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atherleisure

I finished the Santa's Flight Stocking today.

I just have one more to do, and then the whole family will have cross-stitched stockings.

koshka_the_cat

I decided I wanted a footstool today, so another trip to IKEA. My room is getting very comfortable!

koshka_the_cat

I really like the weight of the lace weight on size 2 needles. I think it's 8 stitches an inch, so a little math is in order. Thankfully not much since it's just a t with no shaping. The pattern also uses inches, not rows, for the vertical measurements and has a diagram. It has a 42 inch bust and I want a 36 inch bust. It calls for 6 stitches an inch. Seven would've done it without math, except for a few more stitches on the sleeves.

So, just how many to cast on, how many to add for the sleeves, how many to bind off for the neck, and make sure to line up the lace pattern after casting on the sleeves.

I might make the repeat on the lace at the hems a little wider, which would be easy, just add two more stitches and one more row of yo/decrease. I don't want the Vs to be too narrow.

brickhousewench

Powerball is up to $1 billion today. So I bought lottery tickets when I went grocery shopping.

I don't play the lottery regularly. But I've started buying tickets more often the past year or two. Partly because I'm started to get tired of working. Partly because I need something to dream about (and "spending my lottery winnings" has been a favorite daydream since my college days) and you can't win if you don't play. And partly because they've rigged the games for bigger prizes, and it's hard to resist buying a ticket when they get into "I could afford my own private island" numbers.

So, fingers crossed that I win. Because if I do a lot of people are getting their mortgages and medical debt paid off. And Libraries are getting funded. And oh yeah, Muskrat ain't going to be the only billionaire trying to buy a President for the next election. 😉

m_of_disguise

Fairly quiet evening at home. M and I both had leftover pizza, which served as dinner. I had intended to attack Dish Mountain to get it tamed, but my pelvis was killing me, and M was chatty, so we ended up just sitting on the couch together and talking for most of the evening. Much better than doing dishes. I felt physically awful, though, so the couch was really my only options.

When putting the baby to bed I discovered that her newfound love of putting things under her mattress (herself included) and her love of naked time, had combined horribly when I found a soiled diaper hiding under the mattress. -_- More poo cleanup ensued. At least this time I didn't have to wash all her blankets, and her mattresses are waterproof and easy to clean up. But yeesh, girl, that was not cool.

Set an early alarm so I could do dishes this morning, and got up at 6. And so did the baby, because of course she did. I made her breakfast and plonked her down in front of the TV with a medley of Ms. Rachel songs going to keep her occupied, then I attacked as many of the dishes as I could before it was time to get ready for work. Discovered that the kitchen sink's hot water knob is now broken, so had to wash the dishes with cold water. -_- Got about halfway through the dishes before I ran out of time.

Woke M up, threw on some clothes, and headed out. Hopefully the rest of the day is pretty quiet, and maybe I can sneak out of work a little early since it's a holiday weekend/my birthday weekend.

M made the executive decision last night that I am no longer cooking dinner for the rest of my pregnancy. He has seen me struggle too much lately with the body pains and exhaustion I'm fighting at the end of the day, so from now on no more cooking. I will absolutely not argue with that, it's definitely a huge burden lifted. Time to stock up on frozen meals!

atherleisure

I finished my new 1798 garters last weekend.

They're knit from white cotton, probably #10, though there wasn't a label on the skein. They're based on some from the V&A museum except that I chose not to bind mine in silk ribbon. I just didn't want to and didn't like the idea of losing the elasticity of garter stitch. I've decided to hypothesize with no evidence that the originals were bound after the edges started to show some wear. Again - absolutely no grounds other than not understanding why you would give up the stretch of garter stitch by binding with non-stretchy ribbon.

I will upload the pattern to Ravelry once I finish adding a few instructions rather than just a chart.

koshka_the_cat

I rolled one hank of yarn into a ball. It took forever. I need to do a real swatch, but I think I'm looking at 8-9 stitches per inch. It's going to be a huge project. Ha! But I think it will be super light and pretty, so worth it!

brickhousewench

For months now I have been hearing random yelling in the building. It’s pretty upsetting when you hear just a random shriek that sounds like someone is being murdered. There have been times when it’s been so disturbing that I’ve gone out into the hallway, not sure if I should be calling the police or not. This has been going on for months, and it’s been driving me NUTS.

There was just a really loud, incredibly long shriek, long enough to finally let me confirm that the noise was probably coming out of apartment #3.

So I went down and knocked on the door. Repeatedly. I could hear the voices in the apartment getting quieter. Nobody answered the door. I knocked again. Still no answer. Then the TV turned off. I think I knocked five or six times? Because I really wanted to talk to someone, but no one answered despite the fact that I could hear them in there! I finally went back to my desk, but I kept an ear cocked.

A couple minutes later I heard someone come out of the apartment and head down the hall towards the door of the building. I stuck my head out, and it was the mom. I asked if anyone in their apartment had been screaming, and she shook her head no, nobody was screaming. She asked if I had knocked, and I told her yes. That I’d been trying to figure out where the screaming had been coming from, because every time I think someone’s getting killed.

She told me again that no one in her apartment had been screaming. I said I thought that maybe it was someone playing a video game and screaming when they scored points or something? But that it still upset me, because of one time that the Wasband and I heard screaming from the downstairs neighbors having a fight, and then suddenly, clear as a bell, the wife yelled, “Put that knife down!” and we immediately called the cops.

She again denied that anyone in her apartment was screaming (She has a teenage daughter, which is why I was thinking video games…), but she also didn’t walk out of the building, she turned around and walked right back into her apartment. LOL, I hope she went to tell her daughter to shut the f*** up.

brickhousewench

https://slate.com/life/2025/08/travel-finland-happiest-country-united-states.html

But it wasn’t just that it was pleasant to be outside. On this walk, something clicked for me. It was nice to be doing something that had no specific purpose. What was the point in eating a leaf off a tree? There wasn’t one, particularly. It was just nice to do. In a society where it isn’t quite so drivingly necessary to prove your worth and make money to spend on supporting yourself, you’re more allowed to just eat the tree. You’re more allowed to just go for a walk, dip your body in the cold sea for a minute or two, sit in a sweaty wooden box. Everything around Finns gives them permission to do this—rather than implies that this is an unproductive use of your extremely limited, exchangeable-for-goods-and-services time.

Quietness is certainly a defining feature of Finns, though. Walking down Helsinki center’s yellow-terraced streets, you don’t hear raised voices. It is not uncommon to find yourself in a conversation with long periods of silence, which in London someone would be rushing to fill. My tour guide, Kathrin, a woman in her early 30s from Luxembourg who has been living here for 10 years, said that once you get used to the quiet, it’s a precious thing. “It’s OK to be an introvert in Finland,” she said as we walked past people having their coffees outside on café tables and park benches alone in the sunshine.

Who knew that the secret of being happy was guilt-free, quiet, unproductive time? (Introverts, that's who!)

m_of_disguise

M was feeling much better yesterday now that the house was clean. We chatted a bit while I was home for lunch, I put the baby down for her nap, and we decided to take it easy for dinner and pick up some pizzas.

Dinner was a couple of take-and-bake pizzas from the grocery store, which were perfectly adequate. M had decided to get the baby up in the morning instead of letting her sleep until she wakes on her own, so when I put her down for the night she went right to sleep. Hooray! I watched a bit of TV once she was in bed, ate some ice cream, and finally took a shower.

Unfortunately, when I tried to sneak into the bedroom to grab my nightgown, the baby woke up. So we had a 30 minute interlude where she had a bottle of milk and snuggled her freshly laundered blankets, which were finally dry. M gave up the office for the rest of the night so we could put her down in her own crib, and while she protested at first, she settled in eventually. We all got to bed after midnight, blah.

Sister has purchased the tickets for our movie outing this weekend, hooray! I can't wait to have a day out, I've been feeling very cooped up!

Friend of M at New Company apologized yesterday that HR was taking so long. The way he worded things made it sound like M does, in fact, have the job, since he said they were "just waiting for Boss to sign off, and he's travelling this week." We're trying not to celebrate prematurely, but it does sound very positive.

Eide posted the itinerary for their late-Victorian Vampire-themed New Orleans weekend in January, and MAN am I bummed that I'm going to miss it. There's a dinner with Bram Stoker's grandson (!!!), dinners at all my favorite French Quarter restaurants, ghost walks, cemetery tours, museum visits. It sounds so, so fun.

koshka_the_cat

Open house=loooooooong day...

brickhousewench

When my sister and I visited my parents in April, I said I would probably come back at Christmas time and help mom clean out some more of the stuff she has crammed in every drawer and closet. And I penciled that in my calendar as when I would make the visit.

Today my sister emails me about when in October do I want to go rent the beach house so that she can buy her plane tickets? WTF? The plan was to go through more junk in the house, not vacation at the beach.

Anywhoo, I looked at my calendar, and there is literally not a week between now and Christmas that I do not have either a work commitment (Offsite in Berlin, virtual offsite, Hackathon week, monitoring the Docs channel in Slack, our annual Open Source user conference), a doctor's appointment (one year follow ups for my gallbladder yeet, a colonoscopy, a mammogram), events I want to go to (a local cat show, King Dick's at the new site), or events that I've already bought tickets for (Comedian Josh Johnson in Boston, John Cleese and a showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Lowell, New England Crime Bake, a screening of Stand By Me with Wil Wheaton, Jerry O'Connell, and Corey Feldman in Concord, NH). I am literally booked with at least one blocker to spend a week away from home ever week between now and Christmas. So, I guess I'm sticking with my original plan. If my sister wants to visit the folks at a different time, that's her choice.

atherleisure

Here's where I left off last week:

“Santa’s Flight Stocking” progress - 8/17/25

And here's where I left off this week:

“Santa’s Flight Stocking” progress - 8/27/25

It's actually where I left off last night because I forgot to take a picture on Sunday. I didn't work on it on Monday and only did a little outlining last night so it's not far off of where it was Sunday. The cross-stitches and half-cross-stitches were done and just a bit of the outlining. With a four-day weekend this weekend, I'm hoping that I'll finish it by the end of the weekend.

totchipanda

I am home and mostly recovered from the weekend lol.

Thursday I was super exhausted having been awake from 2-5 AM again, so I made the decision to drive down on Friday morning. I finished the chores I wanted to finish and then watched a movie with my friend. I hit the road just after 8am, and when I stopped for potty/more coffee in the next city around 9:45, I got a call from my friend asking me to go back and get a SUPER CRUCIAL part of their set-up: a lid for one of the tents. As last year we had a super intense thunderstorm and this year was forecasted to be very warm and sunny, this really was a mild emergency. They would pay me extra gas to go back. So, back I went. On the plus side, I got to see Watson the puppy!! Then, while I was there, they called again and said I needed to go into one of the smaller nearby cities to pick up one of their on-site people's wallet. They'd done the entire 4 hour trip the day before without their license, and still needed to drive back. Oops. Well, at least I was already in the area. Six hours after leaving the house, I was still more or less at home lol.

Made it down without incident and we finished up the first day of the show. I went out with my roommate (whom I've met twice) and two other people who help at the show (never met them before) for dinner at like, 10pm. We got back just after 11. The morning was confusing as I'd thought we'd be travelling with Nicole and Matt, but they'd left early to get gas and coffees (the hotel coffee was not it), so I went with Meg, who was only there for the one day. Which was fine, we totally needed 5! people working on corsets that day. It was BUSY and it was HOT and we were EXHAUSTED. The line to get in was ridiculous, I heard later that people were standing on the highway in order to get in (a good half a mile). We had lulls when people were out watching some of the events. No line for any food truck was under 45 minutes. WILD but successful day. Back at the hotel, I took a quick shower before the group went out for dinner and then we all collapsed into bed.

Sunday was less busy but much steadier. We had vendors mostly trying to shop before 10 (go away, I'm busy!), but from 11 to about 430 it was gangbusters. At 5 it died down and I only helped about 4 people until the event closed at 6. Helped with tear down, where I was helping carry a shelf and missed that the trailer height was low so it got stopped on the upper edge, but I kept walking. Thankfully my brow-area took most of the force, and my glasses got pushed into my nose before falling off. I sat down with a bottle of water for an ice pack for awhile. I don't think anything broke, and I wasn't bleeding anywhere, but OW. It's still tender. It was just the three of us by then, so we ordered food to be delivered, then I took another shower bc the day was HOT and WINDY again and I'd washed my hands and part of my forearms, where you could see the line of dirt where I'd cleaned. Dinner was consumed in the hotel's breakfast room, and then we said good night and parted ways.

In the morning, I rolled around for a couple hours before heading down to check out. Breakfast sure was different without the full house from the weekend lol. Hit the road just after 9 and went to the warehouse fabric store which was SO MUCH FUN I HAD THE BEST TIME and I could have spent SO MUCH MONEY but I restrianed myself. I walked out with some ponte in a dark plaid, stretch mesh (on discount bc it was dirty), a bolt of crabs on blue, some cottons for shirts in fun prints (unicorn tapestry, bugs, and birds), just under a meter of black wool, swimsuit knit (I have a plan, for all the swimming I do...), a roll of 1.25" web that Gertie is always talking about hehehe, clasps for a bag project, a new lightbulb for the other machine, and... I think that was it. I had more but I was "good" and put some things back. Then I went to a yarn store where i picked up a sweater's worth of yarn for a sweater I'm starting on Monday and another cable for the same lol. Then it was onto the road!

Got home just before 5, where I promptly crashed into the couch. Yesterday was more of the same, barring a 45 min trip to the grocery store mostly bc I didn't have any coffee cream or cheese. I apparently really needed that rotting time, bc the weekend was really hard on my body and my face still hurts but only when I touch it. I need to do some chores today (cat box, mostly) and tomorrow M and i are going to IKEA (where I SWEAR I am only pick up the missing curtain hardware) and Michaels and Spirit of Halloween. And getting milkshakes.

Long weekend at least so I won't have to go back to work right away. Super duper glad I took this week off, I have many crafy plans! Now I just need to get off the couch and do them.

bleodswean

He lay beside her

Listening to her breathe

For two

played that over in his mind and thought no

For three

For each of us

she breathes

When he fell into sleep he dreamt

He was inside the earth, inside a cave

Dark but safe

A hearth fire

Flame light flickering on the walls

Blood red and illuminating two figures seated beside it

Naked and on all fours crawling forward

The distance was exhausting

On his belly pulling

Across the floor of the earthen womb

The two were women

Mother

Crone

paying him no attention

Murmuring to each other

In voices muffled to his ear

But familiar and for a long moment

He lay content and felt the world expand

In the dream he became aware

It was time to wake

He pulled his body upward to a lotus and watched the two

Through slitted eyes as though the dim

Fire light was sun light

Here’s the secret

Keep it secret

I cannot

You must be able to

Don’t tell me

Please don't tell me it

The mother held her newborn to her breast

This is the weaver, she told him

She showed him the cord

anchored inside her body

Tethered to the child

this is the measure

the crone reached across with glinting shears

and cut

bleodswean

She was asleep, dreaming. And in the dream

there was a girl child,

innocent but serious, opened but mysterious,

blonde ringlets and bare footed

Running to and fro

A forgotten joyousness ensouled

They were upstairs, in his front room, all of them

Herself and himself,

her summer girls and their goat boys,

his messenger and boatman,

and even the moon. Lounging as was their wont,

drinking and smoking, bantering and laughing

listening to the grandmother clock tick the seconds

as though each minute was a favourite song

The child a focus of no one’s attention

but her own

and she was fiercely focused

because somehow

the girl child had found her secret heart,

clutching it against her body with both hands as she scampered

Let me see, she told the child,

show me what you have there

Imploring and intentful

Aware she did not want to frighten her

When at last she heeded,

Solemnly obeying,

Coming forward, leaning against her knees,

she gently gently lifted her heart from the offering hands

and settled back into a rocking chair

beside a hearth

She opened her blouse to offer her breast

because her heart was a nursling daughter,

slick with blood and vernix and

new born.

Wake up, he whispered.

m_of_disguise

Yesterday went completely off the rails. -_-

Got a call from M at around 10:30 that he needed me to come home immediately, so I took my lunch a tad early and headed to the house. When I got there, the baby was in the bath and M was rampaging through the house. Seems that the baby had taken off her poopy diaper before M had woken up, and just smeared it everywhere - her whole body, her crib, her blankets, everywhere.

He'd just finished bathing the baby, so I got her out of the tub and got her dried off and dressed. M was not handling things well, so I took all the bedding and threw it in the tub with some laundry soap and water and let it soak so I could scrub it. I gave the baby a lunch plate, and then spent a good amount of time scrubbing all her stuff. Drain tub, rinse, repeat.

Baby wanted to help, of course, so she started bringing her dirty clothes and throwing it into the tub. So those were scrubbed, too. I gave her a fresh sponge so she would stop trying to steal mine, and that kept her occupied enough that I could finish the task.

The baby had an absolute meltdown when she saw her blankets go back into the tub for the second soak. She loves them so much. It made getting her down for a nap nearly impossible, but she finally cried enough to exhaust herself to sleep. Poor girl was having such a weird day, she probably felt very thrown off.

Once she was asleep, I did the task that had originally been planned for my lunch break - pick up the grocery order. Got home, and the sound of the front door woke the baby back up, so once M and I had brought all the groceries in, I got her up, and she helped me put away all the food. Meaning mostly that I put stuff away and she snacked on pilfered strawberries.

No dinner, too much happening in the house. Baby fought her bedtime because still no blankets, so we had to make due with some throw blankets from the couch, which she wasn't a big fan of.

M got it in his head that the state of the floors was a Major Problem, so once the baby was finally asleep, we got out the mop and bucket and scrubbed every floor in the common areas of the house. He did the living room and kitchen while I did the hall, bathroom, and cat closet. By the time we were finished it was nearly 11 and we were both exhausted.

I have blisters on my right hand from all the scrubbing and wringing of blankets. I can't actually remember the last time I took a shower. I haven't had a break in months. I am very, very tired.

I really can't wait for my lunch outing with my sister this weekend. It will be so, so nice to get away from the house for an afternoon!

koshka_the_cat

Every time I get remotely interested in the Vista sweater, something comes up. Like work or another project. I was knitting at a decent rate...

Maybe I'll work on it tonight?

m_of_disguise

Hit a wall yesterday with my ability to Human Whilst Pregnant.

Came home after work and dove immediately into making dinner, which was an exercise in frustration because the baby kept getting naked every five minutes since I wasn't in the living room to keep her entertained. -_- Still somehow managed to get dinner done at a reasonable hour, for once, and by the time we were all finished eating, it was time for the baby to go to bed.

Cue more naked baby shenanigans, as she kept fighting sleep and getting naked over and over and over. ~sigh~ All that bending over her crib trying to get her to lie back down took a toll on my stomach, which had already been weird all day, and I ended up throwing up a bit. Fun.

Was woozy and extremely uncomfortable for the rest of the evening. Baby #2 must have been sitting just right up under my lungs, because breathing was a chore. I decided to try stretching out on the couch, where I ended up falling asleep. M woke me up around 10:30 so I could go to bed, and I slept like I'd just run a marathon.

Achy and sore today. Pelvis, hips, legs, all hurt like I've been doing a million squats. Being pregnant sucks, yo.

brickhousewench

Now I feel really old.

My email this morning informed me that I had a new achievement on Live Journal! Even though I left that platform for good back in 2017.

Apparently I've been blogging for 20 years now.

Not that I needed a reminder this morning about how freaking old I'm getting.

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sewloud

My blog of finished costumes

December 2021

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sewloud

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Santa's Flight Stocking

Footstool!

Eight?

I bought lottery tickets today

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New Garters

Hmm...

Hey Neighbor

Finland is the happiest country in the world

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yawn

I am booked until Christmas

Week 7

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LJ Idol - Wheel of Chaos - Wk 7 - BAT

LJ Idol - Wheel of Chaos - Wk 7 - Oxytocin Loop

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Now I feel really old

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December 2021

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