This is crossposted from my DW because some people (I am looking at you, your_lake_como) don't get on their DWs enough.



What time is it? Time to ogle Zachary Quinto?



FUCK. YES.



LET'S DO THIS, GUYS.

( The most necessary picspam ever. )

I'm moving to Wellington next summer. I'm probably going to start yet another (doomed to be abandoned) blog about it.

I have a few Dreamwidth Codes again, because I'm a super-duper paid user.

The Dewey Decimators have won three games this season.

I'm addicted to Twitter and ontd_startrek.

New Job Excitement has worn off and become New Job Boredom.

I'm buying a bright red Sony Reader tomorrow.


How are you guys?

Okay, I'm trying to figure out how to get all the little details of the Dreamwidth/LJ crossover posting and feeds and things sorted out.

I will not have (m)any locked posts, so friend the DW feed on LJ: delia_dw. I logged in to LJ with my OpenID, which is pretty much useless because I still read my flist on LJ here and friending the OpenID does not friend my DW, so if there are locked posts, they still won't go through. But you can log in to DW with OpenID and read locked posts through there. Or get a Dreamwidth code from dw_codesharing.

Yes, I am working on getting codes, but I messed up the PayPal payment and had to use one of my codes on myself (the other hasn't come through, and since my paid account isn't working yet, I don't have that extra code either).

Man, I'm hungry. I'm catsitting and there's food, but most of it is either the last of something or something unopened, and it's just not polite to eat the first and last of someone's food. Dear Pizza, please come to me, kthx.

I've had a really big hassle getting my Dreamwidth account going, and ended up having to use one of my invite codes on myself.

I have, I believe, two more codes. I will have more once I get my paid account, and I was going to offer to buy paid accounts for people, but apparently I fail at PayPal and my own paid account won't go into effect until the 8th because I paid by e-check (I do not know what this means, I never use PayPal). This is my Dreamwidth Account:

delia.dreamwidth.org

I have wanted my first name as a username for so long, you guys.

I'm sitting in front of my bedroom window watching the sporadic rainstorms and listening to Tristan Prettyman while working on Amanda's shrug. The shrug looks like this. I'll probably finish it tonight.

It feels like spring, and it's so nice.

I was going to clean up and rearrange the apartment again (I compulsively move furniture every few months) to accommodate my new desk and bookshelves, but it's so calming just sitting here that I don't want to get up. I've sorted through the laundry and scooped the cat box, and eventually I'm going to move my bed to make room for the bookshelf I got from Nialle yesterday when I picked up my Tinker Toys.

I have so much yarn and paperwork and books scattered around my bed. I really should come up with some kind of organizing system so I look less like a slob. But I have no real motivation to pick up, unless someone's coming over.

But there was one thing I had motivation for today, and it didn't even require getting out of bed.

I hadn't been to the bookshop in nearly a month, and I went after Biotest on Wednesday to catch up with Nialle. Midway through a sentence, I was distracted by Tinker Toys, and I promised to buy them when I got my next Biotest payment on Friday (I owed La-La-Laura money, so that's where my first Biotest donation went). So yesterday I stopped by during Coffeetown and picked up the bookcase and Tinker Toys, excited for finally unpacking my romance novels -- after nine months in boxes -- and making a yarn swift out of the Tinker Toys.

Yes. A yarn swift.

I do not like useless toys like Barbies and dump trucks. I like to make toys practical.

So today I made my own Tinker Swift.



It may not look like much, but it's the best $27.51 I've spent in a while, including the trip to Home Ec for Amanda's yarn this week that included an anniversary sale on cotton-linen yarn which will become a summer cardigan for me.



This is a skein of Knit Picks Bare Merino Superwash Wool I bought a few weeks ago and planned to dye, but I wanted to test out the swift, so I might dye the socks later.

It works wonderfully, when the cat isn't lunging at the yarn. It doesn't spin into the middle where the ball is; I balled some of the yarn and stuck it on a double pointed needle and shoved it in the middle to show that yes, Virginia, it works.



I'll probably put the two extra yellow rods in the top and use them to wind skeins that can't be wrapped around the longer rods, like the KP Palettes I've got. They're wrapped in big, loose cakes and it's hard to find the middle-pull end. I have not tested this yet, though.

I was going to make a motorized ball-winder out of Lego or Knex, but I don't like the cakes that winders make and I always end up balling them anyway, so I just ball the yarn straight off the swift.

Ta-dah!

NOTE: I hate surfing LJ without a paid account. I don't know how you guys do it. I cannot wait for my Dreamwidth code holy damn.

1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will - allegedly - create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

Picked by battlepunk

| Heaving Bosoms without vampires!
I just want to tell stories and not have a shitty job! I want to write trashy romance novels and not put up with d-bag library patrons. My trashy romance novels will have having bosoms, but no vampires. I use this for library posts a lot.

| Knitting - now with more sparkles!
The first time I saw the image for this icon, I immediately thought "Do I dazzle you?" And yes, Malabrigo yarn frequently dazzles me.

| Twatlight - makes RDJ want to do drugs a
...gain. Okay, so I go over tag limits. This was from an ONTD post where some magazine wanted to poll people over which is better, HP or Twatlight. ONTD members spammed the shit out of it, commenting as dead and/or famous and/or fictional people. RDJ is one of my favorites. The Hitler ones were pretty funny, too.

| Passive Aggressive Friends
This is actually a quote from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which people like to tell me every time I use it (because I have no idea, ever!). I use it for my passive-aggressive posts a lot, obviously, because it's so passive-aggressive. Or when I'm being an attention whore.

| Who - heeey guise
I don't use this icon very often, mostly in DW communities or when I have no other appropriate icon. It's Ten from the episode Partners in Crime, when he's peering over the cubicle to get a girl to print something for him. And I think his face is adorable. I imagine him saying HEEEEEEY GUISE every time I see it, so that's how I tagged it.

The hero's occupation often forms a shorthand to his character. He's a cop, a SEAL, a security consultant? He has bulging biceps, a tendency toward suspicion, and trusts no one, not even Fox Mulder. He's an artist, or a writer? He's ornery, isolated, somewhat misanthropic, and not at all pleased to see you. He's a diplomat, a CEO, a billionaire CEO diplomat? A tycoon of some unidentified industry? He's ruthless, confident, perhaps even debonair and stylish in an effortlessly authoritative sort of way. See what we mean? Job = identity = shorthand character sketch.

(emphasis mine)

I love this book so hard.

It's also got a graphical representation of the evolution of romance novel heroes (from cavemen to savages to tycoons to werewolves), color-by-numbers, a maze, and even a Write Your Own Vampire Romance mad lib.

I need a nap like you wouldn't believe, so expect me to be coherent another time.

Am I really the only one who sees how similar #amazonfail is to Strikethrough? Really? The only thing missing is cat macros this time, but seriously, this is just like Strikethrough. New policy regarding items tagged with buttsex goes crazy over holiday weekend; heads of the company say nothing, then give conflicting answers to third-party barely-read sources, then say nothing for ages.

It's Strikethrough, but without the striking!




I am getting a little "Oh, for fuck's sake!"-ed out after seeing all these comments about how even though Amazon is Teh Eebil, no matter how much people want to boycott them for Teh Eebil, they won't because they're too fucking lazy to get their books anywhere else. It's like there are no other options for them.

"Wah, my local store doesn't carry Nora Roberts!"

"Wah, I have to wait for books at the library!"

"Wah, there are billions of websites and only Amazon sells books!"

"Wah, it's so cheap, no one else in the whole wide internet is cheap!"

People are so fucking retarded sometimes.

Especially when they violate Godwin's Law over this. Seriously. Comparing Amazon to Hitler is just stupid.

So as I said months ago, HERE are step-by-step instructions with pictures, on how to purchase cheap books online and not support the end of the free world as we know it. And guess what -- you save money when you don't shop at Amazon. I know. I just blew your mind, didn't I?

I got an email from LJ this morning saying that my paid account will lapse in 12 days. Conveniently, six days after that, Dreamwidth opens up their beta to paid users. I will be purchasing a paid account with Dreamwidth and deleting my LJ at that time. I may delete my LJ before buying a Dreamwidth account simply because I do not believe in "plus" accounts on LJ, or the selling of my friends' information against their consent (which goes hand in hand with "plus" status). I believe in the Dreamwidth project, and I hope that some of you will join me -- I will have invite codes, so it'll be like Old School LJ, except with less censorship and more consistent staffing.

ETA: I may downgrade to Basic and keep reading my Flist, but my posts will all be at DW.

I SOUND SO FLOUNCY, RITE?


Today I went over to sai12's house and watched more Bones and worked on some more socks. On my way out the door I discovered that the Knitpicks order I placed on Tuesday was already on my porch! Last time I bought yarn, it took almost a month, and this time it was here within four days! (I didn't leave the house yesterday, so it's been sitting outside for a while)


Two skeins each of Tumeric, Tidepool Heather, and er... Charcoal? I can't remember the black one and god forbid I reach over the foot and a half and pull it out of the bag. There's also three skeins of Bare Merino which is squishy and wonderful and will be dyed with Fun Things like Kool Aid or possibly TEA.

I'm excited for the Tumeric; I found a sock on Ravelry that looked so great in gold yarn I had to buy some. And I really like Tidepool Heather, even though it's not My Color at all (I'm a Fall, it's more of a Spring). And you can never go wrong with black, especially heathered black. I dig heathered yarns so hard.

( Socks, plus the pattern! )

PS Have you heard about Amazon Fail? Amazon Rank, as Google Bombed by Smart Bitches, and reported by Dear Author. Don't fucking piss of romance novel readers, guys! Find the #amazonfail hashtag to follow the shenanz on Twitter.

HOLY FAIL, BATMAN! Amazon, please fire the people you hired from LiveJournal. That shit didn't work in 2007, and it's not going to work now.

IOWA I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!