Tweets of the Day

08:44 I like half-day Fridays with a paycheck. :).

11:16 Happy 21st Birthday Waldo!.... wherever you are...

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Tweets of the Day

11:42 A month and a half in and I'm finally official enough to be listed on the door.

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Tweets of the Day

13:55 Found out what happens when you're the last intern to the office on Wednesday... you end up sitting at the media kit table on your laptop.

13:56 @saragregory, Looking for a photo from the DHT archives... who ya gonna call?

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Tweets of the Day

• 08:02 Signed up for LoudTwitter. We'll see if it works. Trying to increase my presence in the blogosphere, blah blah blah... #
• 08:35 Just a rainy Tuesday. But there's staff lunch to look forward to. #
• 20:56 Fringe is a weird show. But kinda refreshing. #

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Innocent Little Hats

Sometimes a good blog post just kinda falls into your lap (figuratively speaking) over a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a good cup of half-caf Starbucks coffee (that last part is much less figurative).

Anyway about a week and a half ago I joined Ravelry.com, an awesome online networking site dedicated to knitters and crocheters and otherwise fiber-crazed people. It's a great site, and as well as connecting its users to one another, it's also a great tool for keeping track of what, for many of us, is a quite complex web of yarn and patterns and needles and projects. Everything is connected to wikis, and the site makes it really easy to, say, look at a pattern and see what yarn other users have used for the same project. Then you can see pictures of how that project turned out in the alternative yarn. This is particularly helpful to me.

The search function is also great, because you can say, "I remember seeing these awesome knitted cupcakes in XYZ store. I wonder if I can make them." Then you just search for "cupcake" and you get this. (I realize that you might not be able to see these links if you're not a Ravelry user, but just trust me, it's cool.)

Anyway, I was reading the user-created Ravelrly weekly newsletter this morning and found out about the Big Knit campaign by Innocent Drinks, who make the best bottles juices and smoothies in all of England. I miss them like crazy, and I miss their labels which said things in the ingredients list like the number of cranberries used and that there was a big woolly jumper (think: sweater) in the juice bottle. Ha.

So every year Innocent sponsors a hat drive, and everyone knits tiny little hats that fit on the smoothie bottles. Innocent sells the bottles in Sainsbury's and donates 50p for each hatted smoothie to a charity, this year it's Age Concern.

It's a funny little idea, but totally cute. So check it out:


thebigknit2008

In other news, I went to a Cookout for Change yesterday, sponsored by the Obama campaign. It was crazy hot outside (for September in the mountains, what gives?) but there was free food and free beer and general coolness.

We also booked our wedding photographer, which was a really exciting step. You can see her photo blog here. She was referred to us by one of our friends who used to work for her, and I'm so psyched about our coming engagement shoot and having her shoot our wedding. Her work is gorgeous and so are the albums she puts together and sells.

Last weekend we went to Charlotte to take care of some wedding plans, and we got SO much done: wedding dress picked out; bridesmaid dress picked out; invitation design initiated; dishes chosen; guest list discussed; centerpieces rehearsed and approved; and photographers narrowed down (and then chosen on Wednesday). As much as I really want to show you pictures of the things we chose, that would be cheating and I want everyone to be surprised at the event. I'm getting more excited every day.

GoodReads: Slam by Nick Hornby

Slam by Nick Hornby

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Nick Hornby continues to be brilliant. He writes in the way that people actually talk without making the dialogue feel dumbed down or vulgar. Reading Slam made me feel like I was in England again, which drew me in immediately. It's unusual for me to find engaging books written from the perspective of young men, but I became an immediate fam of High Fidelity, and Slam did not disappoint.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to see Nick Hornby on campus. In a Q&A session with a handful of students he said one thing that has always stuck with me, and I think it's deeply reflected in his work. He said: In order to be any sort of artist, you have to maintain a certain amount of immaturity. You have to be immature enough to believe that the world actually wants—or really, needs—to read/see/hear what it is you have to say. The protagonist of Slam maintains this immaturity through the nature of his youth and through his candor, and it happens seamlessly and beautifully.

Even the slightly magical aspects of the book—the time travel and the talking poster—fit into the framework without showing any work.

A great YA novel that expands on the mind of the young father, Slam is great for Nick Hornby fans and general YA readers alike. Bottom line: Nick Hornby could do more to fix sex education in American than our government ever will.

View all my reviews.

Here Now, and...

I don't have to miss the mountains anymore, because I live here now. I have a job and a little apartment, and I'm about to have a part-time internship at an amazing magazine. And now I'm only 25 miles away from that guy I really love, you know, the one I'm going to marry.

Between my new job and my freelance Web site project and trying to get this internship, I've been pretty busy. About five times in the past two weeks I've thought to myself: "Hey, that's really interesting, you should blog about it." But the moment passes and then I can't remember any of the subjects that were so great. I'm sure there was something about books, or food, or design, or the mountains. Or maybe the Olympics.

Sometimes its hard to remember this is here, but really I've always had this problem with journals -- so wonderful when I use them, but often forgotten in the busiest of times. As my very busy friend once reminded me: the more there is to write about, the less time there is to write it. I'm sure I've used that before too.

So here's to the coming Labor Day resolutions, and to whoever out there is willing to help me stick to them. Peace.