Bullet: DODGED.

As in, I was sweating bullets when that October Surprise aka SNOWMAGEDDEN passed through here this weekend because I was *sure* the power would go out, given how many damaged trees there are now from that pesky Irene. It flickered enough to keep us in a state of anxiety about it but crisis averted! WHEW. This should be the last one we sweat through too because the electrician is finally coming this week to wire up a generator all 'proper like' so we will, at the very least, be able to keep the fridge and water running for future outages, which is all I really need to keep me happy. Unspoiled food and toilet privileges and I can live like a king  queen. :)

It's good too because I had SO MUCH work to do this weekend if I hadn't been able to get to it a total nervous breakdown would have imminent. Exhibit A:

Beads made this weekend. As in, the last two days. 

TWO. DAYS. 

(There are at least 400 beads there, believe it or not. *I* believe it because I've lived it but you? You might have some doubt.) 

My left hand is BUSTED like woah now though. Sorry sorry state it's in. I was cleaning and stringing them for over an hour and had to walk away because my left hand isn't working any more. (So I went on to...........photo taking and TYPING UP a blog post...........because *THAT* will surely help things. *eye roll*) I'm hoping two Advil get it 'back' enough in the next hour or two because I have to start digging into another stack of orders this afternoon. I'm down with the whole 'making hay while the sun is shining' thing re: working a lot a lot a lot.............. until my left hand stops actually working because the muscles on the top of my hand are busted from twirling mandrels for umpteen million hours. (Unlike over-knitting, which targets my right hand, I can't be going WHOOPSIE and dropping 1000 degree hot-like-FIYAHHHH things in my lap when working because of numbness. Doesn't work.....not without some serious burning of shit.......or skin.) So we'll see how this week goes. Worst case scenario I'm calling a time out, closing up shop, and taking a week or two off. I could use a break so it won't be the worst thing ever. :)

Anyhoo, I'm now going to show you some things that totally doesn't jib with the hand issues of above but 1) the mitten knitting all took place the weekend before and 2) 97% of the sock knitting took place earlier last week i.e. I've done nothing at all this weekend, knitting-wise. So trust me - I'm not compounding the issue the last few days like a fool. :)

So yeah. I finished the second of the big giant Man Mittens started in September in preparation for last week's Stitches East:

Yay! One pair of unfinished mittens done, one more to tackle.

And mad love was given to a an ever-hopeful thought of finishing up some October socks. (Pattern: Monkey!)

Outlook now: dark and cloudy given my numb hand. But I managed to get 3/4ers of the way through two-at-a-time socks so I made good progress before the shut down.

Also making me sad:

OH NOES!!

My favorite pair of socks, with both heels found to be held together by nothing more than magic dust and a prayer. The stitches seem to be, quite literally, held together by nothing more than a whisper. It's like watching a slo-mo train wreck. You know it's going to blow out and turn into a raveling mess at some point real soon but it's going to taunt me in the meantime until it happens.

I feel certain a new heel could be put on by picking up the stitches where the heel turns but I'm not sure I have the stomach for such fiddliness at the moment. I have to contemplate things for awhile and come up with a plan of attack. The rest of the socks are in such good shape, tossing them, at this point is just NOT an option. 0_o

Edit to add: Ravelry says I finished those socks in Feb. 2009. So nearly three years of wearing them once a week for 5 months a year (they really are my favs).........yeah, I can see why the heels are blown out. Plus, note to self: STOP 'SKATING' AROUND ON THE WOOD FLOORS ALL THE TIME LIKE A BIG IDIOT.)

How is everybody's week going?

No complaints here. (Other than the unrelenting heat that rolled on in about two days ago. Ugh. It seems like that in the last few years around here there are exactly 3.5 days of 'optimal' weather where you could sit on the deck without dying of heat/humidity between Memorial Day-Labor Day. Why do I have deck furniture again? It's lonely about 98% of the time! lol)

Good things for the week:

*The next (and final) book in the Millennium series was released in the US.

Been waiting for this!!!! I haven't dug into it yet because I know when I do it will throw me into an 8-hour echo chamber where all food/drink/chores/conversation will be IGNORED until I get to the last page. (I'm thinking tomorrow might a good day to settle in with it.)

*I don't have cancer. So that's really good. (Had a weird mole-thing that suddenly popped up on my chin over the last few months removed a few weeks ago and had to wait for the test results to come back on it to be sure it wasn't cancer. I guess it's a 50/50 deal with that type of fast-growing growth but I ended up on the right side of that '50'.) Though the whole episode is probably a precursor of things to come as I get older so I'll have to stay vigilant about getting bumps checked on....no biggie there. I can live with that. Who knew about sun disease in the 70's when I was growing up? I remember having one peeling sunburn after another as a kid and nobody thought anything about it. It just was what it was. Oh well. Not much you can do about it now, right? I haven't had a tan in at least the last 18 years so hopefully this is the last of the scary skin issues. *crosses fingers*

*Awesome LOST finale. I just noticed the other day that Netflix has seasons 1-5 available for "instant play" so I think I'm going to spend the summer rewatching the series while nothing else is on tv anyway. I can get Netflix instant play streamed to my TiVo in high-def which is OMFG@!@#$@# awesome and it will be interesting to go back and watch everything knowing all the stuff you know NOW about the Island's goings on.

What else good is going on??

One last LOST headache/hangover before we say goodbye....

But don't worry - I'm not looking to spoil any one about it. I'm going to put enough space here so that nothing shows up in the RSS feed blurb and put my comments in white. So you have no one to blame but yourself if you get spoiled here. lol
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Highlight if you want to see the text. :)

I loved the finale. I'm not saying it was perfect or what I was expecting but I loved it nonetheless.

The show from the beginning was all about 'The Man of Science' vs. 'The Man of Faith' and that's exactly how it ended which, to me, is fitting. Team Faith won in the end so there are a lot of Team Science members out there pouting today. (Which is ok. If it had been reversed, the other half would be the ones pouting this morning.) All of the science fiction stuff was cool/interesting to me over the years but I never got tripped up on it so I don't care that we don't know *exactly* what the Island is. The Island always was there and always WILL be there, forever and ever, doing it's thing, with an ever-changing guardian to look over it, with new people being drawn to it for all time, etc. And let's be honest - it's probably BETTER that they didn't try to explain that. They tried to explain the Jacob/MiB origin and it was cheesy as hell. Leave the Island mythos open to interpretation vs. some cheesy explanation, I say. Every single thing that HAS been explained has been pretty much dissed by the fans so it was NEVER going to live up to expectations in that regard. The mythos they created was greater than they could ever explain in a satisfying way.

I think people are mostly ticked because a lot of characters didn't get their happy ending in 'real' life. Sawyer had to live out the rest of his life without Juliet. Kate had to live the rest of her life without Jack. Sun/Jin never got to raise their daughter. Sayid never found peace off the Island. Locke really was killed by Ben way back when. That is sad but that's life. Kudos to the producers for not trying to go back and whitewash all the Island tragedy in 'real' time. Yes the whole sideways thing was a long goodbye to give us our happy ending in the final moments in a tricky way but that's okay with me. It's not how I would have ended it perhaps but it was still beautiful and it still ended up being a proper goodbye to all of the characters I loved. Anyone who loved Six Feet Under knows that Everybody Dies in The End................and that isn't a bad thing. It's about the people you love and the connections you make along the way that matter. These were not immortal people like some crazy ass vampire shit. They were human beings and they lived their lives until they died (whenever/wherever that was). Why is that such a surprise? lol

Notes:

*I like to think that Hurley reconnected with Rose/Bernard on the Island because he needed a few more friends to keep him company. (I assume he let Desmond leave the Island to sail Locke's boat back to Penny. OMG HE HAD BETTER.)

*I wasn't disappointed that there was no Walt. I wasn't even looking for him, to be honest. To me his story arc ended when we realized he was living with his grandmother, going to school, and doing his thing. He was BARELY on the show in the bigger scope of things in comparison to the other Losties. It makes sense to me he wasn't in the church because the Island, to him, was just one small part of his life. He could have had a whole long life with many other meaningful things in it (a spouse, kids, etc.). He didn't need the Losties to move on.

*I assume Sawyer worked his con man connections to get Richard a birth certificate/social security number? lol That could be a whole show unto itself! Richard reconnecting with the modern world 200 years after he left it. GOOD TIMES, PEOPLE. :)

Gah!

It's LOST Sunday!!!! :(
I'm excited but...................I also have this leeeetle voice in my head saying the same thing over and over and over again...........going: please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck.

Chances of beloved cult tv show ending in a satisfying fan-loved way? Very small, I'm afraid. *points to X-Files, Seinfeld, Deadwood, The Sopranos, Twin Peaks, Pushing Daisies, Carnivale, Invasion.....OMG THE LIST IS ENDLESS* (I'm especially looking at YOU X-Files!!! Pffftttt. Biggest downer ever.)

Thankfully, the bar is set so low I'll be happy if it just 'feels' good versus 'makes any sense' or 'actually ties everything up'. Watched the original Pilot episode last night, have last week's eppy ready in the TiVo for another viewing tonight pre-finale............I think I'm ready. *scared*

Please don't suck. :(

I should have some new beads up tomorrow.

Or maybe on Monday. *snort* But definitely one of those days because I have a bunch done up and they are just sitting here waiting to be 'released' into the wild. :) I need to get back to regular postings of things. Or at least try, right?

I started/finished up my first shawl this week. I didn't plan for this yarn (Noro Sock) to be a shawl but I bought it online and was pretty hateful towards it when it came in. It's way, way, waaaaaay too scratchy for socks. There is just no way anyone would want this anywhere near their feet. Ever. It's horrible as sock yarn. HORRIBLE. But, as always with Noro, the colors blends are just beautiful. So I did a little digging on Ravelry for other projects people had used it for and came up with this simple Feather and Fan shawl:

It's kind of on the 'mini' side as far as shawls go but that's fine because I don't know that my wardrobe of non-stop jeans/t-shirts really screams "NEEDS A SHAWL". I'm more of a scarf person. So I'm thinking of this more as an 'ample' scarf. A scarf with a little junk in the trunk, if you will. Course it's still horrible feeling so I'm not sure I even want it near my neck either..............but that's neither here nor there, I guess. lol Thank god I'm a process knitter so I don't get TOO hung up on finished results that aren't 'perfect'. You can't expect something too big out of one skein of sock yarn, you know? I was lucky in that I timed my repeats *jussssssssst* right because this how much yarn I had left over:

Pretty nifty, yes?

LOST was too spoiler-y too even mention anything about it so I'll just say I felt like this at the end of this week's episode and leave it at that:

Have a great weekend, y'all!! :)

Finish and some awesome LOST linkage (if you *like* LOST, that is)

I'm back on my BB stocking project. We smooched and made up and now it's helloooooooo, lovaaaa! (I will will will WILL finish the whole year's worth of these.) This one is for May. So two for May down, one more to go. This one was a bit of a buzz kill to do, to be honest. I started off with a 'dirty' linen and it was wrong, wrong, wrong for these colors so I had to start it over and then I had the worst time trying to keep track of the gold/cream pattern of the.........bag? sack? posset? thing that holds flowers? That thing. I ended up having to mark the pattern up with colored markers and use long magnets to keep my place. I usually find reading patterns pretty easy but this one had me whipped for some reason. There was majoring ripping out, and ripping out, and ripping out some more to get it right. :( I am choosing to view this as the pattern's fault vs. thinking I am just getting too old and too foggy to keep things straight anymore. MOVING ON..................

Now on to LOST..........
Someone posted some awesome cartoony LOST figures over here this week. #$!@#$!@#$!@ OMG DESMOND.

AND BEN'S BIG FAT EVIL HEAD? Mwahahahahaaa! Too funny!!! This week's episode was kind MEH, especially compared to last week's Flocke drive-thru (heh). It did have one good EPIC scene for me though.

Jack flying through the air like a dog toy? NEVER GETS OLD. NEVER EVER.

This will primarily be a LOST post...

But first I should note that the web site is currently down while the host does a server update. It should be back up shortly. *fingers crossed*

So onward to LOST.............


This week's episode was just so much !@#$!@#$!@#$@ for me. I just *heart* Desmond the most of everyone on the show. His pathos is so uncomplicated in a lot of ways in comparison to the Oceanic peeps. His destiny is to be with Penny and that's pretty much it. No complicated daddy issues, or criminal issues, or does he love her or her or HER issues (a la Jack/Kate/Sawyer). He's not a douche (*cough* Jack). He doesn't make me angry with his constant *I'm oh so constipated* face (*ahem* looking at you Kate). His story is very simple at it's core and I love him, my bruthaaaaaaaa, for it.

I may have screamed just a little during the "not Penny's boat" scene. Just a little OMFG MY MIND IS GOING TO EXPLODE scream. Can't wait for the beta-verse to keep bleeding into the alpha-verse. It's just crazy fun. Go Desmond, go.

Happy Easter!

Or almost Easter as it were as there is still one day left to go.  We're all godless heathens (aka lapsed Catholics) in this house so there are no big plans for the day other than cleaning the basement (still drying) and acting pokey. I think I had wanted to cook a ham (because I'm never going to NOT want to cook a ham) but I forgot to pull it out of the freezer to defrost so that's out. Oh well. I'll be happy the whole thing is over if only for the fact that I've eaten MY OWN WEIGHT IN PEANUT BUTTER EGGS this month. *burp* Those things are pure evil and I have NO willpower when it comes to eating them in moderation. NONE. Zero. ZILCH.

Okay, here's my LOST posting for this week.....

It was funny because 3/4's of the way into this episode, I turned to the man and said that it was a good season except for one little fact: NOT ENOUGH DESMOND. And who shows up at the end of eppy? My BRUTHAAAAAAAAA. *squeeeeeeeeee*

Don't mess with this one. *skeered*

TGIF.............

I don't want to talk about how we got even MORE rain the last couple days so.........moving on............

Okay. So if the wine is the evil and the cork is the island.................what does that make the bottle? HMMmmmmm. I guess it doesn't matter because MiB/FLocke/Esau/Ole Smokey be smashing that shit soon anyway. lol

 SEVEN EPPIES LEFT TO GO!!! :)

  
(Side note: if I had a dollar for every 'I'M ON A HORSE' comment I've seen on ONTD lost postings in regards to this episode this week, I would be a very rich person. And you know what? I laugh every single time I see one. Every.single.time. I freaking LOVE that commercial. IT NEVER GETS OLD.)

Someone remind me again that I'm on a yarn diet..........*cough* supposedly........

Enh. What can I say? It was Fate. Wollmeise is harder to come by than gold chunks (SO NOT KIDDING) and I just *happened* to look at my Facebooks *exactly* two seconds after Sheri at The Loopy Ewe announced she had posted some so I went "oh" and got some. People camp out at their computers for daysssssssssssss (STILL NOT KIDDING) hitting refresh every 5 seconds for Wollmeise. People try for months and months to score the Wollmeise and still come away empty-handed.*** I feel pretty punchy that I had no clue 'bout nuttin' and haven't tried in at least a year to get some and managed to snag three skeins. <-- That would be a whole lot of me justifying the purchase(albeit in a truthful manner) because, once again, the VERY LAST THING I need in this world is more yarn. The sad part is, if this happened again just like this next month, I would fall prey to it AGAIN. I'm never not going to buy the Wollmeise if given the chance. Just saying.

***If this seems strange, empty, and sad to you, I don't blame you. It is rather odd. But such is the power of Wollmeise. Skeins sometimes go for $100+ on eBay for them. Forum fights are fought over it. Certain areas of Ravelry are, right now, completely under water for all the drooling going on over Wollmeise stash pictures. It just is what it is. As long as Wollmeise basically equals one brave german soul doing her best to provide for the masses who love her stuff, it will be this way.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 I am part Irish and have to admit I'm doing.............bupkis for the holiday. (Who says you can't use a little Yiddish when describing your Irish activities?) I'm so over the boiled dinner thing but I do loves me some corned beef. Sadly, I did not remember how much I love corned beef until it was too late to plop one in the slow cooker for today (still suffering from DST EPIC FAIL fever) so I'll plop it in tonight before I go to bed. Then I will make some serious ass-kicking corned beef hash tomorrow...............for brunch. (See: DST EPIC FAIL fever. Not_adjusting_well_to_change.)

I suppose I should do a LOST post since it's Post-Lost Wednesday but it was a little blah last night. All's I got is Sayid being all YAWN, DON'T CARE while Crazy Claire does her crazy thing.

Let's hope Flash Forward has some good razzle dazzle on Thursday for me instead!

Oh shoot, I forgot to do another EPIC Lost post on Wednesday, using appropriately awesome macros. :( I've resigned myself to the fact that every Tuesday night, from now until the end of May, I will be going to bed with a LOST-sized headache/brain scramble. Anyhoo, if I HAD DONE a macro post it would have contained this:

RUN BEN RUNNNNNNN! I heart you so much, you dark and twisty soul. lol

 Who buys more spices than I do? NO ONE, NO ONE! 

LOOK AT ALL THAT. *drool*

God, I love buying spices. Well, I love using them too - I'm not just HOARDING them or anything. I've been out of this, that, and the other since Xmas so I did a huge order last week and it came on Friday. OH HAPPY JOY! I've been without thyme for, like, two MONTHS. The horror! Do you know how indispensable thyme is?  ALMOST AS MUCH AS TIME. I thought I would be smart this time and, instead of ordering everything in 1oz glass bottles, I would order some 4oz bags instead so I could get a few refills out of each one. Why not, right? The bags are usually less than a dollar more and I don't NEED fresh bottles every time. Well, to that I say: heeeeeeeee heeeeeeeeeeeeee hooooooooooooo hooooooooooooo haaaaaa haa haha! Turns out that 4oz of basil (bag) is, like, A LOT. A lot-a lot. I saw those big bags of basil and thyme and started looking over my shoulder for FBI agents because it was like I was dealing weed or something. THEM BAGS ARE BIG. Now I just have to cook like a mad fiend to use it all up!

LOST OH NOES

 

Man, when Ben looks at you like you are bat shit crazy - you are REALLY bat shit crazy! Sayid killing Yoko and Lennon was like !@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$

Creepy Flocke walk? @Q#$!@#$!@#$!@#$!@#.