Hey Hijinksters, it's been a while since my last post. I've been a busy, busy girl lately. You see, I met my quarter century mark this past Sunday. Naturally, there was no way to get everyone I love together for one celebration, so it stretched out like an ancient roman festival to one week. This involved three cakes, some cocktails, a floral arrangement, nouvelle cuisine, and a small roman candle. Fireworks and the indoors don't mix. The smell was atrocious!
I've also been packing up my gear for a gig in the great state of Pennsylvania. Or is PA a commonwealth? I've done a lot of laundry. I finally got around to doing all of my handwashing, which was back-breaking work. Using the bathtub for this process seemed like a good idea at the start, but forced me to practically stand on my head to agitate the garments. I washed all of my handmade socks, a felted purse and wallet, two shells, and a cardigan. As I worked the sweater in lazy circles in the dye-seeped bath, I had an irrational urge to make another sweater like it. That sweater did not meet my expectations when I first made it, but now that it's properly blocked, I think that I will love it.
The past week has also featured feverish creation of minidiscs. They're far less desirable to thieves and much more compact. And my minidisc player is more power-(therefore cost-) efficient than my discman. This decision required me to attempt to predict my musical yearnings for the next month or so. I think that I've made about a dozen new discs, ranging from Glenn Gould to Sahara Hotnights. I also had a fairly respectable collection squirreled away, which I sorted into piles like Scrooge counting his coins. Fortunately, my cousin Chris gave me a MD organizer for xmas a couple years ago. His brother is giving me his ipod when he trades up, so this last gasp at embracing the minidisc is funny and a little sad. I think that I'll keep my MD around, for when I don't want the "steal-me" allure of the ipod or when I want to make field recordings, messages for Willie B., make show discs, etc., but our relationship will be forever altered by the ipod. I used my MD player today as I did some shopping in the Loop. I finally found a pair of short-line cans to replace mine, so that I can use the remote again. It's really handy. And who doesn't want to listen to Swedish garage rock while shopping for a St. Christopher medal?
In other news, I finally managed to sync my tablet pc to a desktop. It required me to haul it up to the north side to connect to Lewis's eMachine, but it finally works as I'd hoped! I installed a pared-down version of AOL to it, so that I can still get my email while I'm on the road. Huzzah! I am so excited/relieved by this development that I can barely put the feelings into words.
Now, all I have to do is clean out my car...

I watched the Oscars tonight. It was a terribly predictable evening. As always, the technical categories, such as sound editing, makeup, editing, et al, were poorly judged. Those "minor" awards almost always go to the big popular favorite because people cannot differentiate between a great movie they enjoyed and one with good editing, sound design, scoring, etc. It's really too bad, because many truly talented artists go unrecognized due to the academy's penchant for movies with loud explosions, hideously expensive special effects, and a big gross. I was happy that Digidesign got a Technical Achievement award for the development of its ProTools sound editing system. The importance of that program cannot be overstated. I love it, and naturally, I can't afford it.
The whole evening was pretty dull. The only interesting speech given was by Blake Edwards. Of course, since it was a lifetime achievement award, he had time to prepare. I added a few things to my list of films that I'd like to see, kept a scorecard, and knitted furiously. My picks were not as astute as they've been in the past, largely because I made sentimental choices instead of politic ones. I wanted Bill Murray to win best actor, and Keisha Castle-Hughes to win best actress, though I can think of many reasons that they didn't. I was surprised that Canada won the Foreign Language category, even though American audiences find French language films more accessible than, say, Japanese. There were several films nominated that were featured at the film festival I worked in the fall. Made me wish that I'd gone to more films then.
I've resolved not to buy any sock yarn until my stash is greatly diminished. I have enough sock yarn for a month of Sundays at present. Socks are an easier project to which to commit, I guess, and a smaller financial outlay than, say, a sweater. Still, do I want to work in small gauge forever? I don't even wear socks most of the time!
I finished the beautiful pastel socks in Schaefer yarn, a very luxurious blend of fibers but very fine. Eleven stitches to the inch fine. So when I started working on a pair of socks for my grandfather's upcoming birthday at seven stitches to the inch, it felt luxuriously large gauged. It's all relative. The birthday socks came as a bit of a revelation. I'm making them from Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, with which I have never worked. What a pleasant surprise! I knew that their yarns were beautiful, but they also have a magnificent hand. Supersock feels a lot like Koigu sock yarn, which is an expensive, rare beast in this area. I even have another skein of Supersock in my stash!
I'm working on my raglan colorblock sweater in fits and starts. I don't want to make it with a v neck after all, so I have to chart out a crewneck instead. Knitting is just one big story problem, minus trains in different cities leaving stations.... It isn't terribly difficult to make the necessary alterations, just tedious. Since I cannot start on the sleeves until I've finished the body, I'm stalled on this project.

What if the internet were a physical place that you went to?
That was the main theme of a sketch that I saw on an episode of Chapelle Show. He posited that it would be a horrible, intolerable place. The sketch featured a mall-like environment. I imagine the physical manifestation of the internet to be Times Square circa 1975. It's full of smut, cheap shit to buy that you don't really need, people trying to rip you off, pickup artists, and thieves. The internet doesn't have neon signs though....