Filed under: Pets
Tomorrow is the 2 year anniversary of our adoption of the “boys” Oscar and Simon. I thought I would honor them with a little blog post about them. The boys are not from the same litter, Oscar is a month older than Simon. They were kennel mates at the Humane Society. Oscar was the first kitty I picked out from the pictures online.
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Oscar as a wee lad of three months.
Simon’s original name was Amore.
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It took us a couple of months to teach Simon his name. He didn’t respond at first when we would call him, so I went around saying “Your name is Simon, Simon is your name” until he finally figured it out. They both became fairly ill right after we adopted them.
This is a common occurrence for pets that are adopted from places like the Humane Society. They were little snot monsters and Simon had infections in his eyes and ears. But the vet gave us medicine and then they were well. Simon was so little when we adopted him, but now he is much bigger than Oscar.
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Simon’s favorite toys are my ponytail holders and hand knit socks. Oscar’s are the catnip filled mice. A sign of love is when Oscar brings you his mouse and lays it at your feet. Oscar is a big old scairdy cat and will hiss at the drop of a hat. Simon is so quiet, he hardly ever makes a peep. Simon has the strangest meow, it sounds like a child crying.
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If Simon is happy, he will flop over and let you pet his belly.
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If Oscar is sleepy he will insist on getting in my lap, curling up into a ball and purr/chirp at me. Oscar wakes me up everyday at 5:30 by jumping and walking on me until I open my eyes and look at him, I wish we could teach him about the weekend.
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Oscar all grown up.
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Sweet Simon.
Darling Husband Carl and I love them, they make our lives so much richer and I treasure every day with them.
This is the title of my favorite song on the new White Stripes CD. Love that song! So it has been pointed out to me in the last few days (by several people) that I may have a little problem when it comes to buying sock yarn. I decided yesterday to go home, empty out my sock yarn bin and take a picture. Here is what I found:
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So maybe I do have a small problem. I think my bigger problem seems to be that I am only able of buying two different shades of sock yarn. Either bright orange/pink combos or brown/black colors. I think if I WERE going to buy more yarn, not saying I am, I need to go into the blue/green/purple/red world. Since D wants me to make him some socks that look like my blog header, I might be making those purchases sooner rather than later. For the most part, I do have plans for all of the yarn in the photo. I have tenatively planned on doing the Monkey socks next in the Dream In Color Giant Peach. Last night I finished the heel flap on Perambulate #2 and started the gusset, too bad I forgot that I needed to knit the heel first! Doh!! So I know I really should never try to knit anything after 8:30 p.m. or while SYTYCD is on.
You may notice some changes at the old BigSkyMind. I’ve deleted some gossip blogs off of my blogroll. I don’t read them anymore, if you really need to read them, I bet you could find them. I added Banana Migraine, who I found through Karen at Meandering Mango. Melissa is a knitter, and a working Mom who I was thinking this morning must never, ever sleep. I’m totally in awe of the fact that she publishes her meal plan for the week on Mondays. It always looks so good, I want to eat at her house. I also managed to add a link to my Flickr page. You will probably see most of the photos there on my blog here, but there maybe some additions especially if I upgrade to a Flickr Pro account. I’m very proud that I was able to add the page, I’m a bit of a stumbler when it comes to things techno, but I kept playing with it and figured it out eventually.
I started Perambulate #2. I think I am going to actually follow the pattern for this one. My two socks won’t match exactly, but they are for me so I don’t mind.
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Simon has been hogging the blog spotlight lately so I thought I would include some photos of Oscar today:
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Here he is sleeping on the towels in the bathroom. He likes to hang out with me while I get ready in the am:
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Finally a big giant Happy Birthday Shout Out to my yoga teacher Lisa! Lisa is the most awesome yoga teacher in the whole world and if not for her support and encouragement, I wouldn’t be teaching yoga today. Have a great day Lisa!
I am time obsessed. I don’t know why. I wish I wasn’t. My insomnia has returned somewhat so last night I turned my clock competely around. It really helps me. Even when I do wake up, I am more able to go back to sleep if I don’t know what time it is. I’m not doing the mental calculations about how long I have left to sleep in my head. Darling Husband Carl has his alarm set, and he’s not going to let me oversleep, so I don’t really know why I even need a clock at night. Lots of times I play the game, “What Is The Worst Thing That Would Happen?”. Like if I WAS ever late for work, what is the worst thing that would happen? I might get in trouble, but I’m usually at least 20 minutes early for work, so I don’t think they would fire me. Even if I did get fired, life would go on. I’m working on having a more relaxed relationship with time. Altho, I am freaking that the iPhone goes on sale at 6 p.m. on Friday night. What is up with that?!? So you know I’m going after work to get into line.
Okay, on to the knitting portion of the program. I finished the first Perambulate sock:
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It is very difficult to take a photo of your own feet without making them look huge by the way. I found as I was knitting the toe on sock #1 that I made a fairly significant error in the foot. I was 5 stitches short. So I had to do some creative knitting so my sock wasn’t permanently like Madonna circa 1985 (you know I was totally into that look Troy!). Now here is my question, do I knit sock #2 to match or do I knit it correctly to the pattern? Thoughts????
I have some new yarn to share with you. The company is called Dream In Color. It is called Smooshy Sock Yarn and the colorway is Giant Peach. Cara and D helped me choose the color, thanks guys. I am seriously crazy about this yarn. I haven’t knit a stitch with it yet and I already want to order more. Wanna see?
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I tried to shoot a close up so you could see the beautiful color and softness of this yarn. These maybe the Monkey socks! Also, coming tomorrow because his fans have been clamoring for it, a picture of Oscar.
It means to walk. I didn’t know what it meant or even how to pronounce it (thanks D) on Friday. But I did really like the stitch pattern and decided it would be my first pair for the Summer of Socks. Check out how much I got done over the weekend.
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All I have left is the toe on sock #1.
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I am so proud of my progress. Of course that means poor Icarus is lying in my knitting basket feeling neglected. Poor Icarus.
Here is what Simon and Oscar did pretty much all weekend:
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“I wish Mom would stop knitting that dumb sock and give us some treats.”
Filed under: Knitting
I really can’t explain it, but I finished Cara’s second sock in record time, less than a week. Her feet are very tiny, I knew what size to make them, so I didn’t have to keep having her try them on like I did for the first one, and I was motivated to get them done ASAP so I could start on the Summer Of Socks. So without further ado, here are the Carabean Socks:
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They are made using Wendy’s Toe Up sock pattern, using Claudia’s Handpainted Sock Yarn (which I am CRAZY about!!) in the colorway Carribean Blue. They were knit on Size 0 bamboo DPNs (Double Pointed Needles for the non-knitters in the crowd) and they did make one trip to IMS for the Greatest Spectacle In Racing.
So this weekend with Poor Darling Husband working away, I am actually going to try two different sock patterns to see which one I like best. One is Monkey from Knitty (ADD moment, it’s weird that in the internet knitting world a pattern will get “hot” and everyone is making it. Monkey is so “hot” right now, so you know I want to jump right on the bandwagon) and the other one is Perambulate, the pattern that was in my Zen String sock club package. I will let you know which one I choose on Monday. I also plan on working on Icarus. Hopefully I will finish Chart #3 this weekend, ambitious I know. My folks are coming over on Sunday afternoon so my Dad can have a follow up visit with the Eye Doctor on Monday. I hope that everyone has a great weekend.
Quick Note: Did you know that RunningPeanut is (finally) blogging again? I love that Troy told him “writers need to write everyday”. I never considered myself a writer, but I guess that is what I’m doing. Crazy!
Happy Summer Solstice y’all! Today is the longest day of the year. I was thinking the other day about summer music/summer songs if you will. When the weather gets warm I love to get out all my reggae CD’s. Something about island music just fits in with the laidback attitude of summer. I also have a few songs that just ARE summer to me. “Hot Fun In The Summertime” by Sly and the Family Stone, “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Croft, “Summertime” by Will Smith (was he still the Fresh Prince then, I can’t remember). Do you have a favorite summer song/music?
My first installment in the Zen String sock club came yesterday. It is Lotus Toes and the colorway is Lily. It also came with a pattern, wheeee! Here is a photo of the yarn.
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Tomorrow is the first day of Summer (believe it or not) June 21st. It is also the first day of the Summer of Socks. I will not be starting a new pair until I finish Carabean’s socks. Speaking of, one is done.
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Sock #2 is started.
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Those purple things are needle caps. I bought them so my needles would not get pulled out of my sock in progress. I found this more of a problem with my Yarn Pirate yarn than I have with the Claudia’s Hand Painted. They will be handy for whatever socks I’m making.
So I’ve already started to think about what my next knitting projects will be. Darling Husband Carl started a new project at work and will be very, very busy the next few weeks. Like 12 hour days and no days off (yuck, I know) so I will have lots of knitting time. I will (of course) be doing socks for the Summer of Socks, any suggestions on what I should do next? I will be getting new Zen String and Yarn Pirate soon. I am enrolled in sock clubs for both. I also want to get started making scarfs for the Red Scarf Project. This year they are taking the scarves in the fall. I can only make 5, that is the limit. Darling Husband Carl wants a blanket. So I have some things to think about. If you were wondering about Icarus, I am in the middle of Chart #3. I don’t hate it yet. It takes a really long time to do one row. I may still be able to have it finished by the Fourth of July, but maybe not. It still looks like a big rusty blob (to me) or a giantic stingray (to David).
Finally, here is a photo of Simon in his favorite spot in our whole house. He likes to look out over the entire back yard.
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UPDATE: I almost forgot, The White Stripes new CD “Icky Thump” is out. Early (I haven’t even listened to it all the way through yet) review, if you like the freaky weirdness that IS The White Stripes, you will probably like the “Icky Thump” which is an Northern English expression (actually ecky thump) for “what the heck”. Nothing gross people, get your minds out of the gutter! Starting with “Little Cream Soda” there are a string of songs that are awesome. It is strange to me that the CD seems to really pick up halfway through. But nothing that The White Stripes do should surprise me.
Filed under: Separated At Birth?
Renault Formula One Driver Heikki Kovalainen.
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My cat Simon.
I hope that everyone had a fantastic weekend like I did. Friday was spent at the Speedway watching the Formula One cars practice to get ready for today’s race. We started out the day facing the pits, watching the cars come in and out and launch like rockets into turn one.
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This is rookie phenomenon Lewis Hamilton. What he has done so far in his first season in Formula One is unparalleled. I don’t know if you can see all the photographers in my photo or not, but the crowd around his garage was 10 times more than that for any other driver. The pressure on this kid is unbelievable, yet he has handled every situation so far with grace and maturity. Simply amazing.
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This is two time world champion and bigskymind personal favorite Fernando Alonso backing into his garage. Mercedes McLaren is a lucky team to have these drivers.
We moved for the second practice session so we could see the cars in motion. My little camera was barely able to capture the goregous Honda machine.
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You should really go to the website http://www.myearthdream.com and take a close up look. Honda doesn’t have any other corporate sponsorship on it. It is really amazing to see in person. Superphotographer Mike B. let me have some fun with a big camera in turn 9. I managed to get 3 cars into one shot, pure luck I assure you.
Maybe he will share some of his fantastic photos with us later in the week.
The rest of my weekend was spent celebrating Father’s Day with my Dad. Here is Dad checking out the engine of Darling Husband’s new car.
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We decided that Dad is actually too big to fit into the tiny convertable, but he assures us the oil is fine. I gave my Dad a traditional Father’s Day gift, a hand knit dishrag. What, you don’t give your Dad a dishrag every Father’s Day? What is wrong with you?
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In case you were wondering, Lewis won the race, and my favorite Fernando finished second. I got to spend the weekend hangin’ with my Dad, I don’t know how much more a girl could ask for in a weekend.
Big Sky Mind 