Reasons for a Good Mood

*This picture is kind of terrible, sorry*

• Bright and shiny pedicure for 30% off at the new salon by work
• Unexpectedly getting out of work early
• Finding "Vintage Knits" at Half Price Books AND having a birthday gift card to use to buy it.
• Getting the last pair in my size of the shoes I want for the wedding.
• The last ball of Landscapes on sale at Michael's for two bucks. It's probably not enough to do anything with, but it's pretty, like an Easter egg. (I never do anything with those either)
• Hempathy, for the Raspy in Denim People or the Indigo Ripples Skirt in this spring's IK.
• Lelah is blooming, now that I have the pattern memorized

Wedding Stuff

The invites went into the mail yesterday! We made them by hand, and are the only wedding craft I ended up doing. I'm really pleased with the results...

The paper is nice and green with a metallic, almost Indian looking pattern. We got our names to print in the same shade of green on the first try. The envelopes were sealed with silver wax and a Fluer-d-lis seal (almost the same shape as the pattern on the paper). I'm really happy with how they came out!

C-a-l-i-f-o-r-n-i-a

*This is how I felt after being awake 24 hours*

I went to go visit my sister in California last weekend and boy, do I have stories. The Dallas skies decided to have a thunderstorm as I was on the way to the airport, which pushed the first leg of my journey back an hour... and then another and another until there would be no way to catch my connecting flight in San Fransisco.
I got put on standby for a flight out the next morning and tried to prepare mentally to sleep in the airport. I called Melissa to tell her, and she decided to drive 4 HOURS to San Francisco to pick me up. (Which I am SO glad she did)

I meet her in San Francisco, have a bit of a scare when it looks like I can't get my bags, but then that turned out ok and we went to Denny's to sustain ourselves for the 4 hour drive back home.

*I don't have pictures of the 2 am crazies at the Berkley Denny's so this cactus will have to do*

By the time we made it to her house, it was 6 am Texas time and I was spent. The next morning she woke up and made awesome lemon poppy seed muffins with almond icing, apologizing for not having a belated birthday cake for me. The muffins were awesome! We spent the rest of the day, which was Cesar Chavez day, shopping for groceries and dresses to wear to the rehearsal dinner.

When we came home, things were in full swing at the "Mangrove", what we call the block of town homes she lives in.

*nothing celebrates the rights of workers like a good game of beer pong*

We made Indian food, and some couscous pancakes from a recipe in the vegetarian cookbook Melissa got me for my birthday. We didn't realize we needed to use "quick cook" couscous so they came out, crunchy? gritty? I don't know. We feed them to the neighbors, and they didn't seem to mind. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out, chatting, and watching the various inhabitants of the Mangrove set things on fire. (We did this both nights)

*neat*

The next day was filled with a trip to the local farmer's market, where I got a jar of olives (yum!) and homemade apricot jam, more clothes shopping, and some homemade pizza. And of course, more fire and beer pong.

*Now is a good time for a picture of the cat*

Little Dude, the cat, is one of my sister's roommates. How do people take pics of their cats? He was very camera shy.

Then it was time to go back home. Upon arriving at the airport, I learned that since I hadn't taken my standby flight, United had canceled THE REST OF MY TRIP! I immediately lost all pretense of calm and burst into ugly, red-faced tears. I think if my flight out hadn't been so draining, I would have handled the situation better, but I had reached my airline crap quota for the next year or so. Through the grace of God, I managed to get a seat on a later flight and make it to Dallas by midnight, instead of the Monday at 2 in the afternoon flight that was the airlines original proposed "solution".

As a karmic payback for my good luck, I spent the longer of the two flights stuck in a seat between an evangelical Christian from Plano and an Agnostic Jew from San Francisco who decided to talk politics, religion and ABORTION, the entire flight. Nothing like a tense discussion of religion with strangers to make you feel like you're in a circle of hell.

I did get some knitting done in all of the crazy, but I haven't had a chance to photograph it in decent light.

This is truly the longest post I've ever written.

It's Not the Size that Matters, but How You Use It.

*belatedly flashing my stash*

My stash is small, and could use some S-E-X...from upper left to right...white handspun silk for knitting a garter that never happened, two hanks of DYO sock yarn that I have plenty of ideas for but no time, green grassy novelty yarn and blue fuzzy novelty yarn that I got for my birthday last year, and still have no idea what to do with, leftover Paton's Classic and some leftover boucule stuff I used to make a neck warmer for my sister out of. The Blue Sky Alpaca sportweight is missing, since it's at S's house and my order for the other half still hasn't come in and I may have to return it and re-buy it online.

*Rupert guards the stash basket*

All of the above fit in here.... and all of my leftovers and some dusty WIP's are in the basket on top and the bag on the right, the one with needles haphazardly escaping from it.

*I am not OCD and yes, that is a jar of olives*

I had a crazy, but great weekend this past, and have stories and pics to share that have nothing to do with knitting. But some of the pictures are of a cat and others of fire, so that should appease the blog gods.
Tomorrow night is the great wedding invitation put-together, so hopefully S will still want to marry me afterwards and hopefully I will have some time this week to post the aforementioned stories, pics of the new WIP, and the yarn I got to beef up my skinny stash!