time is relative

right now we're in this transitional period where light equals daytime and dark equals night. it's kind of a weird sensation really. i'm so ready for spring, even though i have no idea how march is already over. since the new year i've been in this time blur, where one day feels like forever, but then the endless days blur into one and seem to have gone by fast. terry pratchett said something like that once.......i may have to look it up.

but anyway. somehow march has whizzed by and i still have pictures from the beginning of february that i haven't posted yet. ajajaj.

there was the ice park, which was held a couple weeks early. the temps were in the 40s for a whole week, so they panicked and moved the contest up. a bunch of sculptures ended up classical styledue to bits and pieces melting off. we went with our 3 stepbrats (and a dad but he's not in any pics)

the 18month old decided halfway through that it was way past his bedtime, he was bored, and maybe if he screamed *nonstop* he would get to bed faster. he did. so we didn't really get to see the multiple block sculptures, and only got a few pictures.

a chameleon and a very odd abstract couple.

and my favorites: a different kind of seafood dinner, and a teardrop. i love how the carvers can make such realistic drops of water.

the two older stepbrats stayed the night. i read them a grimm's faery tale for bed, which they repeated almost verbatim to their dad when he picked them up the next day *raised eyebrows*. since it was warm out, we went outside for a bit. their dad was literally throwing them around.

they crunched into the snow and disappeared from view. they seemed to like it thoughafter (finally) finishing the snowflake headband, i jumped right on another quick fix, the army helmet hat. that went so fast it didn't even make it up on the sidebar. the fit is a bit snug, right on the line between just right and a little too short. the pattern picture only shows the side view, but i noticed on ravelry that the hat looked a bit small on almost everyone, so i wasn't that surprised. the applied i-cord in front was kind of fun and really topped off the helmet look. i love the yarn, but noticed it has very little twist, so it might pill. that's the sort of thing i've been noticing more about yarn, how it's spun, but alas not until after i've got it home. so far no problems though. i may frog the top and add a couple rows before the decreases, just for a little more height. some day. right now i'm just happy it's done and cozy to wear.

and speaking of being done, i even picked up the FFF shawl this week. knit night at my house, and i figured the pleasure of company would dull the irritation of the shawl. and i finished it this weekend. off the needles. whoo-hoo!!! technically i still have to weave in the ends, but as far as i'm concerned it's done. thank goodness.

limited knitting time has forced me to focus on one thing at a time, which inwardly makes me horribly twitchy, but does get results. i also finished a sleeve for chuck's sweater he says it looks like a sting ray. i could see that i guess. i even cast on the second sleeve yesterday.

a couple weeks ago now, i gave a presentation at chuck's rotary group about alaskan archaeology. it went pretty well despite my swedish computer refusing to play nice with the projector (after a week or so getting it all together *sigh*). the group was small enough that they could still kind of see the powerpoint slides on my laptop. i think the problem may have been the screen resolution, so i'll have to figure out how to change that.

still, everything seemed to flow really well, and nobody got the glazed-over look of too much detail. archaeology is very fun, just in very short bursts. i was glad i could explain what field work really is like yet still keep everyone's interest. they even said i could come back in the summer and do it again! so it was fun, and i was flattered.

another compliment i got recently was at the doctor's office. i was waiting for chuck and knitting (on the snowflake headband i think) and some guy walking by thanked me for keeping a tradition alive. he said it's lots of work and most people don't bother anymore. so even though it was totally random, it was kind of cool to get a sincere compliment for doing something i love.

just for tanya

about a month ago now, i called tanya for her birthday. we met freshmen year of college, in the dorms, although thanks to a psycho roommate we didn't become real friends until the next year. we were roommates through junior year when we both went on missions (her to taiwan and me to sweden). after our missions, tanya lived in her family's condo and i kept jumping apartments til i graduated, but we still hung out.

now tanya lives in minnesota, and i'm in alaska. yet no matter how much time goes between our conversations, we talk like it was just yesterday we were walking all over provo late at night, jumping in puddles and laughing at the paperclip our roommate glued in the thermostat to stop me from turning it down. we talked for two hours the other night like it was nothing.

amazingly, it's been over 10 years we've been friends now. sometimes i think tanya made sure we did out of pure stubborness, because i've always been slow at making friends and most of my friendships seemed to have a 2 year expiration date. she sure showed me ;)

and on her birthday, the only thing she asked for was pictures of my door. so i figured if i was gonna do it, i'd do it right. the door is made of thick boards, with old school hingeswith a lift latch (the inside door has the lock)the crossbeams have studded bolts in them, so they have this castle fortress look about them. unfortunately the stain at the bottom is bleaching out. but that's the door. like it tanya?the sky was beautiful when i was taking the door pictures, so i grabbed a shot for the hope of spring.

tanya almost always calls me out for not taking pics of myself. every time she asks, i'm struck dumb with astonishment, thinking, i swear i took a picture. . . . . . . .as i think back and realize, no, i didn't. i never remember to. she knows what i look like, i know what i look like, it's the same no matter where i am. but since she asked, here's a shot of me (and chuck) from a painful church activitywe're still not sure what the point was, but we were "royalty" for the night. complete with scary outfits and gilt crowns. and that blonde wig. they pulled our names out of a hat for the privelege. at least it was only an hour.

happy birthday tanya. enjoy the pictures :D

and the third fifth one fit just right

the snowflake headband, my quick stash busting project, is done. after about five tries. by the time i finally had the fit and (more or less) the look i wanted, i was starting to feel a bit like goldilocks. this one's too tight, this one rolls too much. and this one, and this one and this one.the first plain knit cast on border rolled something awful, the seed stitch border rolled (and looked weird with only 3 rows anyway), the picot edge didn't roll quite so bad, but halfway through it i tried it on. it went on ok, but you can see the stitches were stretched way more than is good for them (and the rolling, can you see the rolling?).the stranded knitting had a tighter gauge than my stockinette swatch. *sigh* so that version went away too, and since i was starting over anyway, i racked my brains to think of an edge that absolutely positively would not roll. the light clicked on late one night - duh! ribbing. i started over with one more pattern repeat and ribbing. which rolled almost worse than any of the others. so i went back to the picot, since it did the best job of them all. it still rolled a bit, but not as much as the other edges i tried. oddly enough, the heavily stranded snowflake bit in the middle never once tried to roll away from me. guess that extra layer kept it in line.

all in all, it turned out pretty wellblocking helped smooth the wavy picot a bunch, but i can the edges wouldn't need much encouragement to get their groove back. oh well. i still like it. there's a couple spots where i knitted a bit too tight, but overall i'm proud with the results for my first try. you can't say i didn't get enough practice in either, i think i could have knit 2 or 3 headbands for all the ripping back i did. the floats are fairly even, and the reverse imaging looks cool. although that blocking crease doesn't. i need to get one of those foam heads for blocking circular objects.

after my glamour photo shoot, i realized it may be a bit wide. my head looks a couple inches taller (and blockier).but i can live with that.

i used less than 1 skein of each of the colors, a little more of the lighter color. there might be enough left to make a narrower headband out of the smaller snowflake motifs.......

spring's here!!!!........isn't it?

that's what these fellers thought anyway we found 3 of them in our living room this weekend. all sorts of questions sprang to mind: where did they come from? do they eat yarn? did we miss these huge caterpillers eating our plants and turning into cocoons? where on earth did they come from? is there more of them?

luckily the internet came to the rescue on some of those questions. they're apparently called compton tortoiseshells and are true butterflies (ie they won't eat my wool. whew.). the adults hibernate in groups over the winter. three isn't a very large group, but whatever. that lovely +40F weather we had a couple weeks ago must have woken them up. . . . .and they hit the snooze button a few times.

someone at chuck's work said she's gotten them before too - apparently they like log houses for their winter beds. we've been calling them chuck's butterflies, because (like chuck) they don't know how to sleep late when it's good for them. how long they'll last i don't know, cuz we're a little short on butterfly food.

the only down side to having butterflies around is they are just as likely to be underfoot as fluttering around the lamps. and if you've got a butt-ugly 70s rug, well, it can get hard to spot them.can you find the butterfly? talk about camouflage.

i don't think we've stepped on them, though. *yet*

but if you're anxious for spring like those butterflies, go check out aksunflour's contest: when will the snow be gone from her (alaskan) yard? go get your guesses in quick quick cuz the contest ends tomorrow!

your voice sounds like hers, but your phone doesn't

the other day i was driving home when the phone rang with a number i didn't recognize. i thought maybe it was chuck on a different bank phone (why i don't know) so i picked it up. the voice on the other end wasn't quite chuck's, but then the combination of highway white noise, my music, and a little static might have been responsible for that. i mean, i don't want to say i don't know my own husband's voice, right? and the voice assumed i knew him, and even had a slight southern edge to it like chuck's does sometimes.

so i played along, looking for clues to verify if it was chuck or not. the voice was talking about a clinton-obama debate (and i'm thinking why would chuck call for that? he talks big about voting, but really he's just as politically apathetic as i am). but then he says he has to study for a test, and that was the clincher. so i asked who he meant to call, and after we figured out what he dialed wrong, he said

"your voice sounds like hers, but your phone doesn't"

you suppose it was the static or the tupac playing in the background that didn't sound like hers?