Insubordiknit

Raffle's on, yo

click on the waffle to be magically transported to the raffle page.

So, about the raffle

If you read this blog with any regularity, or irregularity as may reflect my updates, then you're aware that every three months I hold a waffle raffle (and I call it that in protest of their non-rhyming, in fact, I like to rhyme them when I say it, I even switch up which one gets the honor of being rhymed, yeah, 'cause I'm all about sticking it to the american language, one mispronounced word at a time). The raffle, historically, or you know, for the last half a year, has been for a free spot in my art yarn club where the winner (and also the 14 other people that buy a spot for 100 smackaroos) gets one hank of art yarn each month for 3 months.

However, as great as the art yarn club has worked out, I just don't have the time to do it this season. I'm swamped. I've got eyeballs coming out of my wazoo, which is not pretty, I've got several thousand dollar yarn shop orders coming up before the holidays, plus all the customs, and I can't continue neglecting my own little insubordiknit yarn shop. So, those are my excuses. I just can't do it this season.

However (#2, if you're keeping track) I will still hold the raffle. I like the raffle and from the feedback I've gotten, you like it too. I haven't given any yarn away this month and I really do like to give yarn to people that couldn't otherwise get it (such as myself, if I wasn't the spinner).

However (#3) the raffle is going to be a bit different this time. It's not going to stretch over 3 months like the club, it's going to be a one time package of 3 yarns. Three Vitreous Humor yarns, in fact. Yes, I'm raffling off three Vitreous Humor yarns! It's crazy popular and I know there are people out there that want it but can't shell out the cash.

Next week I'm heading to my folks with the kids, I'll set up the raffle up before I go and send out numbers when I return on Halloween. The drawing will be Sunday the 4th of November.

It's so pretty I want to puke

I'm sitting here, in my studio, in front of the biggest, shiniest, fastest computer I've ever seen. And also, I want to puke.

I had to do it. What else was I going to do? My shop is it, it's our whole support system, it pays all the bills, I couldn't not get a new computer. Right? We took mine in, right up to the mall with the sterile mac store with all their hipster clerks in their super cool clothes and fancy gadgets and portable register-thing-a-ma-jigs, and I swear they snickered when I came in with my powerbook held together by electrical tape and human will. Snickered behind their manicured hands with their cool leather throng bracelets. High gloss bastards. My dead computer, the one that was so fancy and pretty only 5 years ago? They informed us, in a tone that spoke at once of their sympathy for me, and of their glee for me that I'd finally be able to experience state-of-the-art now that my old vintage piece of crap wouldn't be cluttering up my (14.99 IKEA desk). Oh, yes, it's vintage, officially classified. That's what they said, those computers are classified as vintage and we don't work on them any more.

And so what could I do? Nothing. I had to buy a new one. I wanted a laptop but a work-usable one was at least $1500 and that was one with a screen the size of pipsqueak, the really good laptops were 3k or more. So I got a desktop. As good as the high-end laptops for the low-end desktop price. It wiped out all my cushion-money. I walked out of the black and white store wanting to vomit, just not all over my brand new i-mac with it's 20" screen, I didn't want to vomit on that, over to the side of that, or maybe in the other room so that I wouldn't have to look at it or smell it while I'm sitting in front of the coolest computer ever!

Yes, I love my computer. I went from having a 30G hard drive to having a 250G hard drive. 250! Plus, it's got that fancy camera that lets me take funny pictures of myself while I'm typing. Plus, you know, it's new. A new computer always feels like such a fresh start. Like you get to start anew. You can make all those promises to yourself and it that you won't clutter it up, you'll keep it organized, you won't save stuff to random folders, you won't let your desktop get so covered in jpgs and docs that you can't see your cool randominzing-desktop picture (which is a bunch of funny pictures of the family taken by the computers internal camera). Yes, a new computer is better than a new haircut, or a new bookshelf, or a new boyfriend.

It may even inspire some more regular updating, but not this week, this week I've got over 20 eyeball yarns to finish.

Computer woes

Update from the planet of broken computers, yes, after months of death rattles, it seems to have finally succumbed and gone to the big laptop junkyarn in the sky.

The biggest issue I face right now is gaining access to my e-mail (which resides on my computer) so that i can ship all the yarn that's ready to go out -- the names/addresses/orders are in my e-mail folders. So, if you're waiting for something from me, I'm so sorry, please be patient, I'll try to get this sorted out tomorrow or the next day and get your yarn to you as soon as computerly possible. bah.

Let me tell you, if computers do ever rise up and attempt a hostile takeover (which I fully expect to happen in my lifetime), with all the curses I've hurled at mine for the last 2.5 days, they're gonna take me down right after Steve Jobs and bill gates. blarmy.

Skidder Man

A few weeks ago LB was invited to yet another birthday party. And it finally dawned on me, all those billboards and graph charts loudly proclaiming that a baby is gonna break you, coming in a 70K a year or whatever, are taking into account all the birthday party presents for other kids one has to buy (because otherwise what could it be? snack and soda? I don't know...). Still we don't fit onto their stinkin' charts, because even when the invite makes no mention of us being gift enough so no present is required, we make our presents (finger puppets, wooded puzzles, dressup hats). Anyway, this post isn't so much about the gifts -- which turned out to be a hero activity book made entirely by LB -- but about the costumes.

Yes, apparently there was gift expectation and costume expectation, those billboard/graph chart-figuring-people must have known about this eventuality, because I sure didn't.

The kids were supposed to come dressed as their favorite hero. My boy, with no prompting from me to think out of the (store-bought) box decided to be SKIDDER MAN, sometimes shortened without warning or explanation to SKID MAN, I know, right? Skidder man?

He spend some time planning his costume, drawing it, coloring it. I braced myself for the inevitable conversation of Hey baby, papa's out of town this week and he's the one that knows how to work that fancy sewing machine, wouldn't you rather just be hobo-man? You could wear trash! But that conversation never had to happen, Skidder Man, at least from the pictures, looked like a lazy mother's dream costume, it consisted of orange shorts, red shoes, a cape, goggles, and 2 little red circles on his illustrated Skidder man's chest.

Me: Honey, what are those 2 red circles on Skidder Man's chest?

LB: Those are Skidder Man's nipples

Me: Wait, Skidder Man isn't wearing a shirt? You have to wear a shirt. You can't go to a kid's birthday party, at their house, wearing goggles, a cape, and no shirt. This isn't babylon baby.

LB: Skidder Man wears no shirt. Skidder Man proudly displays his nipples!

Yes, he said that! Skidder Man wears no shirt. Skidder Man proudly displays his nipples!

In the end we used an A-shirt that was a bit too small (thus promoting the Queer as Folk reference above) with Skid Man's emblem on the front, an SK and then, because I didn't center the emblem so well, a little skid mark on the side to balance it all out, you know, aesthetically.

I never could really get a feel for what Skidder Man's powers were, aside from nipple pride. It's been bugging me ever since...

Kid videos

My computer's on the blinkity blink so this update is going to be shortity short. My poor mom hasn't had her baby/kid fix for weeks so here's a new video --

Plus, if you go here , you can watch 6 new sweetpea/little bit videos, all with witty names like sweet pea crawls and sweetpea crawls while wearing cute skirt.

real quick, for record keeping sake:
Sweetpea crawled 2 weeks ago and the next day she pulled up and hasn't stopped.
Last Sunday she cut a tooth, then another.
Little Bit got his Yellow sash in Kung Fu 2 weeks ago -- he rocks!
Little Bit got the part of Rumplestiltskin in his theater class play!