It appears as though my monkeys will be back up for sale within the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I can get at least a couple done while still trying to finish Christmas-present afghans at the same time. I’ll probably work up a quick afghan for my grandmother rather than the more complicated (but much prettier) one that I wanted to do. The picture to the right is a shot of 1 block of the one I’m working on for my father - there’s 12 in all, using a total of 30 squares for the whole blanket.

And now, I’m going to go slather my head with some hair dye and do some more hooking for the rest of the night.

We got up hella early to meet Mom at Walmart for 8:30am. From there we followed her into Cranston to dig some holes at a preschool that was getting some new landscaping done, and it looks really good even without anything in bloom right now. Come springtime there will be a lot of flowers and it will look very nice. After we finished the flowers hit FedEx/Kinkos to mailed out the geisha monkey. Then we went to Petco and looked at their ferrets and their cat condos. Pickle won’t be getting a buddy or a climbing spot yet, since it’s almost rent time. I’m still keeping my eyes open on craigslist though. We picked up a poster frame at Micheals because they were 50% off and we got it for $17 rather than $34, and I snagged a few $1 spools of ribbon for assorted projects. After we grabbed lunch at Walt’s (mmm… roast beef and cheese) we went down to Mom’s house, where I spent the day taking pictures of Jazz and working on the afghan. I managed to finish almost 2 sections, which I’m pleased with, and it’s starting to actually look like the picture on the pattern. Danielle came over for a visit and dropped off some pictures, including my 10th grade school picture that I got into a heap of shit over with my dad because I wore a hat in it. there was also a video of me and my best friend Andrea doing the electric slide on her front lawn prior to our 9th grade semi formal, but we left that over at Mom’s.

The next few days I’ll be home, enjoying my days off before we go back to class. I plan on working on the afghan and trying to clean my desk off. I also want to make a hat out of a smaller batch of really fuzzy blue yarn.

But for now, we’re heading to the bedroom to watch the rest of the news and SNL, providing I can stay awake.

We were supposed to go out with Mom to plant some flowers today, but it’s raining today and so the planting was cancelled due to mud. So what’s a girl to do? Why, finish the Geisha, of course!

Yes, she’s finally finished. I snapped a few more pictures of her this morning. And because I’m a stickler for details, here’s a bunch of them:

• made from one pair of big-assed wool socks, trimmed down to a mostly manageable size for her arms and legs.
• embroidered lips in bright red
• kimono, juban, and obi, all done up according to Japanese patterns and customs. Did you know that kimono and juban lapels should be wrapped left over right, except when dressing a body for burial and it’s done right over left? Neither did I, but you’d better believe this one is dressed properly.



• Long black hair, because I couldn’t get the traditional geisha style to work, nor could I find a tiny geisha wig. However, she does have a pair of pretty coiled buns on the top, complete with flowers and ribbon decorations.
• Tiny “tail obi” - I felt the tail needed a little something extra, so I made a little obi for the tail out of a bit of kimono fabric.

Eddie’s going to be getting me a box from work, so she should be heading off to her new home sometime next week! Tomorrow, she goes to my Mom’s house to show her off one last time.

We had a rather uneventful Sunday, which was completely normal and in fact most welcome. Because Rhode Island seems to be in the middle of its own little monsoon season we didn’t go to the flea market, but we did go to Bickford’s for breakfast after I’d dyed and dried my hair. I skipped breakfast and moved right on to lunch and had a chicken sandwich while Eddie ate some sort of cholesterol-laden plateful of eggs and fried meat. We went to Mom’s for the weekly wings and football. We watched a couple of decent games, and made fun of a few sucky teams, generally annoying Brian.

I’d brought my bag of monkey stuff with me - a skein of black yarn, a few needles, some black embroidery floss, and a card with 3 silver, floral buttons. Shortly after I sat down and put in the first few stitches in the geisha’s hair, in walked my sister, who decided to come over for wings, football, and dinner. Somehow I managed to lose the buttons under the couch and ended up crawling on the floor to retrieve them. Danielle attempted to get me to go get my hair cut with her tomorrow, but I think if anyone goes near it this week it will just fall out while screaming “we give up! we can’t take anymore!” I managed to get the geisha’s hair on, although it’s technically not your normal geisha updo (the yard was too unwieldy), but more like these, just longer in the back. Her eyes were the topic of much conversation, such as my mother asking if they were going to be slanted, and Danielle asking if they’d be “chinky”. What my family lacks in tact, we make up for in being amusement for others. There’s only a few more details to be touched up on (sewing the mouth and tail on, small hair stuff, clipping stray threads and sewing up the obi so it doesn’t randomly untie itself and fall off), and then she should be ready to send out this week. Tomorrow I’ll get more pictures of her, since if I do it now she’ll look really yellow because of the lighting in here.

And now I’m going to take a shower, since being in a roomful of smokers all day has made my head stuffed up solid. Not fun. And then i’m going to try to finish my book.

We’ve had an uneventful night here. Still no idea what the hell was going on with the copter and the police and the train tracks, since the 90 minutes of local news only mentioned it once, and that was describing it as “police presence” during an early traffic report. Hopefully there’s a blurb on the 11pm report, since I’m insanely curious.

I got started on the geisha monkey tonight. She’s entirely stitched up, and just needs to be stuffed and assembled. I also bought the kimono pattern, since I don’t want to run the risk of fucking things up - I guess my dream about it affected me a bit more than expected. Hopefully I get that via email over the next day or so, and then I can get it printed up and start working on that after I sew on the arms at least. Normally I put the arms on, do the outfit, then put the ears, mouth, and tail on, otherwise various apendages get in the way and annoy me.

Pickle has spent most of the night outside her cage, finally falling asleep under my chair wrapped up in the sheet. She likes to sleep under there, and I think when she doesn’t feel like hopping back into her hammock she just plunks her tubby little body under there where she’s cuddled up. Eddie had has in the kitchen tonight while I was getting ready to cook dinner, and she didn’t want any of the raw hamburger we offered her. All the more for us, I say. Right now she’s sleeping in a hammock, curled up in a little furry ball.

Tomorrow I start my first real day of school, the first course being Medical Terminology for Pharmacy Technitions. 212 days left. I tried my scrubs on and while the top fits fine, the pants are fucking HUGE, prompting Eddie to request that I do a MC Hammer dance in the kitchen tonight. I’m not good enough with the sewing machine to actually take them in, but I managed to hem them, taking up about 4″ on the bottom. My mother says she wants to see if she can find some of the same color in a bit smaller size, since she knows how big they tend to run. I don’t mind them being roomy, but too long is just a pain in the ass. The class only has about 12 people in it, 5 of which I met today, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get help if I need it.

Why is The Biggest Loser hosted by a woman with 3 chins?