This makes me nostalgic for dueSouth fandom.
http://m.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29131757

This is my favorite pendant from Wyrding Studios, and the earrings that kythryne custom-made to match.



She's posting a big anniversary update to her site in the next day or two... there's a preview pic here and I can already tell that they will be having a deleterious effect on my budget for next weekend's fiber fair if I happen to get to her update before other folks snatch up the pieces I have my eye on.

(And yes, I'm posting this for an entry in a prize drawing, but I wouldn't do it if I didn't genuinely believe it's a public service to point out her stuff to any of you who aren't already wyrding_studios fans.)

Infrequent posts are infrequent. Also, if you only friended me because we were in the same fandom at some point and are disappointed by the lack of fandom content, every day is de-friending amnesty day around here. My widdle fewwings won't get hurt.

( Updatey stuffCollapse )

I do still read my f-list and comment occasionally, so if you've friended me in the last couple of years and wonder 'who the hell is this person who sometimes replies to my posts?', well, this is me.

Wow, this thing still works? *blows dust off "Post An Entry" page*

I would summarize the last *mumble* months, but it's really just a constant round of knitting, cooking, reading the Internets, etc. And, this week, dentistry. Which I would really, really like to whine about, but won't, because it is graphically TMI and at least one of my friends is dentistry-averse and I don't want to freak him out.

Instead I'm breaking radio silence to beg/plead/cajole you to go see Hesher if it's playing at a theater near you. The teeny tiny list of theaters it's playing in can be found on the movie's website, though I can't direct link it because of flash evilness. (Wake up and smell the 2011, guys.)

You can find a trailer at the same website. I encourage you to watch it. There's no big distribution deal for Hesher, probably because A) it credits the audience with having a brain, and leaves a lot of the backstory and plot unstated for us to fill in for ourselves, and B) it has more f-bombs and sexually explicit language than vintage Kevin Smith. So the only chance it has to get into more theaters is for people to go see it at the theaters that DO have it.

This movie deserves, but probably won't get, Oscar nominations. Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and if there's a category that encompasses general look-and-feel, then that too. There is only one tiny thing that dates the movie; in all other respects it could be set anytime between now and the mid 1980s. I just think that's kind of a cool trick. :) I realize I haven't said much of what the movie is about, but it's about a lot of things, and I'm pretty confident that anyone in fandom - any fandom - is going to grok why it's so awesome. We're already primed to recognize subtext and make our own meta.

Ok, my final endorsement for Hesher... as Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself posted on Twitter, "I'm half naked in it a lot." And he is. And I didn't even pay a lot of attention to looking at him, no matter how worth looking at he is, because I was just marveling at the story and the characters and how nice it is for a movie to treat me as though I have a brain.

I know a few people were interested in the Harry Potter feast I went to earlier this week, and someone at Alamo Drafthouse finally did what I've been wishing they'd do for ages... take pictures of the food! So you can check it out on their blog if you like. And they're not kidding about that wine that went with the halfblood sausages... most wines give me an instant headache, and even the ones that don't (mostly ice wines) I've never really enjoyed. I'm hoping when I track this stuff down it's A) readily available, and B) reasonably priced.

Non-spoilery review of the movie... I liked it much better than the book. But then, I liked HBP much better than the book, too, because I really did not like books 6 or 7. Malfoy Manor looks exactly like I thought it would, except for Tom Felton, who got odd looking as he grew up (and not Benedict Cumberbatch-style good odd looking, either). The location shots were gorgeous, and my favorite part was anything with the house elves, who are tiny, big-eyed bundles of awesome.

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I can't imagine I'll be posting much if at all until the new year, so let me wish you a relaxing, non-stressful season with good food (but not too much) and good visits with family (but not too long) and good friends who don't look at you funny for spending time on whatever fandom you're into these days.

A kitten that I met at my knitting group needs to find a new home or she'll be going to a shelter. She was abandoned at two weeks old and would have died if her foster family didn't take her in and hand-raise her, but they're very allergic and can't keep her.

If you know of anyone in the Austin, TX area who might be willing to adopt an adorable white kitten, please link them here. We all hate the thought of sending her to a shelter, but no one in the knitting group is able to take her in. (I know my own cranky, elderly cats would chew her up and spit her out. DO NOT WANT.)

We have tickets to Can't Stop the Serenity on Saturday (benefitting Equality Now). It's their fifth anniversary, and we've attended for at least three of the previous ones. This time we've decided to re-watch Firefly first -- got through "Serenity" yesterday, which had some great bits I had forgotten about, including Mal saying "I'm a bad man". Tonight we'll have "The Train Job", which is one of my favorite episodes. I love that Inara, not Shepherd Book, is the respectable one.

We've had over 12" of rain in the past 36 hrs, and in the last hour we got another inch or so. I went out to the grocery during a break in the rain earlier today, and when I opened the garage door coming home, earthworms rained from the bottom edge of the door. I knew you'd want to share that gross-out moment. =P Our pool pump isn't working, but my pool guy thinks it was probably submerged in standing water last night and should be ok when it dries out. I'm grateful that the pool overflowed into our overgrown and messy back yard, and not the other way around. Pool Guy says he has a customer whose pool was the high point on the property, so when it overflowed the entire front and side yards became part of the pool and washed all sorts of crud into it. I'm also grateful to last year's roofers, because none of the 13" of rain has ended up in my front room.

Fandom-wise, Sherlock owns my heart lately. (There's no danger of me writing for it, though, because I'm thoroughly American and increasingly Texan, and I'd just make them sound like a bad Douglas Adams ripoff.) I've designed a sock pattern based on Watson's sweater, and it seems likely that I'll actually manage to publish the pattern (unlike others I've created, which languish at 75% written up). You can follow my progress and the Watson sock's outings over on my knitting blog.

I just got The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook, and I'm hoping that with the hint of cooler weather I'll actually do some cooking (we'll be back up to 97F this weekend, though, and won't get autumn weather for another 2 months or so).

I'm playing WoW a bit more seriously than usual lately. For the first time, I'm raiding a few times a week, using Frosts as fast as I get them, and I broke down and installed GearScore despite my philosophical objections. So there's been less knitting and less tv-watching, which my lap cat is not in favor of.

Good thing: football season starts Sunday! Bad thing: the Redskins season opener is against the Cowboys. We have a new coach and a new quarterback, though, so I spent the money for the NFL season ticket. I plan to knit and watch... that way, even if we suck as badly as last year, at least I get knitting time and nice finished objects out of it. Also, queso. Chips and salsa and queso and seasonal hatch chile pepper sauce are on my agenda for Sunday.

Guys, guys, you have to download the unaired pilot and watch it immediately. As a writer, it's fascinating to see which bits of dialogue were there from the beginning and which got added later. Hint: there's a major difference in the conversation in Angelo's cafe (also, a charming additional bit of characterization for Angelo). There are some new close-ups of Lestrade and a shot framed in a way that will make the Lestrade/John shippers squee. Anderson has a dead weasel on his face. And most of all, Cumberbatch's performance is NOT the same Sherlock Holmes that we got in the aired version. I won't spoil anybody by dissecting how I think it was different, but trust me, it was.

I really need a Sherlock icon. Possibly several. It feels like cheating to gank any of the ones I've seen so far, although the cartoon ones are my favorites... Sherlock with the shock blanket, and the eyeballs in the microwave. I'll do much more boring screencap ones on Wednesday, as a treat for finishing this endless (well, knee-length) argyle sock I'm working on. Yesterday I calculated that it needed 16.5 more hours... now I'm probably at 14 hrs or so. Self-imposed deadlines FTW! So if anyone wants screencaps of specific bits, let me know and I'll add them to my list.

Hmm, 14 hrs. I have two documentaries to watch, one on Domesday Book and one on Anglo-Saxon artifacts. That should leave enough time to re-watch the entirety of Sherlock twice more. OCD much?

Oh, and I finally got around to starting a delicious, for the sake of sharing Sherlock bookmarks. (Unlike most of my other fandoms, there's nothing here that I'd be reluctant to own up to in public.) It's at http://www.delicious.com/brienzeTX if you're interested.

Cat woke me entirely too early for a weekend, so I'm quietly killing time in the computer room until Mr. Brienze wakes up and I can turn on the teevee and knit. You would think knitting is a quiet activity, but you'd be wrong. ;)

I've seen several of my friends try out the "You Write Like" meme... I recommend this analysis of the site to you: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012502.html.

And I find it completely adorable that Patrick Stump mis-quoted one of my favorite chick-flicks (Playing by Heart) in this tweet yesterday.

Our youngest cat, who will be 13 on Sept 20th, has been losing weight for no reason we can discern. $1400 in vet bills, including two overnight hospital stays, an x-ray, an ultrasound, and potassium supplements later, she seems healthy enough, but... I'll find out sometime this weekend when I weigh her whether Fancy Feast tuna offered every three hours between 9am and 9pm is actually stopping the weight loss. Please cross your fingers for her.

PS - 9am to 9pm. You did get that, right, Cats? Feeding does not commence early if you wake me at 7:30am. So there!

Wow, I haven't posted in approximately forever. So, February I did the Ravelympics, finished a shawl, and spun my first finished skein of yarn. In March I recovered from February, and then my parents visited, which was lovely, but I spent April recovering from that. I'm not quite sure what happened to May, other than knitting and catching up with Tivo. Somewhen in all of that we got a new fence built, and Lily stopped taking her pill hidden in food, so now we play "catch the cat (she's really pretty slow) and stick a pill down her throat" twice a day.

( And last night we went out for my birthday dinner...Collapse )

I didn't want to do the whole bbq routine on my actual birthday (too much like work!) so in a few hours I'll go pick up an ice cream cake to share with friends. The decoration could have been picked by someone thirty years younger than me, but that's what makes it fun. I wish I'd thought to get balloons so we could have duck voices, too. :)

It snowed today, for the first time since Valentine's Day six years ago. This icon is completely unrelated to today's content, but I baked my first challah and photographed it when I was "snowed in" back then (for values where snowed in = too sensible to be out on the road with the crazies).

I also finished a big shawl project today. It's blue. Blue is not white. I thought this presented an opportunity that should not be missed, so...


More and better pictures over at my knitting blog, which incidentally you can get on your LJ feed by going here.

Sorry I've been so boring. Haven't really been reading fic, still haven't watched past the pilot of Vampire Diaries. Playing altogether too much WoW and knitting lots and lots. Reading and commenting on LJ, though, and I appreciate each and every one of you. It's nice to read about people whose lives are more interesting than mine. =P

There are all sorts of holiday fests and comms that I have barely begun to read my way through, and there are multiple sites with pictures and commentary of AFP and The Dress (NSFW) at the Golden Globes last night, but all I really want to do is look through six pages of shawl pictures to see if there's any good patterns I didn't already know about. The internet is for porn, but what they don't tell you is how very far afield the definition of 'porn' can extend.

Addictive personality type? Why yes, hello. Aren't we all glad I never messed around with alcohol or drugs?

Tivo update: still haven't watched Vampire Diaries. Still haven't watched CoE. Still haven't watched the Doctor Who finale. But I'm gonna watch Brett Favre beat the snot out of the Cowboys, even though because I know that's what happens, while I take down the Christmas tree tomorrow.

So, do I have to watch Children of Earth before I can watch The End of Time?

I'm only a little bit spoiled for CoE, but that was enough that I haven't really been eager to watch it, y'know? But something was mentioned in an article about the #biggaybattle about Barrowman and the end of The End of Time and Gareth David-Lloyd makes me think I should maybe be watching things in the order they came out. Y/N?

A quick "thank you!" to those who sent me snowflakes. I thought I was being very clever, figuring out that for them to stay on your profile till the new year, I would wait until Dec 17th to send snowflakes to all of you. But since eljay had to take them down for comment spamming, I won't get to. =(

I've been going nuts this week trying to get the house ready for my parents' visit, getting a head start on baking, and getting less dreadfully behind on knitting projects that I'd meant to have finished by Christmas. Haven't even played WoW since the patch. At least my kitchen is done, though! Need to get full-spectrum bulbs to replace the cheap incandescents, though... it's very yellow in there right now.

Even during the holidays I try to make time to read f-list, generally by sacrificing some sleep since the only time I get to myself is when nobody else is awake! This will be my first Christmas with an iPhone and a Twitter account though, so it'll be interesting to see whether those drop by the wayside as well.

Usually this is where I'd gloat about our wonderful weather, but it's 40F (4.4C) out there! Bah! Going to draft Mom into helping me finally sew the lining for my knitted Coat of Fuzzy Warmth so I can actually wear it.

I hope you're all having as much fun as you can manage during this stressful time of year. Take a break; eat a cookie, knit something, watch one of the excellent movies that all seem to be coming out on DVD right now.

Guys are downstairs right now, painting my kitchen. They were here Monday drywalling, here Tuesday texturing, the guy doing my electrical work (who was actually a roofer, but that's ok because it was all off existing wiring) was here yesterday. I am very ready to be alone in the house again.

On the plus side, the tree is up and the entire downstairs is clean and ready for visitors. Now I just need to clean up the Christmas closet (anything not in use currently, not used to put presents inside of, or not used to wrap outside of presents will be thrown out) and the guest room will be ready, too. On the minus side, tomorrow is the only day this week when I could actually leave the house if I wanted to, and we're supposed to get snow. In Texas. I put up with ridiculous heat in the summer so I don't have snow, dammit. Time to hibernate on the couch with a bowl of chili and the newly arrived S1 Disc2 of Big Bang Theory.

I've had my iPhone glued to my side even more than usual this week because of all the workmen coordinating schedules, and because this morning was my first time hosting our knitting group and people might have gotten lost and needed to call. I've concluded that my default ringtone (Church Bells, comes standard on the phone) is too damn quiet.

So I'm taking suggestions for something nice and loud to use as my default ringtone. Mom's is the do-wop classic "Sh-Boom", Mr. Brienze's is "Nemo", by Nightwish. I use a clip from FOB's "20 Dollar Nosebleed" for all my doctors' offices, and a clip from P!atD's "Northern Downpour" for all my knitting buddies. At this point I'm devoid of inspiration. Something lyrically appropriate for a generic ringtone would be good, but really, I just need LOUD.

Lately I've been listening mostly to bandom, but every time I listen to FOB I get all distracted singing along and forget to, y'know, listen for what would be a good ringtone. I also like Good Charlotte, Bowling for Soup, Eve6, Matchbox 20, TMBG, The Refreshments, Caroline's Spine... none of which I associate with LOUD, particularly, and some of which are definitely not lyrically ok to have blaring out in the middle of a grocery store.

Lemme do it this way. First person to suggest something that is both LOUD and owned by me (or easily obtainable by me) and SFW, that will be my new ringtone until I can't put up with it anymore and have to find something else.

Star Trek DVD and Fall Out Boy album on the same day? You better believe I just went and got both... and how lucky am I that my grocery store has an entertainment section? I scored their last copy of Believers Never Die at around 2pm, so it seems to be selling well. I'm about to go pop the DVD in the Tivo and knit a headscarf and watch the videos (most of which I've never seen, because somehow my stalking never includes YouTube stalking). Spoiler-free comment: I love what each of the band focused on for their liner notes... it's all very them, I think.

Tomorrow I'm taking a class in stitch pattern design from Cat Bordhi, a knitter famed for thinking outside the box and inventing wild and yet perfectly sensible constructions. Am very excited and hope to learn lots. And I finally did finish my first pair of socks from her new book (detailed here, but beware the tl;dr for non-knitters), so naturally I'll be wearing her socks to class. Fall weather has arrived in Austin, with highs in the 60s (18C) so socks are justified.

Thursday is my usual knitting group, so I'll be able to burble to friends about what I learned, and finally start a pair of house slippers out of this yarn that I got at a fiber fair last weekend.

Friday the roofers come to put on a new roof, and the drywall guy comes to repair my ceiling and prep the kitchen so the electrician can get rid of the godawful flourescents and put some nice can lights in.

Saturday I'm getting together with a friend to test out new holiday baking recipes while her husband cooks us dinner. Doh! I better have my list ready by Thursday afternoon so I can shop for ingredients. And my Sunday knitting group can expect to be beneficiaries of at least a few baked goods, since by the time I'm done baking I've usually reached my sugar tolerance and can't stand to actually eat what I made.

Busy week! I hope everyone else is having fun in the ramp-up to the holidays, and not getting stressed out about things. Remember, we have shirtless Robert Downey Jr to look forward to on Christmas Day, and shirtless Taylor Lautner even sooner.

This is the time of year when I buy a lot of cooking magazines from the racks at the supermarket. I've been a fan of the Better Homes & Gardens Special Interest Publications since the late 90s, and some of my favorite holiday recipes come from these books. Usually each year I find at least one thing that becomes a perennial favorite, a bunch of semi-interesting things that I never get around to making, and a bunch of things that don't interest me.

( People on diets might want to skip thisCollapse )

We had a leak in our bay window patched yesterday, in advance of today's rain. The ceiling is certainly going to have to come down, the rug may have to come up (please, FSM, don't make me move the books and the bookcases), and the whole roof will likely be replaced. So I don't know that I'm going to have time to try new recipes any time soon. OTOH I fixed the problems with my current socks after I discovered the leak, once the sock was not the biggest problem I had. So testing recipes might become a welcome distraction, I dunno. I'm going to bookmark everything with that hope in mind. =)

So far I've been doing really well on having veggies and/or fruit with every meal. The Cook's Illustrated Italian Sunday Gravy that I made Friday was the exception. A friend kindly tried to say the tomatoes and onions count, but I don't think they really do. I got to freeze a whole bunch of sauce to thaw out when my parents are here at the holidays, though, which will be convenient.

I screwed around with Alton Brown's Pearnsip Sauce recipe, and I really shouldn't have. I think made as directed would be really yummy... my version, with less cardamom, and half as much honey instead of maple syrup, was a little bit meh.

I have yet to find the perfect, homemade mac n cheese recipe. Mr. Brienze tolerates my efforts, but is just as happy with the Kraft yellow stuff. So it was easy to sneak Tyler Florence's Cauliflower Mac n Cheese past him. I never did get the texture entirely smooth - maybe boiling the crap out of it instead of roasting the cauliflower might've worked - but it tasted fine, and not cauliflowery. Probably won't be making it again, tho.

I made negative knitting progress last week, and got nothing else done aside from the aforementioned cooking and a whole lot of playing WoW. I got my Hallow's End achievement Friday and my albino drake today, so I think I can finally stop being tied to the computer and spend some quality time with, er, with the computer attached to my tv. Poor thing is seriously running low on disk space, and I haven't watched a Vampire Diaries since the pilot.

Have so much to do this fall that I started making a list for myself. Lists are lovely, optimistic things, that do not in and of themselves feel let down when you fail to accomplish more than half the things listed on them. Where did October go? For that matter, where did September go? Wasn't it just Labor Day?

So I've been inspired by schmoo999 to start getting better about my diet and lack of exercise. Panting my way through mowing the lawn on a beautiful 75F day Saturday enters into this somewhere, too.

I get indigestion if I drink water without also eating food, which makes it difficult to give up soda. But I figure I could start drinking hot tea instead, especially since the weather is getting colder (hey, it's totally colder than it was two months ago, even if we're still in summer by New England standards).

So I'm looking for suggestions of good, storebought, bagged teas. There are several bulk teas I get from Whole Foods, but I want something simpler for when I'm feeling lazy, which face it, is most of the time. I know the trick to decaffeinating by steeping for 45 secs and throwing it out, so caffeinated or non-caffeinated is fine. Anything with chamomile is not. I want teas that taste good -- raspberry tea, for example, smells amazing but tastes like water that's walked past a raspberry scratch-n-sniff.

I want to start eating breakfast, and healthy lunches. Had a yogurt for breakfast today. Dinners are a lost cause, because Mr. Brienze does not eat vegetables and yours truly does not cook two meals for two people. But something else I'd like to start doing is to not buy from the bakery. If I don't get to eat sweets unless I take the time to make them myself, I'll eat less sweets. I've been assembling and freezing my own garlic bread for awhile, because the calorie and fat counts on storebought garlic bread is truly atrocious.

If I stumble across any really good, healthy recipes, I'll be sure to post them. After seeing Michael Chiarello hand-separate quinoa pasta on Top Chef Masters I'm not sure I'm up for dealing with that, but I'll try to reduce "white" food as much as possible. Which, really... doomed to failure, ok? I know this about myself. Giving up bread makes me sadface. I'll settle for significantly cutting sugars and upping food with actual nutritive content.