!

Results? 4 1/2 victories and 2 1/2 sunk ships. Yes!!! 2005 was not a total failure!!!!
To cap off the year, I became an 'auntie.' Baby Kady made it safely into the world almost a month ago. Big congrats and kisses to Daddy Steve and Momma Linds! Only eighteen more years to go, guys! And Auntie has picked up the needles again to make lots of cute baby-type garments, so expect knitting updates fairly soon.
Farewell, 2005.
2006, we hope you'll be good to us.

Update

During a stop on our geology field trip in the Marin Headlands area, we saw several park ranger vehicles drive by with the lights flashing. When we were ready to continue five minutes later, they'd blocked off the main road, and we were detoured to no man's land.
The reason for this, we just discovered, was that less than half a mile away from where we'd been, some guy had pulled over on the side of the road and was, apparently, yuking. Rangers noticed and tried to question him, but he was acting weird, so they searched his car. Lo and behold, there in the trunk was his ex-girlfriend, whom he'd very recently killed. That's when the rangers called in the cavalry. Presumably, the dude was planning on doing a body dump over the cliff. The excitement of our near-brush with a murderer was spoiled by his idiocy. A stealthier criminal would have picked a time other than midday on a sunny weekend to do his body-dumping.

Nerdiness

Went to the coast yesterday on a field trip for my geology class. After about eight hours "out in the field" with my classmates, I was forced to come to an inescapable conclusion: cool people do not go on geology field trips. These are excursions for the nerd elite. I can only say that there were a lot of Star Wars jokes.
It was an interesting. We got to glare jealously at the HUGE ocean-side houses - damn rich people. But I was comforted by the fact that although they can afford multi-million-dollar coastal homes, money can't buy them brains. This was exhibited by the fact that they chose to build next to or directly on top of fault lines, and also that the rock supporting their mansions was pillow basalt, which is constantly being devoured by the ocean. Further evidence was a house which boasted a backyard fence literally on the edge of a sharp cliff over the ocean. And the fence was about two feet tall. As if that wasn't dangerous enough, those daredevils chose to place a trampoline in their yard. Within three feet of the inexplicably short fence.
It was, admittedly, hard to gauge exact distances from my vantage point, but here's how it looked:

I did see a couple of kids jumping on the thing, but when we passed by again thirty minutes later, they were gone. Did they go inside? Or did they fall over the absurdly short fence?
Now that's natural selection at work.

In closing, I would just like to say that when you work this hard for a joke, it doesn't deserve to be laughed at: