Completely random but at least there's lots of photos.

Who's ready for some bulleted list action?

Sounds vaguely nerdily sexy, if you ask me.

If that can even be a thing.

Let's try:

• My sweet peas are finally getting ready to bloom and Jada has decided that the best way to mulch them is to nap on them. Thanks, puppy.

• I'm growing two new hydroponic crops in our greenhouse - cucumbers and eggplant. They're supposed to be a major pain in the ass and prone to a billion pests and shit. Yay.

• The peas happened sort of and then it's been all hot, so this is about all I'm getting even though I planted them way back in, like, February while I was trying to be all I WILL HAVE SOME FUCKING PEAS THIS YEAR DAMNIT, but no. Not really. Again. Ugh. 

• We went to Passover at my folks' and I ate a flotilla of Matzo ball soup and enjoyed making fun of my sister's homemade seder plate from when she was 8 and more talented than I'll ever be. 

• The bees' poppy field is blooming and it's just my favorite thing that I don't have to do shit for. And speaking of awesome shit that I don't have to do shit for, the nasturtium are blooming and covering the grapes' roots just like I imagined they would when I did zero planning and just stuck some seeds in the ground, like, six months ago. Yay.

• The little lime tree is now screaming MAKE SOME COCKTAILS ALREADY because the fucker is so weighted down with nippley limes that I can't help but lewdly tickle them while Bubba makes similarly lewd gestures and reminds me that we're not fit for social interaction anymore.

• The front yard meadow is GOING OFF. This is the time of year when it looks like I know what I'm doing sort of and I'm savoring it. I've taken a thousand good pictures with my real big girl camera, but you just get these ones that came off my phone without any nice filters or anything because I'm lazy.

• I'm still growing buttloads of hydroponic lettuce and basil until the end of this semester when I'll graduate and then somehow come back to grow hydro cucumbers and eggplant. We'll talk more on this another time.

• Spring is nice.

• We took a field trip to a newly started up farm and it was tits. I almost pet a horse (not a fan), saw lots of sheep, clucked with the chickens, cuddled-ish some hogs and listened to ducks quacking around in their baby pool overlooking the Santa Cruz mountains. 

• The college's farm is looking extra nice right now and I thought you should see our blossoming hedgerow because it's pretty and shit.

• The vegetable garden is in and Spring and Jada approve.

• I went to see Kelli for a long overdue visit and, while I took no pictures of the two of us, I do have this one of my bed-buddy Nelson and the inspiration behind a whole day of lazing at the pool. Like a dream.

• Here's a hippie from my Organic Agriculture class who always has something tangled up in his hippie mane. This time it's grass. Other times it's been weeds, flowers, dirt and "unidentified mass". The unique aspect of this photo is the fact that he's wearing a shirt and that this hair belongs to a man.  

OK - so that's the quick and dirty vaguely nerdily sexy bulleted list update. I feel like probably a lot of these topics warrant longer and more coherent posts, but we'll just have to see about that. 

I'M HAPPY AND ANGRY.

Probably the real news here is that I've knitted again, which is meant to sound as sinister as "I've killed again" because I nearly did.

People - knitting is not relaxing.

I just don't care who says it and with what frequency. For me, knitting is a dangerous game of I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL EVERYONE IF THIS DOESN'T WORK ON THIS VERY NEXT TRY and, so often, this is what it comes down to.

My latest knitting project is absolutely no different.

See, I came across this hysterical pattern on Ravelry. Or maybe someone forwarded it to me? I honestly can't recall. The rage has erased a good part of my short term memory.

So, obviously once I saw this pattern, my fingers started twitching and swears started revving up because OH I MUST MAKE THIS.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOooooooooooooo

Because of its hilariousness. And eyeballness. And hilarious eyeballness.

But, of course, I can't just make things all willy nilly without a purpose, so I decided I'd make it for my dad. Because it's his birthday tomorrow. And he drinks tea.

And likes snails? Wait, no.

He likes his teapot to stare at him? Nope.

His teapot is cold? Not that I know of.

Whatever.

I thought I'd knit this crazy ass thing and offset its absolute weirdness with things I know that he does like so that he wouldn't hate me or think I was, like, late stage retarded or something.

So I knit the thing up and put it with a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints, some really good black tea and a tea ball shaped like an elephant.

Not that the elephant part is relevant, but that was what I found and it amused me and let's be honest here - it's clearly all about my amusement.

And by it I mean everything.

Obviously.

But about my rage knitting.

It was ragefull.

And let me now summarize for you a few things about knitting that inspire the greatest amount of rage.

Firstly, there was a lot of "Make two" going on in this muther fucker of a pattern. Like, "Make two eyeballs" and "Make two pupils" and "Make two shafts" (HA! SHAFTS! I'm real mature.) and such. And you know how much I hate any pattern that requires me to knit something and then, just when I'm finished with it and I see the light at the end of the tunnel and oh I have a finished object NOPE..."Make two".

I mean, I get it. If you're going to have a pair of anything: gloves, socks, eyeballs, whatever - you're going to need two of them and I know that the pattern is going to say to "Make two" and I know that when I get to that part in the pattern that I will roll out my special "Make two" swears and call it a scheming sunuvabitching whore.

But I'll get over it.

And make two like a fucking grown-up.

But here's a knitting thing that I've only touched on ever so briefly in the past but enrages me like fucking fire: Weave in ends.

OH REALLY? IS THAT ALL? Just weave in the ends like in five seconds and then we're on our way TO where everything looks perfect and will stay put just like so?

You know what I always say when I get to the part of every pattern where it says, "Just weave in ends."?

JUST FUCKING BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS.

That's what I say. Because I am the boss of knitting. I point at the thing I've just slaved away knitting and go, "Oh yeah, sweater that I've been knitting for half of my adult life? Just weave in the five thousand ends you have dangling all over the place? WHY DON'T YOU JUST BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS/SLEEVE HOLE?"

My rage comes from the fact that "just" weaving in the ends is always this mystery activity of where the fuck do all these ends really go so that they don't show through the front of the work and how long do they really need to be to stay in place even if this thing gets washed and what if I just tied a good old fashioned knot here and cut the ends and called it a day and such.

Because this is my thought process every time I get to the "Just weave in ends" part of every pattern after I have my temper tantrum wherein I command the pattern to blow it out of its non-existent ass.

Again - I'm real mature.

But also, saying "Attach securely to [project]" isn't helpful at all.

HOW?

HOW WOULD YOU SUGGEST I ACHIEVE THIS ALLEGED SECURE ATTACHMENT?

HOW DID YOU DO IT?

ARE YOU MAGIC?

CAN I BORROW YOUR MAGIC WAND TO SECURELY ATTACH THESE SHAFTS (HA! SORRY.) TO THIS SNAIL TEAPOT COZY?

NO?

Well, then you can blow it out your ass, too. You and your pattern can have an ass blowing party and I'll just sit here and burn over the ridiculousness of this pattern and...oh wait...I got it...oh my god that's the most hilarious thing I've ever madetotallyworthitHOORAY.

So, yeah. 

The Snail Tea Cozy is, to me, entertaining and hysterical and also a little cute and that's sort of helping me forget about the fact that it took me more than 10 tries to get this thing started properly because the pattern calls for starting with 6 stitches knitting in the round on double pointed needles.

Because the chick that designed this pattern hates people, so she makes adorable patterns using punishing techniques and thank the maker that someone had the wisdom to post a crucial tip on their rendition of this pattern, "I started by making a 12-chain crochet ring, then picked up stitches out of it and knit from round 3 of the pattern."

That helped a lot, Annettle. You're tits.

Without that nugget of wisdom, for which I was wholeheartedly searching after failing over a dozen times at the start of this pattern, I would have burned my entire knitting stash after stabbing my eyes out with all of my needles.

Twice.