Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I've written before about how much I love Valentine's Day.  Better than Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving combined.  Knowing this, Fiance made me this amazing V-Day "Advent" calendar.  So I've been celebrating all week!

It started with the traditional "Red Dinner" (No relation to the Game of Thrones Red Wedding...that scene has made explaining my tradition a lot weirder).  It was a potluck again, and people went all-out this year!

Jello shots, chocolate covered strawberries, heart shaped cornbread.

Cheese ball.  Pink wine.

Red Pasta and yummy dessert.

Yup, that's red sushi in the shape of hearts!!! 

Homemade, heart-shaped crackers and salsa!

The week got even better with heart breakfasts.

The most intense blanket fort you've ever seen in the living room:

Look how spacious it is in there!   Held up by a camera tripod, of course.

And shrinky-dink art like you make in elementary school.

I heart it all.

Weekend Update: Stitches South

This weekend I went to Stitches South, a big knitting convention in Atlanta.  Given the fact that exams start this week and I haven't done nearly enough studying yet, I could only stay for one day, but it was spent productively.

First up was a class called Design Your Dream Sweater with Leslye Solomon (can I just say, I love this lady).  I learned the basic skills for designing my own sweaters.  Seemed pretty intuitive, but doing that much swatching doesn't sound like much fun.

This is a sweater chart.  It's hard to see here, but each little grid square represents a stitch.  You do calculations based on your gauge, translate that into how many stitches to cast on/cast off and then draw out what you want your sweater to look like.

Over lunch I visited the market area.

Hundreds of booths hosting all kinds of knitting related items from yarn, to bison fiber to baskets and yarn bowls, to knitting needles and patterns.

I got some silk mawata, which are squares of silk cocoons stretches out and layed in layers.  You pull the layers apart and just knit them like any other fiber or yarn.  I resisted jumping on the mawata band wagon  a la the Yarn Harlot but now it might be time to try it out. They were dyed by Fiber Charmer, a local Atlanta dyer.  The colors are a lot more interesting and complex in real life. 

This yarn bombed bike was in the Atlanta area knit shops booth.  I wonder if it works...maybe my bike needs an overhaul...

In the afternoon I took a class on entrelac, the process of knitting in a cool diamond shaped pattern. 

The practice project was a beer cozy.  I feel very proud (of the knitting, not of the heinous color choices).

The teacher, Gwen Bortner wrote the book on entrelac.  Very, very smart, if intense, lady.

Great day.  Now I am hitting the books REALLY hard.  Property exam Wednesday, followed by Crim on Friday.  Whew....

Weekend Update: Color Run

Saturday morning, I got up with thousands of other Atlantans and ran a 5K Color Run.  This is what I looked like at the beginning of the day.

I ran with a group of students from Rollins School of Public Health.  Thanks to Laura for taking these lovely pictures that I have shamelessly stolen from your facebook page.

That's me yawning on the right there.  I am obviously way into this whole running on a Saturday morning thing.

At each kilometer mark, people along the edge of the course threw colored powder at you.

This is obviously the purple station.  There was yellow, then green, then pink, then purple.

The volunteers had buckets of the stuff.  The powder was floating down the street, coloring the cement and passing cars.

At the end, all the runners had packets of colored powder to throw up in the air.

This is what I looked like at the end of the day.

I've been washing colored powder out of my ears for three days now.  And I had to paint my nails to hide the fact that my fingers are stained pink.  My clothes seem to have washed out ok.

It would be cool to have a Color Run colorway in a nice fingering weight yarn.  I would totally knit a stole or socks that looked like this.

Weekend Update: Back in the ATL

I survived the first week back to school.  But first, my bestie came for a visit.  We went to the CNN Center:

This is the news room.  There are several hundred researchers who focus on different topic or areas of the world.  They discover news and then send it over to that big red desk in the background where it is edited and sent to the news casters.  The average turn-around time is in minutes, not hours.

Jha met Anderson Cooper.

I added to my collection of JoAnna Hugging Statutes of Older White Men (seriously, I have a reputation).  This is  Baron Pierre De Coubertin, considered the father of the modern Olympics, in the Olympic Centennial Park.

This is John Pemberton.  He founded Coca-Cola.  He's in front of the Coke Museum (World of Coca-Cola).

 The rest of my week was WAY less exciting.

Unemployed. And nomadic. And looking for adventure?!?!

Where I spent more than 4300 hours over the last 2+ years. 

Oh, DOT.

My last day at the US Department of Transportation was Friday, and I have no immediate plans for other employment.  I moved out of my house (lovingly known as "Lamontacasa") on Saturday to couch surf for the summer.  Which makes me the most directionless I've been in, um, a long while.

Plans for the summer include a little bit of travel, some doula-ing, a little farmer's market action, gardening, and lots of gym time (I say that last one now, but who knows if that will continue to be a priority).  If this weekend is any indication of what the summer will be like, it will be one part manual labor (moving, biking, working the farmer's market, pulling weeds in the garden, surviving the 94 degree weather) and three parts being a lazy bum (i.e. knitting and watching "Modern Family" in bed while on-call). 

I'm ok with this.

Weekend Update: So Much Fakeness

I think I might let the following pictures from Madame Tussauds Wax Museum speak for themselves.  (Note: For some reason I'm feeling really embarrassed about admitting that I went to a wax museum...I would like to say that I got the tickets CHEAP...is that a good enough excuse to go?).

I got to see Daniel Webster's signature on his desk on the Senate floor once.  It was so nice to meet him in person.

Tying for creepiest statute ever is this guy....

This guy....

Tyra.... ("smile with your eyes")

And this guy.  Who am I kidding?  Larry totally wins.

This is not my first picture with Truman.  I kind of love this man.

Some of the exhibits were a little awkward.  Gary sat on a Rosa-Parks-Bus where it feels like someone is kicking your seat and yelling at you to move to the back of the bus.

There was also the option to start the next world war.....??????

Bill Clinton tried to touch my bum.

I'm so friggin' pale.

I look great in the Oval Office....just sayin'

Brangalina and I are tight.

Ella Fitzgerald ignored me as I held her hand (or maybe I was taking her pulse?  What WAS I doing there?)

I make a mean pirate.

The only thing that I am sad about is that they didn't have a wax Kim Kardashian....

Weekend Update: Stitch and Pitch

My last experience with knitting at Nationals Stadium ended in me flipping off a stadium employee for taunting me for my "womanly" craft.  This weekend the employees contained themselves as scads of knitters showed up for Stitch and Pitch, an event where knitting at the game is not only allowed, but encouraged.

I knit my way through maybe the most interesting game the Nationals have ever played.  11 innings, loaded bases, pinch hitters, walked batters, you name it.  Yet, my sweater was still WAY more interesting: increasing at the side markers every three rows AT THE SAME TIME as adding the pocket linings.  Take THAT baseball!

Julie and Devon avoided knitting by just politely holding the yarn I gave them...

Julie's feet got cold ,so I let her put them in my purse....after removing the yarn and knitting needles.

And the nationals didn't suck that badly despite the eventual loss.  In other new, Lincoln won the President's Race.  It was rigged, I tell you!

The only truly awkward moment was when they honored the troops, asking them to stand for applause.  Some genius had decided to change the lyrics to the Cee Lo Green song to "Thank You" but of course none of us could hear the words and instead sat in horrified silence as CeeLo called his would be lover a gold digger.**  Awwwwwkwarrrrrd....

In other news, I pulled out the Schwinn

I love this thing so much.  I feel so regal cruising through traffic.  I am thankful for having a mother who saved all her quality vintage awesomeness.

And saw the sights

Is that one tall, ugly building or what?

Happy Monday!


** So apparently the "Thank You" version of the Cee Lo song is a real thing.   Still sounds crazy when you can't hear the lyrics.