{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"la vie en violet","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/","description":"la vie en violet - LiveJournal.com","lastBuildDate":"Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:42:30 GMT","generator":"LiveJournal \/ LiveJournal.com","copyright":"NOINDEX","image":{"url":"https:\/\/l-userpic.livejournal.com\/89259106\/6984184","title":"la vie en violet","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/","width":"100","height":"100"},"item":[{"guid":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44588.html","pubDate":"Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:42:30 GMT","title":"Happy day!","author":"marcolette","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44588.html","description":"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.","comments":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44588.html?view=comments#comments","category":["cobras","portland","bandom","rl"]},{"guid":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44463.html","pubDate":"Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:36:59 GMT","title":"Bears!","author":"marcolette","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44463.html","description":"My current obsession is with knitting. Not specifically with knitting bears. It just happens<\/i> 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<\/a> before Christmas, but he's found a home and a name since then, and gained a basketball.




It took me a few weeks, off and on, to knit the teddy bear. It was a minor challenge, a lot more sewing than I like to do, but not a huge deal. Just follow the pattern, step by step. The uniform, though, was a creation from scratch, and it was a major pain. I love problem solving, and it was fun to improvise - The jersey from a baby's tank top pattern, the shorts from a pattern for baby jeans, freehand improvisation on all the colors on the uniform, the number, deciding how to embroider the team name, etc. But it was also tedious and long, and I finally had to put it aside to get the rest of my Christmas gift projects finished so I wouldn't show up at home with a lovely handmade gift for my mom and a bunch of gift cards for everybody else. So I ended up knitting the basketball at my parents' house, much of it in front of my mom. I was convinced she would guess what the entire project was if she saw the color of the yarn, but that was the result of being too close to the project, and too obsessive about it for too long. Because I was in a rush and a little bit tired of it by that point, the basketball is a little messy, and I'm not fully satisfied with it. But it's done. I made my mom open my gift the night before Christmas Eve. I'd been working on the thing for months, and because I had to make so much of it up, thinking about it<\/i> for that whole time. I had to tell her all about it once she opened it, so having her open it early allowed me to focus on being part of the group, enjoying the rest of the family instead of needing to tell her all about my project.

She loved him as much as I hoped. She named him \"Dunkin\", which, much as I don't love strange spellings, is all about basketball. She says the crowd will cheer, \"Dunk! Dunk! Dunk!\" when he's on the basketball court. He's been watching all the games with her, and she's giving me updates on how he thinks the team is doing.
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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.


Last year, my sister requested a teddy bear hat, and I made her an ivory one<\/a>. She was appropriately grateful, but she also requested I make her a brown one, if I ever got in the mood to make another teddy bear hat. I don't love making the same things over and over, but I do love my sister and I find it hard to say no to her, so she got this for her birthday, 12\/27.



My brother-in-law is a smartass (which is what allowed him to seamlessly join our family), and he said he wanted a bear hat, too, but he only wanted the bear butt. So I made him one for Christmas.



Don't they make a dignified couple?



My b-i-l is a grown man, a responsible adult professional and all that, and he doesn't have much in the way of winter-wear, having recently moved from Portland to a place that actually has enough winter to require snow tires. So I figured I'd make his hat respectable, with the added bonus of the gag. I put a couple of yarn-over holes in the back of the hat, about 3 inches from the bottom. I made the pom-pom out of the yarn I used as an accent on the bear hat, and I attached a long piece of yarn to it. I then threaded the tie through the holes and tied on the tail. And presto! Bear butt! Just untie to become a respectable adult. Except he says he will never wear the hat without the tail, no matter where he goes or who he might see. So the removable tail was for nothing, but it was kinda fun to do.
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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!","comments":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44463.html?view=comments#comments","category":"knitting"},{"guid":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44243.html","pubDate":"Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:14:54 GMT","title":"Knitting for giants","author":"marcolette","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44243.html","description":"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.","comments":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/44243.html?view=comments#comments","category":"knitting"},{"guid":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/43991.html","pubDate":"Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:40:54 GMT","title":"Christmas update","author":"marcolette","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/43991.html","description":"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).



Naked Teddy:<\/b>







Uniformed Teddy:<\/b>






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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<\/a>, 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<\/i> 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!","comments":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/43991.html?view=comments#comments","category":"knitting"},{"guid":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/43328.html","pubDate":"Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:26:18 GMT","title":"I have a teddy bear head","author":"marcolette","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/43328.html","description":"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<\/i> 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!","comments":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/43328.html?view=comments#comments","category":"knitting"},{"guid":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/42294.html","pubDate":"Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:55:45 GMT","title":"Sleep deprived Thursday","author":"marcolette","link":"https:\/\/marcolette.livejournal.com\/42294.html","description":"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.

*

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: