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Monthly Archives: February 2013

Dreams and errata

Sometimes I have dreams that mimic real life.  So much so that I have difficulty telling if what I had experienced was something real or just a dream.  It’s kind of disconcerting, since normally I have a pretty good grasp on reality.  I know it may not seem like it.  I may choose to ignore reality, but I know what it is and where it is.  The dream most like this occurred in high school.  To this day I don’t know if I placed an order for some AP books at the (now closed) bookstore or if I just dreamed it.  I never went back to check.  I mean, how would I explain it if it were just a dream?

Me: Hi, I’m here to pick up these books that I ordered a week ago.
Bookstore employee (BE): [looks confused] We…haven’t had anyone place an order for books for months.  Are you sure you ordered them?
Me: Oh…uh…I…must…have…placedtheorderatanotherbookstorethatismuchfartherawayandobviouslynotwithyousorrytotroubleyougoodbye! [runs away]

Most recently, I had a dream affect me in a different way.  I dreamt that I was pulling an all-nighter for some reason and when I woke up, I felt like I had pulled an all-nighter and was tired and cranky.  There were actually other parts to this dream that were really surreal and obviously a dream to me even in my dream state.  So really, this dream was nothing like what I was describing earlier.  But it affected me in real life even though it didn’t really happen, so that part is kind of the same.

So now I will transition to talking about lucid dreaming even though I was not talking about it at all before and if this were an academic essay of any sort, I would obviously fail because here I am talking about lucid dreaming when the opening paragraph was leading you to think that I would be talking about super realistic and mundane dreams that trick you into thinking they’re real.  And actually, I’ve now changed my mind and I don’t feel like talking about lucid dreaming in detail.  I’ll just say that I can kind of do it.  Sometimes in the middle of a dream, I will realize that I am dreaming, but still not really be able to control it.  I kind of exit the dream as a player and it becomes more like a movie and it also tends to start becoming really ridiculous for no good reason.  And sometimes I can exert marginal control over a dream.

The end.

If you couldn’t tell, I wrote this after a night of unrestful sleep because I dreamt that I had pulled an all-nighter and then felt like I really had after I woke up.  Of course, I might be kind of tired and not coherent because I had a night of unrestful sleep because a muscle in my left shoulder started spasming and didn’t really let me sink into useful sleep because it insisted on getting some attention.  Or it wanted someone else beside it to feel miserable later.

I pummeled the muscle into submission later.  It’s really sore but otherwise not making a huge fuss like it was during the night.

I make! Ugly dog sweater edition

That’s right!  I made something!  Finally!

Well, I actually have made a few things but haven’t found the time to write posts about them.

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Anyhoo!  I recently crocheted a dog sweater for my ancient dog.  Choco is turning 17 tomorrow.  What comes after old fart?  Because that’s what she is.  And because she’s so old, she has a hard time regulating body temperature now.  Mostly, she just gets pretty cold.  I had put her in an old tshirt for awhile, but as she gets even older, a tshirt isn’t sufficient in keeping her warm.  Sometimes I’d see her wake up from a nap and look pathetically around while her ears were quivering from her shivering.  It’s…pretty pathetic.  When I knew she’d be sleeping for awhile, I’d cover her with a blanket.  But that doesn’t work so well when she wants to get up and do stuff, because then she drags the blanket with her and it kind of trips her up.  So I decided that making her something warmer than a tshirt took precedent over any other project I had going.

Did you know I crochet sometimes?  I do.  And my sister is more of a knitter.  We can both do the other, but we prefer to do what it is we do.  Now, my sister knits more than I crochet, because people request her to make stuff for them.  Mostly scarves.  That means she has all this leftover yarn overflowing the yarn drawer.

Generally, people don’t request me to make stuff.  Mostly because I make kind of useless stuff.  Amigurumi or hats with teeth (I believe more hats should have teeth…and eyes) or small stuff like that.  Generally I make small things because I don’t want to count stitches.  I lose count all the time and it’s tiresome to count and recount ALL THE TIME.  So the fact that I made a sweater for a mediumish sized dog was kind of impressive to me.  Stitch markers FTW!

Anyway, I also had a bunch of leftover (ugly) yarn from small projects that I made.  So I made a dog sweater.

Actually, I made my dog this sweater

dog sweater

in the XL size, based on the measurements around Choco’s neck.  (You will have to register with Bernat to see the pattern.  As far as I can tell, they don’t sell your email address to spammers and they haven’t bothered me about anything, so it seems safe.)  Choco is kind of a weird shape.  But because she’s such a weird shape, the collar of the sweater fits ok, but the rest of the sweater is waaaay too big for her.  It fits Yaris, but ends up being a little short.

So, as you can see, I didn’t bother with the stripe pattern.  Well unless you count my one big stripe of ugly, variegated yarn in the middle.  The red yarn is decent quality yarn that was left over from one of my sister’s projects.  The ugly, variegated stuff is not good quality yarn left over from one of my amigurumi projects.  I don’t have to buy good quality yarn because you don’t wear amigurumi.  I only buy good stuff if I’m making a baby toy or something.  I didn’t think Choco would mind the rougher yarn since she already has a fur coat and the yarn won’t rest against her skin.

Um…what else?  Oh, I accidentally half-double crocheted where I was supposed to double crochet, because I often get those two stitches mixed up.  I’m not sure why, but I do.  By the time I noticed, I had already gotten pretty far on the sweater, so I opted to just half-double crochet the whole way through.  I also decided not to add sleeves because I felt they were unnecessary.  Um…and later on I added a cinch for the waist because the sweater was just too big on Choco.

So, there you have it.  An ugly dog sweater.