AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

zzzzz....

This past weekend felt like a whirlwind.  I cooked, but not as much as I like.  I knit, but not quite as much as I like (close though, very close).  I hung out with friends more than I normally get to, which was splendid.  I played a new game and a few old games and what felt like lots of Blokus.  And more than anything else, I stayed up way past my bedtime.

I finished Lover Eternal and Dime Store Magic.  I enjoyed both of them, though I think that Lover Eternal was the more coherent story.  Funny, because it is not like Dime Store Magic was complicated at all!

This morning I left for work a bit later than normal.  I let in two guys from Anderson Insulation to do their best and their worst to our home.  I've got my fingers crossed that Saru-chan isn't overly traumatized by the end of the day, that they had to do less interior drilling than they expected, and that the job is done.  I don't particularly want to wait around until 8 a.m. for people to show up, even when they are people I want to show up (if that makes any sense).  I think it is the strange hovering sensation I get when I know I'm waiting for someone. 

This morning before I started my hover waiting dance I baked brownies and brushed them hot out of the oven with bourbon.  I'm hoping to frost them and dip them in chocolate (not necessarily in that order) tonight.  Of course, this isn't what I want to be baking.  My brain has been trying to build gingerbread houses.  It's not something I've made before, which is part of the allure I'm sure.  I blame food network.  Stupid gingerbread house challenge.

mailing packages

I am really bad about mailing things out.  I have two cards with letters in them that are over a month old (letters I wrote in mid-October).  Today won't be any different in that regard.  It is cold and wet outside, with an icy rain that cuts through my layers of clothing in a wink.  If I'm not going running, an activity that will keep me warm, then I'm probably not going to the post office either.

Thankfully tomorrow's weather is supposed to be if not warmer at least a bit drier.  I won't need to worry about whether or not the packaging will be soaked through before I get the packages sent off.  One of these packages is really important though, and I cannot delay any later than Saturday.

Yup.  Finally have the Red Scarf finished.  It's been washed, blocked and I just trimmed the woven in ends this morning.  I have a gift card and a little note to send along. 

This was my second attempt at working with Rowan Calmer.  Actually, attempt is the wrong word.  Experience.  The first time I knit with Calmer it was a beige yarn being knit for baby hats.  A fun experience in a less than fun color.  Color is important to me as a knitter and I have a harder time getting excited by a beige project than something in bold interesting colors.  This scarf, which I started sometime this summer, was a much better experience.

I bought the yarn at my first trip to Snow Goose, a cute shop in Milton.  I loved going there, and have been avoiding going back.  It's too nearby to give my bank account any piece, at about a 30 minute walk away.  It is safer to go to Windsor Button, which is deadly close to work, because there I do not have a lot of browsing time.  It's either the short space I allow over my lunch break (because I like to have my lunch too) or the single hour a week they are open after I get off work.  Not that I don't manage to get into enough trouble with the short trips for yarn. 

I was a little worried that the two skeins wouldn't really be enough for a scarf, so after I finished blocking it I hung it on a hanger in my craft closet.  I'm not sure that it lengthened the scarf out any, but it at least made me feel a little better.  It's just not as short as I thought it was.

So, tomorrow will be mailing day.  I have a scarf and a couple of letters that I should get out the door, and maybe I'll become a fast enough knitter in the meantime to start and finish another one in under two weeks.

3 minutes

The mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots is done and just waiting for us to eat it.  I have three pies (2 for sharing and one will stay home) and soon the dog show will be on television.  I'm a sucker for the doggie shows, something that I'm not sure will change after I have a doggie.

I have a pair of fingerless mitts that I started as an alternative to needing to deal with a colorwork chart while cooking.

The casualties. One finger, well wrapped in bandaids, that was the victim of friendly fire when I was cutting the caramelized shallots up to include in my mashed potatoes.

All in all, a good day, if a little ouchie.

the luckiest

Yesterday as I was walking to work I realized I am the luckiest woman alive.  This weekend was great.  I got to hang out with people, cook, read books and knit.  All of the things I like to do best spread over two days without any of the annoying bits.  No petty arguments, no recipe failures, none of that general miasma that you sometimes get when you just don't know what you want to do, but you know you aren't doing it now (I can't be the only one who feels that way sometimes).  Better yet, I got fun mail on both Friday and Saturday.

Saturday night I started the socks for the exchange.  I'm past the heel now of sock one, and am enjoying the process.  I'm working toe up, which is not my common sock method (if I don't want to think at all it is always top down).  It was my first time working the Judy's magic cast on, and it was easier than I was expecting.  This is also my first time working with Vesper yarn, which I've seen online but never had picked any up.  I love the vibrant colors and better yet, I forgot how simple and endlessly entertaining self striping yarn can be.

Now, I'm working the Gusset Heel Basic socks from Socks from the Toe Up, and I really should have checked for Errata.  Everything about the gusset (well, not quite everything) I did was wrong.  I think that is OK, because if I followed Wendy's instructions I would have had a much bigger heel and my sock would have been over 10 inches long.  Instead of the instructions or the Errata'd instructions, I worked the gusset to the 30 stitches mentioned and then the center purl of the turned heel was 12 stitches (22 free stitches on each side of the heel).  I think I will remember this for when I get that far, but there is no use taking chances.  Even with undoing a huge chunk of heel yesterday on my way home I still managed to make a heel that looks correct.

The socks I'm making are a little bit bigger than I'm used to (actually, I had the same problem when I was making socks for my mother in law, whose feet were smaller in length but bigger around the instep and the ankle).  I've never been completely comfortable with measuring for socks, but my feet are narrow (9 inches over the ankle bone) and I wear my socks with a ton of negative ease.  I remember my first trekking socks, which were also the first socks I made that felt like they actually fit.  They were like midget socks and I wondered if they would actually go over my ankle!  So, here is to hoping that my gauge and my math-ing have resulted in socks that are the correct size!  Not too big and not so much negative ease that they feel uncomfortably tight!

a little bit of everything

I've finished reading Stolen by Kelley Armstrong, made 44 clove (or more) garlic soup and a winter fruit salad, and figured out how the lawn mower that sucks up leaves is supposed to work. Other than the mower thing being about a month and a half too late, I would be willing to say this is a good day.

Now I'm going to take a break and work on some sock knitting and debate where my smu is going next.

the geek in me finds this funny

I have D&D tomorrow evening (garlic soup, because we're hunting undead).  I'm going to either knit during the dead spaces, like when the party rogue goes scouting, or I will be helping a friend with one of her orders by removing worn out velcro.  Hrm.  Must remember seam ripper.

I guess I could find some wood and start whittling.  It would be awfully funny to have the game within a game pan out for even a few minutes.

Thursday night after work I went to Windsor Button (again, I swear I don't actually live there).  I bought another ball of crochet cotton, a skein of yarn to finish a scarf, and a couple of skeins that I was going to combine to make a hat with a cute reversible band.  I will be knitting, cooking and smu-ing until my husband gets home from his game.  It will be nice to have a quiet night at home.

Failure!

click for bigger

I was checking out a restaurant the other day, and wanted to see if there were any busses running from the area.  Well, no such luck with that.  If you are in Boston and at 355 Congress Street (near-ish to South Station) then you are apparently the equivalent to off the coast of Africa.

They are using Google Maps, but I still feel this has to be an MBTA fail.  If I just enter the address in to Google Maps, then it shows me the correct street in Boston.  Just a bit of bizarro for the day.

pretties

I saved my old theme and updated my blog using Chroma, TypePad's new layout design/tool/thing.  I like the idea of having a few themes that I can just swap around on a whim, and while I could do this with the custom theme builder it is nice to just load a new picture, choose some colors and go kablamo. 

Of course, I might decide I hate the entire thing in a week, or more importantly other people will hate it.  I don't really look at my front page very often.  So, for now there is a heavily Photofiltre'd picture of the waters off of Half Moon Cay.  Nothing to do with the blog and everything to do with entering the lands of late fall and winter.

Chroma Pluses:
1.  Quick and Simple
2.  Clear Design
3.  Larger writing / image space

I don't know what the cons are, but for the moment it is the lack of options.  It would be nice to still be able to do at least a limited version of the content layout that is available on the custom theme builder or to have the image and sidebar stuff on the right instead of the left.

Now onto funner things (or something).  I've been reading Bitten (Kelley Armstrong).  While it is fairly well written for some reason I don't find it as compelling a read as Dark Lover (JR Ward).  It might be possibly the steam factor or the first person narrative style.  It's the style I'm writing, but it just doesn't feel as gripping.  When you are reading, are there certain points of view that make the book easier or more fun to read?  I'm starting to feel that there is for me at least.  Of course, I have the next Armstrong book out as well, so I'll see if it grows on me.

a break from the baking

I do a lot of baking, but like most activities it goes in waves.  Right now my schedule has been knit, knit, bake, smu.  By the end of the month it will look more like: smu, smu, eat, smu, smu, sleep.  The joys of NaNoWriMo.

This giant cookie is just that.  I found a recipe at allrecipes.com, but really any good cookie recipe will do.  Your cookie will be a bit thicker than normal and just spread the cookie dough out in the pizza pan until it is between two inches and an inch from the edge of the pan.  Mine ran a little onto the ridge of the pan, but it came off all right with only a little cracking (which isn't even visible in the photo).

One of the many suggestions for this is to make two slightly less gigantic cookies by spreading the batter in two 9 inch cake rounds.  Doing this could make one delicious mondo cookie sandwich.  Yummy!

I've been very lucky this month.  I have been donating to the Red Scarf Project¹ (and my scarf is soaking in water now before being spun cycled to dryness and blocking).  Norma is spearheading another fundraising drive for the project and has some fabulous prizes donated from all over knitterdom.  

I went to look at the site over the weekend, because she is still doing daily (or near daily) updates and found out that I won the beautiful mega sock prize.  Between that and the great sock exchange that I'm doing with another knitter, I am awash in knitterly goodness.

¹I was not a child in the foster care system, but when I went off to college my parents didn't send care packages or anything like that.  Being left on your own, especially as a first generation college student, can be very lonely.  The packages help show that you are still important and loved when everyone and everything you know feels so far away.  I always felt very lonely when people in my dorm got packages especially around the holidays and Valentines.  So, I can imagine how special receiving something as simple as a scarf with a gift card for a little something nice - restaurant, fast food, iTunes, etc. can be.

smu-pdate

NaSmuWriMo is still going strong sort of.  I'm desperately behind, but haven't run out of story which is more important.  I have retyped the first 30 pages (handwritten and double spaced) into the file, and I'm somewhere past 46 pages written.  Of course, that means I am just about where I was supposed to be at the end of last weekend.  This week will be a lot of writing.  Tons of writing.  Days of writing.  Not exactly a surprise. 

This weekend was pretty typical for me.  Saturday was baking for the last of the celebrations for my husband's birthday.  We got together with a group of friends and went to see the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science.  It was a lot of fun, though I am really bad with crowds.  Afterwards we went back to our place for dinner stuff and a Giant Cookie.  There were presents and the presentation of the best birthday card ever.  We played games, including Zombie Fluxx and Monty Python Fluxx.  The winning game for me though was playing a sort of Encore Light game.  A person would think of a word in a song and the other team would have to think of a song with that word in it.  There was no back and forth, but if the team couldn't think of a song with the word then they could challenge and the other person needed to sing part of the song that included the word. 

I was a bit chintzy.  I'm the only one that does a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan, so I used taradiddle.  I love that word, and they used it a lot (if both Ruddigore and Iolanthe are a lot). 

This morning I wrote smu and then alternated between writing smu and working on another chocolate peanut butter cake.  This one is the shallow Buckeye Cake from the Nestle Meal site.  I've made it before, but this time I replaced the ganache with the chocolate peanut butter ganache from last week's cake.  I'm going to bring it to work tomorrow, because it is just not safe to have that much cake sitting in my fridge.

Now it is time for loathing and maybe some more smu before bed.  It's been a tiring weekend.