2 posts tagged “family”
Oh, dear. So now my fiance, who I have depended on to be the Hauler of Stuff throughout our relationship but particularly since our car accident (he wasn't very injured, and healed quickly), has hurt his back.
Worse, he has no idea how! It's been bothering him mildly on and off for the last week. He drove 90 minutes each way on Thanksgiving Day, sitting in an uncomfortable folding chair most of the day in the interim, then on Saturday and Sunday, he exhibited at a convention where he also sat all day on uncomfortable chairs.
He takes stuff into the con, too, but the thing I can think of that is most likely to have injured him is his Tub O' Original Art For Sale, which is so heavy that I can't even attempt to pick it up without pain. (It's several hundred sheets of bristol board, around 12x15ish.) Don't know, though. There was no moment where he did something and then thought, "I shouldn't have done that."
He has lots of good drugs from the doctor, two days off work, and a heating pad that I lent him after his appointment this morning.
On top of all this, as mentioned in my last psot, my dog has been sick this past week. Not too horribly sick, but she had a bladder infection and a yeasty ear infection. She's still being treated for both. $400 so far; I took responsiblity for half of it. *groan*
I found the missing library book I mentioned in that post. It was right where it should have been, in my stack of library books on the part of the bookshelf that I reserve for them, only I couldn't see it. It was between two larger books. I was looking at the spines, and the book I sought was pushed back a little, so the spines of the larger books met around it! You could only see that it was there by looking at the stack from a different angle.
Button Angst
And now, to the title of the post!
The other night, as a Present To Me, I ordered this purple cashmere v-neck cardigan and the matching tank that you can see in the picture. They were on sale ($60 total), and I like to be warm in the winter. It isn't here yet.
I've heard some bad things about this year's Target cashmere (like, "it's thin and itchy"), so we'll see. Last year's was great. Eucalan wash -- I use the lavender version -- helps soften most protein-fiber clothing, and you can also use a bit of diluted hair conditioner on cashmere to soften it further, as long as you can stand the conditioner being against your skin.
It seems as though the buttons will color-match, but they look whitish in some of the photos, and it's difficult to tell whether they match or not. They might have picked up a flash reflection, or they might just be light-colored buttons.
I love the intaglio/lens/cabochon buttons made by Winky and Dutch, which are a picture under a clear dome set into a metal backing and which the company itself seemingly only sells to merchants. Some time ago a friend's cousin added an entire set of their pin-up girl buttons to a sweater she had de-and-re-constructed for herself.*
It looked really cool, but the buttons themselves are pricey, as buttons go, and not all that easy to find. I'm more likely to buy something in person than to mail order it. For example, somewhere -- still in the mess of boxes from my last move -- indifferently packed by the worst movers ever, and not labelled -- I have W&D barettes, the "Sad Puppy" design in a hair-pin setting, from a shop I used to go to. Their other jewelry is not too difficult to find.
So, I noticed that ReproDepot has been having a sale on the W&D buttons, which they sell at a decent price to begin with, most of them in two sizes. It seems like they might be trying to sell through their remaining stock. The selection has decreased over the last few years; they used to carry many more "sets" than they do, IIRC, and a lot more single-button designs.
The problem is that my sweater, assuming I even want to replace the buttons on it, has five buttons. I don't like either of the Sci-Fi collections enough to buy one; I wanted the Robot or Tourism collection. No robots to be seen, and they only have a few of the Tourism buttons, one of which doesn't really match the others.
I was going to get London/Tokyo/Hollywood/Miami, all of which have blue skies, but the only other one available is Brooklyn Bridge, which doesn't. Pegasus would have been OK as the fifth match, but it was unavailable in the smaller size, about 1/3" or so, that I needed. This is the size for "shirt" buttons. There is a larger size, more like 3/4", which would work for stuff like chunky handknit sweaters. I have at least one or two of each, but not enough to work for this project.
Some searching took me to EQuilter, which has tons of cool stuff and seems to be the only other regular online merchant of these buttons. They have a larger selection (with a few more designs at the "previous page" link), but they only sell them in sets of three -- usually three of the same button, but sometimes three thematically linked buttons -- or in larger sets. They do have the robot set.
They charge, however, much more than ReproDepot does. The buttons I wanted are around $1.50-$2, depending on whether or not there's a sale, at ReproDepot. They break down to over $3 each at EQuilter, probably because they only sell the larger size (it seems). This is a lot more than I want to spend on potentially putting wacky buttons on a sweater (even $1.50 is possibly excessive, but I've wanted to do this for so many years that I was willing to go for it).
End result: I bought six Tokyo buttons from ReproDepot for about $1.50 each. The other one I really liked was London, but I didn't think that mix-and-match would work unless each button was different, which I couldn't manage with ReproDepot's current selection. Since the sweater is purple - if I use it on that - the Tokyo design both seemed like a better match for purple and more appropriate in terms of color scheme. (Purple and sky blue seems more "Japanese" than "British", right?) Obviously, I bought one extra button "just in case."
It being Christmas, and having already bought the sweater set, I had to completely ignore every other thing I want from ReproDepot. (At the last link, it's the Ayumi Uyama felt animal kits: I like the deer, rabbit, dog, and duck, in order of preference. The Minigurumi kits are all pretty adorable, too: they look like designs from a book I have, Mame Wanko, which is all about tiny fabric dogs and their accessories.)
A Mysterious Yarn-Related Project
The other crafty thing I ordered lately was Lang Mille Colori yarn in color number 68, a sort of earthtone mix. Mille Colori is a self-striping wool/acrylic blend. #68 is on color chart 2, at that link, the strip on the far right.
This is for a mystery project for which I wanted a relatively tough self-striping yarn, worsted or bulky, with non-garish colors and thin, rapidly-changing stripes.
I looked at a bunch of Berroco yarns: Keltic (stripe pattern too long and subtle), Jasper (composition made me worried it would pill, didn't see an appropriate color scheme, stripes also too subtle), and Foliage (the only color I liked for the project had been discontinued, plus I was worried that the spin was too loose/uneven -- it seems that Foliage is basically Berroco's version of Kureyon). I nearly chose Keltic's "Argyll" or "Tartan" colors; my friend memorably described most of the other colors as "week-old stale vomit" -- ouch. I considered Noro Kureyon (too uneven) and Big Kureyon (not the right colors for this project), and Rowan Tapestry (DK weight, too drapey).
I found Mille Colori in a weird, serendipitous way... it kept popping up in Google Image Searches, then also popped up when I did a search on "self-striping" and variations of the term at the site where I almost ordered some Keltic.
I hope people like this thing when I'm done with it, because I really have agonized over the yarn. If it goes right, it'll be a free pattern. If not, I will cry real tears of tears: I've been planning it for months, and I'm putting off another project to do it, and as I mentioned a few posts back, my last attempt went really wrong.
* The same girl, who supposedly didn't even particularly like me, gave me this great pair of black Doc Martens oxfords that I wear to this day. They were almost new, but she was moving and wanted to travel light, packing most of the stuff she was taking into her soft guitar case around the instrument itself. The shoes were too weighty and bulky for her to take. I still think of her gratefully every time I wear the things... and last I heard, she was doing OK.
The last few days have been uneventful for me... I've just been working, and taking care of my mom, who has a viral ear infection, labyrinthitis, that causes constant vertigo. (One of my friends said, "Labyrinthitis? Is that where you wake up with 80s hair and an inexplicable urge to sing and dance?" She didn't realize it's a real illness, but she cracked me up. Though she did miss the opportunity to say, "... an inexplicable urge to sing and dance, magic, dance.") I am really hoping to not also catch the wave, as it were. I had a really difficult time parking my car a couple of times last night, due to dizziness and disorientation, and it worried me.
So, I've had to run a few errands, nothing really exciting, and I've been writing little blurbs on this and that, waiting for Thursday to come. And today was Thursday, and do you know what that meant?
Time for the Smashing Pumpkins show! (They didn't actually play "Ava Adore," or any other songs I like from the last two albums, at the show tonight. They did play "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" and a lot of the new album. I like "Tarantula" much better live than I have in video form so far.)
The thing is, right now and all evening, I'd say it was around... 45 degrees. It rained all morning and threatened to rain all day; it's probably the coldest day since late April, and it hit us suddenly (it was 95 degrees on Monday). My torso, arms, and neck were warm, because I was wearing three different long-sleeved shirts (two were hoodies, the top one was fleece) with a cotton jersey scarf. The rest of me was really not very warm at all. Apparently the band thought it was very chilly, too: Billy remarked on it several times, and said that they almost cut the encores short because of it.
I could have stood in the pit and been warmer, but then, well, I'd have been in the pit, on concrete and unable to move more than three inches in any direction. Instead, I stood on the sloping lawn, where initially I didn't want tickets -- I'm glad I was able to stand there in spite of my technically better ticket. I had a great view for most of the show, and the ground was softer and warmer than the paved area. I was really happy that I brought a thermos of hot tea to keep in the car for after the show.
The show itself was great; musically quite good, and Billy is much funnier and more charming on stage than I'd expected. I never got to see them the first time around... I tried in 2000, but the show sold out. I had plans to show up at the venue with ridiculous amounts of cash to buy a ticket, then came down with the flu (not a cold - THE FLU, 104 fever for days, almost had to be hospitalized) the day of the show. And they'd broken up! So it was really important to me to make it to this "second chance" show... and I did. (Alas, I didn't have any spare cash for merch. I thought I would, but The Bank Error That Keeps On Taking mostly cleaned out the account again, and obviously dog food is more important. The merch was outrageously expensive anyway, but I love the shirt and hoodie in the "antique engraving" style.)
The only thing that really sucked, aside from the chill, was that I got stuck standing next to this insane, obnoxious, totally plastered trufan girl who showed up maybe a half-hour after we did. Constant loud nasal chatter between acts, screaming along with the songs while facing me and not the stage (I think she saw I was annoyed and decided to "show me"), dancing (badly) in enough space for six people. Now, before I sound like a crochety old man: I don't mind ppl singing and dancing at shows, as long as they don't sing loudly and right at me, and as long as they don't constantly flail their arms into me and everyone around them when they're dancing. I mind rude people, and this girl was so into her fandom (and, I think, her beer) as to not be considerate of anyone around her. The next person to turn to me and scream song lyrics into my face during a show is getting the fist of righteousness, I'm telling you.
(The other funny thing was that, any time she saw a shaved head during the set-up, she started squealing that it was Billy. After the seventh or eighth time, I turned to T. and said, "Do you think the roadies are contractually forbidden to shave their heads, too?")
T. only agreed to come with me because Explosions in the Sky (indie-approved!) was the opening act. I liked them, but they're a little too much guitar noodling and not enough structure. They sound just like certain SP songs without the vocals, and also a lot like the time when Cranes opened for The Cure, and Alison was sick, so Robert Smith stepped in and played her vocal line on his guitar. And they sound a lot like a slightly-less-dreamy Sigur Ros. In all, I don't find it that interesting, but I do find it pleasant. (However, they've never had a major hit and you can't groove to their music, so it's "cooler" to like them than to like SP. The show was really too expensive for people to come just to see them, though, unless they had a Pumpkins fan dragging them along like T. did. I bought his ticket for his birthday.)
T. thought Explosions in the Sky were from Japan (they're from Texas). I chirruped, "Yeah, they have that sound that says, Konnichi-wa! We're from Osaka and we love kabuki!" I think I meant Noh, actually, rather than kabuki.... Either way, anyone who gets that joke (which is based on vague sonic similarities) has too much time on their hands.
Now I am: done with my fun, back in a warm house, and back down to work (I'm designing a pattern! You'll see in a week, maybe!). Strongly considering a hot shower, because my nose and feet are still frrrrrozen.
Um, did I mention that I FINALLY GOT HIGH-SPEED INTERNET LAST WEEKEND? I finally got high speed internet last weekend! It's a whole new world! (I can watch Bleach episodes the week they air in Japan! My priorities are in order, yeah!) This weekend is likely going to be the one where I tear the computer apart and give it new innards... the hard disk problems seem to have faded into the background for the time being, but I'm still going to replace the disk with the new one we got, as a failsafe measure. We'll see if I have time, though.
