SHOOTFACE!!!

The title of today's blog is an exclamation of Lindsay's that I am attempting to incorporate into my personal lexicon. I wish I could say that I uttered it when I encountered a computer emergency about an hour ago, but that would be an uncouth untruth.

However, an alternate title for this entry could be, "My bro is awesome!!!" Because he is. Because as you have no doubt noticed, here it is an hour later and I am happily blogging away, computer crisis completely resolved. Aaaaaah. How swell.

I have been working like an insomniac on crack on those BWM Christmas stockings, and am now thankfully in the home stretch. I'll take a photo of the whole set when they are (finally!) completed.

Unfortunately, the time crunch on the stockings has made them a priority, and so I've had to set a couple of projects back a bit. However, I am hoping against hope to be done with them by this time tomorrow, and back on with hats, guitar straps, convertible mittens, tea cozies (I'm almost out!) and other sundries. I may even do some more Christmas stockings eventually, since I've finally gotten the pattern to a place where I'm happy with it . . . but not for a week or two. Where did November go?

My awesome friend Adrian gave me a shout-out and posted some beautiful pictures she took of her doggy Benny wearing a sweater I made him. Here's one of them, but you should really check out her blog to see the others.


I have more stuff that I could, and probably should write about--but that sixth stocking beckons. If you are in the 'Ville and free on Saturday morning, December 1st, you should consider visiting the Edmondson Pike Library around 10:30 a.m. I'm just sayin'.

More soon--thanks for reading!

Mein Auto ist ausgepimpt

Monday night was our monthly-ish dinner meeting over at the Blood:Water Mission offices in East Nashville, and one of the other volunteers I met this time around was John, recently moved to Middle Tennessee after having taught in Vienna for three years. Natürlich, our conversation turned to all things Germanic. He shared with me several amusing adaptations of American terminology into Deutsch, my favorite providing the title for this entry. If it doesn't make sense to you, unfortunately I don't think my explaining it will increase its humor value. But *I* thought it was hilarious.

In other BWM news, I now have a work-in-progress for the Christmas stocking project I have undertaken for them. I have designed and am making six stockings to be used for BWM donations at the upcoming Jars of Clay/Third Day Christmas tour. If they're coming to a city near you, check them out! And remember that one US dollar can provide clean water for one African for a year.

Obviously, that one is not quite finished--I ran out of yarn. Whoops. The other five will not be quite so big, not only because of the yarn quantity required but also because the finished size is a little unwieldy. I wanted to make them big so people would want to fill them up with donations (that's how it works, right?), but I think slightly smaller will work better.

Kristen, Nick and Zoë sent me a box of mailers! Aw, shucks. You guys are so swell. I definitely won't be needing to purchase any for QUITE a while.

In case you have been sleepless over the past few nights wondering about the fate of the Frankensquash, here are a few post-baking photos. As you can see, the flesh actually baked up more orange-y than it had been raw . . . however, its character was still some sort of pumpghetti cross. And while it wasn't technically inedible, it wasn't something I would serve to guests, either.

Sweet dreams. ;)

I also made my first pair of convertible mittens last week, upon request from Kristen. She even sent me a pair all the way from Sunriver so I could see exactly how they were constructed! What kind and generous friends. When I took these pictures of the finished product (well, 50% of it, at least), I couldn't decide whether it was better with the flash on, or off. Let me know what you think . . .

Thanks to all the ladies who came over Sunday afternoon for our Pride & Prejudice gathering--all six hours of it! Special gratitude to Liz and Sarah for their delightful refreshments . . . wish I had gotten photos. Dangit. I also regret that I am unable to find a suitable online image to support my contention that Anthony Calf (aka Mr. Darcy's cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam) is not actually "hippy."

Last but not least, one more thing I thought of for the wishlist . . .

PAPER SHREDDER: To recycle unwanted advertising into cat box filler--alternatively, if you have a paper shredder and are willing to save the remains, I would be happy to take your shreds!

Happy Tuesday night!

Pumpkin fraud!!!

I don't think my pumpkin is really a pumpkin. See, Tracy bought it a few weeks ago to carve it, but never got around to doing so. So, when I saw that she still had it this past Tuesday, I asked her if I could take it to make pumpkin soup for my autumn-themed shindig on Sunday.

Since I am going to be out of the house most of the day tomorrow, I planned on baking it tonight in preparation for making soup in the crock pot on Sunday. When I cut it open, this is what I found:



Now, for the uninitiated, this might not seem unusual. However, the flesh of a pumpkin should be orange, not white, and solid, not stringy. What I suspect we have here is some kind of cross between a pumpkin and spaghetti squash, bred to look pumpkiny from the outside, but not have the amount of seeds and pulp that a regular pumpkin would have. As you can (sort of) see from the photo below, the pumpkin breeders were pretty successful--the small amount of pulp is quite dry, not very messy at all.

I have half of this Frankensquash in the oven right now, but I am fairly certain that A) it is going to come out more spaghetti-ish than pumpkin-y, and B) whatever the character of the cooked flesh, it will be pretty inedible.

Boo. Next year, when I have my garden, I am going to grow pumpkins that actually ARE pumpkins.

In non-produce news, Karen, Dustin and I went to see Brian Regan at Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium last night! I have seen Brian several times before, the last time in New York infamously concluding with a fist fight in the audience (I was not involved). If you are familiar with Brian and his comedy, you realize how ironic this is.

Most of the photos I tried to get to document the hilarity were unfortunately blurry. If you've never seen him, Brian is quite physical and does a lot of hilarious faces and gestures, none of which are represented in these photos.

As if BR at the Ryman we're excitement enough for the week, Wednesday saw the first official "Kickin' It Night" for the Belle Meade NFG. Basically, this just means that we're going to be trying to get together on the "off" weeks from our normal meetings to hang out in a less-structured way than we ordinarily would.

K.I.N. #1 started off with two rounds of Funny Bones. The game is semi-related to the old song, "Dry Bones." Each pair of players gets a card with two connected "bones"--e.g. "Nose bone connected to the shoulder bone." They then have to make that "connection," with the card suspended between their body parts. If the card drops, they are out.

Don't let my boring, dry explanation fool you. It's pretty hilarious. See for yourself:

After that, the gathered assembly split into three teams and played Cranium. The ladies' team won. (For Paul's sake, try to act surprised about that.)

In closing for this extremely lengthy blog entry, here are a couple more items for my wishlist, in case you happen to be out garage-saling this weekend:

SCALE: preferably digital, for weighing yarn and food

STUFFED ANIMALS: large sizes, clean and in good shape, for modeling knit items in photos. I would particularly like any life-sized realistic-looking dogs, for showing off doggy duds.

Thanks, y'all! Happy weekend!

Wishing

I intermittently think of things that it would be useful to have, though far from urgent. For instance, I would love to get a decent used bike for toodling around Crieve Hall, down to the Edmondson Pike library, over to my Wednesday babysitting job on Franklin Road, to the Goodgames', etc. These places are just outside the scope of being able to walk there and back efficiently (every time I've walked to the library thus far, I've hitched a ride home with Katie Sue), but still close enough that it seems like a shame to start up the car.

Then there are things like used bubble mailers, which I mentioned in a previous post I would love to take off peoples' hands and reuse. Just things that I could use, that perhaps the readers of this blog would be willing to help me keep a look out for.

So, to that end, I've decided to start a "Wishlist" over at the right of the blog, along with my links and "Current Reading" and whatnot. This is by NO MEANS intended as plea for people to buy me new stuff. Au contraire. I hold firmly to the belief that there is too much stuff in the world as it is, and I certainly do not want to contribute to the demand to create more of it. However, since there's a lot of it out there, the list is a modest attempt to help me locate some useful goodies from the overflow. Or that's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

When I add something new to the list, I'll describe what I'm seeking in the blog itself, and then link the list back to the pertinent post (assuming I can figure out how to do that, of course). So, if you see something that I've listed at a yard sale, at the curb or in your garage, please give me a shout!

Here are the two things I've mentioned so far:

BICYCLE: (see above) Not looking for anything fancy--just something safe and efficient to take me on little errands of five miles or less.

BUBBLE MAILERS: (see above) Please save bubble- or other poly-mailers in good shape that I can slap a new mailing label on and ship knit goods in!

So, that's it for the wishlist concept . . . we'll see how it goes.

It's Tuesday night, which means I just got home from Tracy's. We didn't study the Bible tonight, but we did hang out in front of the fire with yummy coffee, cider and brownies!

Eli loves me. No, really. He LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVES me. See for yourself.

More stuff should be going up on the store soon--hopefully tomorrow. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Things I wish I'd said

It occurred to me, about three days too late, that I *should* have titled last Thursday's post, "The time has come . . . " But I didn't. If you get that reference, you probably think it's a little dark, and you wouldn't be wrong. If you don't get that reference, perhaps you should hie thee to a library . . . or hie thee to a Google. :)

Marlene has requested a flat-topped bucket-style hat with a large pompom, and so I got to work with a design this weekend. Here's the prototype:

The pompom ties onto a little loop on the top of the hat, so it can be removed for washing or style considerations.

Hmmm, I just noticed that the top doesn't look so flat in those pictures as it does when the hat is sitting on a table with no newspaper stuffed in it.

Thanks to everyone who's been sending great suggestions for new designs and products! I have a few special orders that I am working on in the moment, so I may not have time to design and add too many new products to the store before Christmas. However, it is my intention eventually to offer full-sized and baby-sized afghans (including personalized birth announcement baby blankets with name, DOB and weight knit in), felted guitar straps, a limited selection of sweaters, and a variety of new hat and scarf designs. The larger the item, the less likely that I will be able to offer a wide selection in the store, since things like sweaters and full-size afghans require such a significant investment. However, I am happy to take special orders for these items, where the risk of putting a lot of time and effort into something that no one will want to buy is so much less.

Happy Monday, everyone! Hope the weather where you are is as beautiful as it is right now in Middle Tennessee.

Ready . . . ? Okay!

TWENTY-EIGHT! IS GREAT! TWENTY-EIGHT! IS GREAT!

No, I wasn't actually a cheerleader. I'm sure you are stunned by that newsflash. But that was my rallying cry at Adrienne's fab birthday party last night! Here are a few choice pictures:

The Magnificent Mrs. Anderson

Look at all the presents people brought for Adrienne! She is very popular.

Our birthday girl is very beautiful, and very silly. I'm not sure why she makes this face in so many photos, but it works for her.

A's mom sent these flowers from Indonesia! Well, the flowers came from Nashville, but the sending came from Indonesia.

TONIGHT was Russ's birthday party (the Magnificent Mr. Anderson), even though his actual birthday was two weeks ago. It was also fabulous. I made cheese in honor of the occasion! I really wanted to take pictures of the cheesemaking process or at least the finished product, but the batteries in my camera ran out. Boo. I bought some new rechargeable ones this afternoon, but they take eight hours to get charged--double boo! So my initial cheesemaking efforts will be memorialized only by the taste buds of those who got to sample some at the festivities. But never fear--the kit I bought makes about 29 more batches.

Happy falling back! Yay for an extra hour of sleep--I need it.

Hung by the chimney with relative care

Here's what I've been working on today--I am not entirely thrilled with it, but it's a'ight. I had the realization the other day that in the same manner that chef's families end up eating a lot of experimental cooking, the families of designers must end up with a lot of works-in-progress that are necessary steps along the path to artistic fulfillment. Which is to say, in knitting terms, a lot of weird half-successful hats and stockings and stuff.

I'm going to be making six Christmas stockings over the next few weeks for a special project . . . more on that as it develops. I think those will need to be slightly bigger than this one, or at least longer than this. And I think the heel shaping on this was somewhat unnecessarily complicated. So in the next few days, I'm going to be looking for alternate stocking patterns I can borrow (i.e. steal) from.

This basic pattern (minus the previously mentioned heel-shaping) would be pretty easy to personalize with a name, though--I'm thinking of taking custom orders on the website. Anyone have thoughts on this? Maybe doing something like this in red, green and white stripes?

I've also been working on some more doggy sweaters. Here's the one I finished for Benny Hitt:

And here's a little Christmas one in progress. It'll go up on the store when it's finished (unless someone speaks for it before that). Completed, it will be the same size as the Ole Miss one I made for Eli a couple of weeks ago.

In other news, I was very excited yesterday to discover that Sylvan Park's Produce Place carries local dairy products! I spent quite a bit of time poking around online on localharvest.org the other day, looking for places to get food that comes from Middle Tennessee. I found plenty of produce and even meat (anyone interested in going in on a side of beef next year?), but dairy was surprisingly elusive. Tracy had mentioned that PP, which is right up the road from her house, had milk in glass bottles. That sounded promising, so I stopped by after my Thursday morning babysitting gig, and success! In the interest of full disclosure, "local" in this case is a relative term--Rock Springs Dairy is in Wildersville, which is halfway to Memphis from here. Still, it takes a lot less fuel to bring me milk from there than bananas from Honduras or even organic oatmeal from Canada. Plus, I can return the bottles and get my deposit back!

My recent interest in local eating comes as a result of reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I highly recommend. It has seriously challenged the way I think about what I eat and where it comes from. I've started digging big rocks out of my lawn in preparation for putting in a modest garden next year--and I'm only half kidding about the side of beef. It's really not that expensive if you get a couple of people to go in on it together, and it comes butchered and everything! Some of the cattle are raised right here in Davidson County--just think, you could be eating your neighbors for dinner tonight! Wait, that didn't come out quite right . . .

Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who has visited the store, read this blog and been e-mailing with your kind words of encouragement and suggestions. I am incredibly blessed to have such supportive friends and family, and I will try and respond to your e-mails sometime this weekend. A special shout-out to my friend Torrey, who was the first of my friends to actually buy something from the on-line store. Thanks, Torrey--you rock!

Also rocking would be Adrienne, who has a birthday today! Happy day, girl! Guess I should go get ready for your party . . .

3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . blastoff . . .

It's here! Today is the "official" "launch" "day" of the OysterGirl webstore. Even though the store itself was set up a few weeks ago, and all of the items on there right now were posted as of yesterday afternoon, still--I needed to have a deadline, and today is it.

So, if you haven't already done so, PLEASE visit my webstore! There's a link at the top of the list at right, or just click on the logo below:

Now, some of you may have gotten here because I sent you an e-mail today (or yesterday, or whenever I sent it relative to when you read it and are hence reading *this*), and you may be wondering how we both got to this point. In the words of David Byrne, "You may ask yourself, 'How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!'"

Well may you ask. I've been asking myself that for the past few months now. For some deeper background, you may want to go back to the beginning of this blog and catch up on some of the happenings in the World of Lynn. Or, you may just want the super-simplified version, which goes something like this:

- I didn't expect to become suddenly unemployed in June--just as I was closing on my house--but I did.

- I didn't expect not to find another job, but I haven't.

- I didn't expect that I would ever really enter the entrepreneurial world, in spite of people encouraging me for many years to do so. And yet, here I am. Twofold, really--in addition to the launch of the webstore and the OysterGirl brand, in the coming months I will also be working on my music for kids. Scary.

What does any of this have to do with you? Well, I'm writing this blog and sending out e-mails in an attempt to inform people of the changes and developments in my life, as well as keep myself accountable. And, let's face it, to ask for help. 'Cause I harbor no illusions that I can do any of this on my own. So, how can you help?

1) Visit the store. Forward the link to other folks. Maybe buy some stuff, or at least encourage someone else to buy some stuff.

2) Send me your ideas. I want to make stuff that I am inspired to, but also hopefully merge that with what other people are interested in, as well. If you think of something that you think I should be making, please let me know so I can!

3) Keep your used-but-good-condition bubble- or other poly-mailers for me to reuse in my mail-based business! Save the environment and a little cash for me.

4) If you live in Nashville and know someone looking to rent a room, I'm still on the lookout for a good roommate. Not entirely related to the knitting store, but hey, I might as well mention it.

5) Take some of my business cards and give them out to folks you know who might be interested in looking at the store and/or custom orders. If you live outside the 'Ville, I am happy to send some to you!

6) If you are so inclined, please pray for me. This is new, and scary, and so far I'm mostly spending money that I don't have doing it. But I *really* love it, and for the first time in quite a while am excited enough to get up early and stay up late (like right now) "working."

Guess that's it for today. Thanks for reading, thanks for looking, thanks for helping. Today is just the beginning, so thanks for coming along for the ride. (Hope you took your Dramamine.)