What Is Wrong With These People?!

Last night I was watching one of my favorite zombie movies and began to get frustrated with the same thing that always bothers me when I watch a zombie movie. Why is it that no one in a zombie movie ever appears to have seen a zombie movie? Or heard of a zombie? I can understand a certain amount of shock and mental shut-down, but wouldn't there come a point when you say to yourself or hapless companions "Holy crap! They're zombies!" Shouldn't some sort of knowledge kick in? I mean, it seems to me that we live in an age where few, if any, reasonable adults have never heard of the concept of a zombie.

Thankfully, today we watched a zombie movie we rented. We rented The Slaughter thinking it would be terrible (amusingly so) based on the obvious poor production quality, lack of recognizable actors, etc. I have to say, I recommend it. If you can suffer through the bad acting/writing in the first half, it gets a lot better. There are some funny lines and situations in the second half. My favorite scene involved a zombie shuffling toward his intended victim while her cohorts discussed and debated where this particular zombie fit into zombie culture so they could figure out how to defeat it. Finally! At last I get to see someone doing something more along the lines of what I'd be doing faced with the walking dead.

I'd like to see more people who seem to have even the slightest idea of what they're facing. It's just so much more realistic. At least, as realistic as cinematic walking dead ever are. If the creature villians of the story were rabid squirrels, you wouldn't have a bunch of idiots standing around trying to figure out what these furry little creatures with fuzzy tails are! They'd know they were squirrels!

So let's think about this logically:

Does the person coming after you, whether shuffling or running, have a grey-ish dead tint to their skin?

Did your friend just let out a death rattle, go slack for a moment then open his/her eyes again to reveal a glazed look?

Is someone trying to eat your brain or any other part of your body?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions: ZOMBIE! SHOOT IT IN THE HEAD!

Any questions?

Pins and Needles

My wrist is a little bit better. I still have a tendency to aggravate it when I forget about it. I've had to change the way I lean on my leg to stand up and the way I hold the railing to get up the front steps. Of course, with the cold weather, the stairs are already more difficult. I've decided not to try to leave and have to tackle the stairs more than once a day.

The good news is that I've found that needle tatting, at least small projects like my tatted flowers, doesn't hurt my wrist at all! Hooray! And I've finally organized my tatting threads so that I can actually find what I'm looking for and see what I have. I decided to offer a couple of specific color assortments of tatted flowers in my shop. It just feels kind of weird to make them without just using scrap thread. It's been a long time since that was the project I set out to work on straight from the balls of thread.

I've got a stack of fabrics for sewing projects sitting around. I should really do something about that. I'm just trying to wait until I'm sure I'm done making cards for a while since I'm using the same table the sewing machine lives on. I should really work on my apron. Since I've decided to offer a class in about a month on how to make the project that's currently only an idea in my head. I should stop doing that. It's going to catch up to me some day.

Far too much to do. Can someone add a few more hours to the day for me, please?

Hurried Photo Session = Lousy Pictures

This shawl is so gorgeous, but the pictures just don't do it justice! I'll have to try again later. Maybe we'll be able to find our camera by then. I'm hoping it won't continue to hide until we move again or something. Retracing my steps hasn't helped. Looking where it should be and where it shouldn't be hasn't helped. Maybe it was stolen by Borrowers or something! Who knows.

Well, anyway, the shawl is listed. Right at the last minute since the team meeting to show it off is tonight! I'm such a slacker!

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=20064474

Old Wounds Heal Slowly

As I've been knitting since I was very young and crocheting and tatting since I was fairly young, I expect a certain amount of carpal tunnel issues to ensue after a long stretch of doing any of these things. Usually, I slap a brace on whichever wrist is hurting at the moment, avoid doing any of the previously mentioned activities for a few days and then ease back in. It's not working this time.

After knitting four frog hats in two days to fill an order, I tried to take a vacation from fiber related pursuits for a few days. That was over a week ago. I didn't knit, crochet, or type for three days. I almost went crazy. My wrist still hurts. It starts to get better and then it gets worse again. I have things to work on, orders and obligations to fulfill. I don't have time for this! I know typing isn't helping much, but I avoided that for a while as well. I have to figure out what I'm doing wrong this time so that this won't happen again. I'm going to go insane from boredom if I can't work on anything productive!

I'm hoping that as long as I wear my support glove while I work on things the pain will at least stay the same. As long as it doesn't increase, I can continue to work. I'm just starting to get worried that my over-enthusiastic knitting may have lead to damage of a more permanent nature.

Doesn't matter. Doesn't change the fact that I have a choker to tat and an afghan to crochet. Guess I won't be pursuing a career in data entry, though.

Progress . . . sort of

So, I managed to aggravate my chronic wrist pain through over enthusiastic knitting last week. I've put myself in a brace to keep from doing further damage. Of course, resting my wrist means no knitting, crocheting, or tatting. That doesn't leave me much to do. But I figured something out!

It had been a while since I'd done any cardmaking, but my Chrismas cards turned out so well that I decided to make some more. I've got a stack that I'm slowly listing. Of course, with the camera still AWOL, that means my only option is to scan them and this produces less than stunning results. Still, I've listed two cards for now:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=19693718

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=19694235

I decided to start with lovey-dovey cards with Valentine's just around the corner. I love quotes, so I scoured the web for some to use to spice them up and give me a little inspiration. Okay, it wasn't exactly scouring, just a 45 minute search. I wish I still have my old quote list. I'd been collecting it for most of high school and a year or so of college, when my computer crashed and I lost it! I really should try to put something together again. It was so much fun collecting them. I did manage to track down a couple that I remembered from my list to make sure I got them just right for the cards.

Wow, typing with a wrist brace sucks. That's enough for now.

Resolved and Resolute

I've never been one to make new year's resolutions. I know myself too well. I have a hard enough time giving something up for Lent, and that's only a few weeks. For some reason, I've decided to change this year. As it's January 9th, obviously one of my resolutions is not to give up procrastinating. I've got to hold on to a vice or two or I'll never make it.

Well, here goes nothing:

1. I'll do a better job of keeping in touch with people.

I'm so terrible about calling, emailing, etc to communicate with people I care about. I don't want to lose touch permanently with anyone I'm still in contact with. I've lost too many people in my life in permanent ways to let any more simply slip away.

2. I'm going to write something every day.

I used write almost constantly in school, sometimes when I was supposed to be doing something more productive. I haven't really spent much time writing since I finished college. I'm not sure I was ever very good, but it was something I enjoyed. Since all my crafting has become my job, I need some other sort of escape. Also, the knowledge that some of the monologues I wrote in high school for auditioning are still floating around in cyberspace, being read and presumably used is kind of inspiring. Someone actually contacted me out of the blue on Facebook asking if they were from a published play. Maybe I can come up with some sort of cohesive theme to make that play a reality.

3. I'm going to take better care of myself.

That's a pretty broad statement, but it boils down to a few specific things. I'm going to get set up with all the doctors I should be going to, not just the cardiologist. I'm going to take all my pills every day and not forget. I'm going to get up and move more. I'll walk sometimes when I don't think I can.

4. I'm going to finally change my last name.

My life for the past few years seems to have always been in flux. I need a feeling of permanence. It's time to finally fill out any and all tedious paperwork and finally legally have the name everyone already assumes I have.

I guess that's it for now. I could swear I had a few more in my head while I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. Oh well. I reserve the right to add to, subtract from, or otherwise amend this list without prior warning as necessary. Isn't chaning my mind my right as a woman? ;)

I'm an Idiot!

I've lost my camera.

I didn't even get a chance to download my holiday pics and now I've lost track of the camera! That means I can't list anything new in my shop. Too bad it's not like my cell phone. Whenever I lose that, I just have to call myself ;) Yes, that's happened a lot.

I'm trying to decide who to blame for this one. The last person I remember having my camera was my hubby, so maybe it's his fault. However, I have a tendency to put things "in a safe place," so safe, not even I will ever find it to damage it. And I'm sick. So, the question is, who lost the camera? And why isn't there some sort of locator device on these things?!


I miss my camera :(

I Knew It Was Too Good To Be True . . .

For the first time in over ten years, I didn't have a cold on Christmas! I truly can't remember my last non-snot-filled, sore-throated, tired, cranky, all-around-miserable Christmas.

Should have known it couldn't last long. My hubby had three whole days off this week and my body picks the day he goes back to work to feel dreadful and need to be taken care of! Ugh, I win the crown for Queen of Bad Timing yet again.

So much I should be doing and I just feel too yucky to accomplish any of it. I need to make a total of six frog hats to send out, two are totally done, two need flies, and one more is a little more than half-knit. I should really be trying to do something productive, but my brain just isn't working right today. Stupid cold germs. Maybe I'll get over this quickly.



Unlike every cold I've ever had :(