New Year's Resolutions

Do you make New Year's resolutions? I only try to make resolutions I think I can keep.

So far, I have 3 for 2011:
1. Learn colorwork knitting
2. Finally finish my t-shirt quilt (I started it when I still lived in Virginia!)
3. Try one new thing or visit one new place every single day in 2011.

The last one is the one I'm the most excited about, and the first two will probably be a couple of the new things I'm trying since I've never tried to bind a quilt before or knit a Fair Isle or intarsia pattern. I'm giving myself a lot of leeway, trying a new pattern, recipe, or restaurant would count. I've been giving it a try for the last week as a warm up. So far I made a hash brown casserole, learned how to give a Persian eye medication, and went to Slappycakes, and started watching Dexter. Nothing earth shattering, but I like trying and learning new things.

Happy 2011!!

Pumpkins!

Here are those Halloween photos I promised. Just in time for Thanksgiving!!

I was the tattooed lady. MizGuided and I posed at the Rose City Rollers Nightmare on Burnside party.

The Bus didn't dress up this year, but a pumpkin was carved in his likeness.

Then The Bus pumpkin hung out on the porch with my skeleton pumpkin.

I also made this cute, festive little lantern at Crafty Wonderland.

However the true Queen of Halloween is Susan B Anarchy. Look at this pumpkin carving mania!

I carved the pirate ship pumpkin:

But the sugar skull by Susan B was my favorite:

An exciting weekend for the cats

B came home from work Friday night bearing a big, fancy scratching post as a present for Analog's first birthday.

He'd never baked a cake from scratch before, but I coached him along. I think Analog appreciated her chocolate birthday cake with rhubarb topping and coconut ice cream.

She's a pretty lucky little kitten. The Bus was jealous. I promised I'd make him a cake in August for his birthday.

The fun continued on Sunday when the Easter Bunny came to our house and hid plastic eggs filled with catnip and treats (and a certain handknit bunny) all over the living room.

Analog cared more about batting the eggs around than eating what was in them.

The Bus found one egg with catnip in it and called it quits.

After they got their treats, we decided to make some treats for us too. We baked sugar cookies from scratch, another first for B.

My bunny was the Easter bunny. His was Harvey.
They both got their heads bit off. Happy Easter.

quiet time

I'm not feeling very chatty today, but I'll post a couple more pretty pictures from Hawaii to compensate.

Hawaii 5-0

More like Hawaii 1-0-3. I think that's how many photos I took down there. It was so incredible. We got to snorkel and swim with a sea turtle, watch turtles swimming in the ocean, hike on lava and through rain forests, feel steam from an active volcano, relax in a wood burning hot tub, and I even saw a whale!
These are a few of my favorite photos from our trip.




If you'd like to see the rest, they're on my Flickr page. Aloha!

coconut drinks with paper umbrellas all atwitter

Only 27 hours from now I will be bouting. And only 28 hours after that we'll be leaving for the airport so we can board the plane to Honolulu.

I'm already dreaming of palm trees swaying in tropical breezes, fruity drinks, and sunshine. It sounds heavenly.

We're not taking my laptop to Hawaii, so I won't be blogging until I'm back on the 11th. To keep my family and friends updated on my hula lessons, lava sightings, encounters with dolphins, etc. I signed up for Twitter. In my mind, my twittering is sure to sound like a William Carlos Williams' poem, all red wheelbarrows and white chickens and such*, but in reality it could end up more like "ordered another margarita. can't find the yurt." "missed a spot with the sunscreen. ouch.". Only time will tell...

*The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

New Year's Resolutions

I know it's a little late in the month to be making resolutions. I promise I made them prior to New Year's Eve, I just hadn't gotten around to going public yet. Here we go. Deep breath...

In 2009 I will quit cracking my knuckles.

Now this is not a habit that bugs me, in fact, I barely notice that I do it. But it drives B up the wall, and so way back in November, he used it against me as a bargaining chip. He said he would quit smoking if I'd quit cracking my knuckles. I thought this was a bit unfair, since he's been swearing he wants to quit since the day I met him, and I have never once proclaimed any desire whatsoever to stop cracking my knuckles, but I really really want him to quit smoking, so I said ok. I claimed I wanted to save him from lung cancer. He claims he wants to save my fingers from arthritis. I told him that's a myth.

In the last two weeks, I've realized that I crack my knuckles constantly. I had no idea. I crack them at work. I crack them in the car. I crack them at derby practice. I probably started cracking them around the time I stopped biting my nails, because now that there's a moratorium on the cracking, the nail biting habit seems to be back. One knuckle is refusing to cooperate and constantly cracks itself now.

Other than that I've been pretty good. He's not doing too badly either. He's trying to replace cigarette smoking with pipe smoking and then wean himself off the pipe. I offered to teach him to knit because I read this study that says knitting helps people stop smoking, but he politely declined. So if you see us sitting out on the porch together, I'll be the one biting my nails, he's the one smoking the pipe. Does quitting a bad habit count if you just replace it with another one?

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus!

We got snowed in!



Portland has gotten a record breaking amount of snow since mid-December, and I couldn't get access to the internet!!!

I almost didn't make it to North Carolina to see my family for Christmas because of the storms. Which would have been a shame because it would have made pulling off our New Year's tradition a bit tricky.

In tenth grade, my friend Alison and I started buying "New Year's bras". Every year since then, my friends and sisters and I have carried on the tradition. Whenever possible, my sisters and I shop for our New Year's bras together. I love traditions.

The way it works is that you buy a bra that will symbolize what you want for the upcoming year. Then you make sure you're wearing it at midnight on New Year's Eve, and (hopefully) all your wishes for the upcoming year will come true.

This year my bra is hot pink and black (GnR team colors), so that GnR will have a winning 09 season, and I'll have my best season yet. It's also just a little sexy, and a bit romantic with some lace and ribbons. And it's a whole size bigger than last year's! I guess I was part of the 70% of women who wear the wrong bra size. A Victoria's Secret salesperson set me straight. So hopefully this year will be comfortable and a perfect fit! Apparently playing derby will not only give you derby booty and rock hard quads, you also get bigger boobs!!!

Do you have any silly traditions or hopes for the New Year?

It's Christmas time in the city

It is a Modzelewski tradition to put up the Christmas decorations and break out the Christmas dishes the weekend after Thanksgiving. Because we had quite a few other commitments this weekend (like Pie Party, Friends-giving, and Rosebuds practice) B made the ultimate sacrifice and got out of bed at 10am on a Sunday. I'm so glad he did because the house looks very festive and cozy now.

This was Analog's first encounter with Christmas, so it was fairly easy to catch her and shove a Santa hat on her for a quick photo, another Modzelewski tradition.

We even got her to wear the matching booties.

The Bus was much more wily, and all I got was this photo of him suspiciously sniffing an ornament. It's okay, I still have last year's Santa hat photo of The Bus.

Analog was especially interested in the Christmas tree.

The tree has been up for almost 24 hours now, and we've got one broken ornament. So if you're keeping score this holiday season, it's currently Analog 1, The Bus 0, the tree 0. I'm not sure how the tree scores points. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

the perfect tofurky day

Vixen and I worked diligently on our mini-pumpkin turkeys while we watched the parade and the learned about all the new boy bands lip-synching from the floats.

Of course, I couldn't resist the glittery version of foam core at the craft store, so our turkeys were a little sparklier than the originals.

We started by gluing pom poms onto the pumpkins (and some little orange curry squashes Johnny grew in the back yard.

We couldn't get the tail feathers to stick, so we used a knife to carve little holes in the pumpkins and then inserted match sticks to help support the feathers.

Here you can see the rear view of a finished turkey.

We opted for pretty traditional turkeys for our first round, but we got more creative as the mimosas flowed. Vixen made a punk rock turkey and I made a drag queen. We also made a Lucy (Vixen's cat) and a Tonka (Johnny's dog) after we ran out of pom poms. Here's the whole family.

Our centerpieces were pretty fabulous, but Johnny's cooking really stole the show. We had a curried squash bisque as an appetizer, tofurky baked with parsnips, carrots, and potatoes, homemade stuffing, yams, roasted brussel sprouts, Silk Nog, mashed potatoes, and my favorite- cranberry sauce from scratch. Vixen and I contributed apple and pumpkin pies for dessert.

The cranberry sauce was so incredibly easy to make.
He put whole cranberries in a pot with orange juice, water, ginger, and 2 tablespoons of sugar, brought the whole thing to a boil, and then let it simmer, until the cranberries POPPED! When they popped they gave the mix a jelly like consistency. Amazing.

Hope you and yours had a Happy Thanksgiving too!!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is my very favorite day of the year, so the festivities have been going on at my house for about a week now.

Last Monday B and I carved pumpkins.

His is funny and mine is thoretically scary.

It is a vampire with bats on the back.


This was Analog's first encounter with the art of pumpkin carving and she was unsure what to make of the whole thing.

She did get her own little pumpkin though.

And The Bus's warty white wonderful pumpkin rotted, so he got a little mini-orange pumpkin instead. I think he actually likes this one better.

Tuesday and Thursday night, I worked on sewing this straightjacket for B.

He's going to be a patient who escaped from a mental hospital. I only made one arm superlong like a real straightjacket because what if he gets thirsty and wants a drink or something? Super long arms just aren't practical.

I also made myself a little hat and an ice cream sundae out of yarn for the costume contest at work today.

I was a 50's malt shoppe waitress and got to wear my skates at work and everything.

I won 3rd place and $50! If you want more details about the Halloween spirit infecting my office, I blogged about it on our work blog here.

I also got to help Brett draw tattoos on his muscles for his Henry Rollins costume, I drew the Death Trip snake and the Misfits skull.


Tonight I am very very excited to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters at my new house, this will be a first for me. We'll see how festive The Bus and Analog feel when I get home, I think I might foresee some costumes in their future too.

After passing out 2 giant bags of Twizzlers, I'm going to get tortured by Eddie, November Pain's honey, for his House of Horrors and then we may hit another party after that. I can't wait!