* Dan Mangan & Rhett Miller at the Triple Door. Thank heavens for advance tickets, or I might have talked myself out of going to this at the last minute, and that would have been tragic. Dan played his last song out in the audience, standing on a table in the first row of booths, something I’ve never seen there before. Rhett wound up doing two songs off mic & acoustic thanks to technical difficulties. They were both fantastic.

* The Puyallup Fair for the first time in *years*. The more things change, the more the Puyallup stays the same. Fair food! Rides (including my favorite, the classic wooden roller coaster)! Handcrafts! Random, purely American ridiculousness! And this year, much needed purchases of a grey fedora & a plaid belt for my Cocky buckle.

* Seeing Drive with Joy, & then having to explain the plot on the car ride home because she spent half of the movie with her coat over her head. (I thought it was a great movie. But it is a little bit on the blood-soaked side.)

* Erin‘s reading at Elliott Bay, & finishing the rêveur scarf just in time to show it off. Next goal: writing up the pattern. And I suppose taking photos would also be a good idea.

* My first year attending MIFFF (the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival), which was a total treat. Click through for my post on that.

* A week in NYC, mostly helping Kat pack up her entire life & move across the world. The only picture I took was of a gluten free cookie label so I could remember the brand. Oops! But in addition to the packing and cleaning and moving we did a bunch of awesome stuff, including eating All of the Tacos and the Gluten Free Cupcakes, checking out Pig: A Restaurant at the UCB theater, attending the Peter Mulvey concert at ChurchKorner (which would be pretty fantastic on its own, but especially because it turned into a mini-Fruhead reunion), the obligatory trip to the Strand, an adventure to New Jersey, finally seeing Times Square, hanging out with yogis, and most of all, forking over the extra dough for the priority admission to Sleep No More. Ask either of us about it some time and we will rave about it forever.

* Then we came back to Seattle & headed to a lovely weekend up in BC, even though everyone was sick. Julie’s house is the best place to be sick at. She takes very good care of us! Kat & I had some Seattle adventures, and now she is off around the world, which will be her Worth Getting Up For for the entire next year or more.

* The new National Theatre Live season, kicking off with One Man, Two Guvnors, then The Kitchen. I’m so glad that SIFF booked the series again this year. The member pass is $75 for… 5 plays? Cheaper than going to London, for sure.

* The Cinerama‘s 70mm festival, with Lawrence of Arabia on the gigantic curved screen. It was the third time I’ve seen it, the third time I’ve seen it *there*, and I can’t imagine seeing it anywhere else. I also finally saw Playtime & Tron, which was great. Playtime I had tried to watch on DVD once and could not do it. If you ever have the chance to see a Tati film in the theater, you must take it. It is the only way to see them.

* Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where I kicked it up a notch & was volunteer staff, which meant I spent a more time selling tickets than seeing films. Which was fine! I actually quite like working box office & will call at festivals. People tend to be super nice, both the film goers and the other volunteers.

* The reopening of the Uptown Cinema by SIFF. I promptly moved in, as you can all see on Twitter. No really. I am the mayor & everything.

* Halloween awesomeness, including my witch-playing-electric-guitar pumpkin.

* Peter Mulvey again, this time on my coast at the Fremont Abbey, a lovely small concert space. I’ll have to pay better attention to their calendar; sadly I missed Jeffrey Foucault there.

* Muppets! Three weekends of them at SIFF, then midnight at the Cinerama. My crush on Jason Segel is nearly unmanageable.

* Another non-traditional Thanksgiving, with a Friendsgiving on Wednesday night, brunch on Thursday, and Black Friday starting Thursday night. No, really. Judge away — everyone else has — but now I have a Wii. So bite me.

* Cinderella at the Fifth Avenue, mostly because my office got tickets to the final dress rehearsal, and so we got to see many children have their first live theater experience. Super cute!

…and that’s it for now! Stay tuned for Worth Getting Up For: The Winter which will likely include Twilight, the holidays, my birthday, and probably a movie or seventeen.

* The rest of SIFF. Total of 50 features, including the marathon Best of SIFF weekend. Posts about Half of the Things under my SIFF 2011 tag here. More are coming; also note the film blog’s URL change.

* Awesome other things in the theater, including Company (so exciting because I love the show but have never actually seen it, so this was as close as I could get), Lord of the Rings extended editions & All of the Harry Potter (well, five of them in the theater), including the midnight HP7P2. Neville forever!

* Vancouver Folk Music Festival, with a surprise appearance (to us) of our boyfriend Nathan Rogers in his new band, Dry Bones. First time seeing Danny Michel live in roughly ten years of being a fan. Came home with CDs from Dry Bones, Graveyard Train, & The Burning Hell despite the tight budget. I had an amazing time, as always, and thanks to the rain this year felt freer to check out other stages. I could be damp at any stage, whereas in the past I had to strategize to keep from spending too much time in the sun. Also fabulous, of course, spending time with friends I pretty much only see at festival time.

* Finally meeting my OddDaughter during a lovely week in July when she & her parents visited from England. It is very hard having them so far away!

* Argentina for two weeks, mostly in Buenos Aires but with a bus trip up to Iguazu for the waterfalls of extreme amazing. Proper post on that to follow later, I swear. There are pictures and everything.

* A friend’s bachelorette hafla, worth the trip to Belltown for all the lovely dancing ladies. I’m sorry I only got to stay for the first part of the show thanks to my jetlag.

* My traditionally chill weekend with a friend down from Canada, marking the end of the summer.

* All of the things at Central Cinema as usual, including a pajama party where I wrote a poem about Heath Ledger & a movie trivia night where we were slaughtered by Ken Jennings. Also the most dangerous discovery that a) the walk from my apartment is a very satisfying & doable 35 minutes each way and b) that for chill movies I do not feel at all awkward going by myself.

Meep meep!

* Mardi Gras aerial show at Emerald City Trapeze Arts!

* One of four Seattle tapings of “America’s Got Talent”. No, really.

* Moving into Central Cinema for Movie Cat Trivia, pajama parties, Pride & Prejudice, etc etc etc!

* Sarah Vowell reading at Town Hall (and dealing with the inevitably ridiculous Seattle Q&A.)

* Work trip to Vancouver WA, with a day in Portland (Traveling by train! Powell’s! Knit Purl! Burgerville! The Beverly Cleary Sculpture Park!)

* Danny Boyle weekend (including Frankenstein twice (!!)) and the Charlie Chaplin festival (so many movies! such beautiful 35mm prints!) and The Adventures of Prince Achmed (with a live score of awesome!), all at SIFF Cinema.

* Easter weekend trip to Abbotsford BC, and finally getting to see Julie ref at roller derby. Go Vixens!

* The Magic Flute at Seattle Opera (final dress rehearsal, just like when I was in school!)

* The first week of the Seattle International Film Festival (movies, volunteer shifts, and exchanging pleasantries with a certain Ewan McGregor!)

* Finally (you have no idea) getting social media accounts for the office! Like us on Facebook (content is coming, I swear) & follow us on Twitter! Joy is holding down the fort while I’m on vacation, but I am looking forward to getting involved when I get back.

* Scheduling awesome things for the summer & autumn! Stay tuned!

…weirdly, I continue to be far more present on Twitter than anywhere else on the internet. See you there!

This year I’m going classic and pocket-sized, with my main man, Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Heaven—Haven

A nun takes the veil

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

::

What’s your poem this year?

As always, click through to embiggen, & all the projects are on Ravelry, though notes might leave a little something to be desired. For example, probably very few of the published patterns were written toe-up. That is probably a good follow-up project. Anyway!

Chroma Striped Socks, same concept as the Noro stripey socks, but with a variation in the stripe pattern. Also toe-up, obviously. Colorway is “Galapagos”, which I may have selected mostly for Stephen Maturin-related reasons. Don’t judge.

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Ravenclaw striped socks out of a mystery yarn. I’m sure the label is on my desk at home. Ah well. The weird bit on the grey toe is some out-of-control sun. Second shot is a detail of the jogless color change. Which apparently needed a bit of a block. Oops.

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Slip-stitch socks from Hazel Knits sock yarn, “Hometeam Baseball” colorway (Go Mariners!)

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Finally I am, as we all know, addicted to Knitpicks’ Felici sock yarn. This batch has three pairs of Felici socks.

First, Smoking Hot Socks, possibly my first miter experience? I really enjoyed the squishiness of the slipped-stitch pattern on the foot.

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Second, Taffy Ripple socks. Yes, they are pink. I think they will look ridiculously cute with my kelly green Chucks. This pattern, though, was just about the death of me with all the purl rows. I thought I would never finish these socks. My favorite detail is one I added: the no-purl garter-in-the-round on the top of the cuff.

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After the grind that was those purl rows, it was amazing how fast I flew through these Waterloose socks. Back to my old knitting form! And yet, I did throw in a purl row. This particular Feather & Fan version needed it.

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…and that is all for now! Socks in the works at the moment include some delicious cabled socks in Three Irish Girls, simple two panel socks in Goth Socks, the infamous Doctor Who kneesocks, and mindless Jaywalkers in Felici sport. Plus a pair of Cookie A socks in Socks that Rock, which are finished, but needed to actually be blocked. Of all things!

It looks like all of these have more-or-less the toe-up gusset heel I learned on Baudelaire last winter. Some of the in-progress socks sport a purled gusset, which I think is a nice detail. All the toes are the same: figure 8 cast-on of 10 stitches. Bind-off is Grumperina’s stretchy bind-off. Oh, I do love sock knitting. Best!

However, I did finally upload about six months worth of photos to Flickr, so there’s a little blog fodder there. Today, Stuff Wot I Made For Other Folks. Click through to embiggen!

Pond Friends stacking toy [Ravelry link] for my coworker’s baby on her first birthday. It was made for her, but it lives in my office, so that there is a toy for her when she visits me.

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My best friend had a baby this fall, so of course she got a bunny…

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And also nerdy (and rather inappropriate) onesies. The first three were painted by Kat, and the latter three by me. Points if you get all the references.

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A Doctor Who cross-stitch for my friend Joy on her birthday. SO much fun to design and stitch! A little dangerous, because I have so many other ideas, and it would be far too easy to spend all of my time designing and making nerdy cross-stitch pieces/

And a Christmas TARDIS.

Whew! That is a lot of baby and nerd craft action! Coming someday, if it ever stops raining, ALL OF THE SOCKS AND LACE. And maybe some of my sock yarn blanket, which is currently just a box full of beautiful, colorful squares.

* Christmas with family in Quincy (a lovely weekend and a beautiful bus trip across Stevens Pass), New Year’s with friends in Abbotsford BC (finally meeting their new family!).

* Hamlet, Fela!, & King Lear (National Theatre Live at SIFF Cinema is the greatest thing)

* Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Cymbeline (thanks, Seattle Comp Tickets!)

* Cinerama reopening as in independent cinema. So far I’ve enjoyed Harry Potter, the Sci Fi & Fantasy Short Film Festival, Black Swan, and their delicious chocolate popcorn.

* Finally discovering Central Cinema. Die Hard! Earth Girls Are Easy! And cinnamon sugar popcorn! (I detect a theme.)

* EMP|SFM on Free First Thursday for the Battlestar Galactica exhibit. Not, I feel, worth the admission if that’s all you’re going for, as it’s quite small. This Thursday is your last free chance! However, I cannot lie. I may have made a quite embarrassing noise when I saw Callum Keith Rennie’s Leoben Conoy costume. Once a fangirl, always a fangirl. Also, I got a free Adama poster. Win!

* The fifth year of Noir City, a week of hard-boiled detectives, femme fatales, and regular Joes caught up in the inevitable seedy underbelly.

* Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, even though as usual I took no classes. Also, knitting group starting up again!

…and most of all, visiting Kat in New York for my birthday. Gluten free deliciousness everywhere! Snow & Skype & knitting! The Transit Museum of Awesome! The Strand! My third tattoo! Sadly, the snow failed to cancel my flight & I had to come home. Woe.

* Best moment in music: Nathan Rogers leading a singalong of “Northwest Passage” at Vancouver Folk Music Festival.

* Best exchange on Twitter. Seriously, it still makes me giggle:

* Best thing on the internet: the Wimbledon Isner/Mahut liveblog of doom

* Smash Putt, the miniature golf apocalypse of AWESOME. This year it was held in the old INS Building in the International District, and the weekend we went was also the opening of that building as an art space, so after we kicked some miniature golf ass we got to go check out all the exhibits. The most powerful, obviously, were the ones that dealt with the history of the building. Interesting stuff.

* Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and volunteering for the first time. Why it takes me so long to get involved, I do not know. Better late than never, I suppose, and of course I only started volunteering for SIFF in 2009, so clearly I am running behind.

* Metropolis, the newest, most complete cut to date, with a live score by the Alloy Orchestra. I had never seen it before, and I think this trend of the theater experience being the first experience is an excellent one.

* Harry Potter: the Exhibition at the Pacific Science Center. Costumes! Props! Sets! My favorite was probably seeing so many of the wands. They’re fantastic, each one beautiful in its own way and perfectly suited to the wizard in question. Things I wish the gift shop had sold: posters of the Proclamations (or at least postcards of more of them), the pennant from the Quidditch World Cup, and autographed 8×10 glossies of Gilderoy Lockhart. On the other hand, I spent $18 on magnets and postcards, so perhaps they sold enough things as it was.

* The Rally to Restore Sanity, Seattle satellite edition. Some inevitable snags: rain, trouble with the live feed from DC, but a lot of cool people with clever signs, and just a nice thing to be a part of. Someday I may even upload photos from it. I was the obligatory Seattle xkcd protester, carrying a [citation needed] sign. Yup. I am awesome.

* All Souls at St James Cathedral. Every year they do Mozart’s Requiem Mass, and it’s standing room only. I stood for a while, but then went out and took a seat in the lobby, where I could listen without feeling claustrophobic (and also free of incense!) I was particularly glad to go this year because I saw in the program one of the remembered for the past year was my high school & college opera appreciation teacher, Perry Lorenzo. You are missed, good sir.

* Erin McKeown at the Triple Door for her Distillation 10th anniversary tour. The year of that album was a life-changer for me, no lie. She did the album in reverse order, then a mostly-request show, including “James!” & “Vera” at the piano. And “Single Ladies”! Hee.

* Daniel Handler at Benaroya, with a follow-up Q&A by my boyfriend Sherman Alexie. Valuable information regarding Mr Handler’s tastes gleaned from this show: he is a total fanboy of The Egypt Game, when the Giants won the World Series he was watching Red Riding, and he has a working knowledge of the band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities. I approve of all of these things.

* The Seattle Rock Orchestra performing the Pet Sounds album in full, as well as a bunch of Wall of Sound numbers. The vocals were provided by local artists, which introduced me to a bunch of new bands. Win!

* National Theatre Live began at SIFF Cinema with A Disappearing Number. I apparently love plays about math. Who knew? I bought a series pass, which is exciting, because it’ll give me entertainment through til July. Also exciting because I heart laminated passes. Sad but true. I know that there are a lot of Opinions regarding these sorts of live theatre programs, but for me, I’m still seeing theater in Seattle (thanks, Goldstar!) and this is just more, and productions I wouldn’t be able to otherwise see. Since I’m not in London, more’s the pity.

* #snOMG, Mother Nature’s first volley against Seattle, which enabled me and my death cold to have a half-day work week with much less guilt. Hooray! (Yeah, you read that correctly. One half of one day.)

* Concerts at the Zoo: Carbon Leaf, full of DIY joy and encouraging everyone who has a CL album to make it two, give it to a friend, bring ‘em to a show. Great Big Sea, where we learned that Murray singing bass still makes my socks roll up and down & that Alan must start drinking really early if he thinks (in the midafternoon) that Dick’s makes life-changing burgers. Being out on the meadow in general, warm evenings knitting in the sun, eating Rainier cherries, watching tiny children dancing.

* Concerts everywhere else: The Paperboys at the Triple Door, such a swank room, & Geoff Kelly dancing always makes me happy. Slaid Cleaves at the Tractor, two sets, no opener. Sarah Harmer at the Triple Door from the very front row.

* And, of course, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Weekend on the happiest beach on earth, Doctor Who paper lanterns, frozen bananas, finally buying a cheesy sun hat, discovering my new favorite artists (Nathan Rogers is my new boyfriend; Tao Seeger provided tough competition until Nathan’s throat singing workshop oh em gee), finally being there for the whole damn festival, the beautiful duo Luluc, Nathan leading the singalong of “Northwest Passage” at the mainstage Sunday night, and so much more. Best!

* Cheap and free theater! Kindred Spirits & Sex in Seattle 18, both free at Hugo House, Much Ado About Nothing (though now I know Seattle Center is a terrible venue for outdoor theater if you’re not there crazy early. Next summer I’m all about Sand Point), & A Doctor In Spite of Himself (hilarious, & still playing, so hit up Goldstar).

* And more! Stitch & Pitch, even though we lost (of course), Greg Proops (even though he was in Bellevue, which is terrifying), the street art exhibit at Bumbershoot (which I still hope to post photos from), and best of all, a too-short visit from Kat, including a trip to Portland for roller derby, Burgerville, and book buying. Huzzah!

…and that’s all for now. Someday I might manage to show you guys all the knitting I’ve done since the last time I posted. Which is. um. Lots.

I hope you all are well!