Of Writing and Knitting, Tunes and Balloons

Stealing this from Knitting Lemonade, because it’s my favorite meme yet, and also I’m trying to stall until I post pictures of my now completed Summer Cardigan.

1. Black-eyed Susan, 2. Moonstruck chocolates, 3. Time…, 4. Pawnee Pink Sherbert Sunset, 5. Daniel Radcliffe, 6. water droplets in the shower – o.k. bokeh, 7. Picturesque village Vernazza, 8. homemade berry ice cream, 9. The Writer, 10. Gizmo, 11. Prenent un Bany. Taking a Bath., 12. 100_0287

Q’s and A’s:

1. What is your first name? Susan
2. What is your favorite food? chocolate
3. What high school did you go to? That’s undisclosed, instead I offer you a picture of a random building.
4. What is your favorite color? Pink
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Daniel Radcliffe.  Shut up.  I can’t help it.
6. Favorite drink? Water
7. Dream vacation? Italy
8. Favorite dessert? Ice Cream.  Duh.
9. What you want to be when you grow up.  Writer
10. What do you love most in life?  Puppies.  Well, not really, but for the sake of conversation.
11. One Word to describe you. Awesome
12. Your flickr name. susanwritesandknits.  No pictures come up for this, though, so I offer you Marshmallow in a hat.

You do one now:

a. Type your answers to the questions in the Flickr search box.
b. Pick an image from the first page only.
c. Copy and paste the image URLs into fd’s mosaic maker.

And now, as I am stuck in bold for some unknown reason, it is time for me to bounce.

The new Knitty is up, and, per usual, there are several patterns that I like, but will never get around to making, being a slow monogamous knitter with an already expansive queue.

Sidenote: I just had to open a new Internet tab so that I could go on Ravelry and look up how to spell “queue.”  Even though I look at it almost every day, and should know how to spell it.  Go Susan!!!

Anyway, back to the Knitty patterns I like:

Shetland Shorty: This is a really cute pattern that looks just challenging enough to keep me entertained without making me so frustrated that I have the sudden inextinguishable urge to throw my needles across the room, only to then be yelled at by Shelly, adding to the frustration.  As a general rule, I try to avoid patterns that might result in that.  You know, on principle. 

Then again, I’m kind of over boleros.  I had a whole bunch of them a few years ago, but I’m bored with them now.  I’d rather wear a whole sweater.  Boleros make me think that someone got bored before they had the chance to finish it.

Inverness: I don’t know what it is about this sweater that’s calling to me.  I really don’t.  It’s not particularly attractive and it doesn’t look like it would be flattering on me.  Maybe there’s just something about big comfy sweaters that I’m incapable of resisting.  Because you can’t look at that sweater and say, “Gee, I’d like to make that but it just looks like a pain in the neck to wear.”  No.  It looks so damn soft that I’m a little happier just looking at it.

This is a pattern that I’ll have to wait and see how other people’s turned out.

Thira: This is another one that I don’t know why I like.  I think that it just appeals to my attraction of impractical summer knitwear.  Like Summertime Tunic.  It’s summertime, and I’ve yet to wear it.  It’s too damn hot for a sweater, with or without sleeves.

Seascape:  You know what, I feel a rant coming on that’s going to require a whole new paragraph.

I think lacy stoles are gorgeous.  Ever since I saw the Bleeding Hearts Stole in the spring issue of Interweave, I’ve had the hankerin’ to buy some lace weight yarn and make one.  But here’s the thing: whether it’s Seascape or Bleeding Hearts or any other stole, where am I going to wear a lacy stole?  I’m all for impractical knitting in the sense of tank tops and camis, which are fun to make but in reality will probably never be worn.  But a lot of work goes into enough lace to make a stole.  And for what?  Never in my life have I seen someone wearing a stole.  I don’t even know where it’s appropriate to wear one, or how to wear one, or when to wear one.

It’s probably one of those things where I’m going to have to wait until I’m old to make and wear one, when I’m at the point where I don’t really care what I wear in public and I can be like, “Screw you dumb ass, I’m wearing my lacy stole!”

Yeah.  I can’t to wait to be old and say anything I want to say.  The possibilities are endless…

On another note…

My Summer Cardigan (not to be confused with the impractical and rarely worn except in the winter, irony of ironies, Summertime Tunic) is 50 or so rows from being done!!!  Yeah!!!

Excuse the excess explanation points.  Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m a regular girl who uses too much punctuation and dots her i’s with hearts and smiley faces, instead of a Susan who can’t walk in heels, doesn’t like to wear make-up unless she has to, only paints her toe nails when Shelly makes her, and has maybe two and half girlfriends, the rest of her posse is made up of guys.  The pretending doesn’t last long though, before I sicken myself with the exclamation points and come this close to deleting them before I stop myself and instead write up a paragraph much like this one in the hopes that readers might find it entertaining.  I’m probably wrong, per usual.  But at the very least, you just sat through that entire irrelevant paragraph, so I guess I win.

I’d show you a picture of the cardigan, only it’s so close to being done that I’d rather just wait until it’s finished so that you can see the whole thing, which is Susan code for I’m too lazy to take out my camera and try to take a good, not boring, photograph, which is not exactly my fortay.

Song of the Day:
“I don’t want to argue about who is the victim cause maybe we both got burned.  I don’t want to talk about who is the traitor cause both of our loyalties turned.  I don’t want to fight about who is the liar cause there’s too many ways to lie.  I don’t want to hear about who is the winner cause we both know it’s a tie.” -Pat Benatar, “Precious Time”

Shelly and I went to Staples today to make copies for Pharmacy Pete, and it was here that I realized something about the behavior of women during the summer.

When it gets warm out (like it has around here; so hot in fact that local schools let the kids out early because it was too hot in the un-air conditioned buildings), women start to wear shorts.  And when they wear shorts, they think that it becomes socially acceptable to scratch their butts in public.

I can’t tell you how many women I have seen reach up the leg of their shorts and start scratching their behinds.  Like just because they can reach up there, they should.  No one will notice.

But I notice.  And I think it’s gross.  So, just to throw it out there, please don’t scratch yourself in public.  Save that for boys.  At least it’s expected of them.

Just kidding.  Kind of.

Song of the Day:
“Well, maybe I’m just too sure.Maybe I’m just too frightened by the sound of it.Pieces of note fall down.” – Better than Ezra, “Good“

Wednesday night, or Thursday morning I should say, after prom, a group of our friends went to Boyfriend’s house to sleep in tents in his backyard.  One girl said to me, “I can’t believe that was senior prom.  I’ve been waiting forever for it, and I can’t believe it’s over.”

That’s the way I felt about it.  I had a lot of fun at prom.  Granted, I don’t dance, much to Boyfriend’s happiness.  But I’m friends with all boys, except for three or four girls, and none of the boys dance except for when those girls tell them to.  So we just sat around and talked.

Here is my prom conversation with Boyfriend:

Boyfriend (B): So… you probably don’t want to dance, right?

Me (M):  Hell no!  Why, do you?

B: No, just thought I’d check.

M: How very thoughtful.

(We pause to watch everyone else dancing.)

M: It would be one thing if anyone really danced, but they’re just kind of…

B:  Having sex on the dance floor?

M:  Basically.  The day I ever rub my butt on your gyrating pelvis…

B:  Yeah, I don’t know how I’d feel about it if you acted like that.  You want to make out?

M: Right now?

B:  Yeah.

M: Um… no.

I had a lot of fun at prom, but I feel as though I could have done the same thing in Boyfriend’s back yard.  I spent a lot of time getting dressed up to talk to the boys that I see every week at Boyfriend’s bonfires anyway.

But, it was prom, and now I can say that I went.  Woo hoo.

In other news…

This is the conversation that I had with my parents this morning:

Shelly (S):  Look!  I got my toes done today.

Me (M):  Pretty.  They’re very pink

Pharmacy Pete (P):  Like a hooker.

S:  They do not look like hooker toes!  I’m not a hooker.

M:  Yeah, I don’t crochet either.

S:  Not the same.

P:  I like Susan’s red toes better.

S:  MY TOES ARE PRETTY!  Susan, put it on your blog that my toes are pretty!

P:  Take a picture of her hooker toes!

S: No!  I hate pictures. I’m going to go clean the bathroom.

P:  No, I’ll do it so you want ruin your toes.  You look all pretty.

Then we fought about whether or not a picture would be taken, before she finally agreed to take one with me.

These are our toes.  Hers are the ones on the right.  You know, the ones that look like they belong to a hooker.

I’m just kidding.  I shouldn’t make jokes like that, or Shelly will stop reading.  Then I’ll be down to, like, no readers.

And in knitting news, which I appear to be forgetting that this is what this blog is supposed to be about…

I have cast off for the arm holes in the Summer Cardigan.  I’m working on the sleeves now, which are kind of weird in that they are knit on double pointed needles, then the live stitches on the sleeves get put onto the circulars where I cast off for the arm holes, and all three pieces get knit as one.  I guess this is kind of nice, in that there is minimal seaming at the end, but I’m also really interested in seeing how it’s going to work out.  Hopefully well.

Song of the Day, Per Shelly’s Request:
“Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory, falling on my head like a new emotion.” -The Eurythmics, “Here Comes the Rain Again“

The party store is not exactly the hub of life lesson learning.  Occasionally I learn something that I can throw into everyday conversation (like the fact that helium is a non-flammable gas, which I tried to explain to a group of boys at a bonfire who wanted to see a balloon explode.  I was ignored, as I usually am being the girl who consistently ruins fun with sensibility ((oh yeah, I know where I stand)).  I watched as they held the balloon over the fire, and laughed when they were disappointed because it only melted without even a little explosion.), but mostly I leave work every day with a head full of useless crap that I’m never going to need to know.  I did, however, learn this over the course of the 9 or so months I have been there: no intelligent person stays in a store past the time the store closes. 

There have been several people who, and I’m not sure if this is because they’re oblivious, inconsiderate, or just dumb-asses, have stayed in the store far past the 9 o’clock closing time.  They always come in before 9, so we cannot ask them to leave.  Since we are a party store, they are not our customers, but our guests.

I’m actually completely serious about that.  It’s in the training video.

Not one of those people have left me with the feeling that my life had been enriched by meeting them.  Never once did I think, “I’d really enjoy having a meaningful conversation with this person.”  Not once.

Instead, I end up hating the people who stay so late.  I don’t even know them, and I really dislike them because they are just so dumb.

One woman a while back asked me at 9:10 what time we closed, then proceeded to stay for another 10 minutes, then yelled at me about the prices of things in clearance before throwing wrapping paper at me.

I kid you not.

Or like last night, when two woman came into the store to purchase supplies for a graduation party at 7 o’clock, and stayed until 9:30.  They asked me what time we closed, and when I said, “Oh, about 10 minutes ago,” they didn’t seem to care and stayed for another twenty or so minutes.  This included the time it took them to rent a helium tank, which is kind of a long procedure.  On their way out, they said, “Sorry we took so long.  Thanks for being patient.”

What?  Sorry I took so long?  You’re not sorry.  If you were sorry you would have left.  Kiss my Portuguese/British/French Canadian/Native American/a little bit of Scottish behind and leave!

Though I guess that answers the question as to why they didn’t leave when they saw me walking around the store, huffing and puffing, looking at my watch, and thinking that, if they were party guests at my house, I would still kick them out.  They were just completely oblivious to common courtesy, and, well, just about everything else.

Also, I got home from work last night to find a series of small bruises up and down my right arm.  My left elbow, which I hurt 2 years ago and had to wear a brace on for months but has since stopped hurting unless I lean on it or whack it on something, hurt so bad that I had to find the brace and wear it for a few hours until it stopped.  And I don’t know how this happened.

It’s a running joke around the store that I hurt myself every time I’m there.  Which is true.  I’m pretty clumsy. But usually I know how it happened.  This time, I’m at a loss.

Boyfriend thinks that they took me out back and beat me until I couldn’t remember anything.  I told him that this is unlikely, as the injuries are pretty mild for that situation, and also the people I work with are nice, and not at all the beat-me-until-I’m-unconscious type.  More likely I just walked into a door, or carried a box the wrong way.

And in knitting news…

I finished the lace part of my Summer Cardigan, and started the endless garter stitch part.  Any photos would be redundant of what I’ve already shown you, but when I get further along, pictures will be in store. 

Also, prom tomorrow, so there will probably be pictures of that too.  Squeee!!!

That was an excited noise, in case there was any confusion.

Song of the Day:
“But if I wanted silence, I would whisper.  And if I wanted loneliness, I’d choose to go.  And if I liked rejection, I’d audition.  And if I didn’t love you, you would know.” -Maria Mena, “Just Hold Me”