badrabbyt

this weekend, i sustained a yarn injury. i wasn't even knitting.

which is totally not what i wanted to talk about. originally, i think i wanted to talk about old television shows, like night gallery and the twilight zone. because i found a channel on the cable that does nothing but horror. and horror, sadly, has never really scared me. but i'll get back to that in a minute.

i have had a bajillion skeins of yarn, just sitting around in plastic bags. i am not a fan of plastic bags. or cardboard, truth be told. i'm one of those annoying people that, when she moves into a new place, has all her stuff unpacked in less than two days. i leave nothing in cardboard boxes. if i need another bookcase or whatever, then... so be it. i procure a damn bookcase. then i break down my cardboard and get it to the damn recycling already.

you can imagine how annoyed i am that most of my life is still in cardboard boxes in the garage. i long to set it all free. and find that one pair of shoes.

anyway.

so, the skeins. i went insane for a minute, and when i came to my senses, i had all this lovely yarn. most if it needed to be wound into exciting balls. which means a visit with sir windy and some chairs in the dining room, if cecil's arms are not available. and since i shot down his hope of cruising IKEA friday morning (i just couldn't hack it, i needed a nap or something), he shot down my plea for a winding partner. so, i wound solo. and i must have wound a metric ton of yarn, because it took a few hours, and my shoulder still hurts. because i don't have a swift - which i will, when i get my own place again - there's a lot of shoulder action as i whip the yarn off the skein wrapped around the chairs, then wind it on sir windy. sometimes, no shoulder action is needed. i can slap the skein onto one of our barstools - yeah, barstools in a clean and sober house. shut up - and, holding the free end of the yarn just so, wind the ball with little effort.

this was not one of those times.

i picked up even more sock yarn. i figure i now have enough sock crappe to keep me busy through december. but... well. one skein of the sock yarn was unaviodable. see, this new shop opened, and i've been dying to go in. it's bad luck to go into a new shop and not buy something, so i had to get the yarn. and this stuff is fabulous. the company is a one-woman army called yarntini. i don't know if it's hand spun, but it's hand dyed, and a lot of the colorways are named after drinks. the skein i bought is called tequila sunrise (if you go to their website, and click on the 'colorways' link, you can see it). and it's beautiful.

the store - twisted - is also lovely. i may have to hang out there more often. they're doing a movie night this coming friday, and i plan to be there. knitting. with the cool kids. i do hope my shoulder is better by then.

so... horror that doesn't scare. i blame this all on my dad, if you want to know. he used to let me watch all kinds of crap on the telly. he did not believe in censoring my media intake. i mean, he never actively let me watch porn as a tyke. but he hid it pretty badly - it was behind all the other tapes. he loved taping movies from tv. which means there were weird jumps from commercials, and sometimes you missed chunks here and there, because he was up getting a beer or a soda. anyway, the adult movies were behind the indiana jones movies. i only found out because, as a young one, i was often told to stay at my own house during the summer. we lived in a really bad neighborhood, and it wasn't unheard of for kids to be shot for screwing around in the wrong place at the wrong time. so, my friends would come over, because it was southern california and we had an above-ground pool - a pool is a pool is a pool, yo - and a big backyard. and a big dog that sounded menacing if people were cruising the house or watching us kids.

but when no one came over, i would bake cookies. my dad had a thing for chocolate chip cookies, and my mom is a lousy cook. over the years, i have perfected my baking, and my dad will drool when i suggest i'll send him a batch of my cookies. i am a pretty good cook. and back then, as i sometimes do now, i needed background noise. so , i would grab a movie. i used to be able to quote a lot of really odd movies, because they were always playing while i mixed the butter and sugars. anyway, that's how i found the porn. it's also how i saw the first alien movie. for the longest time after i saw that, i wouldn't eat spagetti. go rent it if you don't know why.

so... my mom never liked horror movies. they were creepy and gross, she said. but then again, she didn't think monty python was funny. it was a commonality i had with my dad. oh... we used to watch elvira, when she was on public access. i never could figure out how her dress stayed up. or how she got her hair that way. i didn't know about wigs and boob tape back then. anyway, she showed these absolutely insane films. i remember only one with any clarity. maybe it was called the paperclip killer or something, because all the victims seem to have choked on paperclips. but i loved how bad these films were. i still love really bad horror movies (hello, grindhouse!) because of elvira.

the only movies that really scared me... well, back up a second. i used to be afraid of teen movies, but only because they seemed so far removed from reality. but, that was a different kind of fear. the movie that totally scared the crap out of me was the exorcist III. i had never been allowed to see the first one, because it scared my dad so bad he slept with the lights on for a week. although... i saw it recently, and i wasn't too terrified. creeped out, sure. but scared enough to regress? not really. but exorcist III, that was a different story. i was in high school, and i was having a halloween party. my dad thought we should watch a scary movie, and that's the one i picked. my theory was... if the first one terrified my dad, then the third one would surely be scary. there were about 16 people at my house. i was not super popular, but i knew enough people. anyway, only four of us actually watched the movie - the others were too busy gossiping or something. piper, who would later steal my dad's calling card number; zak, who would expose himself to me the next summer in hopes of getting laid; and someone else whose name i can't recall. we were sitting closer to the television, and we were completely absorbed in the movie. so much that, when it was time to wind up the party, the four of us ended up sleeping my my bed with the lights on. i have never been that scared of a movie.

so, a few weeks ago, i was up at four in the morning and alone at the house. i was looking for background noise, and i found the chill channel. which plays nothing but scary-ish movies. that night, they were playing the twilight zone movie. which was not that scary. except for that last part. i remember seeing that the first time, and not wanting to go anywhere near an airplane for a few months. anyway... horror movies are not scary. they are, however, great to knit to.

thanks for stopping by.