My little brother clearly did not bother to find a place to get a haircut while out at BYU. So Saturday night when I came home from work, it was a shock to see a tall version of Frodo Baggins.
Yesterday, Don and I headed downtown and that's when he got The Shearing:
Starting out, here we go. Check out that curly hair, he hasn't lost those curls since he was a baby and everyone mistook him for a girl. Not so charming, 20 years later:
So, a good deal of heckling and joshing was due and then he sat in the chair to get a proper shearing.
I wanted him to stop here so Don could stay with the Mixed Up Zombies haircut.
Check out that great collection of hair that just fell onto his lap! And that's not the extent of it!
1. I gave my 2 week notice at work because I couldn't stand watching the skin deteriorating on my hands anymore. This is going to take quite some time to heal.
2. I slowed way the heck down on my knitting. There's just so many socks I can take and I don't want to takes it no more!
3. I worked on cleaning up Darken Tides with my friend Briana (it's online but you have to know the Super Sekrit Handshake and be a part of the Member's Only Club and own a Sekrit Decoder Ring...in other words, you gotta ask and we gotta trust you to not rip us off before we can get this to editors and publishers).
4. I finally watched Eragon but only with the help of RiffTrax. You would think a dragon movie would be just up my alley but there was no way. Too hokey and pukey.
5. I discovered a cavity and it's going to get fixed next Monday. Uuuugh.
6. And then there was Life Drawing class and storms that caused things to be displaced and running and knitting and old pictures of me being pudgy and wearing a bad bra but mostly that's just average, every-day stuff.
And tomorrow my brother comes home! I'm so excited!
The General was on last night, followed by Our Hospitality, both silent films featuring the brilliant Buster Keaton. It had me looking up YouTube videos and I found a few fantastic ones set to more modern music.
This one's my favorite though I have yet to see Steamboat Jr. (I guess it's time for a trip to the library, they've got a really impressive collection of Buster Keaton flicks):
And ten points if you get the music. :D
P.S. Did you know that Buster Keaton did all of his own stunts? Engineered them, too! And that Jackie Chan cites Mr. Keaton as one of his biggest inspirations? It's easy to see, really.
It's been quiet here as madness sets in. Sock Madness. Round 3 just finished with two strands of lace yarn held together (Knit Picks Shadow in Jewel and Lost Lake) and as I finished up at 3 in the morning, I took the frantic picture, sent it off to the lovely ladies and went to bed.
Then I got up in the morning, went for my run, got my brain moving. Something seemed wrong. I kept thinking of the toes of the pattern. You see, I couldn't figure out the toes properly, with my sleepless, befuddled mind. I thought it was some fancy incorporation to do with the slipped stitches and I wanted a normal patternless toe. But now I was awake, I had adrenaline running through me, and I realized that I had decreased improperly, making the toe shorter than the pattern specified.
Drat!
Now I know the rules and making the socks shorter than specified is definitely cheating. It took me a little time to make up my mind to notify the mods and I must admit, it was with a heavy heart, I didn't want to be disqualified. But I am a grown-up after all and just because I was out of the running, I could still knit along and cheer on the others.
Now, one might think that is the end of the story. Oh, the mods thanked me for my honesty and posted on the blog about how they would take the next person in the Tennessee Twisted Knitters division who was finished with their socks properly to take my spot. I must admit that the comments to that post made me blush but then something a bit unexpected happened.
About ten after 9 o'clock, I got an email from the mods. Apparently no one ever stepped up to take my spot. Either no one was finished OR...no one wanted to take my spot. I don't know which, I don't know why but tell you what--
I'm back in and I love my fellow competitors, all those still in and those cheering us all on.
When I first saw this commercial, I got a little bit sniffly:
But I couldn't help but giggle when I saw the second part months and months later:
Daisy was kind of a similar case. Someone must have thought that they couldn't care for her very well, perhaps someone who was expecting a much smaller dog and within a year, realized that the girl was going to be quite large. So they dropped her off the side of some gravel road and drove off without her. Daisy is pretty resourceful, she made herself at home at a nearby farm where six other dogs were already at home. Dad was there one day with his Scouts, doing some fun boy thing or other when the farmer approached him and offered "Ralph" (hoping that boy dogs go faster than girl dogs, the farmer gave her a boy's name) to him. It didn't take much talking at all, we brought her home.
That's a recent picture, actually. She used to be a bit smaller, thinner, and her ears flopped over at the ends when we got her. She's also well-mannered and a bit of a drama queen. But that's alright, there are enough girls in this family that we all know how to handle drama queens. ;)
Sock Madness has started and I have never knitted a sock so fast. Thursday is generally a busy day and not only did I have Institute but I was scheduled to work that night. The announcement came out that the pattern would be coming out between noon and 5pm EST. I knew I would be lingering around the computer but since I'm a good girl, I went to Institute anyways (a religion class). I tried hard not to think about the socks but when class let out, I was gone!
I managed to at least grab the mail before I ran in and checked my email. ahh, the pattern had arrived--an hour ago! Well, I cast on like a maniac and knitted for the three and a half hours I had until work. Then I knit during my break. Then I knit after I got home and into the wee hours of the morning. Friday at 10, my first sock was done. And strangely enough, the day followed just as the day before had and by Saturday morning, I had two socks finished, off the needles, and snugly on my feet.
They're very nice and I love the construction of the heel, very well thought-out. And I'm in the running for Round 2, yay!
And that's all for now. I feel a little under the weather, most likely due to some bug I picked up. Everyone's sick, my dad was sick this weekend and my coworker has the most alarming cough (though she's finished her antibiotics). But I'm surprised I haven't picked up anything earlier. I must be quite healthy not to get that sick this year.
