Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles

Blocking

2008-07-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

I started a new project a while ago...a book!

No, not a knitting book. I'm doing a set of alphabet wood block prints for kids, which will be available in my Super Fabulous Etsy store (which doesn't exist yet, because I don't have anything to sell there yet, but soon...). Anyhow. Back when I was a little little kid, one of my aunts made an alphabet book for my brothers and I. It was a collage book, with letters and pictures cut out of magazines and I thought it was so cool. A couple of weeks ago I was messing around with a lino block and ended up with my first letter on accident; thus a project is born.

I'll be doing a book of the full alphabet, but the individual stamps look good too...I'm thinking of doing some kids' clothes and maybe tote bags.

This was a proof print- I know the text needs more work to be legible...but I couldn't wait to see how it would look on fabric. I love the funky rustic look of the blocks, and the style reminds me of wooden alphabet blocks.

Simplicity and the house of lyssa

2008-07-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

I used to be pretty bad with money. Not so bad as some people I've known, who were buried under a mountain of debt before they knew what hit them...but not so good either. I don't really like money. Sure, having it is nice, but I don't really like thinking about it, counting it, keeping track of all the bits of paper associated with it, all that stuff. When I got my first real job, I had really big amounts of money to play with for the first time ever...and play I did. I bought lots of stuff, spent a lot of money on entertainment and fun. I didn't really know where all my money was going for that first year, and frankly, I didn't really care. I gave myself that year to feel free and not think about money for the first time in my life.

One of the first things I did after getting a job was to destroy the physical copies of my credit cards. They were just causing trouble. I keep the accounts open so that I can build my credit score and in case I need one for travelling or other Grown-Up stuff, but now my card balances are zero and I like it that way.

After my year of play money, I got more responsible. I started spending less and dumping some money every month into a savings account, where I basically didn't ever look at it again. Forgot it was there, actually...so it was a pleasant surprise to sit down today to get my accounts in order, and find out that I had a credit balance of a few hundred bucks on one card, and more in the savings than I had thought. Whee! Counting money is a lot more fun when the numbers come up positive.

All this is part of a bit of overall life-simplifying. I'm driving less and walking more, cooking more and eating out less, and getting rid of stuff that isn't all that important to me. Yesterday I hauled six bags of stuff and a giant box of books to the thrift store and it felt so good.

What am I saving up for? Well, I have this:

which I would like to combine with this:

This will be my Arizona getaway house, a little sanctuary where I can stay when visiting family, store precious books in lovely low-humidity archives, and build equity and all that other grownup stuff. I can't wait to get started.

Wednesday

2008-07-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

Class last night was awesome, but I have a ton of mosquito bites now, even with repellant on. I manage to forget about them for a while, but as soon as you scratch one they all start itching again.

I walked to the grocery store and bought lots of vegetables, then came home and cooked this:

It was an emergency: I needed something to work on over the weekend, but I'd gotten myself stuck in Glendale with no time to go home to get a project...so I bought some squeaky acrylic baby yarn and a hook, and started on a little blanket. I'm willing to crochet with yarns I can't stand to knit with, so it worked out just fine.

Not bad for a weekend's work :) I need to add a few more border rows before I call it done. I'm sure somebody I know will manage to get themselves knocked up soon.

Now, a bit more work, some cleanup on the house, and an art modelling session tonight. I'm going to be art, baby!

Too much stuff

2008-07-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

I brought home a few more boxes from my Northern California storage unit last weekend, and got them unpacked last night. It's funny- when we first moved, we gave away/tossed tons of stuff, and this was what I wanted to save. Now that I've been away from it for a couple of years, I found myself stacking up half of this stuff for the thrift store pile or garbage. Oh well. Most of this batch was yarn, books, and art supplies. I'm trying to get all my art supplies gathered up so I'll stop buying duplicate things, especially since I'm trying to ramp up my work.

This is my favorite plant right now, and I'll be very sad when it outgrows its Cup O' Noodle pot.

Hey, it's all about the recycling here in my ghetto garden. I'm also prone to using ratty old newspapers as mulch and water the plants with water that drips from the AC unit on top of the building.

The squash plants are blooming like crazy, but so far I haven't gotten any veggies from them because I'll forget to water them for a while and all the blooms dry up and die. One of these days, though...

Pole beans are awesome and make you feel like you really grew something. I planted some more of these today, so hopefully I'll get another wave of them soon.

I took another photo of the tomatoes, but realized it looks exactly like the last few photos of the tomatoes. Not the most exciting plant in the world, but the tomatoes are tasty. So far the cherry tomatoes have been much better than whatever other tomato I planted (big girl or early boy or something like that). I started a new beefsteak tomato a couple of weeks ago, so we'll see how that one does.

Slow Art

2008-07-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

This is the most ridiculously awesome thing:

Art. On live snails. Sort of a catch and release art form.

For more: Inner City Snail.

by bird, book or candle

2008-06-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

I think I'll have a economic stimulus check waiting for me when I get home. Right now I'm thinking about stimulating the economy of my favorite tattoo shop.

My cats do this thing, where they lie on the bathroom floor in front of their timed food dispenser and reach one paw way up into the works of the thing and poke at it. Sasha was the first to figure out that by doing this, she could get the machine to drop one piece of kibble at a time, and now both of the other cats have learned it from her. This practice is referred to in our household with the delicate euphemism "fisting the robot". Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm on the last day of my Northern California trip, and on the last day of any trip I suddenly start to miss my home and my cats like crazy and wonder how they are, if they miss me, and what they're doing RIGHT NOW (the answer to at least one of those questions is generally fisting the robot. At least one cat is usually doing this at any given time).

Yes, I know that if I really wanted to, I could fix the robot so that this wouldn't work, either by making the chute longer or adding a grill to the front or something...but much like people who will binge if they can't snack, Artemis is much happier and eats less if she knows she can get one piece of kibble (a kib?) whenever she wants. Plus, that robot-fisting is quite the workout, like pilates for the modern feline. Yes, it will be good to be home again.

Grandma is awesome, as usual. I went to her monthly tea party on Saturday, where I re-encountered a lot of old family friends and met some new ones. I'd guess there were about forty people there, which she said was a smallish turnout. I believe it- Teddy throws a good party. I just found out, by googling my own grandmother, that she is the coauthor of a library science textbook. How awesome is that? I already have a copy of my grandfather's statistics text...now I'm thinking I should do some library reading too.

Last but not least, I bought a new sketchbook yesterday, and spent a few minutes last night smelling the paper (a heavy brown Kraft paper - it smells like fall in elementary school) but haven't drawn in it yet, though I did make a note in it of a paper I want to read that was recommended by Whit Diffie. I met him at a coffeehouse in Palo Alto this morning, and talked with him and Ingy for a while about cool wiki projects. I also met some cool arty people who got me even more excited about plunging back into creative madness.

Now...to work a bit more, go catch a plane, and daydream about drawing lots of little cartoon birds in my heavy brown-paper sketchbook.

The world according to lyssa

2008-06-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

This week, I'm in Northern California for fun! I hear that my grandmother is having an afternoon tea on Saturday (very exciting). It should be cool; Grandma's friends are eclectic and interesting bunch of people.

I am feeling a little homesick for all my projects. Right before I left I really got back into the Boozemaidens project, did a bunch of sewing, and started a lot of other projects. Spice sweater, take 3, among them...but then I didn't bring anything with me. Instead, I'm reading The World According to Garp and hanging out with friends. Garp is kind of a dork; I'm hoping he will redeem himself soon. The book in general is good, though.

* This photo is actually from a prior trip north, but it's pretty much business as usual at the Mothership- bourbon and laptops.

Project Roundup

2008-06-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

I started work on my halloween costume. Here's a teaser:

What, you don't start on your costumes in June? Silly people!

I also may have gone to Michael Levine and may have bought a giant skein of Cherry Tree Hill Oceania at 40% off.

That's just one possibility, though.

I have the front of the Spice sweater mostly done, but I think it is going to get ripped again, since it looks like it will be too small if I continue with the current plan.

This yarn clearly needs to decide what it wants to be when it grows up. I'm getting impatient with it.

a book meme

2008-06-18T20:16:00.001-07:00

Roxie tagged me for this one, so here goes...

Pick up the nearest book.
Open on page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people,
and acknowledge who tagged you.

The nearest book was a tie, with Knitting on the Edge and Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica equally nearby (hey, a friend of mine has a chapter in it. Gotta support your writer friends).

Row 1 (RS) K1, yo, p5, p3tog, *p5, yo, k1, yo, p5, p3tog; rep from *, end p5, yo, k1.
Row 2 and all WS rows Purl.
Row 3 to 12 Rep rows 1 and 2 five more times.

I gazed at him over the top of my glasses. I was busy reading Dear Abby. James knows better than to interrupt me during Dear Abby.

Yeah. Guess which one came from which book.

Hmmm...I'll tag Fickleknitter, Carrie, Roberta (who needs to blog more anyway), and you, you anonymous lurker, you.

Outside

2008-06-17T17:39:00.001-07:00

Being out in the garden in the sunshine feels really good right now.

The beans I had forgotten completely are climbing high.

The tomatoes are gamely hanging in there in spite of their meager water rations.

One last lonely cilantro plant, gone to seed. I'm hoping to catch some of those seeds for a second go-round.

This is where I sit and drink iced tea or sometimes beer at the end of the day.

Still here

2008-06-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

Still sort of reeling from news of the unexpected death of a dear friend, received Thursday night. I try to be all spiritual and philosophical about death, but I can't. It fucking sucks.

We miss you, Greg. Good luck in your travels.

Farmer's Market Day

2008-06-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

I rode my bike to the farmers' market downtown today, and I didn't die! Go me!

Really, though...I need to get the gearing fixed, since only 3rd seems to be working and it's acting more like first, making for a tough ride. I did get some compliments on the bike though, so at least it looks good.

I ripped out my knitting and started it over again, a la Inverness. I'm making mine a henley instead of a cardigan, though, since I just can't leave well enough alone. Coincidentally, one of the places I'm most likely to wear my sweaters is Inverness, CA, where my grandmother has a house.

Since Roxie asked, this is what my haircut looks like now: the back is grown out a bit, but is still really short. I like it like this. It keeps the mess of curls from getting overwhelming.

stars

2008-06-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

We were walking down in Hollywood a few nights ago, and decided that they need to add a new type of star for actors-turned-governors. It would be the only star that Gene Autry didn't have.

I did some cleaning up in my studio the other day, getting rid of tiny scraps of fabric and about 40 yards of red tulle from an abandoned costume project that had been piled in a corner. That tulle had been overdue for purging, but it is damned funny to come into your studio and find your cats sleeping in a giant fluff of red tulle...so I left it there for a while. I've been stashbusting, though...cleaning out all the yarn and fabric that I don't love. While I was doing that, I found a bolt of cotton kimono fabric from a prior Tokyo trip, so I made a yukata during my lunch hour. Pictures of that later. I still have a bit of cleanup to do, but it feels good to get the studio neatened up and reduce the amount of junk I'm hoarding.

I knitted most of a skein of Cascade 220 into the body of a lacy seamless sweater, but I think it is doomed to ripping. I'm just not feeling the love...so this wool (whose color and feel I do love) should become something else. Maybe an EZ seamless saddle-shouldered sweater. Maybe later when it isn't so hot.

Uppity fish

2008-06-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

They're trying to tell me something...

2008-06-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night in which all of my fish jumped out of the fishtank, one after another, to protest my poor housekeeping of the fish tank.

Guess what I'll be doing later today.

random thursday

2008-06-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

...because what's so random about a special day for randomness?

Henna update: I've probably dyed my hair with this green paste about ten times now, and it is working great. Super red, super shiny, and really soft. The extra trouble seems to be worth it. It doesn't fade out as fast or get brassy the way the commercial dyes did either...but I did switch to using really posh shampoo and conditioner at about the same time, so it's a little hard to separate those effects.

I have no idea how my hair got so straight in that photo. Today it's back to being fluffy and curly. Why it never did that when I was a totally self-conscious, curly-hair despising junior high student, I just don't know. Now I want it to curl more.

I did my first real pull up today. I can do about three chin ups, but pull ups are a lot harder for me.

After a bit of a hiatus, I've been knitting again...I made a new hat, because of course it being june in Los Angeles, I was suddenly struck by the need for a new wool hat...and similarly, started a new sweater with some stash Cascade 220. I'm making this one up as I go along. No photos yet because I only have an inch done and it doesn't look like anything, but maybe more soon.

I also had my first cherry tomatoes for breakfast a couple of days ago. Now it's tough decision time: If I don't water the tomato plants, the ones currently on the vine are going to taste awesome (dry-farmed tomatoes have a much more intense flavor) but the plants will probably die eventually. If I water them, I'll probably get a second bloom and more tomatoes later, but they won't taste as good.

Filled

2008-06-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

I found this on my desk this morning. I think it's a love letter from the husband.

Yesterday I did the grown-up thing and went to the dentist. Ouch. Eight fillings. Only two were really needed right now according to the dentist, but I was like, hell if I'm coming back again if I don't have to...get it over with! So now I'm all caught up and my teeth are shiny clean, and I just have a lingering headache and sore mouth from the novocain shots. Why is it that dentists have to use the creepiest looking giant needle on the planet to do that? I swear, the syringe she used was more than a foot long. Is that really necessary, other than for giving small children nightmares?

Now that I have that out of the way (I tend to procrastinate on that kind of thing for ages), things are just ducky. I woke up at 5:30 this morning, had some coffee and some knitting, and go the laundry in before work. This evening I'm planning a little bit of running and some ninja class. Life is good.

Shoes #6

2008-06-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

Two paintings in one weekend? Check.

Shoes #5

2008-05-31T15:31:00.001-07:00

The artist at work...

I went into the art lab today for a serious painting session. For a while, these shoes were giving me grief and I had to smack them around some...but we eventually came to an understanding.

One more Shoes painting, then it will be time for something different. Hats, maybe?

Aah, sleep

2008-05-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

I finally slept something like a whole night last night, after a few days of 4am wakeups and weird afternoon naps. I'm feeling pretty damned good this morning.

I'm looking forward to a nice weekend. Hope yours are great too!

zzzzzzzzzzz

2008-05-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

I got back to the city of angels at 8:30 last night, and was back at work at 8:30 this morning. I could use a really thorough massage, a long soak in a hot spring, and a nice cold white wine. Instead, I'm going to drink some more coffee and go out dancing tonight, because I won't be able to sleep anyway, and hot springs seem to be in short supply around here.

It is good to be home, but part of me can't help wishing I was still on vacation.

Favorite things today: ManyBooks- free unlimited downloads of ebooks in the format of your choice. Lots of classics and old pulp science fiction. Totally awesome. Also, watch this: Hitler Plans Burning Man. Just because.

Oreo

2008-05-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

I don't think Oreo is really a cat.

Maybe a robot, an alien, or the reincarnation of some funny little man.

Maybe a cousin of the little poverty god.

Yeah. Definitely not a cat.

In the ROC

2008-05-23T03:48:00.001-07:00

I finished War and Peace! Man, that was a piece of work. It took me a couple hundred pages to get into it, then It became really fascinating, then it dragged on forever. As the book goes on, chapters that contain nothing but the author pontificating and philosophizing on the nature of war, the nature of military, the nature of military historians, the nature of imperial power (and so on and so on) become more and more frequent. The last couple hundred pages were the worst...but I slogged through it hoping that it would get better. Nope. Now I'm working my way through all the Kipling I have on the eBook, starting with Plain Tales from the Hills and Captains Courageous. I think tonight I'll start reading Kim.

Taiwan is really beautiful...but you'll have to take my word for it, since I seem to have left my camera cable in Tokyo. Hopefully I can pick up a new one tomorrow, and will be able to sort through all the photos I've taken so far.

It is warm and steamy here, with occasional bursts of really heavy rain. I'm exploring Taipei and Hsinchu between cloudbursts. Yesterday, I was on the 89th floor of Taipei 101, watching a thunderstorm roll in across the city. The day before, a strange trip up to a resort town in the mountains where people go to soak in the hot springs. Today, I learned to ride a scooter on back roads around Hsinchu. Everything out of the city looks like the jungle is just waiting to swallow it up again, like if you turned your back on it for a few minutes your scooter would be covered with vines. It started to rain while I was riding, but it was warm and I didn't care. By the time I got back home, the rain had stopped and the wind had dried me off.

I'm resting up a bit now between adventures, watching a weird soap opera show. Time to go shuffle the laundry.

Don't feed the monkeys...

2008-05-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

...no matter how hungry or worried they look.

I've never actually seen a monkey here, though. There is a little monkey park at Takaosan where I guess all the little old monkeys are hanging out, but I haven't been inside.

Other native wildlife:

This is the first one of these I've seen, and he did not at all want to be photographed. I had to chase him around for a few minutes. Damned paparazzi. Not sure if this guy is a stag or jewel beetle. He might be a stag beetle in drag. I'm still on the lookout for his
rhinoceros cousin.

Of course, there is always the ubiquitous common gnome.

I'm told these were originally brought over from Germany to combat the cockroaches, but now they're just another invasive species hanging around the noodle shops.

Takaosan

2008-05-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

Last time I climbed Mt. Takao, it was a cold, snowy January day, and if I hadn't been following some hardcore obachans (one got the feeling that they climbed Takao every morning, weather be damned), I wouldn't even have been able to figure out where the trail was.

Here's the #1 trail map:

The trail is about 5km, and very steep. The first time I saw that trail map (with snow everywhere and more coming down), I just about cried, it looked so intimidating...but the little old ladies were merrily hiking up, so I couldn't wimp out.

This time, the sun came out for a perfect day to go hiking, and the mountain was full of people, including lots of school groups on field trips, all laughing, shouting, picnicking, and running around. The teachers kept them moving, shouting "Gambare!" (do your best) whenever the kids started to lag.

The view from halfway up:

Too hazy to see Mount Fuji this time, but still a nice lookout spot.

Yakouin Temple is the big one, but there are lots of little shrines as well. I'm particularly partial to Inari and her kitsune messengers.

Inari and me go way back. Maybe I should make her some red bibs next time.

I hiked back down the mountain on a different trail, a much narrower muddy back way that wasn't visible at all on the snow day. Yesterday was rainy, so all the little creeks and waterfalls were running high.

I got back to to the apartment six hours after I left, sweaty, muddy, and tired. A shower and a good cup of coffee later, and I'm ready to go run with the geeks again.