Alternate title: The Blog Posts I Mean to Write Will Take More Time than I Actually Have
That about sums it up, I think. There will be an arts festival recap, a cupcake pattern, and something about the RI Great Outdoors Pursuit soon. Well, eventually.
But in the meantime, I have to admit, I love getting tagged for memes. So here goes:
What Is Your Current Obsession?
Finding a job for next year! And knitting for myself, after months of craft-fair projects.
What Are You Wearing Today?
Well, I'm at work, and I have a job interview today (!), so I'm wearing Real Grownup Person Clothes. Khaki pants, a blue wrap sweater. I wish I could say a handknit one, but no.
What's for dinner?
I actually remembered to defrost some drumsticks this morning! My husband, with his fabulous cooking creativity, will figure out something to do with it. If it's sunny, that will probably involve charcoal.
What Would You Eat for Your Last Meal?
Indian food. Samosas, and that potato-and-spinach thing I don't know the name of.
What's the Last Thing You Bought?
Sunscreen. Because I am an optimist.
What Are You Listening To Right Now?
Absolutely nothing. It's very quiet here.
If you could go anywhere in the world in the next hour, where would you go?
Hmm. Well, at last night's knitting guild meeting, our speaker was a woman who works in textiles at Old Sturbridge Village. So now I kind of want to go back there.
Which language do you want to learn?
Arabic; some of the older members of my family still speak it. Also it looks beautiful when written.
What do you love most about where you currently live?
The history. Can you tell I've been visiting Slater Mill a lot lately?
What is your favourite colour?
Yellow, and orange.
What is your favourite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
Probably my jeans.
What were you doing ten years ago?
I had just finished my sophomore year of college. J had just graduated, and we were planning our wedding. Sam was a little over a year old. He may have been sleeping through the night by then, but probably not. We were living in a 3rd-floor apartment near my mom's house, and thank goodness it had air conditioning.
Describe your personal style.
Comfortable? Not as crazy as it used to be? (Jess, no comments from the peanut gallery.)
If you had $300 right now what would you spend it on?
Books for everybody. Games for this kids - they've become obsessed with cribbage and high-low jack recently.
What are you going to do after this?
Get back to work. :)
What inspires you?
Colors, textures. The speaker from last night's guild meeting! (I'll link to her website when I get home.)
What are your favourite films?
I am a big nerd fan of Lord of the Rings. I know there are others, but I just don't watch that many movies. Hmmm . . . we rented The Assassination of Jesse James recently and that was very good. Visually stunning, and with more of an emotional wallop than I expected.
Whose work/designs are you inspired by?
Oh, wow, I don't think I could narrow that down. Norah Gaughan's designs are consistently surprising, beautiful, and interesting. There are others, but I'm drawing a blank here.
Your favourite books?
I like the warmth and humor of James Herriot's books. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Of course, Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien's other books, too.
Do You Collect Anything?
Not really. I have a good bit of yarn and fiber, but those are raw materials more than they are a collection; I certainly don't plan to display them and keep them forever.
What makes you follow a blog?
Well, if it's written by someone I know. :) Also, good writing, humor, and feeling like I have seomthing in common with the writer. Beautiful, inspirational photos, especially in knitting blogs.
What was the most enjoyable thing you did today?
Hopefully I haven't done it yet. The good stuff usually comes later in the day, when everybody's home. But so far - drinking my coffee.
What's one thing you dream of doing?
Hitting the lottery and staying home with the kids. And some sheep.
I'll be back soon, honest.
I've never been a jump-in-the-pool-all-at-once kind of person - I've got to do it gradually. It's not like I don't know how to swim; I like swimming. I just have to ease my way in slowly.
The internet community has been that way for me, too. I found blogs by a happy accident: browsing the website of one of those baby magazines you get a ton of when you're pregnant. I started knitting at about the same time, so it was natural enough to dip a toe into the water and start regularly reading a few favorite blogs. I never thought I'd have one myself, though.
And I didn't, not until about a year after I'd started reading them. I took that next step into the pool almost accidentally, too. I was at the library, looking at the "newly arrived" books shelf. (There's almost always something good there.) There was a "Blogger for Dummies"-type book and I grabbed it. I still thought I was just going to peruse it, but that didn't last long. That was when I started this blog.
I was happy enough to splash around ankle-deep, but, well, Ravelry came around. And you can't join Ravelry without joining flickr, of course. Groups on Ravelry were a new feature when I got my invite, and so I started joining and reading and posting in them, too.
After Ravelry came Etsy. I knew starting up a shop there, in anything approaching a serious way, would be a big commitment, a big step into the pool. And it is. There are quite literally thousands of sellers there, so it quickly became obvious that I needed to do something if I wanted anybody at all to see my shop. The collective wisdom of the Etsy forums (fora?), as well as the Etsy Ravelry group, told me that the way to go is to put myself out there on as many social networking-type sites as I can find. To which my first response was: HELLS NO. That' s way too much. But in the end, I got all the way in.
So here I am. I'm on Ravelry. I'm on flickr. I've got two shops, one on Etsy and one on the smaller 1000markets site. And now I'm on Twitter and Facebook, too. I know what a tweet, a photostream, and a phantom disagreer are. I have a blogiversary and I celebrated the last one by sending yarn to Texas. I use words like omg because, really, there is nothing else that better expresses the sentiment. (I have yet to use LOL or any of its variants, though, and I don't plan to.) I have most definitely dived all the way into the pool.
In fact, part of me wonders if I'm in over my head. That was first worry about the whole social networking thing - that I really wouldn't have the time. O Internets, how I underestimated you! Turns out SO MUCH of this stuff can be all linked up. Ravelry uses the photos from flickr. Everytime I post something on Twitter, it updates my Facebook status. I was even able to set it up so that if I post to the blog, a link shows up on Twitter (and therefore, on Facebook). (I could do that for the Etsy shop too, so that it shows up anytime I list something new or renew something. I'm trying to do that at least once a day, though, so it would get really spammy.)
And I really didn't anticipate how much fun it would be. I've been on Facebook all of three days and I've already found tons of people I haven't thought about in years. I'm far too shy to send a friend request to anybody I haven't at least talked to sort of recently, which I think is a whole new level of pathetic, but it's still super fun.
So - come find me! Anywhere and everywhere!
Amy tagged me for this meme (just today! Marvel at my promptness!).
It's pretty simple: go to your sixth picture folder and find your sixth picture. Here's mine:
That's Sam, age six, decorating a surprise birthday cake for me. Reese would have been four, and presumably too destructive to be let near the cake. Come to think of it, he's still like that . . .
Anyway, this was back when I was teaching high school full-time, and Jess was the boys' babysitter. Isn't she thoughtful?
I'm also supposed to tag five people:
Have at it!
So, to celebrate my blogiversary, and because I've never done it before, I'm having a contest. I wish I could think of something creative, but no. Just leave a comment, anything at all, and I'll send somebody some yarny goodness:
Left to right: handspun, a little skein of uber-soft baby alpaca, Araucania Ranco sock yarn, and Berroco Ultra Alpaca. Just let me know which one you'd like. I won't be mad if it's not the handspun :)
If you're not into yarny goodness (weird), I'll figure out something else. I'll pick a winner next Monday. Contest! Fun!
I'll leave you with a picture J's dad found recently of our family when Sam was a baby. We look just ridiculously young, no? It cracks me up.
Signs of fall:
potato leek soup
My camera simply refuses to do them justice. I guess you all will have to come to New England. Call me when you get here, will you? We'll go get some iced coffee and grinders.
Because I just can't help myself!
I missed my own blogiversary, can you believe it?
As of January 12, I had officially been blogging for a whole year. This might not be a big deal for a person who still has that battered, dog-eared journal that chronicles their teenage years, but I am a person who still has a few pristine, mostly empty journals that chronicle a few weeks of a teenage year. So keeping this up for this long is pretty surprising for me. If only I had known the secret to maintaining a journal: let other people read it. But then everybody would have known that I thought Andy was cute and that Renee and I spent all of French class passing notes with random song lyrics on them and boy that Jess was a total bitch. (Ha! Just kidding on that last one.)
Anyway, I just wanted to do a quick post to commemorate, and because I have been rather neglectful of the blog lately (ergo, missing my blogiversary). (Is "neglectful" a word?) I'll even be super-cheesy and link to my first post, in which I am very boring. And I will offer a promise to post more substantially later, really.
It's not like the journals, I swear.
Hey - didja check out the new header? Hard to miss it, I know, it's freaking huge. (All attempts to make it smaller only made it bigger, so there it stands.) I've been meaning to add it for ages, pretty much since I started blogging back in January. Originally, I wanted to have a picture of one of those Newton's cradle things, like this:
I have just returned, exhausted and somewhat irritated, from eleventy-thousand jillion errands. Both of J's cars (his everyday truck and the 1984 Camaro that is his second wife) broke yesterday. I tried not to gloat as I chauffeured him around this morning, because he often makes fun of my car, using any euphemism for "junk" that he can think of. But whose car is actually running?? Ha! This is a long way of explaining why a meme really hits the spot about now. Quick, before the baby's nap is over!
1. Name one person who made you laugh last night. My brother Rock Fan. He's really good at the whole deadpan thing.
2. What were you doing at 0800? Starting out on the eleventy-thousand jillion errands. What time is it now? Past noon? Yeah.
3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago? Eating a piece of cold pizza while putting away groceries.
4. What happened to you in 2006? Baby Sister! Oh, did you want a picture? Of course you did:
5. What was the last thing you said out loud? "Bye."
6. How many beverages did you have today? I've been nursing the same travel mug of coffee all morning, which is generally what I do. I'm sorry if that grosses you out.
7. What color is your hairbrush? Yeah . . . my hair is generally between 1-2 inches long. Hairbrush not so necessary.
8. What was the last thing you paid for? J's blood pressure pills.
9. Where were you last night? Home, teaching my mom to knit a sock heel.
10. What color is your front door? White for now, soon to be reddish-orange. The paint chips are on the fridge, the job is on the list.
11. Where do you keep your change? In an old value-size Skippy peanut butter jar that J's mom cut a hole in for him when he was about 10. He doesn't throw anything away.
12. What’s the weather like today? Started out rainy, but the sun's out now.
13. What’s the best ice-cream flavor? Coffee, of course. My username is jenfromRI, remember?
14. What excites you? Ideas - about knitting, parenting, figuring out exactly what I'll be doing career-wise eventually, etc.
15. Do you want to cut your hair? I couldn't cut it much more. But soon, when it's ready, I'll head into the bathroom with the scissors and come out a new woman. :)
16. Are you over the age of 25? Yep.
17. Do you talk a lot? Not really, but I guess it depends on whom I'm with.
19. Do you know anyone named Steven? Yes. Has anybody answered "no" to that question?
20. Do you make up your own words? Not on purpose, but probably.
21. Are you a jealous person? Nah.
22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter "A." Amy.
23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter "K." Kathryn.
24. Who’s the first person on your received call list? I don't have a cell phone. No, really.
25. What does the last text message you received say? See above.
26. Do you chew on your straw? No.
27. Do you have curly hair? Sort of. I'd use the word "frizzy" myself.
28. Where’s the next place you’re going to? The kids' school, to pick them up.
29. Who’s the rudest person in your life? Baby Sister. That girl pulls my hair, throws food around, has been known to fart on my lap. Jeez, can you believe her?
30. What was the last thing you ate? The aforementioned slice of cold pizza.
31. Will you get married in the future? What, again? No, I don't think I'll do a trade-in.
32. What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks? I mostly watch science/history documentaries from Netflix. Yes. I'm a nerd. I get it.
33. Is there anyone you like right now? *blushing* That's such a personal question!
36. Did you cry today? I don't think so.
37. Why did you answer and post this? It looked like fun. My brain is unwilling to cough up anything else. It's NaBloPoMo!
38. Tag 5 people who would do this survey. Anybody who is also doing NaBloPoMo - you're welcome.
Tomorrow I'll do a real post. I promise. :)
So I'm sure everybody in the blogosphere knows about the NaBloPoMo thing by now. I had been toying with the idea of doing this for a little while, torturing myself with the pros and cons, as is my wont. And actually, the toying time should have pretty much been over, as it is November and thus already started.
I thought it might be too much as the most posts I have ever written in one month is 16, and 16 to 30 is a pretty big jump. But it seems fun, and one of those camaraderie-laden bloggy internet-y things like KALs and Ravelry groups that I love so much. Because I am a joiner! And finding new readers, meeting new people, making new friends - that's why we do this blogging thing, right? I realize I am totally overthinking all this.
Anyway, I figured I'd try it out for a little bit, see how posting every day would be, then join if I thought I could do it. This is probably cheating. But I have posted every day for about a week now and my brain has not exploded, so there - I've officially joined. I'll put the buttons and whatnot on tomorrow - it's about my bedtime.
My apologies in advance if I post about diapers some time in the next month. I hope it will not come to that.
You're going to have to bear with me on the leaf pictures on Fridays for a little while. I really really love fall.
