I have today off from work, which so far has been a mixed blessing. I'm getting to cook and knit and drink coffee, which are three of my favorite activities. However, I'm getting extra dog walking, and dog cleaning up after (he has discovered that the kitchen is a fun place, and now the big baby gate is back up to keep him out of fun land while I reorganize the kitchen to keep fun things away, away, away).
Right now I'm working on a batch of ice cream, which if I make the custard mixture tonight should allow me to churn the batch tomorrow. I really do love ice cream. One of my friends goes to an ice cream con each year. I'm thinking that we will need to save our pennies to go next year, because I love the ice cream too much to not make a good faith attempt at tastiness! Between that and wanting to save up for Squam and Rhinebeck, I think I have all of the travel I could ever want for next year!
Outside of cooking, I am also trying to be a more consistent crafter. I will work on something for weeks and then I'll set it aside for something different, something fun or more exciting or whatever, and then the project lies there. I might still want it, but it is now fallow and it is hard to get back to it then. My Olympics sweater is like that. I stopped working on it, and probably won't go back to it until August!
I finished my mini challenge sweater with the Loopy Ewe on Tuesday and blocked it Wednesday. It is dry, but I probably won't take finished photos until I wear it to work next week (I did try it on before weaving the ends in and blocking over a t-shirt styled shirt, so I know it fits and is long enough). After I finished my mini-challenge sweater I moved onto the UFO pile.
What am I working on now? I have restarted the dress that my husband kitted for me for Christmas 2007. Thank goodness for Ravelry, making it easier to figure out not so much where I started but what issue of Vogue Knitting the dress was in. Super slow going, because the lace pattern is really wide. I've restarted this on the sleeves to both get them out of the way and to get back into the swing of things.
I also went back to my Pomatomus socks, which I started in September 2008. I finished the first sock yesterday and immediately cast on for the second one during my commute home. Go second sock, Go! I'm hoping to get reasonably far along with this over the weekend, but these are also complicated enough that I don't want to knit these when hanging out with friends. Of course, that means starting a new project (in lieu of finding another old project that is in the simple category). Windsor Button just got in some of the Brown Sheep lace weight. It's only a little more expensive than buying 2 skeins of the Classic Elite Silky Alpaca lace, but for that price you get a monster 170 gram skein with 1500 yards. In the skein (and the cake once it was wound), it feels wonderfully squishy and soft. It is enough yarn to make 2 copies of Whisper if you are small enough, or one Whisper and a lace scarf or shawlette. I'm looking forward to starting that sometime today, so I can knit it when hanging out with friends tonight, at Knit in Public day tomorrow and other fun social events that would make knitting pretty problematic. Horray!
