embee's blog

So I have instituted some new things around here, the most obvious of which is a new default theme. I started it months ago when I was unemployed, then I ended up over-employed for the summer and never got the bugs worked out, but... eh. Close enough for now. I'll pick at it again when I have the time. (The schedule at Job A and Job B is lightening up, but web design work is picking up, so...)

Next, and far less obvious, is some new "rules". I have been getting absolutely slammed by bandwidth eating spammers (and I've gotten no real comments for more than a year) so I upgraded the version of Drupal to a far more secure one, disallowed anonymous commenting, and now require new members to wait for me to approve them before they can comment.

I am probably going to be appalled by the time I finish writing this post. I have been trying to finish projects this summer -- the Poncho Verde, the pink purse, the Glamour Top -- and indeed I actually did finish those projects. (Well, the Glamour Top is technically finished. It doesn't fit me anymore because I lost a lot of boobage in my recent weight loss, which is good for me and bad for wearing the Glamour Top.)

Having been frustrated by the Glamour Top (I seem to have lost significant boobage since starting the project), I am now spending time on other projects. This weekend, I finished a small summer handbag made from recovered cotton yarn.

I've been working full-time and then some since my last post, but the great thing about the full-time job is it comes with an hour lunch break. It only takes me about 15 minutes to heat up and eat my frozen lunch, so that gives me 45 minutes to crochet (or, occasionally, return calls from web design and IT clients).

This has been especially great since I tore out the beginnings of a poncho I'd started last December (I got some yarn for Christmas, and immediately started far more projects than I really needed to) and re-did it, this time with proper sizing. What I have now dubbed the Poncho Verde has turned into something I will actually wear once this stupid heat wave is done with.

First, I made the two main pieces of the poncho. It's two rectangles 12" x 24", with an overall pattern of st1, sk2, in alternating rows of sc and dc. It makes a bunch of small squares (I may do this in stripes someday).

One thing I'm really terrible at is finishing projects. Well, that's not entirely true. If I have an actual deadline (i.e., baby shower) or if someone is paying me, it's far easier to finish things. But if it's just stuff I'm doing for myself... eh. So projects drag on for years sometimes. Thus, even though I bought a shitton of yarn on sale (and got a bunch more plus an A.C. Moore gift card for my birthday last month), I have declared a moratorium on starting new projects until I've managed to finish the ones cluttering up my closet. My one and only closet, which also contains my clothes, winter blankets, old stuffed animals, and financial documents. Yeah.

This is the first project I've finished since the moratorium, an afghan crochet "fabric" with cross-stitched James T. Kirk! I got the cross-stitch pattern from black lupin at deviant art (look for the link to her second group of stitchies, too). The result (which still needs to be blocked into squareness and not-curly-ness):

My parents are on vacation this week, so it's just me and my sister. And the cats, which is another blog post entirely. This one is about food. I'm pretty much back to my living-alone eating habits after two days of not having to cook for others. I get to eat what I want, when I want. (All my sister eats is pasta, Pizza Hut and iced tea.)

Yesterday, I wanted falafel. And I made it, and it was good. It was so good, in fact, that there wasn't really any leftovers to photograph. Oops. I'll try to take some shots the next time I make it.

I also wanted brownies. After some negotiating with my sister, who also eats brownies, I settled on peanut butter chip with peanut butter frosting. Oh yes. They are so peanut-butter-y that you can barely taste the chocolate. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) This is how they turned out (pics after the jump):

So last night, I was about to go to sleep. I was sitting up in bed, reading a book, as I usually do shortly before bed. I was also being occasionally poked by my cat, Shy, who really needs attention late at night for some reason.

When all of a sudden, a goddamn evil spider crawled over my hair and pillow!!

I immediately leaped into action. By which I mean I freaked out and started shaking out my pillows and smacking them with my book.

Why must you blow our
Single-stream recyclables
All over the yard?

This is something that's been taking up a lot of my time -- not necessarily active crocheting time, but certainly thinking/processing/designing time -- since I got this yarn for Christmas. Once I figured out each step, it didn't take long to complete it, but it'll probably be another month before it's ready to wear in public.

First, a gratuitous shot of my boobs:

And now, front and back shots:

So it's been a busy couple months here in Embeeland (sounds weird... never mind). I moved back to Connecticut and have been looking for work. Actually, it was more like I sat back and let work find me, and it happened. Crazy, huh? I ended up doing some weird stuff, put a lot of miles on my car, did a bunch of interviews... and now I have one retail job, one office job that starts soon, and I may possibly be in the running for a huge high-pressure corporate job. I'm thinking of bowing out of that last one. Kinda freaks me out, plus there's a lengthy commute involved, and like...