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October 27, 2004
One Provocative Pumpkin
Well, we had one heck of a Scissor Squad get together last night! We met up at our local beer purveryor, the Hat City Ale House, where they were holding a pumpkin carving contest! YEE!!!
So, since we are the local group of crazy, crafty girls, we just had to have a few entries! REPRESENT!!! Mary, Michelle and Eva each carved a beautiful pumpkin before arriving - and then while we were watching so many others in the bar carve pumpkins right in front of us, Michelle couldn't take it anymore and went out and bought another pumpkin for a collaborative effort. And let me tell you something, friends - you don't argue with a pregnant woman.
That last pumpkin won us FIRST PLACE!!! We all decided a naughty pumpkin was in order if we were to beat the competition! So Mary scribbled away furiously on a variety of pinup girls on jack-o-lanterns. She came up with a few cute ones but they were veto-ed as Anne declared their breasts were nowhere near large enough for a win!! (LOL) Half joking, Mary drew up a girl sitting spread eagle on top of a jack-o-lantern with a gigant-o grin that matched the pumpkin's... As soon as we saw it we all died of laughter and declared this our design of choice!
Here's a pic of some of the Squadders next to that winning pumpkin! Click here for a better pic of that pumpkin - and to take a peek at the other entrants from the Scissor Squad!
Quite a ruckous we caused last night.... The chubby "I'm an obscure punk rock kid" kid that has won the past two years (cough...CONSPIRACY!...cough) was de-throned! And one uptight girl declared our pumpkin ...gasp... disgusting! Well I have one thing to say to you sister - Cram it with walnuts, Ugly!!! We all have bits - get over it!!! Besides, it's not like I'm setting this pumpkin out on my doorstep for little trick-or-treaters to see! At a bar, you must be 21 years of age... so we are all grown ups! I say LOOSEN UP!! It's FUNNY!!! :) At least we thought so. As a matter of fact, we thought it was HILARIOUS.... I think she was just mad that WE got the $40 gift certificate for beer - and not her!
May this begin an era of complete domination over all crafty events in our little burg! Watch out any body else! It's the Hat City Scissor Squad! And they're hardcore!
In other non-pumpkin related Scissor news, we have a new Squadder! Lauren hung out last night and I taught her how to knit! Yay! She is an excellent student - picked it up SO quickly! We're going yarn shopping on Monday - yyyyyaarrrnn shoppiiiiiiing. sigh. Life's good!
Posted by Sarah at 3:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 25, 2004
A Peek at the Progress
SO! I finished a pair of mittens I made for my Dad's Birthday prezzie! I used about a ball and a half of Rowan Big Wool in Black/Grey, Alison's super easy mitten pattern, and US11 circ's (you heard it right, folks! I knit in the round using.....dun dun dun...... magic loop! wee! wow, I am silly today....)
Here's the finished product:
Comfy, cozy he will be.... What's that you say? He lives in Florida, does he? Well...... he can wear them when he visits me in the chilly North of course! All the more incentive for him to come see us!
I have a few things in the works at the moment......
SKULLY
... is progressing nicely, I must say! Here's a pic of the finished front piece and the back piece I am still working on.....

"I'm gonna be a big tough sweater for a manly man! He'll be the coolest kid in school...errr....at the bar.... errr.... Well he'll be the coolest. Yes."
MYSTERY XMAS SURPRISE IN BEEYOOTEAFULL BOUCLE
...is nice but I can't say more! There are spies everywhere! Spies! Note to self: Is it possible we've become too sleep deprived this week due to taking a sudden interest in baseball and watching far too much of it in trade for sleep? hmmm.
MOO COW FOR THE GOOSE
...is finally getting somewhere! I spent about 7.5 hours on Saturday cutting, pinning, stitching..... Here is where we stand at the moment. Still needs ome fur for that cowtail and the hood with the ears... And some finishing touches of course! In my opinion, no 2 year old in a cow costume should be without a loud clangy cow bell to irritate the grown ups!! Especially when that 2 year old isn't coming home with me! :)
SPIN AND SPIN AND SPIN AND SPUN
I am working hard on my spinning - here is my first (kind of sad) attempt at yarn! Wooo!! This is super addictive!

Corriedale I acquired at NY Sheep & Wool Festival....

Yummy shetland that looks like a storm cloud! Also acquired at NYS&W....
ON IT'S WAY ON TO THE NEVERENDING LIST OF WIP'S
...is a Bobbi Bear for Seren which I will be knitting for the Bear-along hosted by two pregnant Katies! Yee! Iwas going to knit this up anyway and it's always more fun as a group!
...is CHARLOTTE!!!! Yes, friends. I finally found Koigu KPPM. In colors I find delightful. And where did I find it? Of course - at the place I had previously decided I would not buy any yarn that was not hand spun or hand dyed. Rhinebeck. Well, bah. I couldn't find this anywhere and how I longed for those beautiful colors!! So I snagged it. It felt good. This will surely wait until after Xmas, but the yarn has been secured and I am psyched.
...is a mystery Xmas project for the parental units. What could it be? Nope. Not telling.
Hoping to have photos from Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool for the site sometime this week! I want to go back!!!!! Why can't I go back????
Posted by Sarah at 10:19 PM | Comments (3)
October 19, 2004
The Birthday Bune
I so owe you some updates. The past couple have weeks have been very event filled! So much so that I haven't had a lot of time to write any of it down! I'll start with the birthday festivities!
'Twas my birthday a couple of weeks ago.... I have some pics of the cool cool cool prezzies I got from my sisters! Mary gave me a copy of Sweater Design in Plain English AND a computer program called Sweater Design!! Yippee!! What fun I am having playing around with that sucker....tooo cool! Heather made me a buch of amazing paper flowers that match my living room!! She made them especially for the cool little vases she gave me last Xmas! Perfect since all my flowers outside are on their way out! These flowers will last all winter! She wrapped all those flowers up in a bee-yoo-tea-full green shawl she found at a little Russian shop in Boston. :) My sisters are the greatest!
The Hune took me out to dinner at my fave Japanese restaurant - yum yum sushi!!! And he made me CUPCAKES!!!!!! He bakes once a year. For me. On my birthday. Gotta love him. :)
He wrote out "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUNE" upon them! (Bune (buh-nee); proper noun; term of endearment ; nickname used by Jamie and Sarah for each other)
Then, the day after my birfday, Mary and I went up to Boston to pick up Heather for a weeked visit. WE SHOPPED! A lot. We had a regular craft fest of our own! We went to Newbury Yarns, PaperSource and BeadWorks. Yee! (And Lush too of course..... Duh! My fave shop of all time!!!) I spent way too much money and it made me feel fantastic. Funny how that works.... Anyhoo.... here's what I came home with:
Ooooooh. Nice. That wreath there came in a kit and over the course of 2 craftlicious evenings, I constructed a happy Autumn wreath for our front door! I love it so! Now on to those Bluebells! Oh yeah... and the 2 gorgeous hanks of Schaeffer Laurel (mercerized cotton) in the Billie Holliday colourway...... My own private birthday present. :)
And guess what?? That super secret pal of mine saw it was my birthday and sent me this card!!!
So, it was a great weekend and fun was had by all! (And the Jets one that weekend - hoorah! Oh and they won the weekend after - hoorah! Oh my - that's right... THEY"RE 5-0 RIGHT NOW!!!!! YEAH!!!!! Life is good.)
Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter where I bring you up to speed on my WIP's...... oooh ooohh oooh!!!! :)
Posted by Sarah at 7:11 PM
October 15, 2004
Words of Encouragement from Michael Moore
How I heart this man... I heart him so... He has a point! We can do this!! Let's get some serious democratic voting mojo going here people!!!! WE CAN DO THIS!!!
Dear Friends,
Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"
Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.
They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.
Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"
No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.
Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.
My friends, it is time for a reality check.
1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people. Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.
2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.
3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you. Turn off the TV! (Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just a sugar-coated lie).
4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11" (the fear of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are doing in Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to how to recognize an immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of monumental proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.
So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it. The Bush people need you to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into your easy chair and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a candidate who didn't windsurf and who was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like Karl Rove is hypnotizing you -- "Kerry voted for the war...Kerry voted for the war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted fooooor theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."
Yes...Yes...Yesssss...He did! HE DID! No sense in fighting now...what I need is sleep...sleeep...sleeeeeeppppp...
WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?
Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?
Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com
Posted by Sarah at 3:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 4, 2004
Good Good Musics
Check out the hunny's band. Best. Music. Ever. NO - really. I know I'm biased...but I'd think this anyway. Cross my heart and hope to die - stick a needle in my eye. Yeah - I know - that's gross. That's how much I mean it. MmmHmmm.
**Typepad is acting a little wonky today - so if this link does not work, the address is www.purevolume.com/armsandlegs if you'd like to take a listen. :)
Posted by Sarah at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

