So, you’re getting your pr0n dose a little early this week.

This is what happens when I go to my SnB and leave some yarn for my hubby to photograph while I’m gone.

KnitPicks Gloss in “Woodland Sage”, surrounded by “Dusk”

Handpaintedyarns.com laceweight in “Dusty Olive”, hanks and wound (Thank you, klinska, for the awesome swap!)

And some KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in “Amber Heather” - which Kris picked out to eventually become Avast for him.
Check out the color on this stuff! It’s incredibly cool.
And does anyone else expect some little critter to pop out of the middle on that last one? :D

OK, you’ve had the opportunity to mock my Science Fiction book collection, now you can mock my movie collection. Do you see how much I love my Knitty friends?

You’ve seen them in this form, courtesy of the Macro Shot Challenge:
Now, you get to see what is INSIDE the boxes (Kassett boxes from IKEA, if anyone is interested. I love ‘em.)
Some personal faves from the collection:
Seasons one and two of the BEST SHOW ON TV:
Seasons one and two of Fraggle Rock, and season one of The Muppet Show (as I wait impatiently for season two):
Three, count ‘em THREE different editions of The Wizard of Oz (possibly all of which were Christmas presents from my brother at different times):
Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of Broadway’s Lost Treasures - performances from past Tony Awards. LOVE these:
And the Broadway shows I own (not movie versions like Chicago - actual stage productions):
And yes, that is The Hoff in Jekyll and Hyde. And I even like him in it. Sweeney Todd is without a doubt the favorite, though. Hmm… and I just realized that I must have missed Passion when I pulled those out…

So, those are my (our) movies. Let the mocking begin. :D

(Oh, and I would post pics of our videotapes, but we JUST packed them up, and I’m not digging them out just for this. So deal. :P

And you know what that means! Yarn pr0n! (All pictures are posted at 400 px wide here, but you can click on them if you want to see them even bigger)
This first one is not yarn pr0n - it’s too far away, and Turtlegirl will yell at me if I try to claim that it is legitimate pr0n. It is an establishing shot of today’s subject: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock in “Titania”, the newest shipment from the Rockin’ Sock Club. I just wanted to show how all of the colors work together in the full skein.
Blue and orange at one end
Slightly overspun bits at the other.
A swirling vortex of green and purple
And back to blue and orange
I did, of course, enlist Kris again this week. At some point, he’s going to have an evening when he’d rather be playing World of Warcraft, but until then, I plan to exploit his camera skills to the utmost. :D

Incidentally, when I asked him last night about taking these, I commented that if I didn’t post something today, Turtlegirl would come hurt me. His response? “At least that would mean she was visiting!” His concern for me is remarkably underwhelming, but at least he seems to like you, Cristi!

Thank you very much, Turtlegirl, for figuring out that I was missing a /div tag in my sidebar. THAT is what was fouling up my formatting. And yes, this is the second time I’ve managed to do that. *sigh*

No pictures today - I’m saving it for tomorrow’s YARN PR0N FRIDAY! I know what I’m going to post, I just need to… um… take the picture. Hee. I have made some actual progress on some Christmas knitting, though, as you will see in the sidebar. I finally started the gifts for both my Dad and my brother. Yay! Now comes the hard part… finishing them!

OK, I finally remembered to scan in the picture of the sweater I am doing for the Grey’s Anatomy KAL.
The Handyman sweater, from Knitter’s Fall 2005 issue. The dark brown part will be done in black, and the mustard-yellow part will be done in grey. Woo hoo - my husband, the fashion wild man. :D (See also his Satchel and Cigar gloves)

I originally picked this sweater pattern for him because he does love woodworking, and the dove-tail-like detail where the colors meet up just seemed kinda cool. And since he decided on the grey/black color scheme, it is a perfect fit for the Grey’s KAL. Plus, this means I’ll finally make the dang thing.

OK, off to check on the chili I’m making for tonight’s dinner!

Oh - and anyone who is having formatting issues with the blog - I have no idea what is going on. I’m not seeing anything weird here, and I’ve tried to size the pictures down as best I can. Hopefully it will clear up soon. Until then, I’m sorry!

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, this picture that Kris took at the Ren Fair this weekend:
How awesome is that? His name is Stefan Rosario - he’s the nicest guy, and he has a great gallery of pictures people have sent him here. We were chatting with him while looking at kilts in one of the shops. I’m betting he’s going to have a blast there this weekend - it’s Pirate Weekend at the Faire! (And yes, we’re probably going back. We finally broke down and bought costumes to wear for Halloween and at the Faire, and Kris needs a couple of accessories.)

And in non-pirate news, Carbon Leaf has a new cd out - Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat! Mine came in today’s mail. Yay!!! And we FINALLY got a copy of Robin Hood: Men in Tights on dvd, which we have been waiting for for years. It’s the dopiest movie, but I love it.

And in knitting news, I joined the Grey’s Anatomy KAL. I’m FINALLY going to start working on the Handyman Sweater from the Fall ‘05 issue of Knitter’s Magazine. I’m making it in Cascade 220 in Black and Grey, so it’s totally appropriate. :D

ETA: I shrunk the picture, so that might help those who are having formatting issues with the blog. I hope.

So, I ran around the house taking pictures of our bookshelves, and although my first inclination was to post pictures of each individual shelf, I realized that it would be a LOT of pictures, so I cut back a little. As it is, this is going to be a long post. Click ‘em if you want to see bigger versions.

Bookshelf #1 (the tall one) - On the top we have two pop-up books: The Wizard of Oz, which Kris gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago, and Love Bugs, which I gave him for Valentine’s Day a while back. And the only plant I have kept alive for more than a month since I was a kid.
Top shelf: Gregory Maguire, Neal Stephenson (although Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are currently lent to a friend, so there is a gap there), Orson Scott Card (I LOVE the Ender series), plus The Princess Bride, The Silent Gondoliers (also by William Goldman), and The Neverending Story (Although not as cool as the copy I took out of the library as a kid - the real world was in red text, Fantasia was in green. Or maybe vice versa…)
Second shelf: Kris’s SciFi collection - Asimov, Greg Bear, Arthur C. Clarke, Gregory Benford, plus The Darwin Awards II and George Carlin’s Napalm and Silly Putty. And stuck on top are Good Omens (GREAT book. SO funny!) and Julie and Julia. In front is Walking through Virginia’s Vineyards, written by a guy Kris used to work with.
Third Shelf: More SciFi, although this is more of my stuff. Includes Holly Black’s Tithe and Valiant (Which reminds me… I should see when Ironside is coming out. Crud. Not until spring.), Alice Borchardt’s Wolf trilogy, two of the George R.R. Martin A Song of Ice and Fire series, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which took me forever to read, but I adored.
Fourth Shelf: Geek books! High Tech Heretic, A Brief History of Time, The Tao of Physics (all Kris’s), Brian Greene’s An Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos (both mine - made my brain hurt, but I loved them anyway), Kris’s Michael Crichton books, a few Jonathan Lethem titles, more random SciFi, and the Clan of the Cave Bear books. (Anyone else read these? I loved the first three, tolerated The Plains of Passage, and forced myself to finish The Shelters of Stone. Ugh. It felt totally forced.)
Bottom shelf: Music books and some random coffee table books.

Bookshelf #2 (the short one): On top, most of our Discworld books. We love these books. I had to make Kris reading them at night, though, because he would start laughing out loud, which either distracted my from what I was reading or woke me up.
Next shelf: More SciFi and fantasy (sensing a theme?), plus my Wrinkle in Time books and some classics (Les Mis, Sense and Sensibility, etc.)
Next shelf: random mishmash, including some of the info we picked up when we were first looking into adoption several years ago (obviously, we didn’t make any progress on that)

OK, yes, first of all, that is a picture of me at age one on the wall. It used to hang in my parents’ house when I was a kid (talk about embarassing for a high-schooler), and when Mom gave it to us, Kris made me hang it up.

Anyway, Bookshelf #3 has the remainder of the Discworld books on the top, comic strip collections on the next shelf, more random SciFi and some sign language books on the third shelf, and TONS of DragonLance books on the bottom. (We both read some, but I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of them that never even were cracked open)

Bookshelf #4 has Kris’s James Bond books on the top (some of which were originally my paternal grandmother’s and my dad’s), Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series (Love, love, LOVE this series), Apprentice Adept, and Geodyssey series on the first shelf, his Xanth series on the second, and an assortment of New Age books (Astrology, aromatherapy, dream interpretation and such) on the bottom.

Oh, and a blurry Rowena running away, because that’s what she does. :D

Two bookshelves full of further proof of our immense geekiness. On the left, Spongebob sits on my Douglas Adams books, accompanied by a Beanie Baby dragon and pterodactyl. Top shelf: My Shel Silverstein books, and the Brian Jacques Redwall books.
Next shelf, my kids book collection - some funny picture books, including some very funny John Scieszka books, Little Women, Little Men, and Heidi and a few others (all from my own childhood), and the Spiderwick Chronicles.
Next shelf: Random fiction, includes The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the Tales of the City books (except Sure of You, which I just re-reading finished last night and haven’t brought back down yet), and the Dan Brown books.
Third shelf: Theatre books. Some old texbooks from acting classes, scripts, monologue books, and one-act anthologies.
Bottom shelf: Kris’s home and auto repair/maintenance books and my yearbooks.

On the right bookshelf, the top three shelves are all Lord of the Rings stuff (Obsessed? Us? Noooooo!) The next two shelves are my Arthurian Legend books - The Mists of Avalon et. al., the Pendragon Chronicles, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, and some non-Arthurian fantasy, like Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders trilogy, and James Alan Gardner’s Explorer Corps series.
The bottom shelf holds Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (technically, Kris’s Mom’s… I should probably see if she would like those back), and some great alternative history stuff by Harry Turtledove.

My Stephen King books. As in, everything he has written, with the exception of On Writing, Cycle of the Werewolf, and The Colorado Kid. For several years when we were kids, Tom would give me the latest Stephen King book in hardcover for Christmas. I think he bought me from The Dark Half through Desperation and The Regulators. Eventually, I started buying them myself, because I was too impatient. Plus, I was working at Barnes and Noble the year Bag of Bones came out. No WAY was I going to be able to resist when it was right there AND I had a discount.

Oh, and that framed picture? Yep - that’s an autographed photo of Stephen King. My senior year in high school, I did my final paper for English class on the appeal of his books, and my dad mailed him a copy of it. He sent me the picture in return. I had no idea Dad was sending it, so it was a total shock to me when it arrived. My Dad is pretty cool. (Even though he NEVER updates his blog)

And now we get to the cookbooks. I love to cook, and I collect cookbooks. They once filled one shelf. Now they live in the kitchen on our biggest bookcase PLUS a shelf of my baker’s rack.

My “I watch these people on TV” books - America’s Test Kitchen, Wayne Harley Brachman, Alton Brown (*swoon* I adore him…), Shirley Corriher, Tyler Florence, Ina Garten, Nigella Lawson (cannot WAIT for her new show on Food Network!), Jamie Oliver, and Rachael Ray - my go-to girl for just about any meal. She’s a little overly perky for me to watch regularly anymore, but her recipes still kick butt.

Left half of the big-ass oak bookcase: chocolate cookbooks, ice cream cookbooks, ethnic cookbooks (Thai, Chinese, and Korean, specifically), plus a bunch of fun ones like the Sopranos Family Cookbook, Cooking with Friends (Yes, the tv show. It has the best lasagna recipe EVER.), and a cookbook from Ukrop’s, our old grocery store in Richmond. Plus a big accordion file of recipes from Food Network.

Next shelf down is mostly baking and appliance cooking - pressure cooker, Crock Pot, and bread machine (which I don’t even own anymore… can anyone use this?), plus a few more Food Network folks, like Emeril, Bobby Flay, and Ming Tsai (Hey, the shelf got full. Someone had to move)

The bottom shelf has some cookbooks from our year as vegetarians, and a bunch of random cookbooks that are mostly compilations of recipes from food companies. (One of those holds the best turkey chili in the world. And it’s about that time of year again…)

And the right half of the big bookcase: mostly random cookbooks, including some fundraiser ones like the million-year-old Three Rivers Cookbook (My Mom used to make stuff out of this when I was a kid, although I think this might actually be my Grandmother’s copy) and “A Taste of Caring”, which my former neighbor in Richmond gave me (she worked at the hospital that was selling it), our bartender’s guides and wine books, two different ancient copies of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, and a new version of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Plus two notebooks of Food Network printouts and a recipe file of more stuff from their website.

And finally, my knitting books. (No, I’m not taking a picture of all of Kris’s computer books, so you don’t get to see those.) One notebook of articles from various issues of Knitty, three notebooks of patterns from Knitty and elsewhere, and one notebook of everything I might want to know about socks, including patterns. And a ridiculous number of knitting books for one person to own. I have a lot of difficulty walking away from a new knitting book, as you can no doubt see. Pretty soon, I’m going to have to ask Kris to build me another shelf for them.

Woo hoo! We’re going to the Maryland Ren Faire today!

I will post lots of pics (Kris is, of course, taking his camera) and will eat much food on a stick.

And then I have to take library pictures for this week’s blogstalking. I got so excited about the first Yarn Pr0n Friday that I completely forgot to work on that. Oops…

So, the brilliant and lovely (and really, really funny) Turtlegirl and I spent about three hours on the phone last Friday night, and she made the statement that she wanted to start a “Yarn Pr0n Friday” blog ring. I told her I thought it was a great idea, and that I would be more than willing to participate. So, today is my first contribution to Yarn Pr0n Friday!

Happily, this coincided nicely with Kris receiving a macro lens for his camera, so I pretty much let him go to town. When John moved into his new house, Kris turned what was John’s room into his photo studio, so he has some lights set up (just some basic clamp-on lights from Home Depot, although he is drooling over this.), and some foam-core reflectors. It’s a pretty decent setup for doing Yarn Pr0n, that’s for sure.

Oh, and I will take this opportunity to shamelessly pimp Kris’s new website - Digital Arcana. He’s been working very hard to get it set up, and I think it is coming along beautifully!

And without further ado, the Yarn Pr0n! (I’m posting big-ish pictures, but if you click on them, you will get even bigger ones)

Berocco Denim Silk in 1426 - “Absinthe”. Turtlegirl picked this up for me at her LYS. It’s the same yarn that she is using for the Simple Knitted Bodice (although hers is red), and that is what this will become as well.

Blue Sky Alpacas Hand Dyed - I picked up the taupe and orange a while back with the intention of making a sweater for Kris (obviously, I have more than this), and found the dark brown just the other day. I decided it would work well with the other two. Now I just need to figure out a pattern. It may be something as exciting as stockinette in Fibonacci-sequence stripes. If you haven’t seen it, it is a wonderfully squishy soft heavy worsted weight.

Debbie Bliss Cathay in a lovely purple. I met up with Margaret9 a couple of weeks ago for a crochet lesson, and I swapped her a couple of Addi Turbos for this and the next yarn. No clue what I’m doing with it, but I really like it!

Ah, Sari Silk. One lovely, bright hank of Sari Silk. I’m thinking some sort of modular scarf, although I haven’t decided for sure. This is my first hank of it, so I’ll have to see how it behaves.

Kris loved photographing this one, so here’s a bonus shot. I’m actually almost tempted to just buy some for him to use as photo fodder.

In general knitting news, Christmas present #2 is coming along pretty well. I’ve got the stitch pattern memorized, so it’s good Metro and SnB knitting. Present #1, however… not so much. I love the way the FO looks, but I’m just not enjoying the actual knitting of the pattern. I think maybe this will end up being abandoned, and I will sit down with Mom and have her pick a pattern. If she really likes this one, I’ll do it, but I have my doubts about it being ready for Christmas. Of course, if I get a lot done during the flights to and from Vegas, that may change. The presents for Dad and Tom are still, well, nowhere at this point. I should be able to get Tom’s done in relatively short order, since the first one took me no time at all. Dad’s worries me a little, but I think if I can get a couple of non-Christmas things done, I can sit down and concentrate on it.

When we were in PA for Labor Day weekend, I wore my Pomatomus socks over to my Aunt & Uncle’s house, and there was ooh-ing and aah-ing. I told my Aunt Cathy that I would make her a pair of socks. I looked through my sock patterns, but nothing jumped out at me. And then the new Knitty came out on Monday, and I saw these. I am leaning toward making them in Essential in Dusk. I would love to make them in Gloss for the “wow” factor of the silk, but I am a little leery of giving someone socks that have to be hand-washed. Thoughts? I am considering ordering some Gloss for me for Serrano, probably in the Burgundy, so maybe I will order some extra to play with and wash, and see what happens.

OK - I’m going to post these today to try to get myself at least slightly more on-schedule for this, especially since I’m going to need a buttload of pics for my bookshelves…

Some of you may be aware that I went to a small college in Pennsylvania. Specifically, Westminster College (Go Titans!). It is a beautiful campus, and I loved it there. One of the neat things (which I believe has since changed) that Westminster had was a 4-1-4 schedule. Fall and Spring were typical semesters, where you took 4 classes. January was a separate term, and you only took one class. For education majors and minors, one of these J-Terms would be field experience (observing a class for the month), and a lot of people took at least one J-Term as a travel class. My cousin spent January travelling around Europe one year. My freshman year, the Theatre Department used January to rehearse and stage a production of “The Man of La Mancha”. Once the show was up, we had classes for about a week and a half on the history of the American Musical. It was awesome.

Anyway, my sophomore year J-Term (January 1993), they offered a class called “Literature on Broadway”. We spent three weeks in class, reading “Phantom of the Opera”, a really crappy abridged version of “Les Miserables”, some Damon Runyon short stories, and watched “Madama Butterfly”. Then we went to NYC for a week. While there, we saw Phantom, Les Mis, Guys and Dolls, and Miss Saigon. (Let me mention once again that this was FOR CREDIT.) We also got to tour Radio City Music Hall and some other touristy stuff. The nice thing about being there as college students was that we were much less chaperoned than on, say, a high school trip, so we were allowed to go to shows and things on our own. Three friends and I bought tickets in advance to see Falsettos and then went to Sardi’s for dinner one night. Another group of us went to a matinee of Jelly’s Last Jam starring the amazing Gregory Hines and a young kid named Savion Glover (This was back when most people who knew him watched “Sesame Street”). Just an awesome week.

So, anyway, my pictures:
The girls with one of the Radio City Rockettes. Shockingly, the 4 guys in the class opted not to pose with us… Can you find me? I apologize right now for the tight-rolled jeans. Again - 1993. I stuck with it longer than I should have because when combined with slouchy socks, it was a good way to camoflage too-short jeans, which was an issue back then. “Tall” jeans were hard to find.
It’s not the best picture, but the woman in the velvet hat is the amazing Faith Prince, who was playing Adelaide in Guys and Dolls at that point. And my goodness, my hair was shiny… (The guy in the back is my friend James Geogehan, who I haven’t seen since he graduated that spring and who will probably be completely freaked if he Googles his name and finds this. :D )

And the amazingly sweet and friendly Tom Wopat. Yes, folks, I met LUKE FREAKIN’ DUKE! I was always a Luke girl back in the day when everyone was crushing on Bo/John Schneider, so this was particularly delicious to me. He was so nice to all of us, signing autographs and posing for pictures. He left shortly after, and a few of us stuck around (I think everyone was going to the Empire State Building, which we skipped) to catch Faith Prince. A few minutes later, he walked back up the other side of the street carrying a 6-pack and stopped to wave at us. Soo cool…

Oh, and thank you for the comments on my “Friendship” post. Like I said, I’m not going into details here (if you REALLY need to know, PM me on the Knittyboards, or read my post on this page, and that will give you a pretty good idea of what has been going on), but I will say that I am honestly doing fine, and that this was more than a simple case of friend growing apart. This was flat-out betrayal in the worst possible way. Which has made me appreciate true friends that much more.