I've been Joost

Have you ever heard of Joost (pronounced juiced)? It is simultaneously my secret love and the bane of my existence. As you may or may not know we do not have a TV here in France, not that the French don't have television it's just that it hasn't been a huge priority for us. We've had so many other expenses in moving here, then returning to the States for our wedding that shelling out the Euros for a TV and then the additional cost of getting the satellite and all that junk just seemed unnecessary. For us having an internet connection was much more important than TV and just as good. And now that we have discovered Joost, a free computer installation that offers a variety of television shows, life is perfect. Well...maybe not perfect. The problem for me is that some days I could spend the entire day vegging out in front of a television. It's terrible. I watch the most ridiculous stuff that is utter trash, of no value whatsoever, and yet secretly I love it.
Yesterday I spent practically the whole day knitting little baby socks for my new niece - oh yeah, did I mention we have an adorable little niece. Brianna was born on February1st! - and watching Bridezilla. Yes, I repeat, Bridezilla! It is my guilty little pleasure. I know that I should turn it off or at least put on the history channel or national geographic - broaden my mind, or at least use my mind a little, but no. I can't do it. I am entranced by the brides-to-be rampaging through New York City. The tears, the drama, the snarkyness. I am utterly entranced and totally embarrassed to admit it, but there it is.

I kept going through my own actions as a recent bride wondering if I was that horrible? Did I snap unnecessarily at my family, friends, and then fiance? Did the tears come flooding out at the most insignificant things? Well, the answer to the last one has to be an emphatic yes considering my entire life revolves around a flood or tears over the most trivial and ridiculous things. I think that I wasn't too bad, I know throughout the whole process I kept saying to myself, "what really matters is that at the end of the day we'll be married." And really, that is what the whole day is about, isn't it? I'm sure I had my snippy bridezilla moments, but in comparison to the women who mesmerized me yesterday with their grotesque fixations with the color of table linens and the exact number of flowers per vase I was nothing. Yeah, I did burst into tears in the middle of the kitchen the morning of our wedding because the coffee wasn't ready yet. I just stood next to the sink sobbing, "I'm just so tired." And I truly was. I didn't want to be awake, my wonderful husband and I had stayed up late finishing off all the last minute things - like table numbers. Why oh why did we have to make a seating chart? We really should have just let people sit wherever they wanted, but no, we had to be clever and make cute little puzzle piece seating cards. Once at the hair salon I did better, but my eyes were so puffy I just kept thinking, this is last thing I wanted to happen on my wedding. it's supposed to be a day of fun and all I feel like doing is crawling back into bed. The hair dresser was so nice she gave me these things to put under my eyes to help reduce the puffiness (and she didn't charge me for them!) It was awesome, I looked like I was getting ready for an american football game. All I was missing was the helmet. Sexy, no?

In the end we had a gorgeous and fun day. Sure, a few minor things went wrong, but I didn't care and I'm sure our guests never even noticed. Oh, and by the time my dad and I were ready to walk down the aisle I had so much energy coursing through me. I no longer wanted to curl up and go to sleep. That might be because I actually did take a quick little cat nap (yep in my wedding dress) before the ceremony. We did things rather non-traditionally and took our wedding party pictures before the ceremony - yeah my groom saw me and it was wonderful, I don't regret it for a second. I was going to put a picture of me sprawled on the floor in my wedding gown but I realized it's not on this computer- oh wait, found it. Honestly, I don't think you could have found a bride who cared less about her dress being pristine for the ceremony. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my dress, it's just once I put it on for the day I was like, "OK, let's live it up." As long as it didn't rip I didn't care. The ceremony was outdoors, it was inevitable that it would get grass stained, but I thought, "really if all of our guests are noticing the grass stains on the hem of my gown then there is something wrong here." My maid of honor wanted to kill me, I'm sure. She kept grabbing up my train saying, "It's going to get dirty. it's going to get dirty." I was like, who cares? She apparently did very much. It was very sweet of her.

In the end we had a day full of fun and laughter, just as it should be. Some of the bridezillas I watched yesterday didn't even seem to be enjoying their day. One bride acted as though she didn't even want the groom to touch or kiss her for fear he would wrinkle her dress or ruin her make up. How ridiculous is that? I seriously wondered if some of those women really loved the man they were marrying or just the fact that they were getting married? The men must have loved them to put up with so much crap from their brides. If it's any indication to how their married life is going to go I feel sorry for those husbands!
Hey, maybe I am just as obsessed with my wedding as those bridezillas, I mean look I was married on September 1, 2007 and here it is February and I've found an excuse to talk about my wedding and post pictures too! hmmm....are all brides this consumed with their wedding even after it has passed? Maybe I just have it foremost in my mind not only from Bridezilla, but because we finally got our wedding album ordered and my mom picked it up for us. She says it looks fabulous. We approved the layout via emails and attachments, but I can't wait till we go back to the States in May - for my sisters wedding no less - and see the real deal. You ahve no idea how hard it was to pick out only 100 photos for our album. There were over 1400 photos taken! There were so many good ones, funny ones, touching ones, we had a terrible time narrowing it down. Luckily, we had the forethought to purchase the copyright to all of them so we can print out anyones we like. One of these days I'll have to sit down and make my own scrap book with all the silly pictures that didn't make it into the album. Actually, I could probably make about 3 scrapbooks with the number of photos we have! One really nice thing is that the photographer said he had never had as much fun with a bride as he had with me. I was goofy and willing to try things as well as had an idea of some funny pictures I wanted. One of my favorite pictures is my DH and I acting like monkeys, all decked out in our wedding attire in the middle of the road! Don't ask. Hey, at least I know on my wedding day I definitely wasn't a bridezilla. I just didn't really care at that point, you know what ever will be will be. in the end I think that's the best attitude you can have. Things might not have been perfect, but I didn't hear any major complaints from our guests. They all seemed to have a great time, dancing, eating, snacking on the candy buffet. We were surrounded by the people we love most in the world, we laughed most of the day, and had a beautiful sunshine filled day. Whether or not every little thing went as smoothly as it could it was the best day of my life. I wish I could do it again, exactly the same. It's funny I didn't want to take of my gown at the end of the night, even covered in grass stains and dirt I still loved wearing it!

OK, OK enough about my wedding. I'm sure there are some episodes of Bridezilla I haven't watched yet. Besides, I still have to finish my nieces second sock and perhaps I'll even be inspired to knit her a little matching hat...that would be cute. You know, I have no idea if these socks will even fit. They seem so incredibly small. And I didn't exactly follow a real baby sock/bootie pattern. I just sort of looked at sizes for baby booties and then made socks according to a sock pattern a friend (thanks Bereni) gave me when I first started knitting socks. So, I have no idea if these will fit or even stay on a new born babies foot...then again who knows when I'll get around to sending them. but, it's the thought that counts, right?

Some new projects

The Sweater


Well, I've mainly been working on some new projects around the house, so I thought I'd share them with you all. Breathe a sigh of relief, most of this post will be pictures. I don't think I have too much to say about my ongoing projects past a brief description of what they are...then again, once I get started you never know what I might come up with to say!
Let's get started. First off, my knitting projects: I started my very first sweater a few months ago and am finally getting back to working on it every now and again. It's about time I did some work on this project. I bought this yarn - a tweed wool - while I was in Ireland last September. It was in Donegal, which is known for their wool and tweeds. I love this yarn so much and I wanted to find something special to do with it. It took me a long time to fabricate a makeshift measuring tool, figure out how much yarn I actually had to work with then wind all that yarn into center-pull balls. Once I discovered I had enough for a sweater I had to find a pattern. A big thanks goes out to Mrs. Tire (aka Bereni) who helped me find a pattern and gave me the belief that I actually could succeed in knitting a sweater. Unfortunately, since moving away from Williamsburg I no longer have her to lean on and fix my knitting mistakes. I have a feeling its going to be more difficult going alone on this sweater, but I shall forbear...at least I hope I will. We shall see, we shall see. For those interested I am attempting to knit a Raglan sweater ( I got the pattern from some book of Mrs. Tire's but I can't remember the name). I am still trying to decide if I will make it a v-neck sweater or a crew-neck. it's not the easiest pattern for a semi-beginner, like myself, to follow because it's a sort of build your own as you go. Should be a good learning experience if nothing else. Plus, the good thing about knitting is if you don't like it you can just frog it (rip it apart -frog, rip it, rip it - get it? don't worry I didn't get what the heck people were talking about the first time I heard it either).

On to knitting project number 2: the scarf. This is something I can definitely do. it's super easy and it was started by someone else! My friend Christine discovered that lugging around size 5 straight knitting needles and yarn while attempting to backpack across Europe was not an ideal situation. Thus, she left her needles and partially knitted scarf with me. Perhaps I should mail them to her in California, but I have a feeling between planning her wedding and dealing with her first year of film school, on top of settling into a new apartment she probably doesn't have loads of free time for knitting. She started her scarf out with just knitting plain and simple. I decided to spice it up a bit and do that basket-weave sort of pattern I've seen so many places. It's simple in itself, you knit 5, purl 5 over and over to the end and you do this for 5 rows, then you switch and purl 5, knit 5 for 5 rows. You get these fun little squares. I attempted to take a close up picture of this pattern, but the picture isn't very good - sorry.
Color is utter crap, but you can kinda see the pattern!

Last of the knitting is a finished project: My Christmas stocking. I finally finished it. Much to Josh's disappointment mine is bigger than his. Men are always concerned about size! hee, hee.
I didn't mean to make mine bigger, I was attempting to knit it the same size, I just have idiotic moments when I forget that if I 'm using
thicker yarn I don't need to cast on as many stitches to get the same size. Oh well. Actually, I think my stocking looks a little ridiculous, short and fat - kinda like Ally!

And finally, a non-knitting project. Josh suggested the clever idea of recovering our couches. I was a bit reluctant even though I agree the nasty green couch could do with a makeover. It's kinda falling apart and most of it is no longer nice faux suede material, it's pilling faux suede material! My objections were: 1) we have yet to find a fabric store
2) we don't have a sewing machine 3) I forget, but I'm sure it was a good one. Naturally, we just happen to be at Ikea and what do we find? Fabric at a decent price. We decided then and there to get some and see what we could do to spiff up our old, worn-out couch (which is pretty new to us since we just bought it used in July!). So, we selected some red fabric and after having measured, cut and washed it, I spent some time today hand-sewing some pieces together. This is going to be one long and bumpy ride! We'll see what the final product looks like and hey, if it doesn't work oh well. I'll have had something that occupied my time and we'll be out maybe $30, so that's not too bad. We couldn't have bought a new couch for that, even another used one! So, all-in-all I think it'll be ok. Yeah, you can all point out this post to me in a few days when I start ranting and raving about how my beloved husband convinced me to take on this cockamamie project! Till then, adieu....
The Fabric












The Couch

Ha, ha, ha it's rather funny to me that we are covering our green couch in red fabric - how Christmasy of us!!!!!

A few small accomplishments

So, this weekend turned out to be a quiet weekend at, again, despite the fact that we had planned a busy weekend. We were going to go to a Milonga dance workshop on Saturday. The Milonga is, apparently, the simpler, faster dance that spawned the Argentine Tango. Our Tango teachers run these workshops every few months or so. I will digress here for a moment to gush over our Tango teachers, Paola and Domenico. I love them. They are just too cute and they think we're a step ahead of the rest of the class - at least my cutie Domenico does. I told Josh at our Friday night class that I wanted to give Domenico kisses. You might think this sounds like a strange comment to make to your husband about another man, but what I meant was those three little air kisses that Europeans always give each other in greeting and farewell. I always feel excepted when Europeans give me these little air kisses. Even though I know that they don't really mean anything here because people do it all the time, it's like a handshake, but I feel very European when I get a chance to give kisses! I know, I'm a dork, what can I say?
So, it turns out Paola's mother's sick so the workshop was canceled - postponed till next Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes (if I remember to post, that is). So that left Saturday open. So, we did a bunch of cleaning and rearranging and I knit a Christmas stocking for Josh! Isn't it soooo cute? I think it's adorable. I had to make it out of random yarn I had left or, thus the sort of random stripeyness - but I like it. When I added the lighter blue color I had a few misgivings because it suddenly became highly reminiscent of Hiram College's colors of red and Columbia blue (read powder blue) all that this little baby needs now to become an official Hiram stocking is to attach a little Terrier in a "Columbia" blue sweater vest!
Doesn't it look so perfect hanging by the fire? Now I just need to make one for myself.
So, that pretty much covers Saturday. Sunday we had planned to splurge by attending a Wine and Food fair in Villeneuve, Switzerland. It's about an hours drive on the opposite side of lake Geneva (or Lac Leman as it is known to the Swiss -which begs the question why do the English change the names of everything? Like English people can't say Leman? It's absurd...). Unfortunately, when I called half way through the week to reserve our tickets for this glutton fest I was informed it was full. Boohoo, I was so looking forward to strolling through the old city of Villeneuve where we would stop at 10 different locations and sample a variety of foods and wines at each place. Next year we are signing up well in advance. So, instead of a fun "European" wine and food orgy we hung out at home with a roaring fire all day. It was fairly cold, so maybe we were better off missing the festival - yeah, keep telling yourself that maybe some day you'll believe it! Instead I spent most of my day like this. Isn't Ally just the
cutest thing ever? Don't be jealous. I know she's the most adorable dog alive, but that doesn't mean your dog isn't cute too...just not as adorably cute as mine.
And this is the, "OK, stop taking pictures of me while I'm lying around like a sloth looking scuzzy and unkempt." You know you have given that look to your spouse before - or maybe you were the one receiving it! I did do a bit more than snuggle on the couch with Ally and a book. I made my first attempt at making Ratatouille - sort of vegetable soup popular in Provence. I figured while in France we should make some sort of effort to eat like the French. It turned out pretty well, although it's less like soup and more like large chunks of vegetables in very little liquid. Nonetheless is was eatable and I think we'll make it again.
Well, I know this has been incredibly exciting for you so I will leave you with a few pictures of my other great accomplishment of last week - pictures of my finished shawl! Yay! It only took me 7 months to make - oi vay.

Here's an extreme close-up so you can see the lace pattern. Here I am displaying my shawl.

Yes, that is Mickey mouse on my butt, and yes, I am still wearing my pajamas at 1:30pm on a Monday. Hey, don't get upset with me just because I have no social life. Not everyone is cut out for a life of slothfulness, a life devoid of human contact but full of doggy breathe. I'm sorry, I'm just lucky that way - truly, it's not my fault. Well, have a good day and I'll try to be better about posting for those desperate to read about my amazing life- ha, ha, ha