A Spooky Knitting Night

Well, still no job, but lots of knitting to be had. I've got my evening already planned and it's only 9:30 in the morning!

I don't know if I'd mentioned this before, but one of my favorite shows is Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi channel. I'm also a major paranormal buff. I love ghost related anything, as long as it isn't cheesy because I take the research actually pretty seriously. It's a section of science that's over-looked and laughed at when there are actually very valid experiences and claims. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there... Scientists didn't know about microorganisms until the microscope was invented, so there you have it.

Anyway, the new season just started last week and they just started another show on Tuesday nights called "Scary but True." I'm planning a long night of knitting with ghosts. Unfortunately I already watched my "Paranormal State" for the week so I couldn't throw that into the mix, but I will have "A Haunting" to fill in that gap. I've already seen all of them, but hey, I can watch again!

To update the projects:

I did get a bit further on the fruit loop socks. I'm almost done with sock #1. I've decided though that I'm going to pause on them for a minute because I'm having problems with my knitting needles, they're SOOOO sticky! They're clean of course, but the yarn scrapes along them and it's making it impossible for me to knit smoothly. I did try some of the suggestions I'd found a while back like wiping them down with hand lotion or running them through your hair, basically to get a bit of lubrication on them. Those solutions however, only last so long and I have only so much hand lotion and greasy hair lasts for only a few hours until I wash up.

My solution, to order a new set from KnitPicks because they're inexpensive and I've heard they're nice and slick. I know I'm supposed to be on a yarn diet, but KnitPicks is so inexpensive I couldn't help myself! I also ordered a few balls of yarn. I couldn't help myself! They were on sale!!!

Just don't tell Chris ok? hehe

Over the past weekend we went on a small adventure to the Griffith Park Observatory. I'm also an astronomy buff, so when I had moved here, it was my favorite place to go. Originally, it was an actual observatory for scientists to study the universe, but of course with LA smog, light pollution, locations around the world with better elevations and eventually us blasting off into outer space, it pretty much became useless for real science work.

About a year after moving here though they closed it down completely for renovations. It was supposed to take about 2-3 years to re-open and finally 5 years later, it did. This was our first foray back up there since then and I'm so not happy. The place was packed, they re-did the parking lot so there's actually less parking than there was before. Also there used to be two routes to get up there, and now there's only one. They blocked off the second route for "special" traffic. So the congestion is just lovely getting up one route instead of two.

Here we are stuck in traffic on the way up



A view of the Hollywood sign. This is probably as close to it as you can legally get. Some folks live right below it, but then you get involved in trespassing and so on. It was a struggle with my camera not to make it look so far away. My camera won:



And there it is in all her glory. You may recognize it if you've ever seen a movie since so many were filmed up there. It was the backdrop to the end sequence of Rebel Without a Cause (James Dean was so dreamy) and also a little-remembered 80's film called Midnight Madness:



Here are my hero's. The guys that defied common logic at the time and said that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around:



I think for the time being it's just busy because it freshly re-opened in late 2007. Once the novelty wears off I can wander around there in peace and only trip over a few tourists.

Also, on Sunday I got a wild hair and was looking through my SnB book, initially because they have a few fabric type patterns to make a needle case or a knitting bag or whatever. I was thinking that since I can sew, I can make one of these and possibly sell them on etsy. It's a little way to make some side-cash if needed. But then I came across this:



I couldn't resist and the pattern called for some cheap-o yarn. It's Lion brand Fun Fur held together with Lion Brand Wool Ease. No digging to find it in a yarn shop or having to order it online, just hop over to Joann's where it's super cheap. I wasn't too thrilled with the idea that it has Fun Fur in it since I despise novelty yarn, but it's not for me, it's for the kitties. I also saved because I bought some Fun Fur years and years and years ago when I didn't know any better, so I just had to buy a few more balls to be able to complete the project.

Knowing Clyde, my gray tabby kitty, she doesn't do the whole cat bed thing. I had purchased one for her when she was a kitten and she preferred a nice warm lap or snuggling on your belly under the blankets to a cold cat bed in the corner any day. When I had moved in with Chris, the unappreciated cat bed came with and his kitty Monty instantly took to it.

So knowing that Monty would use the cat bed, I decided to make it the same colors as him, white with black trim. It's a super fast project too. Only took me about a day to complete the bottom. I've been slacking on the trim section but I'll work on that tonight while I'm ghost hunting. It's a straight rectangle, like a scarf. The whole thing is just garter stitch and you don't have to get fancy with your increases and decreases since the fun fur hides them.



So, happy Wednesday everyone!