Spinalcat's Crafty Adventures

Lizard Ridge Progress , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . Friday I bought massive amounts of yarn at Purlescence, Yarn Dogs, and Knitting Arts. They all had fabulous sales even though I slept in and missed the biggest discounts. At Purlescence, I mostly got raw materials for holiday presents. I got some red Cascade Luna cotton for a doggy blanket, and some Euroflax for washcloths. I also stopped by Michaels for some dishcloth cotton. At Knitting Arts, I got a bag of baby yarn that was SERIOUSLY marked down (with a free pattern book that used to be $12)!! And at Yarn Dogs, I gave in and got yarn for projects I've been wanting to do for a long time. I got enough Silk Garden for a Lady Eleanor, Berocco Suede for Cochella, and 4 more skeins of Kureyon for my Lizard Ridge. I've already used up 1 of the 4. I also got my TOFUtsies in the mail from SWTC for some sample knitting I did! Yay yarn!!

Seagull , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . Over the holiday, we went to Monterey Bay. We didn't do the aquarium or whale watching, so I mostly took pictures of birds. In general I can't stand birds, but I make exceptions for seagulls and pelicans (also pigeons). Bryan and I will go back to see the aquarium and hopefully some whales. We also went to Woodside and drove around the redwoods in the mountains. That was nifty. I plan on going back during the day when the park is open. It was really cool to come down out of the mountains onto Saratoga Ave. at night.

I'm not going to go into the whole Nixon-apologist thing, but I used to think Ben Stein was smart. Then I find out that not only is he appearing in a pro-"intelligent design" movie, but he went on Bill O'Reilly to promote it. (Apparently I was also ignorant of Stein's pro-life activities.) Stein and O'Reilly whine about the persecution of creationists in academic science. Well, that's because creationism/id/whatever IS NOT SCIENCE!! I'm sure most universities would deny tenure to Holocaust deniers in their history departments. It all goes back to the fundamentals of rational inquiry. If you want to examine something "scientifically," you have to stay within the boundaries of what is testable. Outside those bounds, I suppose you can believe whatever you want, but don't expect to get it published in a scientific journal. I'm never going to get a paper published in Nature on the creation of life by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a

I discovered this on my husband's former officemate's LiveJournal, then my husband did it. So I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Age you will be at your next birthday Place you would like to visit Your favorite place Your favorite food Your favorite animal Your favorite object Your favorite color Town where you were born Town where you live now Name of a past pet Nickname or screen name Your first name Your middle name Your last name A bad habit of yours Your first job Your grandmother's name Your major in college

Thanksgiving Dinner , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . This was my first Thanksgiving to do all the cooking. The only recipe I'd used before was for the pumpkin ginger cheesecake (from last year's Gourmet). Turkey, gravy, and sweet potatoes came from this year's Cooking Light. Brussels sprouts from 101cookbooks.com, homemade cranberry sauce from veganyumyum.com, and misc. sides from allrecipes.com. Bryan requested his mom's corn casserole, but my FIL never got the recipe to me. I found one on allrecipes that turned out pretty much identical. I also managed to recreate my grandmother's Jello salad that I haven't eaten in years and years. I never knew the white layer was sour cream.

I knew I didn't make it into the top 12, but I didn't expect to know about honorable mentions yet. Then a friend from BobaKnit ( Teenuh )messaged me on Ravelry and told me she saw my Nautie in the honorable mention pool on Flickr. I haven't been reading the Knitty blog, so I didn't even know such a thing existed! Sure enough, here's the pool in Amy Singer's photostream. Sally's Knucks are in there too! Thanks to everyone for all the positive comments while I was waiting!

Cascade 220 Sweater , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . My first adult sweater! And it's totally custom-fit! It's bottom-up, knit in the round, somewhat following Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system for a circular yoke sweater from Knitting Without Tears. I'm adding waist shaping and bust short rows using math worksheets from Big Girl Knits, and I've also consulted the yoke sweater tips from Sweater Design In Plain English. The yoke patterns are my own designs, and you'll just have to wait to see them. :) I don't know if I'll publish the full instructions, since I'm not sure how many people are interested in making a sweater in my size, but I'll certainly do a post on custom fitting, and I'll publish the colorwork charts. Oh, yeah. Cascade 220, size 6 for ribbing, size 7 for body.

Azalea Doily , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . I'm working on another Kinzel pattern, but this one is much less of a commitment than the Rose of England. This is one of the Azalea doilies. The different sizes (centerpiece, place doily, plate doily, and glass doily) are created by working the outer chart different numbers of times. It's actually quite an easy pattern. I'm on the 3rd of 4 repeats of the outer chart and should be finished shortly, though I am a little overextended right now. :) I'm using Cebelia 30 on size 2 needles, same combination as the Rose of England.

T-Shirt Collection , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . I've been getting a lot of traffic from people interested in stenciling, so I'm sharing 8 t-shirts that I've made. All except the right-hand Darwin were made with contact paper stencils (that one used the Mod Podge "screenprinting" method found here ). I've also made a quadratic equation shirt for my math teacher MIL, a Badnarik campaign t-shirt that's gone missing ("Vote Libertarian And Win A Free Country"), and an adorable walrus sweatshirt with glued-on googly eyes for my brother. Visit the flickr page for more notes on the shirts pictured here.

This is kind of tardy, but I had a migraine for 2 days after Halloween. We went to Santa Cruz to see Tiger Army . On Halloween. I cannot overstate the awesomeness. I really think people should dress up this much for every psychobilly show. The show was totally packed and crazy. We realized this was our first time to see Tiger Army together. I saw them in Austin twice while Bryan was going to school in Pittsburgh, and he saw them once in Cleveland. I went as some kind of devil girl, and Bryan ended up as a zombie. They were doing zombification at his work Halloween party. It was a bit of a surprise when I saw the makeup. Otherwise his "costume" would have pretty much consisted of the skull bracelet I put on him. He went to work as "casual Bryan with a new mohawk." Likewise, my costume was just cape + horns + tail. I sewed the cape from a McCalls pattern and some sweet sheer shiny red spiderweb fabric from JoAnn. I'm very happy about getting my sewing moj