Dear Pretty Knitty Kitty City Readers,

Jennifer is on vacation until February 1st and so she will not be able to update, probably, unless she finds an internet cafe in the cloud forest. I am writing this for her because she had to spend every last moment cramming things into her pack. Until she returns, please think good thoughts about her with regard to this irritable poisonous snake that lives in trees and has really freaky eyebrows. And also all the other poisonous snakes. The knitters among you will be pleased to know that she took sock yarn and dpns with her in her backpack.

If she emails me I will let you know!

Yours truly,
Heather

yesterday was a horrible, horrible day for science at my lab bench. the very complicated, time-intensive experiment i was in the middle of doing pretty much exploded on me. took a crap right on my face. i had a little bit of a breakdown over it, and then went home and knit myslef a lovely scarf. the first thing i've made for myself so far. it matches the hat i made for my sister for christmas. i used size 50 needles so it was really fast. it is super long.



in this picture, lloyd was saying, "this is only one scarf? are you a crazy person that knits insanely long scarves and then makes her cat talk about them in his imaginary cat voice? you are a wacko."

but then i wrapped him up in it and he fell asleep. how cute.



i made another baby hat before christmas for bryan's boss' son Janis. i based it on the umbilical cord hat from Stitch n' Bitch and used debbie bliss casmerino aran. i would never have guessed that one year olds have such big heads. here he is on full cuteness power modeling it.



two very nice things that happened yesterday as well. my friend Wendy called me and told me how much she loves all the bath products that Heather and i made for christmas. she said it was the best present she has ever gotten. quite a compliment! she is very excited for us to get going with our business (just a preview, notice how wonderful the little buttons on the side are? they are animated and have lovely little bubbles that show up when you put the mouse over them and each one has different color bubbles. different colors! we are so fancy! and she found the most perfect font for us because it looks almost like the writing we did on the labels. what a good font detective! heather is a wonderful website design expert artist, just wonderful.) so she can order lots of things from us. it was a very nice phone call.

and then my housemate Brian came home from his Ireland vacation and brought me two kinds of chocolates, hot toddies which had whiskey and pepper in them (strange but yummy), and cadbury roses which have lots of different kinds of the yummiest chocolates ever. it made me forget about my crappy day of science failure. yay for chocolate.

with all of the preparations for our big trip to costa rica this saturday, my knitting productivity has plunged. i cast on for the marsupial bag from Stitch n' Bitch on Saturday night. we made a nice dinner at heather's house. she has pictures of things we ate here. here is bryan with heather's cat bruno. he is squishy. the yarn i'm using for the bag is right beside bryan on the couch. can't you just imagine the lovely bag it will make?

here is a picture of my eyeball. isn't it scary? bryan got his new macro lens last night and was testing it out.



and after all that testing out of the lens, there was a massive catnap on the bed. party of five, your catnap is ready . . .



keyser barely fits in the kitty bed. he makes a 100% filled cat pie.



and here is the finished kitty hat from Stitch n' Bitch for my niece. keyser was thrilled to try it on.

i went to michael's last night and spent the gift card my sister gave me for christmas. i got a set of 3 lined shallow wicker baskets, which i realize now the picture doesn't show very well. i also got 2 balls of paton cha-cha in siren, which i know is a silly novelty yarn, and not even a nice one at that, but i have a strange fascination with it. i think it's because it's curly. i also got two balls of allure in black, some darning needles, and a set of pom-pom makers. thanks so much for everything, Suzanne! i already put the pom-pom makers to work finishing the kitty hat. i'll take a picture of it tomorrow after i block it.



and heather bought me some lovely orange brown sheep nature spun to make socks out of. now i have to figure out how to make socks.

there are some angles of the two hats i made for my sister that have not yet been admired. and these are both really cute pictures so i wanted to put them up as well.

here is my sister with her boyfriend Pat, in the classic prom picture pose. they make a picture-perfect couple, no?



and this must be the cutest picture ever of my dad (wearing Suzanne's other hat), although it shows very clearly the error i made in the seaman's cap not continuing the ribbing past the fold. that's why there's more ribbing past the fold! oh well, at least i got this picture out of it.



a couple of other things i made while in phoenix for christmas - a fancy scarf for my grandma and a baby hat for Stefanie's baby Joey. the scarf is made of a ribbion-y yarn that i don't remember the name of and rowan kidsilk haze. i did garter stitch with dropstitch randomly distributed. i'm not sure if i did the dropstitch technically correctly, but it seemed to work, so i went with it.



i based the hat on the Stitch n' Bitch umbilical cord hat, but i used lamb's pride bulky and size 11 needles. i have yet to hear if it fits. hopefully i'll get a picture of it being worn soon so i can post that too.

here is the purse i made for my sister for christmas. i used lamb's pride bulky in rosado rose and garnet, and used some crystal palace merino frappe in places as well. i like how it turned out except i think the straps are too wide. 11 stitches were too many, methinks. that's about the only thing i remember, so i guess i'll never make another one the same. i should write things down so i don't forget what i made up. and heather suggested velcro, which worked perfectly. heather is wonderful!



and this is the little change purse i made for my second cousin Edel. i put a gift card for barnes and noble inside it instead of the money when i gave it to her (that's just for scale). i used some of the garnet lamb's pride and a black zipper that i rather crappily sewed in. my first thing with a zipper! yay!



now i've shown all of these things separately, but here is my sister looking like a bag lady on christmas morning trying them all out.

看辛西亚给我们为圣诞节的可爱的礼物。 我得到了俏丽和五颜六色的蜡烛, 石南属植物被得到的你好全部赌注组织, 并且韩得到了一个可爱的清楚的大猩猩 按摩器以靶垛孔。 相当陶瓷全部赌注想要是它的朋友。 谢谢, 辛西亚!

10 more days til we leave for Costa Rica. we went to the travel doctor today and got a prescription for antibiotics and a booster shot for hepatitis A. i was brave and got a lollipop after my shot. I finished the red scarf very early this morning when i got home from lab.



bryan is quite a multi-tasker - modeling and editing pictures at the same time. that's tim on the screen.

and here we are opening presents at bryan's parents' house the day after christmas:



the little chinese pixie that we work with started a blog in chinese - heather wrote a really funny post about it here. wo ai ni, han!

this is the scarf i am making for my mother-in-law. i wonder if she thinks that it is too long . . . (it is wrapped around my neck once)

i just received this very strange IM. i wonder what it means. notice the young chinese pixie in the corner. and people were trying to sabotage my blog with silly pictures so i will punish them by posting them anyway. i love my blog, i love my blog, bloggity blog blog blog love blog. mmwah mmwah blog. yes, we are all on crack at my work.

i'm finally sending this to Wendy, so i thought i'd post it here as well.

look, i glimpsed a rare sighting today in lab. this picture is an action shot because the flash didn't go off. i think i scared her.



i was able to lure the pixie closer with the promise of sugary treats, but then i could only find a digestive biscuit. she was enthralled nonetheless.

today i went into the city to imagiknit while bryan was climbing. wow. i found a bunch of different yarns i could imagine making lovely things with, and then i put them all back. i was so strong! i decided that my project list was too long to add to it yet. but then i went and found two colors of lamb's pride worsted to make the damn brioche hat from Weekend Knitting that i gave up on because it started mocking me on the 10th attempt. i'll have to try again soon.



but instead of ending this post on a negative note, here is a picture of my two lovely siblings modeling the hats i made them for christmas. what a cute brother and sister i have.

yesterday it rained all day. we still managed to have fun - heather and i went to ikea and i got some new lights. it was very dim in our living room, and i wanted to make it brighter for when i have people over to knit. i ended up getting some baskets for my stash and some candles as well. oh, ikea. we also tried to do some errands, like bringing our photo printer to be repaired and having my mom's old sewing machine looked at. the typewriter store for the printer was closed, and mahhster stitchy (said in a hoity-toity british accent) seems to be pretty messed up - mr. super-duper-sewing machine-geek said that the singer 700 series (from 1975) has a notorious problem with the timing belt, which would cost over $200 to fix. so i think i'll just buy a new one. poor mahhster stitchy. then, in our focused determindness to get to lab, we went into the salvation army thrift store, where i found a big cone of black cotton chenille yarn for $2.50. i have no idea what i'll do with it - heather suggested an army of halloween spiders. here is a picture of it with my new favorite lamp.



we then went to a very late lunch at our favorite thai place, then to work for an hour (it was new year's eve!), to trader joe's for dinner supplies, and home to clean for our new year's eve celebrations. heather made some nummy cheese puffs and some fancy baked sugary pear slices from the martha stewart magazine, along with some fruity champagne punch. we also made pizza. then james left for another party, heather went to go to sleep at 11, and bryan and i laid around in misery. party time.



doesn't he look like the most pathetic sweetie ever? he felt very nauseated all night, and today as well. he finally ate some toast tonight. i hope thai delight didn't give him food poisoning. and i'm getting a cold. i've been sucking on cold-eeze since last night, so hopefully that will stop the illness in in tracks. take that, cold!

having had all day to mope around and feel sick, i've had plenty of time to think about new year's resolutions. i've decided to only make two this year, since i usually make a million and then fail at them all and feel bad about myself. (of course i made a million that i'm not going to write down that i'll fail at and then feel bad about myself for, but it's a baby step.) the first is to be a better person, and the second is to exercise everyday, unless i'm sick. pretty convenient for me today, you might say. oh well. and the first one is sufficiently vague as to let me have a bit of room to declare it a success. here's to a great 2005!