Category Archives: Randonymity

Contests, Knitting, Randonymity

Pass the Silk Nog, please

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Stop over and welcome Deb’s new black kitty, Sammy!

There’s a pretty cool contest over at Kathryn Ivy right now – you can win a complete Easter Egg Yarn Dyeing Kit. The drawing for the kit is limited to residents of the continenal US, but there’s a separate drawing for patterns that’s open to folks outside the US48. To enter, leave a comment (by noon PST, December 27) letting them know what you’re wishing for most this holiday season.

Scout’s looking for knitting inspiration – leave her a comment with your project idea by 8 pm MST, December 24, and you could win some goodies.

The present gnawer is definitely Mayhem. I watched her remove chunks from the poor thing last night. I wonder how picky my brother’s going to be about his present? It’s no longer even close to pristine. In fact, it sort of looks as if a furry, demented kitty girl has been going to town on it…

Some of you (*cough* Marina *cough*) may have noticed a certain lack of knitting around these here parts of late. I really haven’t felt all that inspired knittingwise. However, that hasn’t stopped me from having a plain old sock on the needles. The yarn is Wisdom Yarns, Marathon Socks – Boston (color 212).

“My goodness, Mom, I didn’t realize you still did this stuff.” -Mayhem

“Don’t move, Mom, or the sock is history.” -Chaos

“Told you not to move, Mom!” -Chaos

In the above picture, my pale wintery leg has been blacked out to spare all of you. It’s better this way. Trust me.

I may or may not post on Monday; I hope everyone has a good weekend and a wonderful holiday!

Randonymity, Reading

Wholey woe

30 Comments

Thanks to everyone who left cheering or indignant-on-my-behalf comments yesterday – they were much appreciated. Particular thanks to the many who offered the loan of their boisterous children, all sure to make my cats seem quiet in comparison. 😉

Having trouble finding your holiday spirit? Thanks to brainylady for this link – you can “knit” tacky, gaudy, retina-scorching holiday sweaters to your heart’s content. Be warned that if you follow that link, there is music.

Reading Update
Dark Demon: The Carpathians (Dark) Series, Book 13 by Christine Feehan. Pay attention, everyone. This is critical information. If you happen across the phrase “her feminine channel” in a book, you should throw said book away immediately and apologize to the library later. Trust me on this one.
Unmanned by Lois Greiman. The fourth book of a series I said I wouldn’t bother to continue reading after I finished reading one. Um, those words sure are tasty, eh?
Falling Man by Don DeLillo. Don DeLillo specializes in powerful and disturbing novels about big events and societal shifts. His novel White Noise remains a timely read more than 20 years after it was written. At its most basic, Falling Man is about a 9/11 survivor. But it’s also about Alzheimer’s, performance art, poker, family, separation, and the various ways that people reacted to 9/11 in the months and years following the events. Although the novel is only 246 pages, it took me over a week to read in small doses – apparently I needed plenty of absorption time.

Have some lovely handknit socks that have holes worn in them, but you can’t bear to darn them or throw them away? You could turn them into hand or toe warmers! Apparently I’m all set. (These socks sure didn’t last that long – I finished knitting them on 3/26/06.)

*sniff sniff sniff* “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that these severely malformed black cats are not actually cats at all!” -Mayhem

Randonymity

In which I am crabby

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Based on my interactions with my downstairs neighbor, I knew it was coming sooner or later – she has complained to the owner of the condo in which she lives, and the owner of said condo has sent an official complaint on her behalf to the management company. I have replied. Not sure what’ll happen at this point.

Writing the reply left me crabby and not feeling much like writing a post. But! I won a contest over at 144 Inches of I-Cord – if you peek, you’ll probably guess which yarn Jen is sending me. Thank you so much, Jen! The news arrived at a time when I particularly needed cheering up.

And hey, Chaos is getting into the holiday spirit:

“This waiting until December 24th to open packages is just silly. Here, I’ll help you get started, Mom.” -Chaos

Randonymity, Viewing

Have you been gnawty or gnice?

27 Comments

Happy birthday to my “little” brother today! 🙂

Well, I’ve apparently been gnawty as I’ve experimented with a WordPress plugin to stick a copyright notice at the beginning of my feeds in bloglines. Any change to the pesky thing would send a bunch of updates to bloglines, plus my feed kept getting scraped anyway. So that’s one plugin I’m not using anymore! Sorry for any annoyance all those fake updates might have caused anyone.

But MrsPao and Pao must not have thought me too gnawty, since they sent a holiday package! (Shhhh… I might’ve opened it early.) (But I had a really good excuse reason. The box contained gifts for Jeanne, too, and since she and her husband Michael were over Sunday night, it made sense for us to open our gifts together, right?) (Why were they over? Sheesh! Full of questions, aren’t you? We were on our way out for some tasty Thai at Chiang Mai. Then we walked over to the Lagoon Cinema to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut. I found some parts of that Vangelis score a bit distracting due to their obvious 1980s electronica sound – in previous cuts, the narration covers a lot of the overdone parts of the score. I think I like the 1992 Director’s Cut best.) (Bit of me trivia – I saw Blade Runner in the theater during its original 1982 release.)

Anyway! The Paos sent some P.D. James mysteries, my beloved dark chocolate-covered rice cakes (mmmmmm), a chocolate bunny, some divine purple angora/cashmere/wool yarn, a Furry Feathery Wand Toy (FFWT) for Mayhem, and Sparkly Red Fabric Mice (SRFM) for Chaos! Thank you!

*sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff* -Chaos & Mayhem

Chaos seemed to enjoy the SRFMs.

“I’ll get you, my pretty!” -Chaos

And I think Mayhem might like the FFWT… What do you think?! (None of her paws are touching the ground in this picture, as Chaos lurks in the background…)

*mwmph* -Mayhem

Gluten Free, Randonymity, Recipes

In which I discover a gnawed present

36 Comments

Kristi has blogged about her visit to Minnesota. She got some fun pictures of Mayhem and the MGWT, and a very nice picture of Chaos with the baleful stare. Um, sorry about May staring at you 2″ away from your face while you were sleeping, Kristi…

The iPod meme’s been going around again. I did that one a while ago – if you’re interested, you can check it out.

On Christmas Eve, I’ll be baking some gluten-free cookies to take along to the festivities. Here’s one of our family’s traditional cookie recipes, with gluten-free modifications:

Candy Cane Cookies
1/2 c soft shortening
1/2 c butter
1 egg
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 t almond extract
1 c sifted powdered sugar
2 1/2 c sifted gluten-free flour blend (I use Bob’s Red Mill GF Flour Blend)
3 tsp xanthan gum (not required if you’re making these as gluteny cookies)
dash of salt
———
Topping: 1/2 c white sugar & 1/2 c crushed peppermint stick candy

Mix shortening, butter, sugar, egg, and extracts. Mix in flour & xanthan gum. Stir for at least a few minutes so that the xanthan gum develops. Chill dough. Roll into balls and press flat with your hand. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet about 9 minutes at 375F. Remove from cookie sheet, and while still hot, sprinkle with topping mixture. You can also split dough in half, color half with red food coloring, roll strips of each color out, and shape candy canes; however, I haven’t tried that with the gf version of the cookies. I highly recommend using parchment paper – it helps contain the crushed candy cane and sugar mixture.

A note from the last time I made these cookies: Seemed a little dry (I used butter & margarine, no shortening) – maybe try 2 eggs?? Or would the shortening make that much difference?? Definitely don’t add the full amount of flour at once. (I’ll experiment on the recipe a bit next week and will update this.)

I wrapped a few packages Friday afternoon. Over the weekend, I noticed that one of them was sort of gnawed. Hmm. I wonder who did that?

“It was totally the big kitty! There is precedent that he gnaws presents!” -Mayhem

“Sheesh, May, that’s low, blaming me when you are a notorious gnawer of everything.” -Chaos

Contests, Gluten Free, Randonymity, Recipes

Worth reading just for the fabulous brownie recipe!

34 Comments

Thanks to everyone who played along in my personal ads contest! If you haven’t gone back to read the comments, you really should – y’all are extremely creative, if somewhat twisted, folks. 😉 Many thanks to Jeanne and Deb for providing judging services! Cyn and KitKatKnit tied for first place, and Pao was selected for a dishonourable mention. Congrats!

Jen’s having a contest – leave her a comment about your favorite holiday tradition for one contest entry, and/or post a link to Jen’s blog for a second contest entry. Play along by midnight CDT, December 16, and you could win some “tasty sock yarn.”

Janet’s interested in seeing your recipe posts and photos. Leave her a comment with the link to your recipe/photo, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win some socks personally knitted for you by Janet! Ok, my entry doesn’t have any pictures, but here’s one of the easiest, tastiest brownie recipes ever:

Gluten-Free Double Fudge Brownies
2T butter or margarine
2T water
1/2 cup sugar

Mix the above ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high until mixture starts to boil. Remove from microwave, add

6 oz (1 cup) semisweet or double-chocolate chocolate chips

and stir until the chips are melted. Add

1 tsp vanilla
2 slightly beaten eggs

and mix well. Add

2/3 c gluten-free flour (you gluten-eaters can use wheat flour)
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp xanthan gum (only for gluten-free version)

and mix well.

Stir in 6 oz (1 cup) chocolate chips, mix well, and pour into a greased 9″ square pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350F. Do not overbake! If you wait until a toothpick comes out clean or the edges pull away from the side, they’ll be too done. I usually take them out at about 20-22 minutes. These brownies are very rich. They will be crumbly when warm, but they’re quite cohesive when they cool.

Looking Back
I’ve seen this on a few different blogs and I remember doing it last year… For a quick review of the past year, here are the post titles and non-contest, non-reading first sentences of my first post of each month.

January Reports of my demise were only slightly exaggerated…: I spent six hours of New Year’s Day in the emergency room, getting fluids and antinausea meds for the most evil migraine I’ve had in 12 years (i.e., the last time a migraine sent me to the ER). I’m still not feeling the greatest today.

February Secrets of Cat Photography Revealed (Part the First): Two things have inspired me to write this post. First, I promised the info to Michaele at least six months ago (whoops – sorry, Michaele!). (Um, the photos for Part the Second are still in my unused photos directory… whoops again!)

March Killing you with the cute: Aw, thank you all so much for the kind words about my refined raglan and yesterday’s self portraits! *blush*

April What I did with my weekend, or Meet the Peeves: As I mentioned Friday, the Peeves came to Minneapolis for approximately 24 hours, en route to see more sights and meet more bloggers (Hi CarrieK! Hi La! Hi Laurie! You’ll have fun!!). Meet the notoriously camera shy Peeves:

May A message from Mayhem: Hi everyone! Mom said I could post today because she doesn’t feel very lively…

June And finally, some knitting: Aw, Mayhem really appreciated all the sweet birthday wishes yesterday! For those who are wondering where the heck the year went, I didn’t get her until September last year.

July Feline groovy: Rachael’s cat Digit returned after being long given up for dead! However, he requires surgery and a lot of other medical care, and Rachael and Lala don’t have that kind of money right now.

August Handy Mayhem butt: I’ve mentioned swap-bot a few times recently. Kristi has a great post on how to establish a rating on swap-bot.

September Trying to catch up: I took a bit of a computer break over the holiday weekend and am frightfully behind in bloglines. Please let me know if you’re having a contest you’d like me to mention, as I’ll probably read about it on your blog long after the deadline has passed…

October Monday meanderings: I finished my Los Monos Locos on Saturday! *sniff sniff sniff* -Mayhem

November A Halloween walk: I thought I’d share a few pictures from my walk yesterday. Some of the house pictures are worth clicking to see the Halloween details!

December We were all stricken with camnesia: Thursday evening I picked up Kristi the Fiber Fool from the airport. We chatted and knitted while Chaos glared balefully and May tried to entice Kristi to open up the MGWT closet.

“Whatever, May. I know the blog readers really appreciate my dark smouldering sensuality more than your insipid cuteness.” -Chaos

Randonymity, Reading

Thank yous (with outtakes!)

29 Comments

Don’t forget to play along in my personals ad contest – there are some very funny entries! Deadline is 6 pm CST on Thursday, December 13.

Reading Update
Knitting Under the Influence by Claire LaZebnik. Pure unadulterated chick lit that integrates knitting into the story better than most of the other knitting novels I’ve read.
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. At its most basic, this is a novel about superheroes and supervillains, told alternately from the perspective of each. On another level, it’s a novel about identity, relationships, and alienation. I really enjoyed it, but I know several of you read it and felt more “meh” about it – I’m curious to hear why.
Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. The most recent Jennifer Crusie novel is as light and fun as her others.
Hot Mama by Jennifer Estep. Another superhero book! This is the sequel to Karma Girl, which I haven’t read yet – but will be reading soon.

Thank You Update
I won a contest, and Karen from Denmark sent me 400m of gorgeous Kauni yarn, plus some decadently dark chocolate, a holiday ornament with Danish assembly instructions (that should be an exciting project!), and a lovely letter. Thank you so much, Karen! (Tangent: Once upon a time, I wrote many letters and sent many cards. I guess email made that all less necessary? I miss it sometimes and will write the occasional letter. Recipients still seem able to identify these non-screen artifacts.)

“*sniff sniff* Yum! This smells like sheep (what are sheep anyway?) and pine needles (ditto on the pine needles)!” -Mayhem

“Dum dee dum dee dum…” -Chaos

Jane sent me another of her lovely photo calendars! Thanks, Jane – it’s already at work, waiting for January. And Susan saw these purple “Black Cats Rule!” socks and thought of me… Thanks!

“*sniff sniff* Mmmm… real pictures!” -Mayhem

Fortunately, the calendar was rescued before any kitties licked the pictures!

I’ve been threatening promising to show some outtakes to prove that for every decent cat picture I take, I also take many, many crappy cat pictures. I’ve restricted today’s outtakes to pictures that actually have identifiable cat parts in them.

Exhibit 1, in which there was no Chaos wandering through the planned shot, as I supposed him to be stationary. This shot could be rescued with a bit of cropping and captioning.

Exhibit 2, same thing – May was stationary when I started the shot. Maybe this could be rescued with cropping and captioning, too – something about that ghost paw, probably!

“Whatever, Mom. And just to be clear – I rule. Mayhem so doesn’t rule.” -Chaos

Randonymity, Tunes

Weekend busyness

31 Comments

Don’t forget to play along in my personals ad contest – there are some very funny entries already! Deadline is 6 pm CST on Thursday, December 13. Now I realize that Cyn should actually be “Sin”… and watch out for Margene after she hits the martinis! 😉 (But I am so not knitting that edible thong.)

Saturday night my friend Lisa and I had an evening out in downtown St. Paul, starting with yummy pad thai at Ruam Mit Thai Cafe. We then walked over to the Fitzgerald Theater (very quickly and with much complaining, as it was bitterly cold) for The New Standards holiday show. The New Standards are an unconventional jazz trio composed of Chan Poling, John Munson, and Steve Roehm. They opened with their amazing version of the Clash’s “London Calling.”

If you remember the 1980s New Wave band the Suburbs, Poling was the lead singer – check out the YouTube videos of “Love Is the Law,” “Waiting,” and “Cows.” John Munson was in Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic (“Singing in My Sleep,” “Closing Time“). (Tangential tangent – I went to a lot of Trip Shakespeare shows back in the day, including on my birthday one year as a present from my brother. Munson’s “rap” in the middle of “Toolmaster of Brainerd” that night remains a favorite musical memory.)

The special guests on Saturday night were fabulous – Dan Wilson (Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic) sang “Free Life“; his brother Matt (Trip Shakespeare) made an appearance, too, and they both sang backup on the Trip Shakespeare song “Snow Day.” Other guests included Haley Bonar, Adam Levy of the Honeydogs, and Laurie Lundeen of Zuzu’s Petals. There was also an odd little bit where Poling’s wife Eleanor Mondale sang a very discordant round of “Silent Night” with him… Anyway, you’ll be able to listen to this show yourself if you’d like – it’s supposed to be broadcast and streamed on the Current on Christmas Eve. Although you won’t have the opportunity to get your picture taken sitting on Santa’s lap… both Lisa and I skipped that one! (Nope, there weren’t any kids at the show… so yeah, there were adults sitting on Santa’s lap. Feel free to discuss among your selves.)

This little dinosaur across the street from the Fitz in front of the McNally Smith College of Music caught my eye as we were heading back to the car after the show.

On Sunday, Jeanne and I headed over to Craftmas at the Uptown VFW. We didn’t buy any gifts, but I picked up a few things for myself… We also wandered over to Uncle Hugo’s/Uncle Edgar’s, then had lunch at French Meadow Cafe, and ended up at Needlework Unlimited because Jeanne was looking for some very specific yarn. A busy but very enjoyable weekend!

“I have no idea what a barrette is either, May. I agree, it does look like some sort of cat toy. Shall we?” -Chaos

Randonymity

DWF seeks… A personals ad contest

47 Comments

Dang, have I got nothin’ today or what? Um… Ok, how about a little contest? Because, you know, I just love going to the post office at this time of year. 😀 The prize will be a mix cd personally crafted by me for the winner. Said winner will be selected based on how hard I laugh, or by random number should the choice be impossible. Deadline is 6 pm CST on Thursday, December 13. ETA: Contest is now closed – thanks for playing!

To play along, leave a comment below in which you write a personals ad for me – now that I’m feeling really healthy, dating doesn’t seem quite as implausible to me. *a-hem* Please aim for clever over crude! I’d be perfectly happy to leave behind my blog’s current G rating, but I’d also prefer not to hit NC-17 or beyond, y’know?!

Basic info about me – heterosexual divorced white female, age 41, 5’9″, athletic build, wicked sense of humor, tends not to be attracted to blonds or redheads, likes to read and knit, has eclectic musical taste, loves bicycling and walking, not much into tv. More details can be found in my 100 Things About Me list or my 6 Weird Things list.

“Woman! Bring me a beer! And the remote! And some tuna! And a partridge in a pear tree – doesn’t that sound yummy?” -Chaos

Randonymity, Tunes

Looking for some advice, plus randonymity

62 Comments

I need some advice. My downstairs neighbor has been complaining about Chaos and Mayhem running around during the night and early morning (5:30 am, when I get up) while she’s trying to sleep. I can’t blame her – they’re loud: “thundering paws” comes to mind. But I also can’t think of any great solutions, either. I know that while I was on medical leave, my schedule was very messed up (um, I might’ve unthinkingly played fetch with Mayhem after 11:30 pm on more than one occasion) and I think that was the final straw for my downstairs neighbor.

About all I can think of to do is to shut them out of the bedroom overnight and in the morning. Anyone else have ideas on how to tame the thundering paws of my extremely active kitties?? ETA: Some additional information – I have carpet. Chaos is around 16 or 17 pounds, so when he runs, you definitely notice. May is 10 pounds.

Ok, onto some random stuff. Congrats to Marina and La, who were the winners of my Superpower Blogiversary Contest!

I stopped at my quirky neighborhood liquor store Monday evening (if you’ve ever wondered where all the body mod people work? Yup – that’s the place) and mentioned my annotated beer case. She just rolled her eyes and said that “the boys in the back room” got a little bored sometimes…

Seems like it’s cats two, Christmas trees zero so far…

Some of you may be aware that I have extremely eclectic musical tastes. 🙂 In fact, if it’s by a top 40 artist from the past 10 years? I probably haven’t heard it. Anyway, there’s some pretty interesting holiday music out there, especially if the traditional songs are already getting on your nerves. Here are just a few – please note that this is all listen at your own risk!

Aquarium Drunkard has a nice playlist, including songs like Mae West’s “Put the Loot in the Boot, Santa” and Big John Greer’s “We Wanna See Santa Do the Mambo.”

Big Rock Candy Junk Shop Christmas will be available for a few more days. There’s some overlap with the playlist up at Aquarium Drunkard, but that’s because Aquarium Drunkard’s songs came from Big Rock Candy Mountain! Check daily for more fun songs, too – yesterday’s songs were from Billy Childish & the Musicians of the British Empire (“Christmas Hell” and “Christmas Lights”).

Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands has a free and legal Christmas mix up, which includes songs from Bright Eyes, Sufjan Stevens, and Death Cab for Cutie.

Suburban Sprawl has its annual Christmas compilation up. Some of the songs include Love Axe’s “Happy New Year,” and Jon Cendrowski’s “Dick in a Box.” You can also download their previous compilations.

Snow, snow, snow. We had more yesterday. Some pictures from work before I spent an hour driving 8 miles.

Generally, the world continues on a little further…

“Do I look as if I could possibly be noisy?! It has to be the big kitty.” -Mayhem