Happy Halloween!!!

So the Halloween celebrations have been going on for awhile over here… they started last week with a High Class/White Trash party. Which is just a party where you dress as either of those two things – a pretty hilarious idea. We were going to go as white trash – I even bought a bright yellow t-shirt with an airbrushed eagle on it from the thrift store – but Matt didn’t find anything good. So instead he put on his most “conservative” clothes all at once and parted his hair. He looked like some sortof super-old school politician! So clearly he needed a “friend”. I dug out an old formal dress and added much rhinestones/jewelry as I possibly could:

All night Matt introduced us as “I’m Senator Matthew and this is my ‘associate’ (wink) Jeanne.” Heh.

The fur is actually my grandma’s that she passed down to me. I haven’t really had any opportunity to wear it – we don’t really get that dressed up often – so it was fun to actually have a chance to use it!

Some other randomness from the night:

Andy and Carolyn as White Trash (as Matt put it – Andy looks like Cabellas!)

Jill and Matt as White Trash (the stuffed belly was hilarious, she kept saying things like “baby needs some liquor” and resting her PBR on it. Oh and telling people that she was going to name it “Gundarena LeBron” Nice.)

Random group shot


View from the apartment we were at

Funtimes.

The Saturday night everyone was just going out to the typical haunts on W25th for their costume parties. Matt and I had to throw something together at the last minute because Sat, day was spent buying something very large (more on that later). So we went as demons with pieces leftover from costumes past (cape was from a vampire costume, feather boa and red fishnets were from when I was part of the 7 deadly sins – I was ‘wrath’) with the addition of horns and a pitchfork:


Not too shabby for being thrown together an hour before the party! Really, though it’s Matt’s scary look that makes it:

Andy and Carolyn had pretty awesome costumes, too:


What little kid didn’t want glow-in-the-dark dinosaur footie pajamas and an ALF doll back in the day?

There was also a Cleopatra and a Little Red Riding Hood in our group:

Seriously, Matt with the freaky eyes!

I just like this picture

And many, many other impressive costumes all around:

Walter from The Big Lebowski


Me with the “special box” guys. Gee I wonder if I’m sober in this picture. Wow.

And the Garage Bar’s new fire tent thing is pretty sweet, too:

Then on Sunday we drove to Beaver, PA to see some of Matt’s family. His great-uncle helps to run/organize/everything the Beaver Area Historical Museum:

Which was really cool…

And tonight we’re having a couple people over for our third annual “passing out candy” get-together. We live on a very main road so I think last year we had like 2 kids come by. And they were our neighbor’s grandkids. It was pretty sad…

And then this weekend we’re off to the DC area to visit some college friends. But despite all of the crazeeee for the first time in a long time our house is clean, we have groceries, and all laundry is put away at the same time. It’s like the trifecta of adulthood.

Happy Halloween!

Here and There Worms Scarf

So how about another finished project while we’re all recovering from our post-Halloween weekend hangover?

Worms Scarf:

Pattern: Here and There Cables Scarf from Scarf Style by Norah Gaughan

Yarn: Mmmmmmalabrigo Merino Worsted in the colorway Geranio. I used about 2.5 skeins.

Needles: Size 9 Knitpicks Options

Modifications: I knit one less repeat than the pattern called for and used a larger needle than called for.

The Verdict: I love it. It took forever and was kindof monotonous towards the end but it’s totally, completely worth it. I can’t wait for it to get cold now that I have this squishy, soft, merino goodness to keep me warm while I wait for the bus!

Ravelry: Here it is on Ravelry

Once I was finished knitting it I decided that it needed a good, steam blocking. The cable pattern was pretty tight together and I wanted a wider scarf:


Before

During

After

I love the bright pink color! My mom says it looks like worms – hence the name - but whatever. It’ll look good with my black coat. Also? It matches my roses perfectly:

Btw it’s hard to photograph a very heavy scarf on a skinny rosebush….

Eh. You get the idea. These will probably be the last of the garden pics for the year – it’s supposed to frost overnight so this evening the plan is to rip everything out and get the yard all shut-down for winter.

Oh yeah and I’m designing a cabely hat to go with it… the sketching/swatching/charting part is done and I’m about 75% into the hat:

And I'm out of yarn. Crap. So much for the plan to not buy anymore yarn for awhile!

In other news – I’m on myspace now. I caved to peer pressure. I’m not super active but if you want to be my friend that would be awesome since I only have like 10. Here’s the link to my profile.

And a few more random shots just for the fun of it:



Have a great Monday!

I might be a superfan now

Ok so this week has not been a good one. I was down and out for two days with the worst migraine I’ve ever had. It was all kinds of awful but I’m feeling much, much better now. I mean being home sick is one thing… being home sick when you can’t play online/watch bad daytime TV/read/ or even (gasp) knit is something quite different. But like I said, I’m better now…sadly I don’t have a Peru post for this week and I have no knitting to show. So how about some pics from the Ohio State game instead?

First off I thought our tailgating was pretty high-class b/c Anne made some very gourmet giant sandwiches:


I had no idea. The tailgating at Ohio State is impressive:


Very, very impressive:

Check out all of the generators.


I mean these fans really do not mess around. There were generators and TV’s and direct TV satellites and one group was frying a turkey. It was all-pro.

Oh btw the weather was perfect – like mid 70’s and sunny perfect. Unfortunately that meant it was too warm to wear my superfan hat so I borrowed a t-shirt and picked up a strand of buckeyes at the gate:


Us with the guy who sold us our buckeyes

I think we look like fans… we certainly partied like fans:


Heiny gate

Doin’ the O-H-I-O thing. That happened a lot.

Then it was off to the game. Again I had no idea what I was in for. I was picturing a college football game like the ones I went to back in the ‘nati. So like 12 people in the stands, mainly parents of players, plus a few stragglers and the mascot. I was not expecting this:


Holy crowd, Batman!

Wikipedia tells me that Ohio Stadium seats 101,569 people. Which is more than twice as many as Jacob’s field. And the place was packed. Crazy that.

At half time we were all excited to see the i-dotting. But instead the band does this:

Some random show about Spain or something

Yeah the script Ohio happens at the end of the game. Which was not cool b/c it messed up our plan of leaving the game early to get back to the baring. Because – and this is awful – the Ohio Stadium is dry. Meaning no beer/liquor allowed. WTF. I mean football without drinking? It’s un-American. So much so that by the third quarter (when our pre game buzzes were starting to wear off and we had forever to go before the i-dotting) we had equated football without drinking to letting the terrorists win. It’s that un-American. But then we followed a kid to find the source of the dippin’dots and all was right with the world again. Ice cream even in strange dot form can solve pretty much any problem.

Eventually the game was over:


And we finally got to see the script Ohio:










Marching band at its finest. Oh yeah and Ohio State won so that was good….

Us at the stadium

That night our plan was simple: find bar, watch Indians game. We succeeded (even if the Tribe did not) and ran into the Buckeye Guy. The conversation went a little like this…

Buckeye Guy: Go Bucks!
Us: Um, what?
Buckeye Guy: I’m the Buckeye Guy! Didn’t you see me at the game?
Us: Whatever, dude. The Tribe is losing by a million. We’re not in a good mood right now.
Buckeye Guy: I’m kindof a big deal…
Us: ‘Effing Boston…
Buckeye Guy: I’ve been on ESPN…
Us: ‘Effing Manny…
Buckeye Guy: And I once pulled a girl from a burning car.
Us: Ok ... what? burning car? what? Nevermind...Can we take a picture with you?

So yeah. It was a great day. Funtimes all around.

O-H-I-O!

Finished

They lost. They were 1 win away from being in the Fall Classic and they lost. The whole town is in a bad mood today. Matt was slamming stuff around and cursing last night and all I could say was “Welcome to being a Cleveland fan.” I think after this series we deserve to be ranked number one in both the Baseball Misery Index as well as the Football Misery Index. Perhaps someday in my lifetime we will experience what it feels like to win a championship but until then I’m going to be proud of my city and proud that we still have great fans despite what our teams put us through.

The Tribe is not the only thing that is finished around here – the whole Sox boycott has resulted in quite a few finished knits. I was going to wait and post them all together but I think this gray scarf matches the mood around town on this sad, sad Monday.

My First Handspun Scarf

Ok truth be told I’ve been done with this since July. All I had to do was tuck in the ends, wash and block it. It took me until last weekend to finally get around to doing that. The scarf was pretty tightly knit and short before blocking:



Plus the yarn was very scratchy. Nothing a good soak in eucalan and blocking can’t fix, though!

Pattern: One Row Handspun Scarf by the Yarn Harlot
Yarn: My very first ever handspun. It’s a natural Romney that my grandma gave me to practice with. I blogged about spinning it here.
Needles: Size 11 Knitpicks Options
Modifications: None (really, I swear)
The Verdict: I love it. I’m so proud of my yarn and now that it’s blocked it will actually be soft/long enough to wear!