AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

walking to mordor

I'm still doing Fitocracy, and especially the User-Created Quest Consortium, though not always with the same intensity as before. The attempt to do 5000 points in a single week at my fitness level kind of wiped out my desire for exercise for a couple of weeks.

Now I'm back, and it is because we are traveling to Mt. Doom to toss in the One Ring. This week's portion is 135 miles (it is listed as 125 on the site, but there was a bit of a correction in the comments). I got up early and jogged for 4 miles. It is a good thing that biking counts, because 19+ miles of running and walking a day would probably kill me by the end of the week. It's been a long time since I have done training to the level of the half marathon training of a couple of years ago.

Technically the quest allows you to split the distance between you and up to 8 companions (that's the amateur level), but I am pretty sure that with running, walking and the exercise bike/regular bike I will be able to do it on my own if I pace myself and get the bulk of the mileage during the work week.

I finished an interesting book at the beginning of the weekend (well, it might have been Thursday) that I have been meaning to write a review of. I'll probably post that either tomorrow or Wednesday.

today's experiment... huge success!

Today Chris and I went to see BU v. UMass hockey at Agganis Arena. I was already cold before we left the house, because I had been out earlier in the day.

Going out again I was almost an abominable snow-woman. I had on the normal unmentionables, jeans, regular socks and hand knit wool socks. I had on a long sleeve T shirt, a hockey jersey, a hooded sweat shirt and my jacket. I brought a scarf I knit in February and mittens I knit a few months ago.

The game was awesome. It went into overtime and was close after a disasterous opening period. Some of the BU students were dressed up for Halloween as well as some of the smaller children. There were some "nuns," a couple of penguins, a mascot-like thing, a few people with Rhett masks, a group of beauty queens, some sushi, and the 1%.

I broke out the mittens on the way home. Beautiful, warm mittens. They turned a long laborious trip home into an adventure, staving off the grumpy me with the happiness of not being cold. Of course, my socks didn't keep my feet 100% warm, but the mittens were golden.

Why this was golden? This weekend, despite not seeing any signage in the T stops I used during the week (Quincy Center, Ashmont, Kendall, South Station or Central), the MBTA was shuttling between Broadway and Kendall. This turned my hourlong trip to knitting into almost 2 hours. Our trip to hockey involved 2 busses and 2 different subway lines. Our trip home involved seeing a plethora of women dressed in their Slutty XXX costume of choice bemoaning the snow coming steadily down.

With more than enough weather gear, I enjoyed hockey and am no more than damp. I'm now enjoying a hot chocolate-like beverage, and thinking about relaxing for the remainder of the weekend.

a weekend in the kitchen

Oatmeal cookies with chocolate covered pomegranate arils, what is oldest from the CSA soup, and grapenut ice cream. I raked the front yard, and played on the internet.

It has been a good weekend, especially with squeaking out a win in this week's game. Of course, Mr. Victor has taken to having dreams about mail squirrel men in his sleep, and keeps waking us up at 1:30 barking and growling in his sleep. Last night we brought him (the husband) downstairs to his other crate and bed, so we could sleep through the rest of the night.

Grapenut Ice Cream (based on Epicurious recipe)

7 egg yolks (mine were tiny yolks from CSA eggs, so you can probably get away with 4-5 yolks)
1 cup whole milk
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup Grape Nuts

In a pot add the milk the milk and sugar. Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla bean and add those and the vanilla bean to the milk and sugar. Heat over medium until the milk starts to steam.

In a separate bowl separate the eggs. Whisk the egg yolks until thick and pale (well, paler). It should only take a minute or two.

When the milk is steaming, slowly ladle some of the milk into the eggs, whisking constantly. Pour the tempered eggs into the milk mixture, continuing to stir constantly with a wooden spoon. Cook until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Add vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, place the heavy cream. Pour the egg mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Discard the vanilla bean pod and stir to mix. I usually press the egg mixture through, but not enough to force any of the "scrambled" egg through. Chill for at least two hours or until the mixture no longer feels warm to the touch.

Process in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer's instructions. Add the Grape Nuts in about halfway through the processing time. In my machine last night, I added the Grape Nuts at the beginning and it took about 30-40 minutes to finish processing.

apparently my friends hate me

and I am passing the hate along.

 

After watching this train wreck, please remember it is me not you.

In completely unrelated news, I am working on a red scarf, have had a doctor's appointment for an infection resulting in a healthy woman looking like she was attacked by a vampire, and I am having a hard time sleeping, because Victor has been growling and barking in his sleep.

This weekend is going to be full of knitting and reading and cooking. It also needs to be full of cleaning. The rehearsal schedule isn't hard yet, but it has made me too tired to want to cook and clean and the kitchen shows it. Sad kitchen. It looks like a foodie tornado hit it, and I cannot make anything when it looks like that.

[10 Tuesday] on Thursday...

I'm stupid levels of competitive, so I've been doing this week's wisdom quest for Fitocracy in a way that seems to be eroding any actual wisdom I have. I want to get at least my share of the 20,000 points the group is accumulating, and that means heavy working out, lots of weight lifting (group weights of 100,000 pounds), tons of DDR, other dance or martial arts, and smaller exercises that I haven't tried yet like box jumps and burpees.

So, this weekend started off right. I did some awesome things.

1. Played in 2 D&D games. One of my characters leveled and has picked up her prestige class. The other character went from celebrating beer o'clock during a festival to having horrifying crap happen and now has an insanity point. Yippee!

2. Wove in ends. I finished weaving in all of the ends for the blanket on Friday. Now, I've been concentrating on Fitocracy so much that I haven't taken the time to block the remaining squares. Hopefully I'll get to that this weekend.

3. Biked from home to MIT and did the first "jogging" I've done in months. I'm slow and really out of shape and run much better on the treadmill.

4. Started a red scarf for the red scarf project. It is 100% baby llama in a wonderfully warm red. It is a staggered rib pattern and it will probably take 4 balls of yarn.

5. Made butternut squash linguine. This mostly resulted in the pasta having an orange color. I do not think there was enough squash in the pasta to do much to affect the flavor. It was still good. I need to make ravioli, because I made filling but did not turn any of the pasta dough into raviolis.

6. Washed Victor with both deskunking shampoo and a mix of hydrogen peroxide, water, dawn dish detergent and baking soda. Of course, I think he went back to the area where the spraying happened, because the smell isn't gone and I still have to figure out how to get it out of furniture.

7. Read a book. More like reread a book (for the umpteenth time). A passing comment has me back at the Tamora Pierce books.

8. Went to the knitters brunch and talked with a number of new people and a few regulars including a woman with the most gorgeous embroidery (she uses a water soluable fabric marker to draw out her pattern and goes from there. It is awesome).

9. Raked. My husband and I have started our annual combat the frisking leaves that fall all over the lawn. In 50 minutes, we didn't even get a third of the back yard done. Sometimes I think we have too much yard. Mostly when we are in the middle of yard work projects like this.

10. Sang. The poor people on the train have been early morning captives of my rehearsing strategy. Thankfully the train is loud and most people wear headphones. Otherwise, I'm sure someone would complain about hearing With heart and with voice over and over and over again. I did figure out how easy it was to make a playlist for my iPod on the fly, so now I'm just listening to songs that involve the men's chorus.

Randomly, theater is dangerous. When I did Sweeney Todd, some people were hurt on the slide for the barber's chair. This time around I am trying to see how much bruising I can get in a single blocking session. My record appears to be this:

We avoided cat cow during yoga yesterday, so I wouldn't need to be on the knee.

Apparently my knee is no longer used to kneeling. Stupid knee. Of course, I bruise really easily so it isn't the only bruise I have. Just the biggest.

Victor's bad day

Victor's bad day started with a good night turned wrong...

See, I was so excited, because there were all of these people over and most of them like to pet me, and there is the guy who has the best feet. After they left, I got to run outside in the back yard. I love running. There are birds sometimes and moles and other animals. I love to try to get them all.

My favorite-est animals are cats. I live with a cat, but she is always hissing. It is funny and I am going to be her best friend. So, I saw this cat and I wanted to be friends. She was a really interesting cat with a strange purring sound and these racing stripes. I thought that would make her fast, but she kind of waddles. She didn't like it when I came up to investigate.

Bam! Right in the face. I was all right and the smell was mostly interesting, so I was going to try to introduce myself again when Momma came out and called my name. That made me pause, but the cat was much more interesting. Momma was by the side of the house and she told me to leave it. I hate leaving cats, but I love treats more. I came running up to the house and Momma said I smelled.

She wiped my face off with paper towels and they sprayed the couches with this stinky spray and went to bed leaving me downstairs! I hate being downstairs by myself all night. Last night was bad.

But the morning looked much better. I was outside for a long time while Momma and Daddy opened windows and put in the fans again and used a lot of nice smelling spray. Momma left the house for hours and shortly after she came home my day went from OK to horrid.

This is not the treat I was hoping for!

I got a bath! I was outside with a leash on and no treats in sight (normally Daddy has the treat, which makes bathtime OK). It was worse than a normal bath, because it was like two baths! First Momma washed me with a sponge and the soapy peroxide thing. She kept stopping me from shaking it all off. Then there was the hose. I don't like getting rinsed, but I thought I was done. No! She made me stay there while she got out the funny shampoo and washed me and washed me and washed me. I was out there forever! She eventually rinsed me again and then we went inside and played with a towel. I got all wiped and got to shake. Shaking is awesome!

But still no treat.

Wait, wait. She's getting up. She didn't forget. Nope, nope! TREAT!

block party

I've never actually lived in neighborhoods with block parties, so when I say block parties more accurately I'm talking about blocking.

I am in the interminable stage in a knitting project. First I am weaving in ends. 560 ends, excepting the times when I forgot the pattern and cut the yarn too soon and added additional ends to the mix.

I'm hoping to weave in all the ends and have the squares all blocking by Saturday morning. While I can go to the knitter's brunch on Saturday and weave in more ends, I'll have a bit more fun if I do the slogathon before work, at lunch, and after work and see if I can get them all done. Two (sometimes 3 if I am especially lucky) squares an hour.

Yup. I have finished all of the squares for the Mitred Crosses blanket, and if I were a smart person I would have woven in ends as I went along.

So, needless to say no one was terribly close to the date I'm going to finish the blanket. The closest was my friend, Eeeeka, who is not a knitter and decided she didn't want the prize. So, the next closest date was September 15 from Marsha!

The second winner was randomly selected from all of the remaining entrants (including my mom, who posted on Facebook, and Katrina who commented on another post). That winner is Mrspao.

All of the winners have been emailed, and while the blanket isn't technically done yet I couldn't in good conscience linger over this once the knitting itself was done. Especially as I have actually been a good doobie and started weaving in ends even if it is the least fun part of the project.