I've bleached a stripe in my hair for maximum color impact. Now I just need to settle on which color I want to use! (Bear in mind that the rest of my hair is now a deep auburn. She went more chocolate brown and less red this time. Next time I think I'll have her scale back on the brown and add a bit more red.)
So, here are the choices I'm looking at.
After Midnight Blue
Purple Haze
Ultra Violet
Electric Lizard
Shocking Blue
New Rose
Pretty Flamingo
I know I want the green, but I'm torn on the others. I like them ALL, but several of them are pretty close, and it wouldn't necessarily make sense to buy them all at once. What do you think? Which ones should I go for?
Update: Just for Julie (and her sister), I've edited so that we're talking about hair color, not dye. The weather has been yuck, so I haven't had a chance to go out and get anything yet. I know I definitely want Electric Lizard and Shocking Blue, but I'm thinking I might go for some Purple Haze or Pretty Flamingo, too. Kind of depends on what I can find and how expensive it all is.
I meant to post this last week sometime, but you know how stuff gets away from me. It's a Wordle of the titles and authors of all the books I read in 2011. Pretty clear who made my "most read" list, huh?
Sorry it's so small. If you click on it, you'll go to the Wordle page with a larger image.
Check this out! I got the coolest card in the mail today.
Does that not just rock? I think this one is going to have to go on my permanent magnet board, once I get the damn thing hung again.
In other news, I don't have much news. I'm reading A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, which is pretty amazing so far. There's been a lot of buzz about this one, and if the rest stays as good as what I've read so far, it will be totally deserving. I'll let you know how it goes.
I saw on twitter that Candace Havens is getting ready to run another Fast Draft class, and I'm seriously considering signing up. Has anyone taken it? Any advice? Apparently the idea of the class is that you're supposed to write 5,000 words a day, so at the end of the two weeks, you should have a 70,000 word first draft. That's one unusually long m/m romance, or quite possibly two average-ish length ones. I'm not sure if I'm up for that kind of pressure, but it sure would be a kick in the ass to get writing. And the class is only $20, so it's not like it's a huge financial investment. (Although a significant time investment if I'm really going to do it.)
As far as the rest of my resolutions go, the cleaning one isn't going exactly as I planned, but I am making progress. Today was trash day, and I managed to ditch a whole trash bag full of crap.
I have the next knitting project for myself planned out, but I'm trying to wrap up a few ongoing projects before I start it.
The "read less" resolution is in the toilet. I looked at my little red book, and as of the first of the year I only had 295 books to read to reach 1,000 since I started logging them. I think I'd rather hit 1,000 this year, so 295 is my new goal. I have, however, managed to not buy a book for 5 whole days. That's pretty good for me lately.
Let's see. What else? I haven't done any exercise since that little bout on the Wii last week. I haven't bothered with the picture a day thing, either, although I'm still enjoying taking pictures with my Samsung thingie. Mostly of the cat.
I think that's everything new and interesting. Or even not so interesting. I'm not even wearing any lip balm today!
Here in Indiana we have a take-and-bake pizza place called Papa Murphy's. An Irish pizza joint. This delights me. In the last few days they've been running ads for a special Jack-o-Lantern pizza.
Isn't that the goofiest thing ever? I love it. I'm going to push for a Jack-o-Pizza for dinner on Friday night. I know Halloween isn't Friday, but Friday is Pizza Night. I'm thinking this and one of the Ghostbusters movies that my brother lent us (he has both I and II on DVD, but who in their right mind wants to watch Ghostbusters II?) would make for a very satisfying Halloween celebration. Maybe with the Charlie Brown Halloween special while the pizza is baking. Because what's a holiday without a Charlie Brown special?
I may be about 25 years too old for trick-or-treating, but never let it be said that I don't know how to have a good time.
My best friend, her husband, and her son were here this afternoon for a visit. The hubs has family here in Indiana, so they were able to carve out a little bit of time on their grand tour. (That's not even a joke. They've been on the road since Monday, and other than me they've seen/will see another friend, both sets of his grandparents, his father, and his sister. All in different cities, as far as I know.)
It was nice to see Keli and Eric, but the real highlight was London. The last time I saw him, he was about 3 months old. He's 17 months now, and the cuteness factor was overwhelming. We had presents for him, and once he got in the groove he really enjoyed ripping the paper. And then once each package was completely unwrapped he had to be sure each of his parents got a good look. The funniest thing to me was when London opened one of the packages (a book), and Eric got all excited. "Richard Scarry!" Keli was like, huh? Apparently, she never read Richard Scarry as a kid (how is this possible?), so we had to explain to her that he was an author, and that his books always had a million fun things to look at. Once the presents were all unwrapped, Eric grabbed London and immediately started reading it to him. I have a feeling that's going to be the go to book when it's Dad's turn to read to him before bed from now on.
And then we sat down for some lunch. Mom had made some potato soup, because it's one of those things that is really flexible and forgiving as far as timing goes. It can sit on the stove and simmer for a while with no harm done. (We weren't sure exactly when they were going to get here.) I wasn't sure that London would go for it, but he loved it! There was a smile and a "yum!" after almost every bite. And he got very put out when Keli would sneak a spoonful for herself. That was his soup, damn it! There were also rolls, and London loves rolls. So he was stuffing bites of bread in his mouth between little bits of potato and carrot from the soup. Then his mom had what was apparently the Best. Idea. Ever! She grabbed a little piece of his roll and dipped it in the soup. He immediately made a dive for the soup bowl to try to do it himself.
Mom was practically incandescent with pleasure watching all this. Especially every time he said, "Yum!" It really was unbearably cute.
And then we all went outside so he could run around and play in the backyard. And we could all run around after him. I did very minimal chasing or picking up and swinging. I would have liked to have done more, but frankly, I'm beat to my socks with what I did manage to do. We had rain a couple of days ago, and it knocked a lot of leaves off the trees. So Eric and London played in the leaves for awhile, which was also way adorable. We have an old lobster trap under a tree in our backyard as decoration. London spotted it and tried to crawl in. Again, the cuteness factor was about 1000. Dad managed to get pictures of some of it, although London gets weird in front of cameras and won't smile. If he knew Dad was taking a picture there was no smile. But there were quite a few of him playing and totally unaware of the camera.
And then it was time for them to move on. :( They've got a lot more miles to drive and people to see before they get home at the end of next week. I was so glad to see them. It was with my parents the whole time, and I didn't really get to talk to Keli about anything other than kid stuff and general chatter. It was kind of like a 5 minute visit from an old life. Very odd.
And now I'm all worn out. For a good reason for once. I took my sleeping pill early, and I hope to be crashing soon. Night night!
I'm really, seriously thinking about taking on a new project. There's a book I've read in the last few months, and it's stuck with me a bit. Even better, it has a gorgeous cover.
Delish, don't you agree?
What I'm thinking of doing is knitting a shawl inspired by the book. (No, there is no knitting in this book. Just hot, macho, New York firefighters. But knitting is my medium.)
There's a very popular shawl pattern called Clapotis. (Pronounced clap-o-tee, or so I'm told.) I like the concept of the shawl, but it's a rectangular, and I really prefer triangle shawls. So right now I'm doing a bit of sketching and calculating (well, it's too late for calculating tonight, but definitely sketching) to see if I can convert it. Several other people have done so, but not quite the way I'd like to do it. So this will be a Becky Original, as well as my first attempt at knit design.
I've been looking for yarns to make this in, because I have a very particular idea in my head of what colors I want and how they should be used. No dice, of course. So I have two options as I see it. First, I find an experienced dyer, try to explain my insane vision, and hope that whatever they come up with is in the ballpark. Option two would be to buy some undyed yarn and all the pots and chemicals and try my hand at it myself. While I think it would be great fun to say, "See this? I created the design, dyed the yarn, and knit it, all by myself!" in not sure it's practical. I keep getting hung up on the pots and chemicals (and face masks) and mess and expense of trying to dye it myself. I've never done any dyeing, and I can't guarantee that my results would be any closer to what I see in my head than what an experienced dyer could do. So there's that.
What I see is a shawl with lots of smokey black (they are fire fighters after all, and one of the heroes is Italian with gorgeous black hair) and splashes of red and yellow and orange. Something that screams heat and fire. (And also the orangey red is the hair color of the other hero.) I want to make sure I get that smoke and fire theme across, because it would be very easy for these colors to get Halloweenie. I don't want the yarn colors to mingle too much, or stripe. I want what we in the fiber arts community call pooling or flashing. Pooling is when you get, well, a pool of one color. It can line up funny that way some times. Flashing is like pooling, except that it zig zags across the piece creating a lightning bolt-ish effect.
If all works out as planned, I'll call the pattern Not Clap (because it borrows the theme from the Clapotis, and it's know casually amongst the knitting community as the Clap). And then my particular shawl will be the Hot Clap-- a reference both to the pattern and the book that inspired me to knit it.
What do you think? Too crazy or what?
Oh, and the Lip Balm of the Day is Pink Cake. Too lazy to look up what all is in it right now, but it's yummy!
I had an excellent day today. First of all, I had the house to myself all day long. Mom and Dad went with their Sunday School class to some sort of Jesus museum. (It had dinosaurs. I don't even pretend to understand that one.) Anyway, this place was a couple hours away, so between driving there, touring, having lunch and dinner, and driving home again, I didn't see them until 9pm. It was lovely and peaceful.
And then the thing that I'd been waiting for since Wednesday finally happened. My brand new Kindle arrived! It's light and little and adorable. I spent some time loading books for the quarterly reading challenge that started at midnight, and then I started a library book that I was able to download wirelessly onto the new Kindle.
As if all of that wasn't happy making enough, my name was drawn in a contest on twitter. I got a free advance copy of Carina Press's holiday m/m anthology! In it is a new story by one of my very favorite authors-- Josh Lanyon. Woo hoo!
Some craft supplies that I'd ordered were delivered, and I ate queso dip and tortilla chips for dinner. (I'm a grown up, I can eat whatever I want for dinner. Also, my mommy wasn't here to say no.)
After that, Mom and Dad came home, and we talked about their trip, and then we watched about half an episode of Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives, which happened to feature a place here in Indianapolis and another place in Bucks County, PA (which is where we're from originally). And then we all retreated to our rooms, Mom and Dad to zonk out in exhaustion, and me to watch some random stuff off the dvr and write this post.
OK, as much as I enjoy rubbernecking, it's time to attempt to be A Better Person again. So I decided it was time to do another post about things that are making me happy right now. We haven't had one of those lately, and I have more reason to be happy than I have in a while.
The first thing that's making me happy right now is I Am a Paleontologist by They Might Be Giants. Someone is using it in a commercial right now, and it makes me want to boogie every time I hear it.
Something else that had me whooping and bouncing on the bed recently was Monday night's episode of The Closer. Captain Raydor (Mary McDonnell) was first presented in the show as a nemesis to Brenda. Then she shifted to an unlikely ally. This season she's been revealed to be a pretty valuable supporter, even if Brenda doesn't always know it. (Chief Pope can seriously bite me.)
Anyway, I loved seeing Raydor lead that chase last night. And then when she whips out that shotgun? Whoa, momma. You go girl! Definitely one of the most badass moments of the series so far. And I absolutely loved the look Tao gave her as she was walking away.
If you haven't ever watched The Closer, and you at all enjoy cop shows, I suggest you do what I did a few years ago and rent season one. It's a fantastic series, and well worth watching. (Although I'm bummed that this is the last season.)
Happy Thing #3 is that it's looking like I've got at least a little bit of my knitting mojo back! I hadn't touched the needles in months, until this past weekend. I poked around on Rav until I found a pattern that looked promising (of course I changed my mind and did something different when the needles actually kissed yarn), and then I hauled out all my sock yarn scrap. Y'all, I have a boat load of sock yarn scrap. Three big, overflowing bags of the stuff, and then some.
I sorted out all the scrap, and most of it was sufficiently bright. So then I sat and watched TV and wound a ginormous ball of scrap yarn, tying on a new color when I came to the end of each scrap. This thing was easily half again the size of my fist. When you consider how thin sock yarn is, that's a LOT. And then I cast on my Shawl of Many Colors. (It'll probably change names a few times, but that's what it is for the moment.)
After a couple of days, the SoMC is on row 87 or so, and growing all the time. This pattern isn't super specific. You get to a certain point and then they give you a general recipe to continue, because the size needed on something like this can vary so much, depending on who it's for an how they want to use it. I could probably stop right now and have a respectable head scarf. But I want a full size shawl, which means the wings span is equal to the height of the wearer. I'm 5'7, so I've got a ways to go. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I've got enough sock yarn scrap to make it happen. But at some point in the not too distant future I'm going to have to start rolling another ball of yarn.
I'd planned to post a picture of this grand masterpiece, but I can't find my camera. Or the batteries that go in it. So that's going to have to wait for a day or two. By then it will be bigger and more colorful and more impressive anyway.
One more thing that I'm really excited about. There's a challenge coming up in my M/M reading group called the Quarterly Gang Bang. (Trust me, not as kinky as it sounds.) Every person who signs up picks a book for each other member, and they all pick books for you. By the time the picking is done you could have 50-60 titles on your list. The idea is to read all those books in the next quarter. The reading part doesn't actually start until October, but sign ups start on Thursday. I've been wanting to do this for MONTHS, but I felt like I needed to clear out some of the mainstream romance I'd managed to accumulate but not read in the last several years. I did get some of it read (89 out of 198 books read so far this year were non-m/m), and I hope to knock out a few more in September. And then the rest of the year will be dedicated to reading as much delicious m/m lovin' as I can handle. I even have a few holiday reads lined up already. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I can't wait to dive in.
So that's all the happy stuff. And I know I said I wasn't going to gossip any more, but I just have to mention that we've had our first official *flounce*! Someone who, by her own admission, left the group for a while and only recently came back, felt the need to declare us all terrible people and announce that she was leaving the group again. So there! It was kind of funny, because a) although she claimed we were all rude, her post was by far the most obnoxious one to date, and b)... oh, hell. I forget what b was. But anyway, you know you haven't had a good internet kerfluffle until someone loudly declares that they're taking their ball and going home. I suspect the whole thing will have petered out to nothing by this time tomorrow.
It was all amazingly civil for an internet dust up. If this had happened on my knitting forum there would have been a pile on, and by the time the mods stepped in the offending parties (not always the original offenders, either) would be ripped to shreds. A half dozen people would dramatically flounce (only to quietly return next week), and whoever is left when the dust settles would be quietly knitting sweaters from the remains of the deceased.
Knitters are Hardcore.
I couldn't imagine it happening in the Betties. I mean, I know it could happen anywhere, and we certainly aren't immune to petty scandals. But accusations? Histrionics? I don't see it.
Anyway, that's what's going on with me for the mo. I'll try to control myself in the future. And I'll let you know about positive developments. I'm not quite ready to say anything about them yet (besides, this post is ridiculously long already), but I'll update you when the shift from "things I intend to do" to "things I'm actively doing". Intention is important, but if you don't follow it up with action you won't get very far.
I've been dealing with some difficult internal stuff this past week, and there have been a few things that have saved me.
1) Comfort food. Last night I made a Mexican casserole that I used to make in Houston. It wasn't quite how I'd have done it if I were working from scratch (I'd rather start off with chicken and rotel in the crockpot instead of left over cooked chicken), but it was still pretty good and a taste of home. Then I made a Strawberry Dream Pie. Tonight Mom made mashed potatoes and gravy just for me. Yum. I had a bowl for a midnight snack, too.
2) I'm reading a really fantastic book called A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Really. It's fab. I'll be reviewing it soon. I'm about half way through the book, only 275 more pages to go. It's a big 'un.
3) I've been listening to a LOT of Katy Perry. Very peppy. My favorite is Teenage Dream. But I don't love the video, so here is the boys' choir from Glee doing their version. Hope it makes you as happy as it makes me.
There has been a dearth of happy in the world in the last week. It certainly hasn't been sunshine and rainbows for me. To me this means only one thing. It's time to do another Things That Make Me Happy post.
1. Pancakes for dinner. Especially if they're apple pancakes! 2. My library already has a hold list going for the audio version of The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen. Woo hoo! I love Sarah Addison Allen, and I can't wait for her next book. 3. Farkle is on it's way out! I won't share any of the gory details, but I will say I'm relieved to see progress. 4. Sunday Morning! It's quiet, and I have the house all to myself. I forward to these hours every week. I'm dealing with the change in living situation fairly well, I think, but I desperately need these few hours by myself every week. 5. Trouble. He's a little twerp, but I love him like crazy.
Also, the doctor's appointment went well. Antibiotics, but no lancing for now. I've named my abscess Farkle. Anything that big really ought to have it's own name.
