I am moving over to blogger.

Here's my new space!LINK ME!!!!

So it turns out that Lilly's knee is way worse than we thought. It's a torn PCL. Ugh. I cried when I heard. It breaks my heart. This girl is the essence of derby badassness. ( I know it's not really a word)
Keeping my fingers crossed that she'll be back next season stronger and harder than ever.
Until then, I am going to sit down and give her another knittng lesson.

I saw one of the finished products from this book, (via my publisher) and it looks so kick ass! I'm totally going to pre-order!

Rubbish! Reuse Your Refuse

So now that I'm not knitting for a book anymore, I get to knit for pure fun again! Whee!

I started by casting on for those Terminator arm warmers I fell in love with. I'm using Vickie Howell's Rock yarn. Gwen and Joan are the colors!




I'm also eyeballing the other patterns I want to do. I am working on a super secret pattern for my friend Callies b-day. So no pics of that until next week!

In the meantime, I want to take up some stitching, just so I can make this:




It's from the book, "Not your Momma's Stitching" Super cute stuff in there.

I'm also DYING to make some of the things from Charmed Knits. I've been eyeballing this book forever!
I think this will be the first project:



They look so cute and comfy. Must cast those suckers on! I've got to find the yarn first though. I may just have to order it. I am so dissapointed by the fact that there are no yarn stores around me. The nearest two are both 30 minutes away, each in an opposite direction. So if I want Brown Sheep yarn, it's 30 minutes south, if I want Cascade, it's 30 minutes east! If only we had twice the room here, I swear I would convert half the shop into a yarn store!

Once again, we are warned about the 10" of snow that are going to drop down on us! Quick! Cancel schools! Get up early! SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW!!!

Um. Yea.

We had a little less than half an inch.


In other news... did anyone see Terminator last night? Summer Glau and her super awesome arm warmers? MUST MAKE....

Here's the best picture that I could find. There don't seem to be any screen caps from last night and a google image search only got me what looks like a fan pic. You can't really see the gloves in it.
I saved the episode on my dvr though, so I can study it and make them!











We had a post bout meeting last night, and I feel tons better. Our girl Lilly is up and about, and she'll be back on her wheels this week. The knee wasn't too bad at all! Plus, the word from the refs we brought in was that they were trying really hard. Watching some of the video, they were constantly calling fouls, they just couldn't keep up with how many these girls were commiting, and they were pretty sneaky about watching for the refs before they would pull something. No system is perfect, but it does get a little better with each bout!

Wow.

Saturday night was a derby bout. Our first bout as a WFTDA team against another WFTDA team. We were pumped, and ready to win.

Then, the night before, ticket sales started spiking. And I mean, they were just pouring in on line. We sold out at the coffee shop, and we started freaking out a bit. Was this actually going to be a sell out?

Um. Yea. Total sell out. We actually had to turn people away.


These pics are from before the game even started, and it got even more packed until after about halfway through the first period before they cut off sales.







I couldn't believe it! Man, Indianapolis loves some roller derby!

This bout was against the Burning River Roller Girls All Star team. It was a tough ass game, start to finish. We kept a lead the whole time, but the spread wasn't as big as it could have been. I am constantly frustrated by the reffing situation in roller derby. Honestly, it's not like these girls were a dirty team, but they did a few dirty moves, that resulted in injury. Elbows to the face, shoving, and my favorite, dropping to one knee to dive bomb another girls knee. (which resulted in one of our best players being side lined) What made this even more frustrating, was talking to the refs later who admitted, yea, they knew it was happening, yes they knew about the knee thing, and the 20 feet out of bounds thing, the elbows, etc, but they had trouble catching it.
Um, hello, that's your job!

I try to put it in perspective though. There girls did spend a shit ton of time in the penalty box, so some stuff was obviously getting called, and I've tried reffing at scrimmages before, and it is a really, really tough job. I don't blame the refs per se, I more so blame the reffing system that is in place.
See, most derby teams have their own refs. Which is kind of silly, because how impartial can a ref be if he/she belongs to that team? With Naptown, our first season we had the problem of our refs trying so hard to be impartial, they would tend to favor the other team over us. Which is also no good.
Our final solution was to make the refs no long part of our league. Now we pay and hire the refs in, and try to test them beforehand. It's still not a perfect system, but until WFTDA gets a good ref system in place, it's the best that we can do. Obviously we're still tweaking and trying to perfect it.

Check out this crafty dude behind me with that orange sign. Can you see what it says?





How awesome is that????






Mother Russia on our team lives with a guy named Jerry Lee, and they design all of our uniforms. This season, they even gave our announcers their own custom made wester suits! Check out Dills below!



My friend Pitt Stain made me this last minute NIN sticker for my helmet. I was freaking out, because I had just purchased a new helmet (my old one cracked) and didn't have a music sticker on it! Bad luck! So Pitt made this one the night before the bout for me!




Oh and check out this crazy autograph!




I haven't been asked to sign a dudes bare skin since my band days! (and honestly, I signed more girl boobies back then than boy tummies...)


All in all, it was a good game. I'll post some after party pics later. Still waiting to hear how our girl Lilly is doing after her knee injury. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for her.
Next month it's Cincy. Can't wait!

Wheee! Bout day tomorrow. I am sitting here drinking water, with the typical stomach twisting pre-bout nerves, about to engage in my "routine".
Let me say something here. I am not a superstitious person by nature. But for some reason, when it comes to derby, I really am!
Which means tonight I have to:
Watch the 300. That movie really pumps me up for derby. The scene the main guy is standing there with his shield, someone charges him and he doesn't move... it's the ultimate block!
Chip the toenail paint on my big toe.
Go to the store and buy a cool sticker for my helmet. I got a new one, and it's naked. Helmets can't be naked. It's bad luck.

Load my ipod with the correct playlist, in the correct song order. It's very specific.

I'm also going to try and get loads of sleep since I have to work in the morning before the bout. Boo.

I've also got to pack my knitting. There's a lot of down time before the bout, and some of us tend to knit. It's totally relaxing, and tends to get you nice and centered. File that under weird but true.

Also, my mom found my book on amazon today! Not that it comes out until July but... hey! That's exciting right? They don't have the cover up yet, but my publisher said it should be up there really soon.
Here's the link: Knock Down Knits

So now everyone knows.. it's a book combining my two obsessions! Roller Derby and knitting! You don't have to be a roller girl to love the patterns, but the patterns were all designed by myself and other roller girls. There's some practical stuff for skaters, and some fun wearable stuff as well. You all know my style, nothing outlandish or crazy, just.. fun! Also, my team is going to be modeling all the patterns, which I'm really excited about. Derby girls tend to have big bums and big calves and thighs, so these patterns allow for that as well, and I really wanted to showcase that they really do fit REAL girls. (and a couple boys)

My hubby Dan makes an appearance in the book as well, with a pattern he designed. I am sure my fellow Libertines will be foaming at the mouth to see his creation! But don't worry, it's not a penis warmer. Not that he didn't try to create a penis warmer, but I said no.

This game: BLOKUS

It's kind of  like an interactive board game version of tetris. I start seeing the pieces when I close my eyes at night...

I'm giving up dairy for Lent. Which means no CHEESE! I am a cheese addict. Ugh. Longest 40 days ever ahead.

I'm going to drink a big ass glass of milk tonight before bed.

All week long we've been hearing that Thurday night would be the worst snow of the year. Freezing rain, the 7" of snow, yada yada yada.
During practice last night I was dreading what I would find when I walked out of the rink at 9pm. I pictured having to dig my jeep out, sliding home, etc.
Dan and I worked our butts off all week at the shop, pushing lunches, catering, etc, to bring in extra money since we were convinced that no one would come in on Friday.

I knew, during practice, that something was happening outside when we were skating. When it gets ready to snow, or the temp drops a lot, I have these metal bits in the front of my mouth (results of a long ago car accident) that just hurt. I braced myself for natures fury, and walked outside to find...
nothing of note.
I mean, there was some freezing rain happening, so I figured the storm was running an hour behind.

Ran to the store for important stuff like shampoo and deodorent, and went home.

Dan and I set our alarm clocks early, so we could get our butts to the shop for the bravwe souls that would want their coffee early. We kind of looked foraward to a day of board games, hanging out with a few friends and watching the snow drift over our jeep through the big picture window. The plan was that, as we've done in snowstorms past, we would hang out for a while, if no one came in and the storm didn't break by 1 or so, we'd close up and go home.

So we wake up early, open the door to find... the snow didn't even cover the grass. Sure, there was some ice, but it was mostly turning to slush. Poor news reporters on the morning news, who had been all set to cover this big snow storm were like,

"Well Bob, as you can see there is some slush on the ground, it's about an inch or two high, which can be hazardous to those early morning drivers".

And the newspapers front page had the hour by hour breakdown of how the storm would work, starting last night, going through to this afternoon.

Yea, didn't happen. At all. We got some fluries, and freezing rain.

Still enough to make the metal in my mouth hurt, and my bad shoulder ache (the result of a seperated ac thingie during a roller derby bout, that I have not been able to afford to go under the knife for yet. stoopid lack of health insurance)

Blech.I was kind of looking forward to a relaxing snow day today. Instead, we've been crazy busy because of all the people that already planned on not going to work today!