Naked and Exposed

***UPDATE*** This just in (from Amazon-dot-com), the Elizabeth Zimmerman DVD's. Knitting Workshop is currently in the player and it's worth every blessed penny just to hear her. It's a little like listening to myself in classes. I love love love love them. Girl loves her style also. It's like having EZ in your living room chatting over a hat about various options techniques and means and methods. LOVE it!

Not really. But it feels like it. I really do not like having my picture taken. I know I don't photograph well, and will generally duck and run if I see a camera coming. This author photo thing has become a nightmare. I went to the professionals, if one can call JC Penney professional. The small grainy B&W on the little order form did not look so bad. The finished colorized version? AWFUL! My skin looked green. Flaws in my skin that I did not know were there appeared. So last week when Jess from Storey called and said "We really need your author photograph. We're trying to put the Fall catalog together...." I wanted to barf. Last night Mr Wonderful and I went out on the deck and took a bunch of pictures. FIFTY FIVE of them. I narrowed it down to two. Two out of fifty five. Not bad. He just basically held the shutter down and figured that if he got enough eventually in ONE of them my eyes would be open and mouth would be closed - simultaneously - at least once. He got lucky. He managed it twice. So here I am, naked and exposed, both eyes open and mouth not agape or slammed shut in some snarling "knock it off honey" moment. I also deleted the twisted up "are we DONE yet??" faces, and the one down-the-wife's-blouse shot that seems obligatory when you hand a straight man a camera - that or my butt, every time. I think he deleted the butt one, wise man. The question is, do we go with these, or do we wait for this evening and pray for a glimpse of sun and try again? I am horribly overlit. These are the kind of issues that plague my nights now. Am I too overlit to work in a small 2"x2" frame in a catalog that only wholesale book buyers will read?
Ahhh, office! The floor is done, including the closet - which means all of this went back where it belongs. This was just in the nick of time in terms of my mental health. The whole clutter overwhelming my living space thing gets to me more and more as I gain longer life experience (read "get old"). Where once I could feed three teenagers out of a microwave cabinet turned kitchen for a few weeks, I now find my skin crawling at the sight of closet contents in my living room after about an hour. Cabinets are being hung slowly but surely. I feel office-ish. I am curious to know building code out of the US; specifically in Sweden. Here the standard distance between wall studs is 16 inches "on center" This means that the center of any stud is...or, shall I say "should be" as in our first house studs were inversely proportional to the consumption of beers by the builder. To wit: early in the wall, there are many studs, and few beers. As the wall progressed and the beers become more numerous the number of studs decreased dramatically, and the angle of the wall shifted well away from it's logical path. But I digress. The center of the average stud should be 16 inches from the center of it's nearest neighbor. The Effektiv wall cabinets, which I ADORE came with pre-drilled holes for hanging and a very cool bracket for leveling. 30 English inches apart. This means that they don't hit a stud. Or, one might but the next one won't. And you can't hang cabinets in drywall. Or, well, you CAN, but it might not be considered a wise choice. There was no gap between the cabinet back and the wall to allow a cleat to hang them as one might do in a kitchen application. We got creative. We're going to get more creative with the other two.
I signed up for TKGA/CGOA Conference in Manchester, NH in July. I would not have even known about this if it had not been for Persnickety emailing me, which is kind of sad since I am a member of TKGA. The mailer probably got stuck in between two catalogs I ditched or something. I am very excited. I am taking a class on beaded crochet on Thursday and one with Beth Brown-Reinsel on Twined Mittens on Friday. The endless debate in my brain over which classes to take raged on for days. It was insane. You'd think I was deciding life or death. Unfortunately I will be gone by Friday evening as I have to teach Saturday. A little sad, as I sense fun happens Saturday and Sunday when people are off of work and present en masse. Oh well. Such is life.
Also, for a true attempt at making myself insane, I signed up for an author's marketing workshop thing on the first day of Book Expo America. This inconvientantly overlaps the arrival of a Certain Very Important Person at Webs; May 30th at 6pm. This was unknown to me when I booked my hotel and paid for the conference that occurs on the 31st and requires me to be present and reasonably alert in Midtown Manhatten at 7:30am. Since neither Book Expo America nor Webs nor Ms Pearl-McPhee are likely to change their schedules for me (selfish, selfish people), I will be at Webs "until whenever" on Wednesday night, then drive to Stamford and check into a hotel, sleep for a bit and make my First Ever foray into New York, the Big Apple, The City that Never Sleeps...are you getting this? Me. A Chicken Farmer in New York. I feel like there should be a song or a small book about this. Amy, my beloved, you are in my prayers...that your husband willg raciously allow you two days of child-free vaction to show the helpless little chicken farmer the big city.
Yes, I am knitting. I am clearing my plate today and may post pics tomorrow, and also will begin my First Ever Toe-Up Sock. I have a Tofutsies Plan! I've spent hours since Saturday studying and planning these socks. Speaking of Tofutsies and a plan, everyone should come to Sock Boot Camp at Webs on April 15th from 12-4pm. There's going to be lots of fun, lots of free samples, give-aways, goodies of the food variety, all under one roof!! There will even be a Sock Doctor on hand to answer your sock questions and solve all the sock problems of the world. If you want to come, you should register at Webs and I hope to see you there!