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My brother just came across this gem of a forward from back in the day. Worth a good laugh (*how* exactly do you woo women?).

Though it is interesting: I found this funnier back when I was caught up in (read: hysterical over) the college application process. I’ve always admired people who are utterly capable but take things less seriously.

(Google update: Sad to see, it was for a writing contest?)

Nothing like motivation! Both fronts for the cardigan are done:

Unfortunately, this made completely clear the fact that the insets for the arms on the back were nearly two inches too short. I ripped them this afternoon (only five rows, luckily), and re-knit. No picture, but now the back matches the front. I should have done it earlier, since I knew it was needed, but at least it’s done now. 🙂

P.S. Download “All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers — song of the weekend.

A few weeks ago, I found an iron stand and another 55 gallon tank on micronews for $50. We’ve been looking at setting up a refugium and this seemed too good to pass up, so we bought the two, and I spent a highly noxious few days spraying the stand with assorted pre-sprays, enamels, and coats so that it (fingers crossed) won’t rust. Here’s the new tank atop the stand, 2/3’s full, waiting for the sand to settle.

Ultimate optical illusion, by the way — these two tanks are within a quarter of an inch of each other for the dimensions… who would have thought after seeing this photo? The second (now in-use) tank will go on the bottom of the stand, and will hold the protein skimmer, a pump up to the display tank, and a deep sand bed with assorted macro-algae to further filter the water. We went today to get the baffles cut, so now all that’s waiting is the sand to settle so that we can move all of the rocks, fish and corals from the old tanks to the new, and so that we can clean and dry the old tank to get it ready for siliconing things in place.

The white cabinet in between is another micronews find, and will hold the new pump which will power a closed-loop circulation system, and which can also hold all of the food, etc. Best part: it has a towel bar on the right side. 🙂 There’s a glass panel for the door, currently removed, which I plan to frost so that the pump, etc. isn’t quite so visible.

I found the prettiest color of discontinued kitchen cotton on sale at Fred Meyer last week, and snatched it up for an Eyelet Skirt. (I’m not convinced that this will be the best weight/texture, but the gauge is right, it’s washable, and I love the color. Worse comes to worse, it was a $14 experiment and I can rip it out and make placemats or fishtank towels of it all. And it’s certainly better than that horrible florescent red Cotton-Ease that I ordered online – lesson learned – for the skirt and which quickly found its way to a new home.)

I cast on and made it through a few rows before deciding that it was way too loose, and that I’d have to switch from #7’s to #6’s. Malheureusement, my 6’s are currently engaged with the Bomber jacket (hate that name). So, I have a new wind on that project. I made it through the rest of the right front on Sunday at the beach, and am now working on the last half of the left front. The sleeves are almost all stockinette (yay!), so I think I’m going to try to finish them before starting the skirt… No promises on doing the ribbing for the collar, however – I get all burnt out on K3, P2 after a day or so.

I finished ball 1 of Branching Out — here’s the progress:

Obviously, it’s hurting to be blocked, but you can imagine. I *way* overestimated how much yarn was needed, since I had five balls and this definitely only will need 1¾ max. Any idea what could be done with the extra 500+ yards of lime green All Seasons? Possibly I could be twins with (aka, a vile copycat of) Amanda and try to eke out a honeymoon cami? Or more scarves? If I was a knit swimsuit person, that would be a possibility, but I’m not. Also nix on the boob-holders/one-skein-wonders — not so much my style. Any other ideas? It’s a beautiful yarn and I’d love to make something pretty. If all else fails, I think I’ll get more colors and do some sort of multicolor top?

This has been a rocky week on the fish front. We’ve nearly given up on ever finding our small yellow tang (even though the fish store has 8 larger ones, it seems better to wait — they little ones are so neat and are supposed to adapt better), and Kevin’s been lusting after the firefish that they’ve had recently. Only problem was that there wasn’t much information out there, and the little that was there was pretty conflicting. We knew that they needed about 20 gallons per fish, that they’re jumpers, and that they are supposed to be extremely shy (odd because they weren’t at all at the store), but other than that, reports conflicted. After reading up on Fenner, it seemed that the best option was to get a group of three. On the way home and in the settling-in period in the quarantine tank, everything seemed just fine. However, while we were both at work the next day, all hell broke lose and the dominant fish bullied the other two to death. We leapt in and isolated him in a colander floated in the top of the tank when it became clear what was happening, but by that point it was too late and the damage had been done. So, now we have one firefish. We both feel terrible, because we do want to be conscientious and we felt like we’d done our research beforehand. Lesson learned (be skeptical of what you read), and hopefully others will at least be forewarned by our sad tale. Meanwhile, the “bully” fish seems to be doing well, and we’ve forgiven him for his transgressions.

Such an atypically productive Saturday! I scrubbed the deck, tables and grill, so that when I went out to see my new strawberries and basil, I wouldn’t have to look at the muck cast down by the cottonwood tree.

Meanwhile, Kevin cleaned his closet! The photo on the left is all of the 90’s clothes headed for a new home, and on the left is him finally parting with that horrible orange t-shirt that he used to wear as an undershirt for his fraternity formals in college (nothing ruins a nice dress and high heels like that orange shirt).

And now here’s the gaping loveliness that is his half of the closet:

Way to be, kevin!

May I just say how encouraging it is to finally see a ball of yarn looking like this?

I’m judiciously avoiding posting daily progress on Branching Out, but I have to say that it is enormously gratifying to finally see this ball shrinking. I have four more left in this color, and this first one was taunting me by never ending. Finally: victory at hand.

The original plan was to do a long hike in the snow up by Mount Baker with Larry and Raechel, camp overnight with a group of ex-intern friends, and then do a mini hike around Picture Lake before heading back on Sunday. However, fate intervened in the form of a delayed start due to waffles and an hour+ scenic detour due to missing the Rt 9 turnoff. Oops. Extra car time meant extra knitting time, though, so I wasn’t as sad as you might expect. 😛 Here was the scarf an hour in:

When we got up to the campsite, the rain stopped, so we joined the group and pitched our tents. This shot is terrible, but it’s supposed to convey how much I liked our campsite: level, without rocks, firepit, nice picnic table, Brian and crew had already strung up a huge tarp to keep off the rain, and there was a bathroom right across the road. My kind of camping. 🙂

The best part of our site was that there was a river running behind it, with small rapids. The noise was beautiful. I actually woke up earlier than most of the group (stunning for those that know my sleeping habits, and for anyone who knows how comfortable that sleeping bag was), and took my chair, tea and knitting over to read by the river. The sun was out and it was beautiful:

Apparently the color of the water is due to glacial runoff. It looked otherworldly to me (in a “wow, nature’s amazing” way, not a “toxic sludge!” way), much like the lakes that we saw in the last camping trip I was on, three years ago in the Olympic mountains with a lot of the same group. (Aside: that’s where I met Kevin! 🙂 ) There used to be a crayola crayon the color of the water here and I thought they just made it up (I always sorted it with the florescents instead of with the blues) until I got to the pacific northwest.

The crowd we were with was exceedingly well-equipped, which was awesome. I’m a fan of convenience-camping. Here’s the makings of breakfast:

Hopefully there will be more trips this summer!

A few tank pictures, just in case you thought I’d lost interest… 😛
The xenia has completely split. The original “tree” is on the left, and the new branch creeped over a few inches away and then somehow severed the foot joining it with its parent. It’s extremely cool to have seen the process, which took about two months. They now act as completely independant creatures, and I’ve seen several times when one curled up it’s hands in irritation and the other stayed completely outstretched and pulsing. We’ll have to figure out if we want to start breeding them for resale.

I tried to take pictures of the fish, but they wouldn’t stay put. There’s a great shot of the gramma behind the mushrooms, but other than that it’s just the clowns bouncing off the walls.

And I finally got a great picture of the sunflower zoos and the yellow polyps:

You can see that there are some very tiny new faces, the zoos reproduce by budding, and so ours is growing! The yellow polyps (at the bottom right) have been getting bigger since we started feeding them the same chunks of meat that the fish get, so hopefully, they’ll start spreading soon, too.