to my parents.



Saturday is their 29th wedding anniversary.  Which means I better get cracking on planning a party for their 30th.  I don't know how my mom did id that day - kinda long sleeves, and gloves?  I would have been screaming from the heat.

My dad has hair, hahaha. 

And Happy 4th of July to everyone!  Enjoy your BBQ, fireworks, and so on!  I plan to watch the fireworks from my balcony, thanks to Redwood City shooting fireworks off over the Port of RWC.

It's the summer.  It's too hot to lug around a skein of yarn as I sweat it out in my apartment, with the late afternoon sun shining in my face.

It's time to cross stitch!  I bought these kits off of Craigslist... that only have directions in Chinese.

Thankfully, since I already know the basics, and the overall instructions are in color, especially on how to match the thread to the pattern, I'm going to be ok.

This is done over the past month.  My cross stitching seems kind of slow - it'll be an hour and it seems like I've made no progress, but it takes a lot of time to read the pattern, match up the thread, pull off the two pieces I need, thread the needle, etc. 


I first started on the right side of the project after finding the center, which is a little girl.  With some crazy hair.


She has a face!  And something that resembles a body!


Hair!  Clothes!  Arms!  One arm reaching out!  Legs!  Grass to stand on!


Through last night, I've finished off her friend's body, feet, and part of his head.

In case you're wondering why the fabric looks rounded, I use a round hoop to keep the fabric still when I'm stitching, and it pulls it pretty taut so that I can easily pull the needle up through the fabric.  Unfortunately, it does stretch the fabric a bit, and I'll have to iron it out a bit to get the round hoop out.  I don't have a hoop big enough for this project, and I don't want one - right now, everything I have fits very well in a plastic container and I don't want to buy anymore.  Yet. 

The hilarious part is that this is a Chinese cross stitch kit, but the writing on the kit.. is in Korean.  It's really cute though, once it's done, but it's probably cuter because of the saying.

After this is done (maybe in two weeks?) it will be decision time.  Do I go onto the next monstrous cross stitch I purchased (which is a bamboo forest that will look pretty frickin awesome framed) or back to knitting?

Why cross stitch:  it's hot people!  Yarn is hotter!  Sweaty yarn doesn't make a good project!  It's hard to make the knitting slide over the needles when your hands are sweating.

Why knit:  It's a good time to learn how to do things I don't know how to do.  My goal is to figure out how to knit cables well, and to figure out this argyle pattern I found for a baby sweater.  Also, my cousin and his wife are due in August, and it's a girl, and I'll FINALLY be able to use the 10 skeins of purple yarn that is stashed at my parents house.

Plus if I start my knitting projects now, they'll actually be done by Christmas. 

Oh Michael Jackson.

I didn't want to believe it when I heard the news.  I thought maybe he had just collapsed and needed some medical care.  I was glued to TMZ yesterday, and when they reported him as dead, I almost couldn't believe it.  And then reality set in.

I didn't really appreciate MJ until his "Black or White" video came out.  Do you remember that spectacle?  Macaulay Culkin, the debut, the video being like 8 minutes long... you HAD to be sitting there watching it.  "Remember the Time" was also quite the spectacle, along with the celebrities all over it.

One of my favorite songs was probably PYT, which unfortunately doesn't have an official video tied to it.

You also have to give mad respect to Billie Jean.

Click here, because embedding has been removed by youtube
And remember... you are not alone... I am here with you... although this video is really creepy with Lisa Marie...

Click me!
You also have to respect the Jackson 5.  Do you know your ABCs?

There have been a lot of people who bring up the last 15 years of his life, with the allegations, acquittal and the court of public opinion finding him guilty.  Yes he became... weird as he aged but he also was not a normal child to begin with.  It's probably not the time to bring that up right now.  Let's enjoy his music.

(Although, when I think about it, I'll probably be ragging on OJ Simpson until the end of time for what he allegedly did and totally forget about his football career.)

What was your favorite Michael Jackson song?