I'm moving back to Portland!!! Wheeeee!!!!

I love Seattle best, but most of my main non-family people are in Portland, and I need to be less solitary. As of today, I have the job situation squared away, and I'm aiming for an early April landing date.

So much work to do between now and then. Ugh. It'll be worth it, though. Hooray!!!

Cobras tomorrow in Portland, Saturday in Seattle! Dance party! Speaking of Cobras, this clip seriously makes me laugh and laugh and laugh every time I watch it. Ryland!

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I need to make some Cobras icons, obviously.

My current obsession is with knitting. Not specifically with knitting bears. It just happens that today's updates are all about bears.

First, there's Dunkin, my most ambitious and successful knitting project to date.



I posted about him before Christmas, but he's found a home and a name since then, and gained a basketball.

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That is not the only bear on my knitting portfolio this winter, though. Oh, no! There is also my sister's new bear hat.

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There has been other knitting, but these were the most dramatic of my gifts so far this season. I'm currently knitting a garish but soft wrap/poncho in alpaca yarn for L in her favorite colors. It's a bit frightening, but she'll love it. Will post photos once it's finished.

Later this week: my new knitting cupboard! I cleared out an armoire, bought a bunch of bins to organize, tidied away my stash, and I suddenly feel like I've gained an entire room in my apartment!

I am knitting the most boring hat in all of creation. It's a black folded-brim hat in stockinette stitch, with a couple of hideously bright green stripes as trim. It looks like a hat you'd buy for $5 on clearance. I promised my friend with the enormous head that I'd knit him a hat, though, and he selected the colors and style.

And in case that "enormous head" thing sounds too mean...His head is 27"!!! The average human head runs 22"-24". I consider MY head to be huge -- I'm at about 23.5", and I can only rarely ever put on "ONE SIZE" hats in most stores. So, yeah. His head is huge, and he's never had a winter hat that fit him. So I'm knitting and knitting and knitting this thing that currently looks like a small sweater. Seriously, his head is bigger around than my sister's waist is!!

I have to finish it, though, because I want these needles for another project I'm anxious to start. Also, because I'm getting really bored with the endless stockinette in black superwash wool.

Hello to all my LJ friends I've neglected for so long! I haven't been a good community member, and have neither posted my own or commented on other people's posts recently. But I'm still following all your lives, wish you excellent things for the New Year.

I've been surviving, and am actually doing a lot better with the depression and all than my lack of posts might indicate. I'm not fixed yet, but I have been making progress. And I've started treatment for my sleep apnea, so I should no longer be chronically fatigued once I adjust to sleeping with a mask and have gotten back in the habit of going to bed at the same time every night. I would have updated more regularly, but my posts would have contained fascinating details like, "Today I went to work without beating myself up too hard. Yay me!" and "Today I took a sick day and read fic all day, and then I beat myself up about it." Truly boring stuff.

But! That's not what this post is really about.

I'm off to my parents' house for Christmas this evening, and I've finally finished the teddy bear I've made for my mom. I have not yet finished his basketball, but he's healthy, happy, whole and dressed, which was the important thing. And the basketball won't take too long. I've done so much detail work on this uniform, though, that I occasionally get tired of it and have to run off and make a hat so that I can feel productive on a larger scale. Because, yes, everybody is receiving knitted gifts from me this year. I put all my energy into this bear for my mom, though, so everybody else gets hats. Cute hats, though! Fun hats customized to the individual. But, yeah, hats.

Anyway. Really this post is a "YOU GUYS!!! LOOKIT THE BEAR I MADE!!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW CUTE HE IS!!!" update. He's all finished here. No disembodied heads, for those who were traumatized by my last Teddy photo post. :-S He's handmade, start to finish. Everything is knit except the school name on the uniform (poorly embroidered) and the red edging (crocheted).

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I didn't finish him in time to take him in to work and have everybody admire him, so I'm showing him off here.

I used this pattern, though my results were deliberately different, primarily because I used a yarn that...well, I guess it's officially an eyelash yarn, but I've never really wanted to call it that. It's a discontinued Lana Grossa microfiber yarn with a wool foundation, and the fuzz is almost feathery, instead of the more common polyester or plushy feel. I knit it with a double strand, which gave me the thickness and lushness I was looking for in a teddy bear fur. And the fact that the foundation yarn is wool gave the body a natural give and flexibility that isn't very common in most eyelash yarns I've played with. Elann.com had its remaining Micro Lungo on clearance for something like $3.75/skein for a while there, so I bought enough that I have enough for probably three more bears if I get in the mood to make more. These will definitely not be gifts my family and friends can commission from me, though. It's too much work. Given the number of hours I put in on it, I have to be excited about making the thing from start to finish.

In this case, though, I think this will be a perfect gift. My mom has a substantial teddy bear collection, and there are certain annual collector bears we're always expected to buy her for Christmas every year. ;-) I assigned that to my dad this year, since I'm often the one who gets them. And additionally, my mom has, in recent years, become a fanatical Gonzaga University basketball fan. It's my alma mater and her (my old) hometown team, and she's gotten to the point where she has a huge variety of GU sportswear that she makes sure to wear every game day. She had to go to a Christmas party on the day of a game, and was stressed out until she realized she had a keychain she could carry in her pocket since she couldn't wear a sweatshirt. All fairly typical sportsfan behavior, but this is relatively new to her. Now that I think of it, I can't imagine where I got my obsessive tendencies. (My father deserves some credit there, too, in fairness.)

I hope everybody has a merry Christmas, a happy new year, a pleasant winter solstice, and a happy any other winter holiday you're celebrating!

O Spamful Day!

I'd abandoned my knitting a while ago, and just recently realized that I needed to pick it back up and use it as a stress reliever. It hasn't totally worked yet, because my current project is a crafty one that requires a lot of problem solving and pattern adaptation, which makes me obsess. But it's fun!

I'm knitting my mom a teddy bear for Christmas with a very soft micro-fiber eyelash yarn. The head has been giving me fits, because it's the key. If the bear has a cute face, the whole thing is made. I've redone the ears from scratch, and re-placed the eyes twice, but I'm finally really happy with it.

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Yay! All happy now!

I keep waking up to my radio station proclaiming that they're live in NYC this week, and then I go back to sleep to strange dreams about Seattle being a suburb of NYC or something. An easy solution would be to NOT hit the snooze button and go back to sleep, but that's not an option for me. I'm a snoozer.

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My parents are coming to visit me the first weekend in November. I enjoy hanging out with my parents, but it's a whole weekend of them in my little one-bedroom apartment. My one-bedroom that I live in more like a studio, since the bedroom is separated from the living room by French doors.

I've been bugging them to come visit in Seattle for years, but now that they are, I'm nervous. What are we going to do together? So I need suggestions.

If you live in Seattle, what do you usually do with out-of-towners? Any sure bets?

If you live elsewhere and have visited Seattle, does anything stand out to you as extra fun from your trip?

There are a few limitations:

• My parents are in their 50s, so age is not an issue. But my mom has M.S. She doesn't have any disabilities from it so far, but she gets fatigued very easily. So, for instance, we might swing by Pike Place Market for the standard wander, but an entire afternoon shopping, etc. on the waterfront would mean she'd be done for the day, and possibly the weekend.
• My dad is going in for outpatient surgery today because he tore his bicep when he was playing on some contraption. He swears he'll be recovered in no time, but we're all a little skeptical.

Speaking of my dad and contraptions, his latest passion is the unicycle he recently purchased. Nobody can say that I didn't come by my tendency toward non-standard obsessions naturally.

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Interpol concert tonight with raveninthewind!

Okay, I need to go to bed. However, I saw that the ep was available for download, and I was, like, required to stay up long enough to download it and post these photos. Because it's important that we discuss them while I'm at work on Tuesday.

A Nathan picspam is pretty much guaranteed to come out of this episode, but I didn't have time for that tonight. For now, I just needed to post this photo.

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Below the cut: Nathan!squee. And some other things about "The Kindness of Strangers". And a casting spoiler for next week.

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Why is it still so dark out? It's only October. This is only one of many reasons that mornings are so hard for me.

Jimmy Eat World put on a good show last night, and I had a great time with raveninthewind. I also enjoyed being able to ogle attractive band boys who are AN ENTIRE YEAR OLDER THAN I AM!!! Quite refreshing. I need to track down more of their earlier music now.

In TV news, why didn't any of you tell me how fabulous Life is? You're all on notice!!! Except, wait, I think pretty much everybody on my flist who talks about TV has said it's a great show. So the question becomes, why didn't you sit me down and force me to pay attention long enough to watch it? I clearly need a keeper. I've tracked down the first couple episodes but not watched them yet. I saw this week's, because I finally remembered to set the DVR to record it.

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Hopefully my enthusiasm will stay high once I've seen more than a single episode.

I'm watching Mick Jagger speak French. His French isn't very good, but it's good for, like, somebody who's just taken classes and spent a little bit of time there. That was random.

A group of raccoons crossed in front of me as I was leaving work at 6pm.

I'm really lethargic today. This week, actually. This does not bode well for Friday at work, since I have Jimmy Eat World tomorrow night. And then Friday is SGA night!! Hooray!!

Reaper made its way off the list of things I watch last night. Moonlight is threatening to follow closely behind.

It'll also be interesting to see how Pushing Daisies continues. The pilot was fantastically charming, but I don't know if it'll be sustainable. Or, they might be able to sustain the tone and the quality, but it might not hold my interest. Test time!

Okay, back to work. Stupid work projects at home.