Vacation is supposed to be relaxing!

I am more exhausted this week than I usually am during a work week. I took off the week to hang with the boys before my cruise. The weekend was just a little crazed, in a good way but exhausting nonetheless. Amanda, Tisha, Rinaldo and I did Comic Con on Friday which was a blast. We hung out with old friends:


I returned with Avery on Sunday for Kids Day. When we finished up on Sunday I had to rush back home drop Avery off and then Rinaldo and I returned to 42nd street to the BB King Blues Club to see Pat Benatar.

Best. Concert. Ever.

You know how you see someone who you were a fan of 25 years ago and they can't hit the high notes or they seem like their energy was left behind with their cocaine addiction? So not the case for Ms. Benatar. Her voice sounds even better than it did all those years ago, she still rocks out like she has all the energy in the world and the comfort between she and her husband, Neil Giraldo, on stage is adorable. Well worth the price of admission.

Monday, I took the boys on one of those double decker tour buses around lower Manhattan. When I was a kid my cousin Ingileif and her mom would come visit and do all this touristy stuff. I always got to tag along. I feel like I really appreciate my city because of it so I try to do some cheesy tourist type stuff with the boys whenever I can. It was fun.

Yesterday was a trip up to Yonkers for cruise shopping and then home to rest for a couple hours before heading downtown to knitting. See what I mean about the lack of relaxation going on? Today is my day to catch up on household stuff, laundry, cleaning etc. Plus, well blogging obviously. I have an article to type up. I also planned on working on the sadly neglected Knitting Blogger's Ring but Ring Surf did an upgrade and I can't get it working in any productive way. Risa and I are going to have to come up with a plan to keep the ring going.

Two weeks to the day I started it I finished Swallowtail:
and I didn't completely screw it up:
Oh, uh you noticed something different about mine did you? Well the oracle, aka Kathleen had said to me on her visit, "do you have enough yarn?" and the fact is I didn't. So I decided to forgo the peaked edging, which is in fact my least favorite part of the shawl[ette] anyway. I love the way it looks. It is small but it's as big as I expected. Which is perfect for my needs.

So early Friday morning I am flying off to Florida and getting on a boat with my girls. My dear husband will be holding down the homefront and I'll be back for dinner on Monday.

Try not to miss me too much;)

What a lovely weekend

It was by far the least productive but most relaxing weekend I've had in weeks. Saturday we lazed around in the morning, went out for lunch and sat in the park while Avery played soccer. Sunday morning was a flurry of activity as we tried to get a weekend's worth of housework done in a few hours since company was coming.

Kathleen came and spent the afternoon with me. I sent all the men away to the movies so we could enjoy adult (and female) conversation. It is amazingly restful just having the luxury of conversation with a dear friend. If only we could do it more often.

There was knitting done but I am not deft at lace knitting while talking so I didn't get far on swallowtail. I did think I was finished with the body of it last night before bed but I appear to have miscounted my repeats. I have one more repeat of the second chart to go before I get to the first border.

Maribel gave her Mom Ice Queen on Friday. Mami had her call me so she could thank me for it. Bel sent me some shots:


It looks great on her. At some point I'll make one for myself.

Back to work, it is Monday after all...

I gave up...

...on Jeannie. There was no way in hell she would be done in time. I dug into the basket of wonder and pulled out my swallowtail. I'm having a much, much more successful experience this time:



Sorry for the cellphone shot but that's how it goes. I've got 10 repeats of the main chart done, out of 14. She is just zipping along. My screw-ups have been minimal and easily fixed.

Crazy week = lazy weekend, I hope.

Have a great weekend!

I'm still not sure if dear Jeannie will be finished in time, but it looks bad. As far as I can figure it will take me 21 more chart repeats to reach a length of 66 inches. I only have 18 days before my trip and there's no way I can do a full chart's worth of rows in a day anyway. Still I'm hanging in since I've got nothing better to knit anyway, lol.

I've got nothing to show of interest so we'll go a bit random for Tuesday.

My friend Gary blogs really cool pictures. I love this week's. I really need to find out where the hell he found this car!

Have you guys seen this? It's actually available through an Etsy shop. If they have a gold bikini pattern please don't ever tell my husband.

I've been playing Desert Island Disks in my head for the last few days for some odd reason. I figured I should share it with someone. So here is my list. One thing everyone should realize, a very important component of enjoying music is my ability to sing along with it. I love classical but I rarely listen to it when I'm alone because well no lyrics = no singing. If I am on an island alone I will be belting out for all I'm worth. So that was one of my number one criteria for picking these albums.


Too Fast for Love - Motley CrueThe first album is the best, so raw and new.
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd There are Pink Floyd albums I like better but none that I listen to as often.
Last of the Independents - The PretendersThis is simply my favorite Pretenders album, older, wiser but no less bad ass.
A Night at the Opera - Queen A nearly perfect album from start to finish.
Bella Donna - Stevie Nicks She was never as good solo as she was on this album.
Parallel Lines - Blondie Punk Pop at it's best.
The Very Good Years - Frank Sinatra You gotta have some Frank wherever you go.
American Idiot - Green Day This was a tough choice between it and Dookie in the end this is a more cohesive album so it won out.
Can't Take Me Home - Pink There are much better individual songs on her later albums but I love listening to this one from beginning to end.
Big Chill Soundtrack - various artists This is my favorite album when I need a Motown fix.

I couldn't come up with any of my favorite rap albums to take because I can't sing them. If I were to say add some compilations to the list I would want a Freestyle mix and a hip hop/rap mix but no one album from any artist fit the bill for these. Also I couldn't pick one Liz Phair album. I would need to do a mix for her too.

What are your desert island discs?

TTGIF
thank the gods it's Friday

I didn't end up pinning Ice Queen out at all. It blocked quite nicely in the wet towel. The picot edging on one side is lovely the other less so but I knew that. Once you put it on it makes no difference. The nice end goes on the neck the other frames the face and it works just fine. It is a bit short but Maribel has deemed that Mami will love it so it's all good:



I started Jeannie for my trip but after a week this is all I have:



Will I get it done in time? Damned if I know. I have about three weeks. I have sped up on it a bit. Getting out my chart holder helped a lot. Balancing the charts on the train was a pain in the ass. Also its basically the same 4 stitches over and over in different order so you can get used to it quickly but it's basically k1 p1 which I am slow as molasses on no matter what the project. I'm still going to try though.

The week has been full of meetings and presentations. I am so glad it's finally over. Tomorrow Rinaldo works but I have to take the boys to a party for a friend's daughter at Build a Bear so that should be fun. I can get some knitting done on the train also.

I know what I'm doing tonight, what about you?

The Spinning Goth tagged me for the six word memoir meme that's going around:

Never tick off a Bronx girl.

I have to say this was really hard for me. I had to get Rinaldo to come up with it. I'm still counting it as a memoir, it's just ghostwritten lol. There's a funny story about this line. We went to a book signing for one of our favorite authors Greg Rucka. Rinaldo got the book Shooting at Midnight signed. It does indeed feature a Bronx Girl as the main character. When he signed Rinaldo's book that line was the inscription. I joked with him about how apropos it was since I was indeed a Bronx Girl and Rinaldo often suffered 'cause he ticked me off, lol.

I stole this from Susan because it was really cool:

What Classic Pin-Up Are You?

You're Betty Grable! Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

I love Betty Grable though I don't know how accurate it is.

Ice Queen is finished but I've been too lazy to pin it out. I'll try to get some shots tonight.