A little late, but as promised here is the Striped Thing.

I had some pretty grand ambitions of using all my scrap yarn to put together a stripey cowl, and just by looking at the above picture, you may be thinking that I did achieve some moderate degree of success.

Well, look again.

BAM! It's FrankenFO, muthas! I will now put this away and we will never speak of it again.

In other knitting disasters, here we have Crap the Ripper. He started out as 4 balls of Rowan Yorkshire Tweed and a dream. He ended up a beach towel lined with salty, salty tears. It's okay, though. He's gone now and he'll never hurt us again.

I am enjoying one of my knits these days, however. A scarf based upon a little known pattern known as the Clapotis. Oh? You've heard of this obscure pattern? I'm using Knitpicks Gloss cannibalized from the now dead Thermal. I'm digging it.

I took a trip this past weekend to the homeland, Luverne, MN. I visited my grandpa (still awesome), and saw my dad and a highschool buddy I hadn't seen in a while. Let's see, what else...OH YEAH, it was negative degrees the WHOLE. TIME. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to visit Minnesota in February, but I am going to see a shrink and find out where this deep-seated masochism is coming from.

Here's a picture from the outskirts of the town. I found this bench on the corner of Buttfuck and Egypt.

For now, just a couple of pictures we took today along Rock Creek Parkway. Actually, I took 200 pictures, but these two are the good ones. Just to give you some idea of my photography skills, in case you thought I didn't suck.

Today's weather was absolutely perfect, nice and cool in both the sun and shade. Added bonus, Monkey King and I actually woke up before 3:00 PM to get our asses on the road. That alone is cause for wonder.

Okay, so these aren't really magic beans, but they'll trick a fool with a cow nonetheless. I think they are some sort of ivy berry,  and the cool part was that you could find white, green, turquoise and purple berries all growing on the same stem. When planted, giant slaying ensues. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Below are the pictures I'm really excited about. I found this Photoshop tutorial for achieving the Orton Effect, and until I drank this half a bottle of wine here I was not able to figure out the directions. Added note: am drunk now. Pictures may suck in the hard, hung over light of day.

Some leaves. All Ortonized. Maybe I should have quit drinking when I finished Photoshopping *hic* but really, we can't let the bottle go to waste now, can we?

This picture was actually not taken today, but I wanted to play with it so you guys pay the price. I took this at Bread and Chocolate in Eastern Market. Do not recommend, service was waaaaaaaay too laid back and our food arrived cold. On the plus side, the 45 minutes we waited for panini was just long enough for me to take 98 pictures of this sugar container.

Okay, if you're still reading, I do have a little knitting update. No pics, but my Dad scarf is 1/2 done. It still looks really femmy (the yarn turned out to be chenille, wtf?), but you know what? My dad needs to get in touch with his feminine side and this is me enabling that. It's for the Greater Good. Plus, I bought a new lens last weekend and I can't buy yarn for a while. Like, until 2008. In related news, I will be buying yarn before 2008. Under duress, of course.