I'm a repeat first time offender

Alex taught me to play Magic : The Gathering last night before bed. LOL.. awesome. It was so fun. I'm really bad at it, but it's cool. I'll get better.

I woke up pretty early today, and did some Chemistry review and started in on my tunic again. It's about halfway done, now. I can't wait to wear it, it's going to fit so perfectly, I think. The ribbing for the waist makes it look too small though, I'll have to block the crap out of it to get it to stretch enough. The fact I did 1X1 rib instead of 2X2 rib that it called for was a blessing and a curse. Because I'm working on a bigger size than is expected to fit me, I need that extra shrink in the waist, but the extra shrink in the waist along with the fact I downsized the needles seems like a teeny bit too much. Oh well. I won't use smaller needles for the front's ribbing and it'll all work out.

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It snowed more yesterday. I haven't left the house in almost 2 days now. My Christmas guitar from Alex hasn't come in the mail yet and I'm getting really impatient.. Sigh.

I convinced Katelyn to do an "Ester" knitalong with me, I'm sooooooo excited about it. It looks like the comfiest, easiest thing to knit, ever.

STOKED.

I'm off to a good start this year on my resolutions.

I did 2 hours worth of gruelling Math today, and I got 2 assignments done, minus one question I'll try to remember to ask about.

I went on the exercise bike today for a half hour and then stretched. I feel good, I feel loooooose. I was within my target heart rate the whole time and I actually broke a sweat, which pretty much never happens.

I'm also knitting like a mad woman. MAD. In 4 days I've knit 10 inches of this lacy crap masterpiece that is going to be the bottom back of glorious tunic that everyone is going to be jealous of.

Those pictures are when it was about 5-6 inches long, and now it's about 10 inches from CO to needle. I'm pretty proud of myself, it's the biggest thing I've knit since that huge bag I made in high school when I first started knitting. It is the Bonsai Tunic pattern from Interweave Knits Spring 2007.

That's what it's supposed to look like. I'm making it out of Cascade 220 Wool in some green variant beastie instead of the bamboo it recommends, because I do what I want. I run with 12 gangs, we commit hate crimes.

I'm a pretty happy lady today. I have to return a couple of knitting books to the library today so I'm furiously scanning all the patterns that I want so desperately to keep. It's like knitters' pirating. Oooohh.. sounds devious.

HAPPPPPPPPY NEW YEAR!

.. makes me thing of the Mountain Goats song - Going to Georgia, which makes me think of their song Grendel's Mother, with makes me sing "I will carry you home in my teeth, carry you home in my teeth" repeatedly in my head.

I'm going home. Without Alex, which'll be weird. It won't be the same without him to get fortune cookies and bubble tea with, and sit on the Johnson St. bridge.

I can't think straight to pack right now, so I'm just listening to Oasis and tuning up my voice to Don't Look Back in Anger. Fuck. Yes.

I can't pack any liquids, that much I know. I also assume that knitting needles are out, especially since the circulars I'm using would make a very effective garotte should I choose to use it as such.. So. because it's the Christmas season (oh joy of joys..) I have to be in Edmonton 2 hours before my flight to get out there. By myself, at the gate. I hope I don't have to sit beside anyone creepy on the plane, because we all know that when you're sitting beside someone creepy, their creepiness paired with your uneasiness (however well we all hide it) stop time. They do! I'll be in the air, with some creepy person and time will stop and I don't know if jets can stop in mid-flight. Let's just assume they do, because I won't be crashing into the deep blue sea, making a wonderful splash. No.

Elyse, my love and Alex, her love are picking me up at quarter after fiveish tomorrow at the 'port de l'air. Fuck fucking yes.

I am so excited to hug everyone and get smashed and play harmonica and have a love-in on someone's bed. Not really. I hope I bring enough socks. I have some laundry gong right now because I'm a good wife. I also baked 23 cookies and a casserole so that Alex will be in cookies and leftovers for work this week without me. <3.

I'm a bundle of neeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvbes.

It happens every year around this time. I get all introspective and start analyzing myself - emotionally, spiritually, and *gulp* physically. It's the time I really concentrate on my "lists" and try to make myself better. It's when I decide what kind of person I want to be for the coming year, and when I begin to draw up and execute these new plans.

I don't know when I started to do this, it was so long ago, and I haven't really kept track of how I've done, all I know is that at the end of this year, I'm happier then I was at the end of the last, and the ones before those.

Truth be told, these past two years have been the happiest and most productive of my life. In the last two years, I've met a new boyfriend, I've moved out on my own for the first time, I've been employed at many different jobs and experienced many different things, I've been proposed to, engaged, I planned a wedding (with MUCH help) and I got married to the most incredible man I will ever know. It's like he was custom built just for me - there is no other that complements me so. We struck out and moved to another province and we're building our life together. Alex is working so hard, and such long hours (he did eleven and half hours yesterday, and twelve and a half the day before) so that we can get our very own house and start our own family.

Two years, and I've gone from being a restless, sleepless, flighty girl recently graduated from highschool, to a woman who has more goals and future ahead of her than she knows what to do with. All I know for sure is that I have him beside me and that thought could not make me any happier.

So. On to my lists.

I want to be the best wife ever. It sounds stupid and like such a short-sighted, unambitious thing.. but it's not to me. I want Alex to feel like he always has someone supporting him. I want him to feel like he can do anything in the world.I don't ever want to be the kind of woman who undercuts her man, and makes him feel small, or stupid, like so many sitcoms seem to portray these days - like it's funny or something for a guy to do something wrong and be ridiculed or put down for it. I want to edify him, make him feel good to be doing whatever it is he has to do at the time.

I want to get very good and running a household, keeping it clean and decorated nicely. Basically, I want to excel at everything domestic. I took a short break from cleaning over my birthday weekend and let some of the clean laundry build up.. at least now I'll have something to do tomorrow morning while Alex is at work. I can knit really well, now, and I'm learning very quickly how to sew on a machine properly. I'm so excited to be able to make decorations, pillow covers and other things for the house. I can save so much money if I learn how to make clothes for us, too. I'm getting so much better at cooking, and I'm actually enjoying it!

I want to make more of the kind of art that makes me lose track of time and shake after I've finished it. I want to create beautiful things with my mind and my hands, and I want to surround myself with them, making my home look more and more like my mind all the time, if that makes sense. I feel as if I expressed myself through art and displayed it in my home it would make it all feel more like it was mine (whether it is or not). That kind of feeling of ownership is important to me. I want to develop what skills I do have, and I want to improve so badly.

I want to rid myself of this guilt I carry around with me like sand in my pockets, still there after washing. I feel guilty for what I'm doing, what I'm not doing and what I should be doing instead. No one is telling me what to do but me right now, and yet there's still this unseen, unheard pressure on me to conform to something that I'm not even sure of. I know I'm being vague, but there are others who know of what I speak. There's a better way for me, and I'm trying my best to get there, and bask in it. Finally. It's coming, I can feel it.

As I'm finishing up this entry, I'm coming to the conclusion that my list this year is much shorter than it usually. I hope that this is a good sign. I have lots of things I want to get done this year, small things, little things not worthy of a public list.. but are nonetheless important to me.

Alex has been asleep for almost 3 hours now, and I'm nodding off, too. I feel better already.

I woke up today, feeling like a real adult. I have a husband already, so this is a good thing to feel, I think. Yesterday was wonderful. Really, really wonderful. Everyone got along, nothing annoying or unfortunate happened, everyone was just happy. After a nice lunch out, we came home and I got my gifts. I'm so happy with what I was given!

I got some long underwear, some socks (which were sorely needed). chocolate, and a brand new, gorgeous sewing machine. I am SO stoked to start making things. I'm going to the library as soon as I can to take out some basic books so I can get a handle on this. My machine has 40 stitches built in, and they're BEAUTIFUL.

There she is! I think I'll call her Galadriel. Yes. She is perfect.

I'm making a pair of purple lounge-about-the-house pants right now. They're the first real sewing project I've ever done, where I'm trying to make a wearable garment that isn't going to fall apart on me, and I'm following all the "rules". I'm so excited.

I forgot to mention, when I started, that I'm knitting a cabled scarf with attached hood right now, as a break from that godforsaken shawl I'm trying to get through. I caved and had Alex buy me some acrylic (Bernat Satin) a while back, in that Admiral Blue, and this is what I have purposed for it.

This is the type of thing I'm aiming for. The acrylic sheepishly challenged is knitting up much softer than anticipated. I just hope it doesn't pill the crap out of itself when I wash it.

I love sweet stuff, and since we've moved here, there has been a serious lack of sweet stuff in my life, because of the serious lack of sweet little shops to visit.

Which is exactly why I am so excited to have stumbled across the following shops online:

Pyramid Collection - is a shop I stumbled onto today that I'm definitely going to go back to in the future. They sell gorgeous jewelry, and some really great clothes. My favorite piece of jewelry I saw was a sterling silver bangle with all three verses of e. e. cumming's i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) etched into it in squibbley woobly script.

I also adore the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Trading Post. They make hundreds of unique perfume oils with strange little names in the alchemy lab, and the trading post has tons of merchandise with some wicked imagery. I'm definitely going to keep checking back. Yum.

I learned today that perfume oils are a great percentage more potent than eau de toilette or eau de cologne, which, based on that information accounts for their seemingly exorbitant pricing (average of $15.00/5mls of perfume oil).

Eau fraiche: 3% or less perfume oil.

Eau de cologne: 2 - 5% perfume oil.
Eau de toilette: 4 - 10% perfume oil.
Eau de parfum: 8 - 15% perfume oil.
Perfume: 15 - 25% perfume oil.
Perfume oil: 15 - 80% perfume oil.

Alex bought me some yarn from Walmart today. 400g of the prettiest shade of "Admiral Blue" and 200g of "Silky White". I can't wait to get on that.

Today has been a pretty nice day. Alex made me french toast for breakfast today, and I'll try to throw something together for us, for dinner tonight. We're in the habit of buying movies since the snow has thrown our TV out of commission. Last night we bought Pulp Fiction for $9, and tonight we bought 300 for $9. Wicked deals at Walmart right now.. and I've been secretly using my discount even though I haven't been going to work at all. Tee hee!

So tonight, on the agenda, we have bloodlust, gore, and popcorn! Awesome.

Alright. I'm going to start cross-posting to livejournal like Alex does because he is so cool and I want to be like him.

The cats are angry because it's so dry here and they are afflicted by some unseen force called static-electricity, so when they touch each other they get shocked and bound away from one another. I can't pet them right now because they hear the crackling and freak out.

I pulled out my guitar for the first time in a while only to see that the headstock is broken. I tried to undo the strings a little bit to relieve some of the tension but high E snapped on me and whipped my thumb off. RIGHT OFF. Yeah.

I'm waiting patiently, oh so patiently for Alex to come home. I'm excruciatingly bored here without him. Maybe I'll have another shower to pass the time. The house keeps making bumping noises and tricking me into thinking he's home. But he's not. HE'S NOT.

Today after he gets home, we are going into town to see if I have any birthday presents in the mail. We're also going to buy movies because the satellite TV dish is on strike or something. It doesn't feel like working in the snow and freeeeeezing -32 degrees Celsius with wind chill, and neither would I. I also get a new lipstick today.

Yeah, my birthday is coming. I'm pretty excited. Don't know what's going to happen, if anything. All I know is that we can't go to Edmonton because we don't have enough money. That's okay, though. We'll figure something out.

I'm knitting the Adamas shawl. It's my first lace project, I'm making it out of Elsebeth Lavold's silky wool. It's really pretty so far:

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OH! I figured out why lovebirdie attacked me. My little Sparky-bird is all grown up! She decided to up and randomly lay an egg the other day, even without a little Daddy bird around, which totally explains her aggressiveness.

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Ta Daaaah!

She was so proud of herself. I took the egg away, and she's been just as sweet as ever

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Walmart started to play Christmas music November 1st. I personally think that it's a bit too early. I usually get into the Christmas swing of things after my birthday comes and goes in the beginning of December. It's snowing outside, and it's probably bloody cold, which means I'm probably going to have to wait until A gets home before I can go to Walmart and pick up the appropriate needles for my shawl.

I'm bidding on something secret and wonderful for A for Christmas. It's going to be perfect.

My brother-in-law and his girlfriend just moved in. So far so good. They left as soon as they got here yesterday to go into town, and then they left just this morning. I don't think we're going to see very much of them, which I guess isn't so bad, at least they're keeping busy.

I should probably do some school now. I did a little on the weekend, but none yesterday. Lame.

I did three days worth of Chemistry today. I'm waiting ever so patiently to get my Math text so I can start that, too. So far so good with this Chemistry business, though.

This year I wanted so badly to do NaNoWriMo, but frankly, with the apparent utter failure on my part for last year, I'm a little discouraged. I think I'd much rather be doing a knitting marathon or a reading marathon, or a drawing marathon.

I got some fixative spray today so that my drawings don't get all smudgey after they're finished. I get paid at midnight tonight and if I have any money left over.. OMG. I'm going to Walmart and buying some linseed oil, some brush cleaner and maybe some oil paints, and then I'll trip on down to Benjamin Moore's to pick up some smudgers and some other goodies.

Tomorrow A and I have our second date since we've been married. Holy crap that's a long time to go without a date. I secretly hope that this isn't what marriage is actually like.. and I blame it on the fact we've had limited money this whole time.

A got a job, though, so he'll start working on Monday, which is going to be so fun for him, I'm sure (minus the fact he has to wake up at 4:30 every morning).

He's the cutest thing. One of my favorite things about him is that when he's barefoot, he walks around on the balls of his feet like he's dancing or tiptoeing all the time. <3

A's brother and his brother's girlfriend are coming to live with his parents and us. I'm not looking forward to that, frankly, I hate his girlfriend. Like. a lot. I'm not going to get into this now, though. I'm going to enjoy the rest of the week and bite my tongue when they get here on Friday. I don't have a right to voice how I feel about it, this isn't really my house. I know A's mother is less than impressed that she's coming though.

I'm listening to Bright Eyes' newest album, Cassadaga and it makes me so happy. My new favorite song is "If the Brakeman turns my Way".. I just love it. Seriously.. listen to it. It's amazing.

A's Mom finished the sweater she was making me and it's my most favorite piece of clothing I have ever had to date.It's made of a wool/alpaca blend and it's so warm and soft, I just love it. It's nice that I have something in common with her.