vonknitta » christmas lights

I hate being sick

beccalou — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:08:39 +0000

I felt a cold coming on but I thought I had pushed it out of my system. But last night, that cold bitch slapped me. And today I’m still feeling it. I think today and tomorrow might be the worst of it. At least that’s what I’m hoping. Worse case, I spend the weekend sleeping, coughing, blowing my nose, watching bad tv and knitting. I suppose it could be worse, I could as throwing up to that list.

Tonight I did a little bit of finishing up some small knitting things I did yesterday. I did them both with my HSKS swap yarn! The little sweater was made with the yarn from my swap partner Lavender Ollivander. And the heart was made with yarn from my Random Act of Kindess package that Ophelia Ballycastle sent me!

Check it out -

And Jimbo didn’t really seem too thrill to pose for the photo, but hey, I took the photo anyway.

And here’s a picture of my Christmas tree (see I really did get one).

After looking at this photo, it looks like I don’t have a whole lot of ornaments on the tree. The ornaments are those smaller round ornaments, so they seem to look a little like the lights on the tree.

And I got my HSKS House award! Check it out!

And on that note, I’m going to drink a bunch of nyquil and try and sleep tonight.

Oh! Before I forget, tomorrow night is the luminaria down on Lake Washington and the Argosy Christmas boat. Hopefully I’m feeling good enough to go down there for a few minutes and take some pictures!

It's Christmas time!

beccalou — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:44:20 +0000

How do I know? Well the house in the neighborhood that loves Christmas, has every centimeter of their property covered in Christmas lights and decorations! We all know that I love that kind of stuff. I think secretly my dream is to win the megamillions and buy a nice house that sits on some serious land and cover every inch of it in Christmas lights and decorations at Christmas time. Sorry mom and dad. I have to say that my love of the tacky Christmas might be your fault. I think it all goes back to our family’s favorite Christmas decoration… disco santa.

And in the spirit of the season, here’s a few pictures of the kids…

And here’s Kink doing her best model poses…

and one more

I love this time of year!

beccalou — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:32:33 +0000

I love this time of year! The air is crisp (and in most of the places I’ll be, it’s freezing cold), everyone is bundled up, and little kids looks so darn cute all bundled up, screaming and crying because they can’t get what they want. Even Fremont is getting festive. Lenin is getting into the holiday spirit. That’s right I said Lenin, leader of the communist party. I suppose we should stress party…

Who’s the communist leader who like to get buck wild and party? Lenin! I think I’ll call him LL Cool L (Ladies Love Cool Lenin) – sorry LL Cool J. The ladies like Lenin.

Hey everybody, look! Lenin’s got an idea! It’s a party! A communist party! Now get back to work! I’m not too sure of who Lenin came to live in Fremont, but thanks to the internet and millions of people who don’t have lives (and I’m including myself in that group), we’ve got a wikipedia entry that tells you how Lenin came to find an expensive, small condo in Fremont. People dress him up and put all sorts of signs and things on him. My favorite was when someone put a sign around his neck that said “Pull my finger.” It still makes me giggle, just thinking about it.

After taking a few pictures of Lenin I headed to my LYS and got a few supplies for a present I’m working on. I can’t say what it is because the recipient is reading this. Then I came home to find Kink in Rambo mode – ok, not so much Rambo mode, but sleeping under the tree.

She’s like a little angel sent from above… yeah… ok… not so much.

I thought I would see if there was anything online about overly done Christmas themed houses in the Seattle area. And lo and behold there was. There’s a house in West Seattle that is leaps and bounds above all the others. I’ll try and take photos but quite honestly I don’t think I can do it justice. Fortunately, someone else got photos, video and and interview from last year’s display! Check it out. There was a house back home on Washout Road that went all out. But I think this might beat that house. My neighbor and I are going to grab some holiday cookies, some hot chocolate and drive on over and experience the wonder, the beauty that is this house.

More Christmas fun with the Griswalds

beccalou — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 04:34:36 +0000

Today was a pretty uneventful day. I did see something interesting. A couple of years ago I used to make jewelry. One local store contacted me and asked me to do a few pieces for them, so I did. They paid me and I never heard from them again. I did try and contact them and I didn’t hear back. I just assumed that they weren’t selling that fast and went on with my business. Today I walked into a jewelry store and saw that this woman who contacted me, that I made the necklaces for her store, has done a similar necklace. She changed enough of the design so that I can’t sue her. But it’s a rip off of my former work. And a cheap rip off at that. I would say the name of the store, but she’s not worth it. My boss knew her and apparently had some interaction with her as well. She’s not a nice person and thinks way too highly of herself. I strongly believe in karma and what goes around comes around. So, (insert store owner’s name her), karma’s a bitch. And you being a crafter, know how hard it is to make money and get established for creating something special that people want, should be ashamed of yourself. I won’t be giving you an business and I will tell my friends to not shop at your store and why.

And on a much happier note, we have a new entry into the Griswald family Christmas light display. This one is also in my neighborhood. The house, has the coolest tree house with slide I’ve ever seen. I am totally jealous of the tree house. But at night… the house transforms to this:

That’s the front of the house. And here’s the side of the house:

Also, I got up this morning, walked into the living room to see Kink doing this:

I’m not sure what happened before I got to the living room but it appears that what ever it was she was really happy afterwards.

as far as knitting goes, I’m current working on two of the Fuzzy Mitten’s Lambs. They’re super easy, super fast and super cute. And I also just started Just Call Me Ruby’s Cable and Chains jacket.

Flooding and the Griswalds

beccalou — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:14:29 +0000

So as most of you know, we had a little bit of rain the past couple of days. I woke up to a substancial amount of rain in my entry way and then when I went out to the basement, there was a rather large puddle. Ok, we dealt with this last year, so I mopped up the entry way, brought the de-humidifier into the basement and cleaned up there. I called my upstairs neighbor and let her know what was going on. I got a block away from work and thought, I don’t remember there being a fountain in the middle of 34th and Stone Way. Across the water/Fremont Bridge, on Westlake ave, there was a huge mudslide. They saved the apartments but I’m not sure if they’ve deemed them safe to live in. I get to our warehouse to find that the north way is oozing water in some sort of strange Seattle version of the Exorcist. Great. Fortunately for us all of the product that’s on the floor is on pallets. But there is all those classic and collectible cars that we share the warehouse space with. I check all the cars to see if there’s any water on them. Thankfully the water is just coming for the wall. So I lift the car covers up off the floor and carry on with the day. I call my landlords (who are totally awesome) and they tell me they’re working on fixing everything. At the end of the day, we weren’t hit all that bad. I will have to move out of the apartment at some point so they can remove and redo the flooring and the sub-flooring.

It looks like the hardest areas hit are down south and up north. At one point during one of the news casts they showed salmon swimming across the road. (insert bad joke here) I also found out that I-5, th freeway that goes to Portland, was under 10 feet of water down in Centralia (which is just south of Olympia).

But on to happier things…

I love Christmas! And let me tell you why… Christmas lights and lawn ornaments! I live a half a mile away from the Griswalds. Pardon my French, but these people when bat sh*t crazy with the Christmas lights. I drove by on my way to my knitting group and had the camera at the ready. I was about to take a picture when I realized that they must have had a little party going on as a bunch of kids were walking down their walk. And I thought to myself, “I can’t take a photo with all those people coming out of the house. That would be so tacky.” Then I thought, I’m looking at Vegas in Columbia City. Nothing could be tackier than having every part of your lawn covered in lights. Even the old tv antenna still on the roof of the house has lights on it. And here I am worried about being tacky by taking a photo of their light covered house and lawn. So here it is, in all it’s glory… I call it Ode to the Griswald’s Family Christmas

And as I find more houses like this one, I’ll take a photo and post it. I just wish this photo did the house justice. Man… it was a thing of beauty.