Recent Posts

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Halloween


Halloween, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Happy Halloween!

Friday, October 29, 2004

okay


me, originally uploaded by lwu81.

I admit it. it's been one of those weeks. I'd like to wake up now and still be in kindergarden. I'll take a juice box with that thanks.

Mother Bear Project

Mother Bear Project

i'm thinking about knitting a bear for this charity.

Fleece scarf

I finished a new fleece scarf yesterday (I FINALLY pulled out my sewing machine... oh how i missed it!). It's a fleece boa scarf from a tut on craftgrrl.

I made it with cherry fleece and white fleece. It's a little crazy, but it's so uber cute! and soooooo soft! and sooooo warm! I'm going to make one for my neice/cousin (she's really my generation, but she's four so it's hard to think of her as a cousin... and she's not a first cousin... she's my grandma's sister's son's daughter... whatever that is)

here's what it looks like in all its crazy fun glory:


and modeled by the friendly stuffed otter:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FUSON!

FUSON'S GETTING OLDER!!!
HAPPY 23RD!

bloggin on fridays??!!


ashaProwl, originally uploaded by lwu81.

I don't normally blog on Fridays. But ervan's article showed me that cat blogging, at least the "in crowd" of cat bloggers, only post their cat photos on Fridays. I must have been so totally un-hip since fridays are the one day asha gets no picture of the day.

so here it is.

baa baa baa baa

Ack! Yarn Sale tomorrow!!!! But I have no cash.... what to do?

Sent to me from my local yarn shop, The Knitter's Studio in menlo park

"The Witching Hour
IT'S DOWNRIGHT GOULISH
Saturday October 30, 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm

We're having a sale (with a party of course!) that'll scare all the
goblins and ghosts away!

After you put your children to bed, come collect your goodies at The
Knitter's Studio. We will re-open on Saturday night from 9:00 till
11:00 to bring you all kinds of specials and goings on.

Tombstone discounts will save you 30% on a huge selection of popular
yarns. Yarns like Giocco, Rumba, Adriafil, Dazzlelash, Luna, Mission
Falls, India Cotton, GGH Celine, and Mulberry Silk. There's too many
to list them all! Whether you're a mummy or a goblin, the savings
this evening are to die for!

Then, as an ultimate ghostly act, we'll have a spooky draw basket at
the cash register that will save you an additional 10% to 75% off
your entire purchase - regularly priced yarns, accessories, jewelry,
and books from anywhere in the studio -- and even on the already
discounted yarns!! Yes, double savings!

NOW THAT'S SCARY! DON'T MISS OUT! "


I think I'll just go to tempt myself

Thursday, October 28, 2004

asha helps herself to my cereal milk err lactaid


ashaMilk, originally uploaded by lwu81.

blah today is one of those days.

i thought i could spend the entire day at home reading gre subject stuff, but i have to run to campus to turn in my time sheets.

i seem to have lost a little card that says my grandma's car is insured. it was supposed to go in the glove compartment, but it lost its way some where from my wallet.

FUSON'S BIRTHDAY IS TOMORROW!!!!

woosterfeed bit



from woosterfeed
brought to you here for your own amusement. oh yes, that is dog shit.

by Made You Think

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

posted in asam

"In the November issue of Cosmo, Sarah Michelle Gellar says:

'I already had a definite understanding of the [Japanese] language, because pretty much the only thing we eat is sushi...'

I love to eat sushi too, but I don't have any sort of understanding of the Japanese language from that."

speaking of Buffy87777777777777777u... uh blurp sorry, cat on keyboard.

yesterday on NPR they had a segment about Dracula and they played a clip from buffy:

"Buffy: Who are you?
Dracula: I apologize. I assumed you knew. I am Dracula.
Buffy: Get out!"


we should watch buffy halloween episodes, and angel, but we don't own the series.


I'll leave ya with another wonderful buffyism from the dracula episode:

"Xander: Where is he? Where's the creep that turned me into a spider eating man bitch?
Buffy: He's gone.
Xander: Damn it! You know what? I'm sick of this crap. I'm sick of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, it's over. I'm finished being everybody's butt monkey!
Buffy: Check. No more butt monkey."

michaels

michaels has many more yarns than joanns does, but it doesn't carry lion brand landscapes yet. boo. it carries lionbrand watercolors (another new yarn, not available at joanns), but i'll have to go back down south to joanns if i ever want to finish my hat

i don't think i'm meant to have a hand knitted hat... at least not by me.

moment of fear

yesterday when I was riding the Margueritte, there was a segment on the radio about how this one guy could simultaneously write with both his right and left hand in different languages. The announcer started talking about how difficult it was to write with both hands mirroring each other (ie, write your name normally with one hand, and the other hand would write your name as it would look in a mirror). As the bus driver started to take a turn around a fountain, she let go of the wheel and started trying to mirror write in the air with both hands while the bus started to go astray.

sheesh.

Asha and the sink


Asha runs to the bathroom whenever we walk in there now. She REALLY enjoys drinking and playing with the water from the faucet. We turn it on for her just because she has sooo much fun with it.

she has become horribly persistent about drinking my cereal milk in the morning. If I turn around for a second, her head will be dipped down to drink my milk. Even if I pick up the bowl, she tries to follow me to get it.

Ugh, I felt really gross yesterday. Started with a headache, and then a tummy ache followed. This morning there's it's pure malaise.

I did pick up on my hat knitting yesterday. It's going to fit. I need more yarn though. I don't remember seeing this one at Michaels although I know they carry the brand. And the Redwood City Joann's sucks big stinky dick, but going down to San Antonio for a ball of yarn seems excessive when I have work and studying to do.

Roswell has played a couple episodes out of order on SciFi which horribly irritates me.

My sink is scaring me... errr rather its dirty dishes content is the culprit.

I need to search for my absentee ballot, I think I got it in the mail already.

Barf, and I was going to move my GRE subject test to December, because UC berkeley will accept it if you take it then, but UCLA requires that you take it by november. Balls.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Random - U2's Bono has conversation with my uncle Terril

My uncle just sent me this conversation he recently had. I thought it was relatively random/interesting, and thus is here on my bloggity blog blog.

"Small news conference (10-12 reporters) ends. Bono gets off stool and steps forward. Dialog as recorded on my Apple iPod which was taping the conference.

Bono: (inaudible) your shoulder.
TYJono: (misunderstanding, holding up iPod) Yeah, I need a holster for it.
Bono: No, but do you have a shoulder injury (inaudible)?
TYJono: Umm, actually, I did last week. I'm just getting over it.
Bono: Cause I have ... I just pulled my shoulder out last weekend. I noticed you weren't able to turn back to (inaudible) your neck. Have you taken massage for it?
TYJono: Not really. My wife did a little bit.
Bono: I really, really recommend it. I had to go (inaudible) for three sessions. You can't take the pain. But if you don't you'll get -- your leg will go out, you know, because it all starts repairing, and I really ended up -- I just ignored it, and I really made a mistake
TYJono: Yeah, I should. I hurt my whole spine, but I'm better.
Bono. Yeah.

The End.

(I'm such a dip -- I didn't even thank him for asking)"

boop


ashaRestWindow, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Adam and Paulie came over last night to play some knights of catan. I lost to the MAX! er.. I was definitely trailing.

I did get a chance to continue knitting my 3rd attempt at a hat. Ack, I look back on my decision now to do increases at k9 and I get aggravated. I knitted quite a bit after that and only at the end of the night did i realize that it was gonna be humongoid on me.

so I frogged it until I got back to the k8 decrease row. Hopefully this will be small enough now. But I lost all that knitting! ack! grr. i have to stop going with non specific patterns (ie "continue increasing until it fits your head" since it's really hard to tell if it fits my head when it's on the needles.


Question on the roving from _procession in the spinningFiber community:

"what do you think you'll make with it? or will you give skeins of it away for the holidays?"

I will use the roving to practice getting better at even spinning. The skeins I make will probably go into some of my holiday knitting presents either fully or as accents (depending on the colors I end up dyeing it or not dyeing it) in the knitting.

I would give it away as gifties, but none of my friends knit. Minger used to knit started but gave up before I started knitting. I think there's perhaps one woman at work who knits like a fiend, that I can gift some skeins to now that I am thinking about it (but she yelled at me during the conference, and she seems to act like a second mom to me... do i really need another one? on the other hand, she's always super excited to show me her knitting and try to get me to go to her knitting group)

Monday, October 25, 2004

aha! I found a link describing coptic stitch!

Assembling and Binding Your Coptic Stitch Journal

yarn stuffs this weekend

Friday I received to packages out in the rain... err, they were down by our mailbox under the awning, so they weren't wet yet, but they could have been had i not gone down to check the laundry.

I received my helloknitty.com order of Cascade 220 (a 100% wool yarn, like $6 for 200 yds or something. I got 4 skeins of Aporto (a blueish color) and 1 skein of a burgundy-ish color that i can't remember the name of)

I will make the Kyoto sweater from knitty.com with it. looks like this but i'm going to make it longer with the blue as the base and burgundy as the accent. (top in picture)

I also bought a brightly colored skein of LionBrand's new yarn Landscapes that I've been reading about on the knitting community. (bottom left in photo) i've already cast on for my 3rd attempt at a hat.

I continued recycling yarn from an olive sweater (20% wool 80% acrylic ... super duper soft!!!!!) and I've currently unraveled 3 skeins (bottom right)

The other yarns are made by joanns. they're called willow, and i haven't decided to keep them yet. they were on sale, but i'm not sure i like the colorways that the yarns are in. this one is kinda pinkish (bottom middle)





I also bought two skeins of Paton's Pebble yarn in a blueish color with pink/mauve "pebbles." I made it into a quick scarf for either my grandmother or auntie su.





I also got 1.25 lbs of wool roving in the mail from ebay on Friday. It was only $10 ish plus shipping. I SOOOOO didn't realize how much a lb of wool would be! I put my keys in the pic for reference. I have almost another pound coming in the mail to me (i was ebay happy last week): 6.3 oz of merino wool and 8 oz of alpaca/shetland wool blend.

I've started to spin my massive amount of roving already. I'm already doing much better than my first batch :)






Cat Box Furniture-Mission Style With Access Door

Cat Box Furniture-Mission Style With Access Door

a very interesting idea for a litter box

i wonder how it is with cleaning?

i got my photoshop CS for mac this weekend

my daddy brought it to dim sum for me. It only cost me $40 +$5 shipping from a friend of the family who works at adobe.

yay!!!

asha discovers the fun of paper grocery bags


ashaBag, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Asha has discovered she likes hiding in paper grocery bags. She also really likes hanging out near the front window on our old entertainment center.

this weekend we made tasty tasty beef tendon noodle soup thanks to fu and fu's daddy's recipe. it cooked for 6 hours and it was so nummy!

I also had the fun of seeing my parents twice this weekend for my dad's reunion activities. I got to play photographer at his dorm reunion which was oh-so-fun.

blah must study for gre subject

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Tired


ashaPrinter, originally uploaded by lwu81.

So the GRE went well. I could have done better, but I need to concentrate on the subject test before I even think about the GRE again.

the test software froze in the beginning, which freaked/annoyed the piss out of me.

I had to go to work a bit afterwards, then I came home and crashed. I didn't sleep well the night before, because everytime I tried to go to sleep, a vocab word would pop into my head that i couldn't remember the definition of.

me: "what does mawkish mean again?"
sleepy ervy: "i don't know"
me: "argh....!"

so i had to look up the word because it was going to drive me crazy. Vituperate, paean...

I finished my nai nai's scarf after I woke up. I'm pretty pleased with it.

my purchase today

I went to Vincent de Paul today to reward my stressed out days, (although i have more coming up).





I had to cover up my face because i look like crap.

but man, what an odd purchase for me. I feel somewhat like a pimp wearing it. I don't know if I'm going to modify it at all (stencil on it or something). It's super soft and sooooooo bright red

more like this:


Do ya'll think I'm crazy for buying this? Do you think I should modify it?

It was only 8 bucks.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

my first spinning attempt

hehe, what was once this





I can't wait to get my hands on more fiber! This was a lot of fun!

This was my first attempt, and honestly, I spun it really really thick although its thin in someparts. But it was enough to at least try to get the hang of doing this. Next time I'll try to spin it thinner and more even, but I'm still super happy and excited :)

words I've learned

ineluctable - inescapable
dissipated - can be a pejorative reference to someone devoted to the pursuit of pleasure
saturnine- heavy, gloomy
mawkish - sickeningly sentimental

ok, and really do you think that haughty can really be an antonym of obsequious?

the yarn i've recycled thus far

I've created some pdf files with some recycled yarn tags if people think they'd be useful. For me, it helps organize my recycled yarn and I can keep track of the fiber content as well as what it came from and what I've dyed it with.

long tags (pdf form)- I use these to fold over my twisted skeins

short tags (pdf form) - I wrap these around or pin them to the balls I've made of recycled yarn

This is a pic of what the long tags look like in action:




All this yarn I grabbed from a Large 45%Wool 40%Acrylic 15%Alpaca white sweater. It's about worsted weight, and I've dyed it a variety of colors with Kool-Aid



I frogged most of this sweater last night. It's a handmade 100%Wool sweater with tons of cabling and interesting stitches. You can see the back panel of the sweater there still waiting to be unraveled.



partially unraveld GAP sweater, 40%Mohair, 50% Acrylic, 10%Wool


Some purple acrylic chenille with sparkly thread running through it. I've already used half of the yarn for a scarf, this is what's left.

asha Bed Swimming


ashaBedSwim, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Ah, I LOVE it when it pours rain! Although i hope i don't have to drive to the gre in rain this heavy tomorrow.

Monday, October 18, 2004

ah the bed frame


ashaBedFrame, originally uploaded by lwu81.

We finally FINALLY put together our bed frame and reorganized the bedroom a bit. Now there's this huge space under our bed that asha LOVES scampering around in at night (we found out last night when she got into a high energy mood!).

She also really likes batting at the curtains at the end of the bed, although she got sprayed for it once and was quite unhappy.

I've been studying for the damn GRE all weekend. Yesterday I drove down to the testing center in San Jose to practice since I hate getting lost when I'm stressed, and it will be crazy early in the morning when I'm driving on Wed.

I was quite happy we got a little rain this weekend. It smelled so nice!

a few new vocab words I've learned:
ingenue: a young girl
pancea: a cure-all
denouement: outcome
perquisite: the long form of perk (as in a perk that comes with the job)
panegyric: formal or elaborate praise in writing or oration
prolix: wordy
pithy: to the point

ALSO, I CAN FEEL NAUSEOUS!!!
some people may have no idea what I'm talking about. But there's been this argument that I cannot say "I feel nauseous" because it is incorrect, and I should really say, "I feel nauseated."

ahem.

well, Fu and I checked the OED last night. Oh my! lookie here... well well. So my usage IS in the OED. It is commonly accepted in the US and was also used in this form in the 17th century.

I'm almost done with the scarf I'm making for my Nai Nai. Mrs. M's scarf is going slowly because straight garter stitch is somewhat boring me. I really want to knit the Irish Hiking Scarf with some of the new yarn I scored and try out intarsia.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

yarn love

I stopped by St. Vincent de Paul today with ervy. OMG I was so glad I did!
There were some amazing yarns there today! I paid $35.50 for 40 skeins. Oh but it's lovely!


My TREASURE!!!



I found 8 skeins of 100% virgin wool fingering weight in a variegated burgandy



10 skeins of a light pretty acrylic yarn with silver sparkly veins running through it




10 skeins of Classic Elite Star yarn, 99% Cotton 1% Lycra in yellow/green, lime green, and blue (worth $5 bucks a piece online) (also shown is a bag of 100% wool in worsted weight, color blue, 2 balls. In the back are 3 skeins of acrylic worsted weight in cardinal red)



1 ball of khaki Cable yarn 50% cotton 50% modal



2 skeins of Plymouth Galway 100% virgin wool in Navy (priced normally at $6 each online)



AH, but the grand yarn prize of the day is definitely the 3 skeins of Classic Elite Yarns - Wings (55% alpaca, 23% silk, 22% wool- worth $10 a skein) and the 2 skeins of unmarked grey yarn (also feels like a soft wool blend probably also worth $10 each)




I also took some pics of the koolaid dyed wool yarn i did yesterday in strawberry, orange, and tropical punch (i've only wound the orange into a ball so far)




sigh. I love yarn

Thursday, October 14, 2004

knitting

Knitting Guru
You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting
and do it all the time. While finishing a piece
is the plan, you still love the process, and
can't imagine a day going by without giving
some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation
involves leaving ample space for the stash and
supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn
ends and you begin.


What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

sleepy


ashaCouch, originally uploaded by lwu81.

i'm so sleepy. asha kept waking me up last night. for some reason she was especially needy. She'd stick her face in my face. She'd lick my face. She'd kneed me. She even sat on my face.

she especially liked to stick her head in my hand and bump it until i scratched her cheeks or chin.


On the grad school front, I've narrowed my schools down to 8, which is a very good number. In fact, it's lucky.


I caved yesterday and I bought this:


huh? you ask? wtf is that?

blah, I'm trying to learn how to spin with a drop spindle (that's the wooden thing in the picture). The lump next to the spindle is dyed wool. I've been remarkably attracted to handspun yarns, and I would love to give spinning a go to support my growing yarn addiction.

if you want to see how GORGEOUS handspun yarn can be, check out this link. Gah! they're beautiful. but most handspun yarns prolly won't come out quite as nice as these ones from amazing spinning artists!

well, we'll see if i can spin at all. I tried something like this for a couple seconds at an indian reservation a LONG time ago, and i failed. i'm hoping with more time and practice, i can make some yarnage.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

asha finds the closet


ashaCloset, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Ervy and I have been trying to keep asha out of the closet FOREVER. We're really worried she'll walk in there, we won't notice, we'll close the door, and she'll be trapped.

Today she figured out how to get into the closet even when the door closes. She can bump her head against the sliding doors until there's enough space for her to squeeze in.

I caught her in there twice.

still, I'm worried that if I leave and she gets in there, she'll get trapped, so I'm leaving the door open for her.

This pic shows asha dissappointedly seeing that I found her in her closet hiding space.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

ooh a knitting bloggers cookbook!


ashaClose4, originally uploaded by lwu81.

I was reading my favorite knitting blog Wendy Knits! and there's a fun cookbook being put together by the author of the knitting blog my favorite things. So i sent in ervy and my carnitas fried rice recipe. It's a low key cookbook where she collects the recipes of all the knitting bloggers and prints out copies and mails it to everybody.

Mrs. M's scarf is coming along nicely. I've knitted a dragonfly to place on one end of the scarf. Mrs. M has a thing for dragonflies. This will also be the first scarf that has included some of my beads.

I made myself a few new knitting needles from hardstore dowels. see handmade needles for a quick tutorial. The wood is very soft (poplar), so I don't know that they're gonna be long term needles, but it's a cheap fun way to have more needles in the NOW! I capped the ends of mine with large glass beads, but I'm thinking of casting the ends and doing something fun and personalized. So far I've made needles size 8 (2 pair) and size 11 (2 pair). I have one more dowel that will make 2 pairs of I think size 13 or 15 needles.

Monday, October 11, 2004

shrinkle: I'm too hungover to do anything today, s: "I have discovered that it takes exactly 7 poo sessions to finish an issue of Us Weekly. Which is perfect because if you poo every day like I do, then by the time you are done with an issue, the next one should be waiting for you in the mailbox. But if you are like my friend [info]nganderwear, who poos TWICE a day, then you should also subscribe to a second magazine like People. "

LOL haha..

Emo girl


ashaClose3, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Blah haven't blogged since Thursday. Thursday late afternoon I was asked

"Are you an emo girl?"

oh please. ahem. The comment was apparently invited by my death cab for cutie shirt. I explained that while I do like dcfc, I am not an emo girl.

of course, then I worried that I might not seem like a legitimate fan. With dcfc's rise in popularity, perhaps this young hipsterish kid thought I was 'hopping on the bandwagon.' I only wished I had been wearing my older dcfc shirt from the first concert I had gone to of theirs. Ervy noted that I probably would have seemed even more legitimate had I worn my diy dcfc shirt.

Thursday night we went to see Tragically Hip at the Filmore. Nearly everyone there was Canadian. Those of us who weren't Canadian were brought to the concert by Canadians (ervy's nice boss man bought us tickets to try to bring us into the Canadian cult). Canadian pride was out in full force all night.

I started the scarf for Mrs. M's xmas gift. It's being knit from inside a ziploc bag in an attempt to keep asha fur away from it (Mrs. M is super duper allergic). Anyway, the YARN. It's made from this AWESOME yarn I got from elann.com




Ok. I originally saw this yarn like the week it showed up on their website. I was completely annoyed at the yarn being called Geisha, since I couldn't see any reason why it should be so. Were Geishas fuzzy and warm? I caved though (bad lori). I bought the yarn. I'm thinking of buying more. It's so reasonable in price, and I LOVE the way it feels. It's nice and light and fuzzy. Plus, the colors are AMAZING. I got it in Nile Blue (4 balls), Navy (2 balls), and Merlot (2 balls). I'm going to try a sweater with the nile blue balls eventually!

I tried for the second time to knit a hat without a pattern. I suck.

Asha was restless last night. I kept dreaming I had spiders crawling all over me, and then I'd wake up to find asha leaning into my face tickling me with her it whiskers.

Played knights of catan (expansion for settlers) with fu, adam, paulie, and ervy. Very very fun. I really like all the complexities added.

oops long post. bye! Happy Columbus day!

Thursday, October 07, 2004

asha and a Mac


ashaMac, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Last night Paulie, Minger, ervy, and I went to a comedy show at 50 Mason St in SF. It was a completely last minute decision to go (free tix offered on Craigslist). It turned out to be quite fun! Not all the comics were funny, but I did thoroughly enjoy myself. We also ate at a tasty Indian/Pahkistani place across the way called Punjab.

Poor asha was really bored all night without us though, and we had to kick her out of the room last night because she had too much energy. :(
Unfortunately, she'll be alone most of tonight too, since ervy and I are going to the Tragically Hip concert tonight in SF.

In other news, I finished my havest motion scarf during the comedy show. I need to put a fringe on it, but when I went to michael's today, I couldn't find any good yarn to match... that means i'll have to stop by knitting studio sometime and blow some cash.. grr...

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Asha and my first FO that isn't a scarf!


ashaHandWarmer, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Okay it's not super exciting. It's a fingerless mitten from the book Weekend Knitting (the one where the woman on the cover is wearing a bunch of yarn around her neck, weird huh?). And I've only knit up one fingerless mitten thus far, so my left hand is currently cold at the moment.

I made it to match the long fringey scarf I made last week:



you can also see my Kool Aid dyed scarf next to asha, but here's a close up:



just a simple 2x2 ribbing, but like i've said previously, i really like how the colors are knitting up patternwise.

speaking of orange sweaters

I would LOVE to make this one:

on elann.com

They have the yarn for it, but I can't decide if I'd do it in this orange, or the plain orange, or even another color all together! Plus, I just don't know if I can commit to a sweater yet.

yarn Basket


yarnBasket, originally uploaded by lwu81.

Here's my new yarn basket from St. Vincent (yay 1 dollar baskets). It doesn't fit all my yarn, but it still makes me happy!

I've been working on a scarf from the yarn I bought from elann.com. It's the most interesting yarn I've worked with yet. It's called a "thick thin" yarn, and I've seen this type of yarn referred to in the knitting community. I put them on size 13 needles and am doing a plain k1, p1 scarf. The thick thin does make for an interesting texture. I think I want to get some orange yarn for the fringe (or some fun beaded fringe). hmm.. or make/buy a bright orange sweater.