Amazon Rank: Behold the power of the internet

I think stuff like this is really cool.

Amazon Rank

As if I needed another reason to love Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, they've done this in honor of the Amazon debacle involving stripping sales ranks from books with "questionable content." Here's a couple of updates on Amazon's response.

SBTB was actually how I first found out about Flight of the Conchords and I have enjoyed many a laugh since then. About a year and a half ago, a co-worker pointed out the Smart Bitches blog to me and on the day that I clicked over to their site they had fatefully posted the "Business Time" video. I laughed so hard I disrupted work for an entire morning. Though I am not a romance reader per se, I really enjoy how much they enjoy the genre. And the cover snark is hilarious and awesome.

In honor of SBTB and the genius of the Amazon Rank Google bomb, and how much I like Flight of the Conchords, and my previous history of posting lots of YouTube videos on my blog, I leave you with this oldie but goodie:



That's why they're called business socks.

I feel fat... Gonna try to sleep it off

I've talked about my scale before. I dislike how much I weigh. And it's not just the number, I dislike how I feel in my jeans (and these are jeans that I bought last summer because I was feeling fat in the jeans I had before that) and my arms are getting flabbier and my waist is getting thicker. And I ate three doughnuts at work today.

My new year's resolution was to either get down to 130 pounds - or, if I fail at that, resolve to stop caring about my weight forevermore. So far this year I've put on about 6 pounds. hmmm.

I've tried different stuff and usually something works for as long as I can stand to stick with it. The Sonoma Diet worked well for me but I lost so much so quick right in the beginning (5 pounds in 5 days) that I freaked out and stopped doing it all together. And it made me a little crazy about my food: I almost started crying once because my mom made something for dinner that involved white flour and I didn't want to offend her so I ate it. I almost started crying about eating a refined grain. I become an emotional cripple when it comes to diets that scare you into eating healthy.

And that seems to be the major issue for me, I don't want to do something that makes me mad at food. Or guilty about food. Or scared about food. I have too much inclination to go off the deep end with it.

B posted this about a picture food diary. I've done food diaries before, but it's the same guilt/anger issue for me. I don't want to be shamed into eating less. I do like the idea of using pictures more than just writing it down, cause then maybe you're more inclined to see patterns, and you're doing the recording before you do the consuming... But still.

Then I read this and I'm so all over it. Sleep more and lose 10 pounds? Sounds perfect. I need to lose more than that to get to 130 but still, it's a hell of a start. And I love sleeping. I was already thinking about how I wished I got more sleep more consistently. So I'm going to try it and I'll let you know how it goes. =)

Crochet rug update later. I've hit a decision point and I'm in need of advice. I'll post about it when I have access to the pictures on my camera.

Almost finished before I even blogged about starting it

I didn't go to church today, a fact about which my grandmother had uncharacteristically non-passive, yet still aggressive, things to say. Instead of church, I listened to my heathen boyfriend play Phish bootlegs on the college radio station while I drank tea and started making this:


The sheet I'm using is a batik style print that I used to individualize my bland as bland can be comforter freshman year of college. Over the years it's gotten worn thin in places and the cats have clawed holes through it. So now I'm excited to give it a new life. I cut it into a long continuous strip about an inch and a half wide.


The rug is 20 stitches across and I'm just going to keep going till I think it's long enough. It's already more than twice as long now than it was this afternoon when I took these pictures. But my camera battery is low and I don't have any more lovely sunshine coming in my bedroom window so I may just wait to stage another photo shoot once it's done.


I think I'll have to cut more rag strips to get the length I'm looking for, not sure how that will look with so much of this patterned sheet. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, I do have a lot of t-shirts in colors that would look interesting striped on the end. Or I may expand it by doing denim around the edges. We'll see.

I'm pleased to have such a successful project to post about after the last post of failure. Happy Easter to all the other pagans out there! I had a lovely day despite the fact that I'm going to hell.

When do I just give up on this yarn?

I really wanted to make this adorable little capelet/cropped cardigan thing that I found randomly clicking through knitting blogs. I even happened to have two leftover balls of Rowan Polar (the now discontinued yarn that this pattern originally used) that I bought along time ago for a different, and also ultimately failed, shrug/cardigan thing. She only uses 1 1/2 so I thought I'd be able to motor along just fine and wind up with a cute little thing without spending any money.

Now, I should have known better. I've knitted long enough to buy into the superstition of the craft. I originally bought this yarn for the Hot Lava cardigan but I ran out and some wonky things had happened along the way that I don't even remember now so I decided to rip it. Of course when I did that it stuck to itself and got kinky and weird so I threw it in a basket without even winding it. Then I found the kitty pi and figured some frogged yarn that had practically felted itself already would be perfect. I knit it up, felted and blocked it, but I quickly realized that the increases that I had ad libbed to try and accommodate my two cats were deeply flawed. And to this day no amount of catnip will get either of my kitties into the pi. They hate it. Since you can't frog a felted project that left me with just two skeins. I was going to make a hat, but I don't really like wearing hats all that much so I never got the mojo for it.

Then I saw that little capelet and thought it would be perfect. The major problem here is that while my neck is skinny like the blogger who designed it, we have vastly different proportions below the neck. I knit it to just below the underarms and I've only got a few yards left. I think it'd take at least another skein if not more to get this thing to cover my boobs. And even then I don't think the shape would wind up very flattering. I could make a smaller version and foist it on my friend's 8-year old daughter. But even if I managed to crank it out in her size without screwing up, I'd be paranoid about giving her bad luck via this yarn that been involved in so many failed projects.

So when do I give into my suspicion that anything I try with this yarn is doomed? Maybe I'll just knit a big stockinette rectangle for a felted bag. Hard to mess that up.

B, do you like how I keep writing posts like anyone might be reading when really it's only you?

I hate snow.

Say what you will: it's pretty, it's romantic, it's fun to play in. But whatever, I'm so over snow. We had freak snow showers last night and predicted again tonight and it just makes me want to curl up and die. It's definitely better here than Boston (except for the past 24 hours) but still. I really think I could live somewhere that it never snowed and I'd be a better person for it.

This morning I went out to my car (after procrastinating about leaving for work for as long as possible). I opened the door and slid halfway in to turn on the car to warm up while I cleared off the snow. Of course since it was rainy and gross last night, I had left the windshield wipers on without realizing it. They kicked on and promptly dumped a windshield's worth of heavy wet snow on my leg. Official sucky start to a sucky day. If it had been sunny like this weekend I'd be singing and dancing around the office right now. I would. I swear. I hate snow.

Want to make it, can't decide how

For a while I've wanted to make a t-shirt rug like this. I have this problem where I can't seem to live without at least four Old Navy Perfect Tees (currently I'm into the v-neck version) in my wardrobe at any given time. But as t-shirts are wont to do they stretch out over time and become unflattering to my figure. As I am wont to do I save the ones that don't fit. My mom sews a lot (well she did when I was little) and I used to make her remake my old clothes into other stuff, all hippy style. I've always wanted to be more crafty, but I've never really gotten into sewing. So I have just saved all these old t-shirts, meaning to repurpose them but not knowing how. Then I saw that rug idea and it was perfect. (I've been knitting for a little over two years.)

But then when I went searching for the knitted rug blog post to link to, I found this and this and now I think maybe I want to crochet it instead. I think I know how to crochet enough to pull it off (and if I don't, I already have this to help me) and the only new thing I'd have to buy is the fatty hook. I like the idea of crocheting such a heavy and thick project cause I feel like my wrists would start to hurt knitting it. And I can make it as wide as I want without having to buy a size 19, 46" circular.

B, if you're reading this, what do you think?

Thinner - or - How my scale ironically scares me into eating

I have a bad habit of weighing myself every morning. When I'm standing on the scale, I'm focused on the number (and it never makes me happy which is why I consider it a bad habit). But when I'm in there doin my business (what kind of blog is this!??!) sometimes I look over at the scale on the floor. The brand name is Thinner, which I kind of have issues with. Why can't the name be something that invokes the idea of being healthy, not just thinner? The font actually gets skinnier over the word too. The T is nice and thick and the R is all slim and withered away. Kinda weird.

But the real issue here is that it always reminds me of "Thinner": the only Stephen King movie I have watched other than "Carrie". (Has anyone not seen "Carrie"? I had to read the book for a Women's Studies class in college and it was super interesting. Freaked me out for sure, but it made for a great class discussion.) In "Thinner," A kind of douchey overweight dude does something kind of douchey to a gypsy family and gets cursed to keep losing weight. So he keeps losing weight till he looks like a shrunken head. I don't remember how it ends. Oddly I saw this in the theater when it came out, not on VHS at some torturous bad-movie-watching-party (which is a theme that has cropped up in multiple circles of friends of mine). This theater to be precise. At least I didn't pay much for it.

So now when I look at my scale I think about how much I don't want to look like a shrunken head and then I go eat a lot.