i put lucky ducky up at etsy.com, which is kind of like ebay, but without the bidding, and only for handmade goods. she’s already been viewed three times! i’m kind of excited about this. one of my biggest problems with allknitup is exposure. i’m hoping this is a way to get more people to the site, or just sell more things. etsy only charges 3.5% of the sale price, and a $ .20 listing fee. and i don’t even have to do that unitl nov. 1st! they’re doing a charge free beta. thanks to naive knitting for turning me on to it. check out ducky here.

also, cutest finger puppets ever

man, am i ever posting a lot tonight!

why do i always crave the soda before bed? why? drinking said soda at this time of night would keep me up until all hours. all hours which i do not want to be up until, even though i don’t have to go in to work until 9:00. my god, when did nine get to be late?

jon told me you’re only a morning person if you enjoy getting up in the morning. no matter what, they cannot make me a morning person.

[eta] dude, she could almost lick the sweat off his neck. yeah, i’ve got a thing for andre. he’s hot! [/edit]

if possible, ducky got even freaking cuter:

i’m calling her lucky ducky, because she is the lucky first little monster with a little mouth.

also, there’s this blue potato looking dude. i’m going to call him blue potato man. i can’t remember if there’s an e at the end of potato, but even if there is, he’s not getting one.

he’s not as cute as the ducky, but hopefully someone will want to give him a loving home.

i went to visit aunt sara today while the laundry was going at mom’s. she looks great! if i didn’t know her, i would never know she suffered a stroke a few weeks ago. she’s moving around really well, and has really good use of all of her limbs. well, except the knee she had surgery on, but even that is doing well. she’s started walking without her cane, which her physical therapist says is ahead of schedule. i’m so glad she is doing so well. it was great to sit and talk with her for a while. i haven’t seen her since i visited her in the hospital. the only thing you can notice anymore is a slight pronunciation problem with f’s and b’s. thank god!

mmm, baking brownies. they smell so good! i got one of those silicone pans before we moved to the new apartment, but this is the first i’ve used it. i’ve got to keep a close eye on it, because the packaging said it will cook food quicker and at a lower temperature. don’t want the brownies to burn! they are preccccious.

new package from sp! yummy patons classic wool in a deep turquois type color. i’m thinking a mini felted purse for that. also included are some munchy goodies, little flower notepad, and the cutest little kitty rubber stamp! i want to stamp everything with kitties!

meet ducky! when you say that, you’ve got to say it with a strong british accent. probably something northern, maybe birmingham or york. i knit ducky while watching cash in the attic on BBC america. i wonder if a hundred or so years from now someone will find him in an attic somewhere and put him up for auction as a lovely example of the early 21st century craft revival period. harhar.

had a good day at work today, amazingly enough. helped several people who were preparing for their weddings, and i think i really made a few of them happy. one lady kept gushing to her husband about what a great help i was. it’s amazing what a few nice customers will do for your day.

warcraft, ho!

guess who just bought $120 worth of GAP jeans for $75? ok, well technically it was jon who bought them (love you honey!), but i’m going to be wearing them. new jeans! oooh, i love it. bargains jeans too, which makes it even better. they’re my super fave long and lean ankle length, which fit me perfectly; better than any other jean i’ve ever worn in fact. evidence:

and, for your viewing pleasure, a gratuitous butt shot!

please note, once these are washed and dried in the dryer, they will be a bit shorter. and what’s with the same cut and size of jeans being longer than another? it’s clearly visible that pair numero uno is longer than numero dos, yet they are the same size and cut. messed up man.

i also got yarn in the mail from a LJ yarn swap! oooh, it’s handpaintedyarn baby! like buttah! actually, the color is like butter too. i made a cute little baby hat. put some colorwork in there with white, but the yellow was too light for it to show up very well. there are actually three rows, but only the middle shows up. the two outer ones are supposed to be white every other stitch. oh well, it’s still super cute and soft. hope it sells! i’ve got a show coming up on september 24th that i want to do well at, dammit. christmas is coming up and it’s getting cooler out, people kneed their knits!

honey hat:

honey hat detail:

i’ve been a busy bee today! got up around 10, did the usual check email, read livejournal, etc. then i got to work! i updated both the knitting fanlisting and the robert heinlein fanlisting. i washed the dishes, and there were quite a few of them. i cleaned the kitchen floor. i cleaned the bathtub, the toilet and the bathroom sink. i scrubbed the kitchen sink a few times, and then gave up. i also got all of the new items together for all knit up. i started to take pictures, but my hands are shaking pretty bad today, so i stopped rather than get frustrated. i feel like that’s a lot to have done before 1:00! now i need to call my mom and let her know we won’t be coming to do laundry. jon’s parents invited us over to a farewell dinner on wednesday for his sister (she’s going away to college) and offered us the use of their washer and dryer.

i was going to take a picture of hideyo, my hairdresser, when i went to get my haircut yesterday, because she is just so darn cute. of course, that would involve me actually going to the hairdresser. instead of, you know, having to be driven home from work by a coworker and ending up with the worst migraine i’ve had in years.

i started seeing sparklies soon after i got to work, maybe 9:30. soon i couldn’t see much out of my right eye. it was like there was a giant glowy white spot in it, as if i had stared at the sun for too long, but with just my right eye. around 10:30 my right eye started to go dark, like my eyelid was drooping or something. when the pain started to come i told devon (yay! the super nice manager was on!) that i couldn’t stay any longer, and could someone please drive me home? i ended up curled in a ball in bed, crying because my head hurt so much. and the crying? it does NOT help a migraine. around 12:00 or so i managed to choke down half a sandwhich in order to take some excedrine. despite the sanwhich it still made me want to puke up everything i’d ever eaten in my entire life. that stuff just rips my stomach apart. of course, i did take two, but it was a super bad migraine. finally around 3:30 the headache started wearing off. mom came and took me to the chiro (i think my neck caused my headache) and he adjusted me. my neck and back feel pretty darn good today. stupid headache didn’t fully go away until i woke up this morning.

so no picture of adorable asian hairdresser. no hair cut. no eyebrow shaping. no three hours of work i could have used since my hours are short this week. but….

i bought yarn! found an ebay seller that has comparable products to handpaintedyarn.com. ooooh, cannot wait for it to come! it should be around 2 weeks, since it’s from uruguay and it’s coming plain old parcel post. there was no way i was paying for expedited shipping.

i’ve also signed up for secret pal six. this secret pal has been awesome, and i can’t wait to spoil someone else! i hope the next person i spoil is multi-crafty too, because the dates it runs from include the week at work where i get 50% off everything. i love employee appreciation week!

when i was in high school i lived across the street from a buddhist temple. this was very strange, as i lived way out beyond suburbia, in the sticks. not only the sticks, the conservative mennonite sticks. there was a girl a year or two younger than me who lived at the temple with the nuns. her name was hanh, and she and i became friends, but we weren’t very close. we rode the bus together, and i’d help her with her school work. she spoke english fairly well, but she had trouble reading it sometimes, and had to have things explained. she was really nice, and kind, but she had a scar on her face that made her one eye look funny and i think it made people uncomfortable. you know how high school kids can be. she told me one time that she got it when she was very young. she remembered waiting outside a shop for her mother, and a mentally unstable man slammed her face into a brick wall.

my mother left my father at the end of my junior year. she didn’t know how dad was going to take it (he’d been pretty depressed and somewhat unstable for a while) so we packed up the house in one day and went away for the weekend. we left on the day i was supposed to have my latin final, but my teacher was really nice and i knew she would let me make it up. when hanh got home from school she saw the moving truck and came over to find out what was going on. she seemed pretty upset that i was moving. i think i was one of the few people who was friendly to her. i don’t think there were very many vietnamese kids in our school, and it’s hard to fit in when you don’t speak the same language everyone else does. i feel a lot of regret about it now, but i was so busy with moving that i didn’t really get to say goodbye to her like i should have.

that summer my mom, sister and i were living at my aunt and uncle’s until we could get our own place. i ended up getting a job at a grocery store within walking distance from their house. it was the grocery store the nuns from the temple went to, and sometimes they would bring hanh and some of the other kids with them. the last time i saw hanh she told me that she wouldn’t be seeing me at school the coming year, she was moving to philadelphia, where her family lived. i had never even thought to ask her about her family, who they were, where they lived, why she wasn’t with them. i didn’t really know anything about her. i never saw her again.

every once in a while i think about her. i wish i had asked her how to get in touch with her; a phone number, an address, anything. maybe sometime i’ll go back to the temple and ask them if they remember a girl who lived their named hanh, and if they know what has become of her.

it’s Mr. Grape! this little monster was made just for another little monster, my baby cousin lauren. it’s her first birthday party this saturday, and i have no money to buy gifts, so i made her something out of stash yarn. hooray for stash yarn! all pics open larger in a new window when clicked.

front:

side:

mom asked me how i knew he was male. i told her i made him, and i just knew. i also told her i couldn’t put a tiny little penis on him, as it’s a child’s toy. mr. grape is just a boy, so there. to bed!

first, a quiz:

next, thanks to my secret pal. i had a really crappy day at work, and i came home to a package full of beautiful yarn and beads. thanks! no pictures, because i am tired, cranky, and menstruating. take my word for it, they’re gorgeous, and my SP is great :)

why did work suck? my coworkers didn’t pull their weight today, and i’m really getting pissed off at the insurance situation. i took a “promotion” to full time at work with the understanding that i would get full time insurance benefits immediately. if i had stayed at part time i would have had to wait until october to sign up for part time benefits, which aren’t as good as ft. i heard from the insurance company last week that there is a 180 day waiting period, even though i am considered a status change (going from pt to ft). this means around january i’ll qualify for full time benefits. around january is also the time i will most likely lose my ft position. a new michaels is opening up in the area, and they will most likely draw away enough of our volume to make us a B level store instead of the A level store we are now. when we drop levels, we lose positions, mine being one of them. you can bet your ass that when i go back to full time i’ll have to wait until f-ing october to get benefits again. i hate them.

i’m going to go lose myself in happy blog land now! buh-bye!