What to do, what to do...

Just wanted to post some things I made. They were surprises for my folks so I had to wait until they got them to post this. Here they are:
That's a little button drawing I made for my dad to take to work. It's my first "artist trading card".
"SMILE! It's Halloween!" Halloween card for ma. I like making these a lot, even though it takes forever to cut all those little peices.

On an unrelated note, I'm trying to figure out what direction to take my future/career in. Here are my ideas:
-Start my own yarn/fiber shop like the Fold in Marengo. (Buy a farm with some land, get sheep and alpacas, run the store out of my house. Spend all day knitting and kibitzing with the customers.)
- Return to school to be a dietician (specializing in whole foods wellness/weight loss/veganism). Looked for jobs related to that, didn't have much luck. Possible waste of money?
- Return to school to be an art teacher. Pros: Summers off and somewhat creative environment. Con: Purple hair not an option.
- Try to get a job as a freelance children's book illustrator. No experience or ideas on how that actually works.
- Write a graphic novel about my adventures as a cynical retail clerk. Probably going to do that one anyway.
- Write trashy romance novels. Pro: easiest genre to get published in. Con: I would have to tell people I write romance novels for a living.
- Get a real job. Pros: money. Cons: eternal misery/sold soul for money.

Ideas, comments, donations welcome.

Newness!

Halloween is almost here! The weather was so warm for so long that I waited to decorate and then it got really cold and felt more like winter. It's like we skipped right over Fall altogether. So I don't feel that Halloweenie this year.

But I did get my Halloween Swap package in the mail today! Super exciting! Check out all the goodies.


Did I mention it snowed again?


"It's not normally like this." It's a good thing Howie and I got some stay-at-home essentials like this awesome chair from Goodwill for $7. It's actually a nice poopy green, but looks brown in all the pictures. It's also the cats' new favorite scratching post.

And we bought a Wii! And Wii Fit! Woo! It's super fun. We rented Super Mario Galaxy, Ghostbusters and Animal Crossing:City Folk from Blockbuster and that's all we've been doing for a week. Here is Howie going for a nice island jog.

Here is me in Animalia. And here is my knitting project that I work on when Howie is playing. It's Knit Picks' Andean Chullo. That's the bottom half of some alpacas.

And I gave Howie a haircut and he made some yummy vegan stew, served with the bread I made earlier. Now it's time to settle in for some knitting and Super Mario!

Happy Birthday Howie! Goodbye Metrodome!

This is a little late, but here it is none-the-less. October 12th was Howie's birthday. The big Three-Oh. Since we moved up here we talked about going to see a Twins game at the Metrodome. They built a new stadium so this was our last chance to see them play there. We never really got our act together and missed the last game. But we got a second chance when the Twins went into the post-season. So I got tickets for Howie's birthday to see the Twins play the Yankees. It ended up being the Twins last game ever at the Metrodome.

Howie got stuck sitting next to Yankee fans (BOO!) so I couldn't help asking this kid to stop so I could take his picture as he walked by:


The Twins lost pretty horribly, but it was a fun night anyway. We did the wave, ate cracker jack and there was even a crazy fan who ran out onto the field. He actually made it to the fence on the other side, but he couldn't get over before the guards got there.

Oh yeah, and did I mention it SNOWED on Howie's birthday? Everyone assures me it "isn't normally like this" up here. I've been hearing an awful lot of that.

I can knit again!!

I can finally knit again! I read some stuff online about omega-3, so I've been taking my flax seed oil and eating lots of ginger and my tennis elbow is all better! Yay! Here is what I made today. It's half of the Brea Bag by Norah Gaughan. I have one of her books and her patterns are seriously amazing. Maybe in a day or two I'll have a finished bag to post. I was too excited to wait on this one. I'm going to go get started on the other half. Yay knitting!! Just in time for the long trip to Minneapolis tomorrow for the Twins playoff game.

Timm's Hill and Chequamegon

Yesterday Howie and I went on a mini-roadtrip to Timm's Hill, the highest natural point in Wisconsin, and Chequamegon National Forest. The colors are starting to change, even though it feels more like winter than Fall. I saw ice hanging from the bottoms of cars this morning.


We drove along a narrow path to get to the tower at the highest point.

Then there was a pretty big hill and we had to climb this...

And then we were at the top. Yay! So pretty! Pictures don't really do it justice.



We were going to carve our initials up there, but besides having no knife, there wasn't a whole lot of space that wasn't already taken.


Somehow I feel like that last one used to say something else...

Then we went through Chequamegon National Forest. There wasn't much to it that we could see. There were camp grounds but not too much in the way of scenery. We did stop at this little lake. Apparently they have man-made osprey nests but we didn't go on the trail since it was starting to get late.


Then we headed home. Fun day!

Chair Barf and Mustard

I haven't been able to knit in a week. I think it's tennis elbow. Everything hurts it. I got a strap that's supposed to help, but it doesn't really. Yesterday I had to go to the yarn shop to get some yarn for a yarn swap I'm doing. Some mustard-colored yarn lured me into buying it, knowing perfectly well I wouldn't be able to make anything right away and it would just be sitting there taunting me. It's torture.


So instead of knitting, I've been reading books on knitting and working on some designs, which can't go very far without being able to knit swatches for them. Grrr.

To try to take my mind of knitting completely, I decided to finally recover my kitchen chairs. Every time you'd sit on them it would barf out some stuffing. It was definitely time. Blaaarrrggg...


I bought the fabric forever ago on *clearance!* Yay! I even ripped one of the chairs apart about a year ago and had the new padding all cut and sitting on top of the board. We don't get many visitors (maybe because our chairs barf on them?) so it was easy to just leave them like that. But enough was enough! I'm self-taught with a sewing machine and I didn't feel like pinning lots of stuff so I did it my way, but I think it came out pretty decent. I still don't understand how people can sew something straight to something curved and have it not come out a little bumpy, but whatever. Here it is, in it's slightly bumpy glory:


And it's mustard yellow! Hurray!

I also made these earrings while watching tv last night. I can only watch so much tv without some sort of project... usually knitting. Grrr.

Happy Owl-oween!

Everyone is getting handmade cards this year. I made this one today...

Fall is here!

Today is a yucky, rainy day and it's COLD! And since it's Thursday, I met up with Natalie at the coffeehouse for some knitting. She was on her laptop working on her roller derby team she's starting, but I got some serious knitting done. We were there for four hours. I knit almost the whole foot of my sock and finished the pair. Yay! I'm so ready to start something else. This pattern was pretty boring and there were lots of purls, which hurt my fingers.


I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, although I should have done an afterthought heel or something. I don't like the harsh line that was formed from doing the heel flap and I totally knew it was going to do that going in. Oh well. They're still super bright and happy!

So I'm going to do some sewing today or decorate for HALLOWEEN or maybe work in my "studio". It's a stay-at-home kinda day. I should probably finish this painting I started last year. I've been working on it and there isn't too much left. I'm hoping to sell it when I'm done. If anyone will have it.

Last time I was working on it, I left the door open while I rinsed out a jar and when I went back in my cat (May-May, of course) was up on the table. I freaked out when she jumped down thinking she'd have paint on her paws and would track it all over the apartment. I picked her up to check her paws and didn't see anything and then she turns her face to me and it's covered in orange paint. She'd licked it and then licked her face and it was just all over. I was freaking out, trying to wash it off, which wasn't working because it's oil paint. Meanwhile I'm yelling at Howie to call the vet, thinking she's going to start foaming at the mouth or something. She didn't eat much, just a little lick, and they told me to watch her for two days and to wash the paint off with Dawn soap. They use it on ducklings from oil spills so I guess it's ok. She hated me for a while after that, I can tell ya.

And on a totally unrelated note, I was looking in my fridge for a lemon and I checked the "dairy" bin, which we never use, and I found a little surprise:


That's where the garlic went. So I planted it and it's grown like 5 inches in a week. Crazy stuff. I guess I'm going to get a whole bulb for each little sproutling I planted. Yay!