Well, it’s the last day of the year and the day of lasts. I got out of bed for the last time of the year, fed the cats the last time for the year, washed my hair for the last time of the year, ate my last breakfast of the year. This is my last blog entry of the year.

I’m melancholy and yet I can’t say I’m sad to see the year go. There’s something satisfying about the final things of the year. It was a bad year for me personally with my health problems starting back in April and carrying all the way to now. Things still aren’t fully under control. Still, it’s my last day of pain for the year. Some time later this morning I will finish my last knitting of the year, eat my last lunch of the year, and go to my last parties of the year. There’s something comforting in all that, even if I know tomorrow will be my first day of pain in the New Year, because even that “first” will be one of many that will be far more positive.

Of course, all the news feeds are doing some sort of recount of the year, including celebrities who died in 2007. The whole year was full of tragic losses, from Sidney Sheldon in January to Dan Fogelberg this month, with people like Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, Liz Claiborne, Robert Jordan, and Madeleine L’Engle between. April was particularly cruel when looked at in review, because that’s the month we lost Johnny Hart, Kurt Vonnegut, Don Ho, and Boris Picket.

They will all be remembered. They will all be missed. They will all be replaced by the people they inspired. Such is the turning of the days, of the seasons, of the years. This is the season for honoring that change. Tonight we ring out the old and ring in the new.

May the best of the last year be the worst of the next one. As the Invisible Man might say, see you in 2008, my freaky darlings.

Where do I begin on this particular episode?

I wasn’t so keen on The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, which felt like a two-parter rehashing Star Trek V in only a slightly better manner (What does God need with a space ship? Same thing he did in Star Trek V: he needs it to escape this trap.) The biggest problem with Love and Monsters, aside from the Absorba-yutz being silly looking, which undermined his effectiveness as a monster, was that they spent a whole episode on foreshadowing. I might have forgiven them for this if the Doctor hadn’t acted out of character and thus ruined the entire point of the flippin’ episode.

I’m sorry, RTD, but there’s no way the doctor would have left Ursula alive trapped in a half-life as a head in a slab of concrete. He would have told Elton that she was gone, and that he was sorry. Ursula should have died protecting Elton and it should have been at the hands of a terrifying thing, not another green, farting, joke of an alien. Elton should have been left alone, and that should have been the ultimate cost of touching the Doctor. That message, the message that lives touched by the Doctor are often dark and terrible and can never be the same afterwards but are still worth living despite that, that would have been worth spending an entire episode of foreshadowing on. What Love and Monsters actually turned out to be wasn’t worth the time they took to film it.

Thursday I knitted up the Bainbridge Scarf while working my way through more Doctory goodness in the form of Season 2 of Doctor Who.

I’m up to Love & Monsters now, which I’m tempted to skip simply because I’ve heard it’s a truly crap episode.

On the other hand, I should judge that for myself because I don’t always agree with fandom on the nature of crap. For example, I loved the TOS Star Trek episode called Spock’s Brain. It made me laugh and laugh. Laughing is always good in my book, even if it wasn’t what the writer intended. Maybe Love and Monsters will be funny.

Hey, I can always hope.

The scarf itself is easy enough, but I still managed to screw up attaching the ties. There’s a picture, which would probably better serve as an illustration if it were next to the text that describes where to pick up the stitches for the ties. Still, it works where I did it and that’s all that matters to me.

The Bainbridge scarf is knitted in the round in broken rib stitch. I liked the reverse side better than what was the outside when I knit it, so I turned it inside out.

A close-up of the texture. As you can see, I attached the ties at the top of the tube on opposite sides. They should be half way down the tube on opposite sides. It still works to attach them this way, but it lies more neatly if you attach them correctly.

As I finished up The Satan Pit (and the Bainbridge Scarf), our old “guild buddy” Ciena (in real life, Liz) from the EverCrack, um, EverQuest, days showed up as planned. Liz and her husband Bill are in town for the annual LAN party hosted by HR’s friend and ex-fiance. The LAN party is full of first person shooters and guys who are hopped up on sugar and caffeine and aren’t bathing enough, which neither HR or I really enjoy, so we hosted Liz at our place for a day of girl talk, chili, and hooking her on World of Warcraft! We got the new Ciena up to level 12, which isn’t too bad for a day of questing.

Yesterday HR and I went skiing with a huge group of friends and co-workers. It snowed all the way up to Dubuque, all the time we were skiing, and pretty much all the way home. I had HR’s little camera (as opposed to the Camera God) in my purse, but didn’t think to snap any pictures of it. I doubt they would have come out because it was kind of foggy, too, and you can never really capture the beauty of those kinds of days.

My feet were bothering me, so in a moment of thinking ahead (marked down on the calendar because I’m not always great at that), I brought along the copy of White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9) by Jim Butcher that I borrowed from dark_aegis. My boots are officially too old and crappy and my arthritis in my feet too bad to ski. Looks like I’ll have to find the budget to replace my ski boots if I intend to continue to ski.

Either way, my misfortune skiing turned into time to devour White Night, which was all good. got to leave the ski resort with her book because I finished it, too. Yay! Now if Mr. Butcher can hurry up with the next book, please, because I’m completely addicted and we all know how fangirls get when they get the DTs. Thank you.

In another moment of planning ahead, I actually had both paper and pen in my purse, so (who didn’t bring her laptop) still got to get in some writing time, as she was done skiing for the day about an hour before the rest of the gang (meaning HR, who drove, and Steve, our other passenger) were done. As it worked out, I had just finished the book and was gushing about it to (who was ever so patient listening to my recounting the best parts) when HR and Steve were finished.

We came home and rented Balls of Fury and Blood and Chocolate. I recommend both films, but for very different reasons.

Balls of Fury is funny in a “Spoof Enter the Dragon” kind of way. About the only thing it was missing was it needed more cowbell. I laughed so hard my belly hurts today.

Blood and Chocolate on the other hand, was a beautiful little Werewolf film. It was the kind of film I think Underworld wanted to be for vampires, but couldn’t attain because it spent too much time on action sequences and special effects, on par in some ways, with Ladyhawke in its sympathy for the werewolf characters and certainly will added to the film collection as soon as I can find it for sale.

Yesterday I knitted up a pair of fingerless mittens from One-skein Wonders 101 Yarn-Shop favorites, page 92, using some Home Spun Luxury Blend - 2 Ply - 3.8 oz - Goblin Flower from Lazy Perry Ranch which I bought on Etsy. They worked up really quickly, and only took about half the skein of yarn.

Today I made a neckie inspired by fourteen which rocks(!) in the color that designer John Brinegar made it in, and it’s so masculine in that form. If his version is “Fourteen,” then mine is “Twenty one” because that’s the number of stitches I cast on to get the width I wanted. Made using a smaller set of needles (9’s) in the leftovers from my Goblin Flower with three dainty Victorian-esque buttons, the pattern transforms into the perfect little companion to my fingerless mittens. Once I got onto the Brioche Rib (using this video tutorial, it was easy enough that I could work on it while watching Season 2 of the new Doctor Who. I started at the regeneration Children in Need and worked on it through School Reunion (skipping Tooth and Claw, because I’ve seen it three times). All in all another quick little knit.

Fingerless Mittens

The 21 Neckie

Update: I sent pictures of the finished gloves and neckie to Collette at Lazy Perry Ranch so she could see how beautifully her yarn knit up, and she’s asked permission to use the photos for another skein of the yarn she has for sale! They really do show off the color nicely, even if I do say so myself. Best of all, they’re fuzzy goodness.

So I finished the leaf green sonnet, but after I finished sewing it together it was too stretchy and the shoulders wanted to fall off my shoulders. It’s so stretchy I’d recommend making it with negative ease to compensate along with making the neck opening narrower for a better fit through the shoulders.

Since I didn’t care to frog the whole damned sweater, I decided to try felting it to see if I could get a better fit. It turned out wonderfully. I just wish I’d taken a before picture to show how stretchy it was before I felted it.

To felt it, I just hand washed it in really hot water and then pressed out as much as possible. Then I threw it in the dryer on low heat with a bunch of dry towels for 20 minutes. It worked perfectly to felt it up and didn’t remove much of the texture from the seed and box stitches. If anything, it actually accentuated the differences in texture and made it seem much more like a light boiled wool jacket. It’s really cute on, but unfortunately, my roommate wasn’t here, so I had to get a photo of Baked Potato Betty modeling it for me.

Baked Potato Betty makes an excellent model but sadly, like Marie Antoinette, she has no head.

I just finished binding off the second sleeve of my leaf green sonnet. It’s not a finished object yet. I still need to sew the sleeves in and sew on buttons, but it’s no longer in second sleeve stage, either. With that done, I can call it an evening.

I’ve got to be up early in the morning. We’re having Christmas at Casa de ‘Rents tomorrow and I’m bringing a fruit tray. I’ll finish up the sonnet tomorrow and post more pictures then.

According to this article in the New York Times, the following exchange took place when Mike Huckabee was in Des Moines :

“Who is your favorite author?” Aleya Deatsch, 7, of West Des Moines asked Mr. Huckabee in one of those posing-like-a-shopping-mall-Santa moments.

Mr. Huckabee paused, then said his favorite author was Dr. Seuss.

In an interview afterward with the news media, Aleya said she was somewhat surprised. She thought the candidate would be reading at a higher level.

“My favorite author is C. S. Lewis,” she said.

There’s a MasterCard priceless moment if I’ve ever seen one.

Maybe he’s taking the Zaphod Beeblebrox approach to Presidency and making a spectacle of himself to keep attention away from what the real power is doing. I hate to tell him, but in US politics, that’s the vice president’s job.

Because there really can’t be too much owl love right before Christmas. I found this Holiday Hoot Felt Ornament. Sheer joy.

I now return to my frantic last minute holiday item knitting.

I finished my voodoo arm warmers I’m making for my Aunt of Red Heart Soft Yarn in the Ember Colorway! They took almost all of the skein, but I still have a bit left over, even with making the “on the hand” part long enough to go all the way over my knuckles, which worked out to two inches rather than just one inch.

The skinny little things and the small ball of leftover yarn.

Proof they fit on an adult human being, which is required after the Swell incident.

Well, the final package that I was waiting to arrive showed up finally. I bought HR a new biking jersey with Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen’s Chat Noir on it. Fortunately, she doesn’t read this blog, or rather, I think she doesn’t, so it’s mostly safe to mention.