Cattywampus

A Columbus Day list

1. I went to Denver for a conference.  It was pretty there, the food was good, and we found a fabulous yarn store where I purchased too many things.  (Not THAT much, but considering I didn't need ANYTHING, it was too much)  They had Mini Mochi...I've never seen it in person before!  SO FUN.

So fun that I got two colors...  :-)

2.  I started a sweater for Scott for xmas, Rene by Anne Hanson, the v neck pullover version.  I am knitting it in Berroco Vintage because he thinks 100% wool is hot, and this way he can wash it without fear of ruining it in some way, which I think will allow him to wear it more.  I got about 7 inches done on the way to & from Denver.  Considering we're in October, I'm happy with that.

I have made him two other sweaters, but more at the beginning of my knitting and this one should look quite a bit more "ready to wear" than homemade.  He does wear the others around the house, but not out - but I don't wear the sweaters I knit 5 years ago out either...so we'll see.

3.  The Swirl is coming along.  Here it is a week or so ago.

And here it is now.  

Progress is happening, and it's AMAZING how fast those 300 stitch rows go compared to the 600+ stitch rows at the very beginning!  I am a bit concerned about yarn usage, but nothing to do but keep on knitting and keep my fingers crossed.  Also, it looks a little small, I assume extreme blocking will happen because of the laceweight in there, but still...a little nervewracking.

I am having SO much fun knitting this that I already bought yarn to make one of the other Swirls in the book (see Denver yarn shopping above).

4.  It is fall in the Poconos.

Fall is just so very pretty in the country, in the city it doesn't look like much at all.

5. Duke is still hanging in there.  Right now we seem to be at an uneasy truce with the cancer.  His lymph nodes are not getting any bigger (he is on a chemo regimen that we give at home), and he is still himself and not in any pain (as far as we can tell, he acts like normal other than a few side effects from the drugs he's on).  We've been here for 4 months, and they had given him 6 months 4 months ago, so I assumed he would be starting to decline by now.  

The vet says it is possible, but unlikely, that we can hold the cancer at bay for a year or more, it all just depends on how his particular cancer responds to the drugs.  

So, I am taking nothing for granted, watching him like a mother hen for signs of Something Very Bad happening, but so far, we're just status quo.  I am too worried to let my guard down and think that we are in the unlikely set that can fend off the cancer indefinitely, but I am accepting that for now, he's comfortable, happy, and enjoying life, so I can stop being SO very anxious until he gives us a sign that he doesn't feel well anymore.

A buddy pic:

6. Cream cheese ice cream is amazing.  Thanks to Jodi for posting it as a suggestion.  I added cinnamon and allspice and a bit of vanilla extract to make it sort of apple pie flavoried, then I served it with crumbled graham crackers on top.  YUM.

7. I have Jury Duty tomorrow.  I don't mind it AS LONG AS I don't actually get picked to serve.  In a big place like Philly it's a pretty organized and crazy system, about 400+ people show up in the morning and get taken to a court for the selection process, then whoever isn't chosen gets bumped back to the main pool of people and the whole process starts over.  So in a regular 8 hour day I might get to sit through jury selection on as many as 3 or 4 trials.  It's interesting to be part of the process, and I get a lot of knitting done, so fingers crossed I don't actually get picked, and it won't be a bad day at all.

8. Christmas is just over 2 months away.  OMG.  Commence panic and planning.

9. I have a quilt ready to go, my not enough energy to complete it.

Maybe in a week or two.  I love the way quilt tops look with light behind them, all sort of glowy and luminscent.  It helps get a good sense for the color values too.

10.  Finally, a book review:  (it's been quite a while since anything has been good enough for me to post)

Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons

This book is very good, Simmons has a lot to say about the nature of evil and human nature and how those two things play both with and against each other. It was a little long for me, one too many "the bad guy isn't really dead" scenes, but he's really an extraordinary writer. One of the few authors I've run into who actually expands my vocab (along with China Mieville), it's nice, for change, to read a book isn't written for the lowest common denominator.

If you haven't read any Simmons, I would recommend checking him out, he has other books & series if this isn't to your taste.

 

A book review, some cooking, still no knitting

Over memorial day weekend we celebrated our 5th anniversary...I really can't believe it's been 5 years!!!  For our anniversary dinner I made a sausage and rice timbale and it was phenomenally delicious.

I'm not sure how all timbales are constructed, but this one was made by cooking risotto rice, mixing it with egg and cheese, and packing it around the edges of a spring form pan, filling the center with a sausage tomato sauce & then packing more rice on top and baking to set. 

I was really amazed at how well it held shape after I took off the spring form pan.  It was fun to make, creating the rice structure was very much like making a graham cracker crust for a cold pie, in other words...it involved much playing with my food. 

When you cut it open it looks like this:

And it was absolutely delicious!  According to my husband it tasted like high end restaurant food (he's no dummy, he knows how to go for the big points).  I don't know what level of food it tasted like, but it tasted realllllly, realllllllly good!  Basically I guess I'm saying that you shouldn't be intimidated by this (or any!) complicated recipe, it wasn't hard, it was pretty fun, and it was SO worth it!

Book Review:

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Like all of Jasper Fforde's series this world is filled with random rules that don't make sense to the reader and form a bizarre landscape that the main character is fighting his way through, making decisions that make no sense to the reader but make perfect sense in the world Fforde has created.

Fforde uses very little exposition and I really enjoy the way he drops the reader into the middle of these rather bizarre worlds and forces the reader to fend for him/herself in understanding the rules and preconceptions that the world is built upon.

Fun & enjoyable, forcing you to adjust the way you look at the world.

However, if you haven't read any Jasper Fforde before, I much more strongly recommend his Thursday Next series.  The first one is The Eyre Affair.  This series centers around a main character who is a literary detective because in this bizarre world people can go in and OUT of books, so characters escape from books and set themselves up in the real world but then are missing in all the copies of the book, sometimes she has to go INTO the book to solve some sort of crime or problem and she is written into the story...if you enjoy literature, bad puns, and puzzling your way through things that create paradoxes (paradoxi?), you will really enjoy this series. 

 

Practice, practice

When learning new things there is nothing to do but practice, as much as it pains me to admit it, it is indeed the truth.  None of us, or very few of us at least, are good at anything in the first go.  It takes a certain amount of persistence to keep going until you consider yourself at least competent at whatever it is you are trying to learn, and a good bit more to become proficient.

I consider myself reasonably proficient at knitting, but quilting I'm still working on.  I have been meaning to learn free motion quilting for quite some time, I finally picked up the right foot last weekend and I set out today to see if I could make that happen.

So, I did like the book said, and did a 'sampler'.

Certainly not great work, but enough for me to get the general idea.  I finished piecing a wall hanging this weekend, so I decided to dive right in.  Stippling, a sort of meandering stitch, seemed like the easiest thing to start with, so off I went.  I did okay.

On the right you can see where I tried the small, tighter stippling and did that half in separate squares, that was the first half, then I did the piece on the left, then I did the little loop-d-loops on the outside and sashing.  

I still have to put the binding on, but I ran out of steam to do that this weekend.  I was so obsessed with sewing that I didn't knit at all this weekend, so I think it's time to sit down and do that.

All in all I am relatively pleased with my first attempt at free motion quilting.

Something else that required a bit of practice this weekend:

We went on a segway tour of Philadelphia, one of those things we got for half price on groupon, it was quite cold for the tour (30s), my knitwear came in handy and even still my toes felt like little icecubes by the end of the tour.  They spent a good 30 minutes teaching us how to use them before we started on the tour, thank goodness for that.  Once I had the hang of it and we were on our way it was insanely fun, I would absolutely recommend it if you ever have the opportunity!  

I have this quilt ready to be quilted, but I am leery about moving from a wall hanging to this giant thing, maybe I'll work on on a friend's baby quilt next, that seems like it would be a good inbetween step before I get to this one.

Sorry, it's a little blurry, I just can't tell that they're blurry on my phone until it's too late.

Something completely random, cinnamon bun french toast!  It's just like regular french toast, except you use cinnamon buns sliced in half so they are the thickness of thick bread.  YUM.  

A list of sorts

I'm a bit manic right now because of some things going on at home & at work (all good, no worries, but I'm running in circles), so I'm going to fall back to the list format.

1.  Look Mom, I sewed!  I haven't had my sewing mojo for quite some time, it seems that when fall term starts and the students come in waves that I just lose all my energy for sewing, spring and nice weather bring it back.  Go figure.  It has happened 3 years in a row now, so at least I can be comfortable that there is a cycle and if I don't feel like sewing, it's okay, I will again soon.

I made a cover for my nookcolor!

I adore that fabric.  I bought the pattern on etsy from birdful stitches and I would recommend it, easy to follow and a lovely finished product.

The only thing I did differently was to use an elastic hairband in place of the fabric loop to hold it closed. 

It is most excellent, I do not have to take it out of the cover to do anything with it, and did I mention how happy the bright, flowered fabric makes me???

2.  It is theoretically possible that I will finish this Christmas quilt before next Christmas, but nobody hold their breath.

3. Pixie is fuzzy and cute.  Wait, that wasn't one of my things.  Sorry.

4.  Deep fried oreos with homemade cookies and cream icecream.  Judge if you'd like, but I finished every bit and I would order it again.

5.  Thanks to a recommendation from Jodi, whom I trust in this matter implicitly because she lives in a much colder, snowier and windier place than I do, I purchased a pair of Sorel snow boots.  Because I finally have practical snow boots, it will not snow another inch this year, and actually that's okay with me.

And they're cute too, toasty warm with cute shoes, what more could a girl ask for?

Something New

I picked up one of my personal sock kits this weekend, found that it was the Kenkyo pattern, and I came really close to putting it back and picking up a different one.  

I love this sock, I think it's gorgeous, and I bought the pattern a year or two ago, but every time I picked up the pattern to try to knit it I found the whole thing so overwhelming that I put it back.  

The reason is this:  in order to knit this sock I had to learn Japanese twisted cable stitches.

But this weekend, I didn't put it back, I sat down with the all knowing interwebs and my pattern determined to learn how to do this.  I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again, sometimes being really stubborn turns out to be a very handy personality trait.

And voila - here it is, I messed up a bit at the beginning, but I certainly wasn't going to go back and fix it.  I am loving it, it requires complete concentration and it is insanely fiddly, but it is FUN.

I hope you can see the detail, it is much clearer in real life, I'm not sure why it is so obscured in this picture.

A random recipe:  Pecan Pie Muffins.  I think they're only called muffins because they're not iced.  They would be amazing with cream cheese icing.

These are soooo easy and sooooo good, like somehow someone poured pecan pie into a mini cake form.  Totally YUM.

Thanks for your feedback regarding book blurbs/reviews, I will start to post them here as well. 

I will leave you with some beauty from our snowstorm this past week.

Of Puppies, Goals and other things

Duke has had all his bandages removed and is doing fine.

He thanks you very much for your good wishes. We went for the visit with the oncologist last week, his prognosis is much better than we were originally told.  I cannot possibly express how much joy this brings us both, and Pixie too, tho she has no idea what's going on.  His cancers both came out 'clean', so no radiation therapy, they are mid-level dangerous, so they are being sent off for additional testing to determine if chemotherapy is recommended.  And where they had originally told us 3-6 months, now they are telling us 2-3 years with a watchful eye for any new tumors that might pop up.  I am incredibly grateful for advanced veterinary care!

In my effort to buy less yarn this year I managed to stymie an impulse purchase yesterday.  I was intending to go to Vogue Knitting Live with friends, but that got canceled at the last minute because someone was feeling under the weather and we decided it would be more fun to go to NYC together at a later date than to leave someone behind this weekend.  So of course I had been planning on buying yarn there, my thoughts immediately turned to buying yarn HERE.  Instead I redirected myself to find something fun in my stash and cast on for an impulse PROJECT, much better than an impulse BUY.

The impulse project was a pair of socks  for DH (who I am fairly sure gave up on reading my blog last year some time, if he didn't, um...SURPRISE!) for Valentine's Day.  He had asked for another pair of socks, but the idea of another never ending pair of fingering weight socks was not appealing to me at all, so I found this SPORT weight yarn from Briar Rose and decided they would make a seasonally appropriate Valentine's Day gift.

Once I started knitting they were sort of addicting, this is a broken rib stitch, my favorite go to stitch for socks, it breaks up the color just enough to prevent flashing or pooling.  I knitted them bottom up to get the most mileage I could out of the yarn and used the Widdershins heel.  The Widdershins heel allows you to put a slip stitch heel on toe up socks, it's reallllly clever.

The reason I decided that he did, in fact, deserve another pair of socks this winter and shouldn't wait until NEXT winter is that my final Christmas present arrived in the mail this week.

He had told me there was something that was delayed, but he had already been really generous so subconsciously I was expecting something small, a book or something, but what he handed me was this.

This is two skeins of Sweet Georgia laceweight cashmere silk blend in Blackberry.  This is NOT an afterthought gift.  

It was on my wishlist, he didn't come up with it on his own, but still, he is SUCH a sweetheart.

800 yards of gorgeousness.  I am considering making this lovely stole called Evening with it, but I'm not going to jump into anything, I want to make sure I pick just the right pattern to go with this lovely yarn.  

As a random sidenote, I made bread this afternoon (the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day kind) and I knew something went wrong, it took WAY too much additional flour to get to the right consistency, but I couldn't figure out what happened.  Finally, about an hour into its rise I realized that the odd thought I had when filling the measuring cup the second time 'huh, is that right?  seems like a lot of water' that led me to double check the recipe, was because I was using a 2 cup measuring cup, so instead of putting 2 3/4 cups of water in, I put 3 3/4 water in, so presumably another 2 cups of flour, but the amount of yeast, salt, and other ingredients for the regular amount of flour and water.  I am not optimistic about this bread dough, but I can't bring myself to throw it away without at least trying it first.  Sigh.  

The last float in the FO parade

And rounding things up nicely is Kerrera aka George.  (as in, I will love it and pet it and I will call it george).  This is pear tree yarn, oh sooooo squishy and soft, I'm not sure it will hold up very well and I absolutely don't care.  (I say that now, wait until I have to get the little pill shaver thing out)

This pattern was wonderful to follow, any mistakes are my own idiocy (like forgetting the short rows in the hood).  I did have that little button band issue, but I'm chalking that up to a gauge problem, I went back and picked up 2 out of 3 stitches all the way around and used a needle one size smaller and it came out perfect.

I made it a bit shorter than the pattern called for b/c I'm a bit shorter than your average person (5'2"), and I think it's a good thing I did b/c I only had about 1/4 of a skein left.  Yeesh!

Now, when is going to get cold enough to really wear it????

My mother came to visit this weekend, we had a wonderful if very short visit, and we made these little apple pies.  There is very little in life that is better than homemade apple pie.

Sadly, my mother had to leave this morning, but I have apple pie left to have for lunch, so I'll take that as my consolation prize.

I am enjoying a day off today, a day to do laundry and get caught up around the house before the work week starts again.  And of course, a day to knit!

Pictureless

Work has been busy lately, we're on quarters so we just started last week.  I feel like my summer disappears in orientations and then registration, and finally by the time classes start it's fall and I the last thing I really remember, it was June.

This weekend was a weekend of recovery.  I could use a week of recovery, but who couldn't?

I spent a lot of time knitting.  Knitting a button band that is probably wrong (pictures with explanation at a later date b/c I'm sure as heck am not ripping it out BEFORE I block it on the very slim chance it's actually right), fixing another pair of socks, weaving in endless ends (ha!) on my fingerless mitts.

Ooh, not pictureless, I have a picture of them!

I adore these.  They are Minnesota Mittens from the Folk Mittens book, double stranded except for the fingers & thumb, and I really hope they do a better job of keeping my digits warm this winter.  They also match my hat, in a non-matchy sort of way.  They are slightly different sizes because I made one last winter and one last week, you can tell if you look at the cuff, the one on the right is longer than the one on the left, but they're mine and I defy anyone to walk up on the subway and laugh and point b/c my mitten cuffs are two different lengths.  I will poke them with my signature dpns, and then who will be laughing???  Actually, maybe everyone, because that's a fairly amusing image.

(hah!  look, two pictures!)

And next up is a scarf that will be in the same colors, but also non-matchy. 

The only other exciting thing that happened this weekend (other than lots of sleep) is that i made Vodka Sauce for the first time.  I love that Pioneer Woman, she has some really good recipes.  I had NO idea vodka sauce was that easy.  Also, I made more garlic knots to go with it, if I'm going to cook with heavy cream, why not throw in too much butter with a side dish?  

I made the mistake of going on the Tom Bihn group on Rav for kicks & giggles yesterday and ended up back at the Tom Bihn website considering buying another Swift in Crimson.  I think Crimson would be better for fall, don't you?  Hmf.  I know I don't NEED two of the same bags in different colors, but the purple is getting slightly boring and I love the bag still, no desire to try something new.  Maybe if I destash enough stuff and just wait until I have enough money from destash to buy it.  Someone on Rav has offered to take the purple one off my hands, but I'm not sure I want to actually get rid of it yet.  It would be fun to go back & forth, and of course whichever one I'm not carrying to work would make a great knitting bag.

Speaking of, I have quite a few things in the destash if you want to take a look.

And speaking of destash, I realized last week I had sold enough stuff that I could purchase something with the money (this was before I decided I needed another swift) and have ordered some BFL sport from Lisa Souza.  A bit of a splurge, but since all the money for the purchase was from destashing, I think it's perfectly justified.  There will absolutely be pictures when that comes in, loveliness!

Happy Monday, happy rainy, sleepy, wish I had the day off, Monday.

Aftermath

Well, Christmas is over.  All the preparing, the knitting, the choosing of gifts, the cooking, the decorating, the wrapping, the mailing, the month and then some of preparation and POOF.  24 hours later, it's gone.

But wasn't it wonderful?  I was for me, I hope it was for you as well!  And of course if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you enjoyed a relaxing day doing something you like!

We started out with a Christmas eve dinner of Sausage and White bean gratin, of course I didn't remember to take pictures of any of the food to share.  DH and I exchanged a portion of presents xmas eve because we had to be out of the  house bright and early in the a.m. (bright and early for Christmas day, not for a regular day)

He gave me an ipod nano, in red, which I wanted but is one of those (product red) things so it was a little more expensive and I never would have forked over the extra cash for it myself.  He even had it engraved on the back "As You Wish."  Seriously.  I cried.  (from the Princess Bride, in case you are unfamiliar)

 

So cute!  And now I won't have fight with my phone anymore.  I have been using it for podcasts on the way to work, but it loses my place, randomly restarts episodes, and in general makes me want to scream at it's ineffectiveness - none of which is good for anyone when this happens before I've had coffee.

Christmas morning we exchanged the rest of our gifts - dh completely shocked me with two of the Yarn Harlot's Christmas recommendations - the knit klips to clip things together while you are seaming, and a sweater bag for the laundry.  I had been forwarding those to him for fun, but I didn't really expect to get any of those.  I do love him.

Another huge surprise was the complete series of both Angel AND Buffy.  Holy crap!  He knew I was going through them one disc at a time on Netflix, of course, and that I would check my amazon gold box to see if someone the price had miraculously dropped to $25 a set or something, but I never expected this!

 

I am EXCITED!!  I can watch them whenever I want, as much as I want, without having to wait 4 days for the next disc.  Hooray!  Again I say - sweetest man ever.

Last but not least, the glaring red background of the nano shot.

 

A kindle!!!  Hooray!  I went back and forth and forth and back between the kindle and the nook and I finally settled on the kindle - for two reasons - 1. if I wanted it for xmas that was my only option and 2. it's not a new product, amazon has been doing this for a while and I trust them.  Not to say that barnes and noble  can't do it or that the nook won't be awesome, just that right now it's all promises and sweet talk and I wasn't willing to jump on the wagon yet.  

It's super fun, I have downloaded a book, loaded up some pdfs and I am good to go!

 

Knitting pdfs on my kindle!  When I travel I will have a back up of my pattern!  That makes me happy.  As does the ability to read while I knit.

So basically, I got a nano to listen to while I knit, dvds to watch while I knit, and a kindle to read while I knit.  Either that or I'm a little delusional thinking it's all about the knitting.

Anyway.  We were off to my grandmother's bright and early to arrive there in time to visit for a while before dinner.  It was wonderful to see her and we had a wonderful time chatting with her and the other family we sat with.  We don't get down to see her enough, it's hard sometimes to fit those visits in, but we need to do it more.

After lunch there we were flying back home to prep the house for my mother's visit, she arrived mid-afternoon.  More gifting commenced!

 

A DellaQ DPN case, I have been in desperate need of DPN storage and this is perfect!  Also, the Knit Kit which will be perfect for travel (I think maybe I don't travel as much as I think I do, but it's good to be prepared at any rate). Also there was some china to go with my set, but that's not very exciting for the blog, so I didn't take pictures.

And on the other side I believe all of my gifts were well received and will be enjoyed, which makes me even happier than getting such awesome stuff!

After that, dinner commenced, involving some appetizers (shrimp cocktail, antipasti), homemade bread with proscuitto, parmesan and rosemary, (here is where the salad would be if we hadn't decided we didn't have room for salad), some pork braciole browned and then baked in marinara sauce served with pasta.  All of which would have been delicious if the braciole hadn't been stuffed with 50% salt.  I couldn't even eat them, the sauce they had been cooked in was almost too salty to eat.  Oh well, I guess I've learned my lesson there, I will have to learn to stuff my own braciole if I want to know for sure that they will be good.  

But who cares?  A wonderful 24 hours with family and (mostly) good food, I couldn't be happier!

In knitting news, I am making progress on the back of Sprossling, the test knit for Anne, I am not as far along as I would like to be, but it's coming.

 

I also picked up the pi shawl that I started months ago and that I intend to have done for our trip to belgium in May.  I really better get moving on it if I intend to be able to bring it with me!  I don't even remember what I got sidetracked on the last time, but I will try not to let that happen again.

And now, back to our regular programming.  (Except that I'm not going back to work until NEXT monday and OH BOY am I thrilled about that!)

Almost

I have two more FOs this week!  Woot!

I finished Scott's Mitts, he was unimpressed by the idea of an action shot in the snow (OMG the snow!) we got over the weekend.  So here they are!

 

Pattern cobbled together from many different places, did you know not one single flip top mitten pattern has a men's XL?  Men's medium - lots, men's large - some, XL - not at all.  Do the authors think that we just won't knit for them b/c it's too time consuming?  Heavens, if we knit them socks we will certainly knit them mitts!

I did, in case you were wondering, write it down IN DETAIL so I can duplicate them the next time he needs a pair without all that work.  Hooray for not thinking I'll just remember it next time!

I also finished my goddaughter's baby brother's sweater.

 

I am happy with this except for that yellow button.  I don't want to talk about it.  I had 5 green buttons.  I made 5 button holes.  I had a disagreement with the couch that let to confiscation of a button.  I know it looks OKAY, it's a kid's sweater, who cares?  BUT I HAD 5 BUTTONS.  I did!  Really!!  GRRRRR.

Pattern: Childhood, in Berocco Vintage (which I liked and would totally recommend).  I have yarn enough to make one for his big sister, but that was not meant to be by Christmas.

Now I know you are just dying to see pictures of our snow (23"), so here are a few amusing puppy pics.

 

 

The snow was definitely taller than the dogs.  Still is, in fact.  Pixie loved it, bounced around like a little bunny, but for Duke it was his personal version of hell.  It's cold and wet and attacks you from all sides and gets between your toes and your sister jumps on you and knocks you over and it's HORRIBLE.  Torture.   
 
 Since we were snowed in on Saturday and all plans were canceled I had a snow day to knit, I finished off the two projects above and made some progress on the sweater I'm test knitting, pics later on that, but I'm really happy with the way it's turning out.

On Sunday I decided to make baklava - which I was going to make for our get together saturday night and I was antsy to try out the recipe I had.  

 

So I made it.  OMG.  It's like crack.  I don't even know how to explain to you how good it is.  If you haven't made it - try it!  It was much easier than I thought and OMG it's so much better than any store bought stuff you've had.

Sunday night I made Shepherd's Pie, the only version I've ever made successfully.  (The first time I tried to  make it I set the oven on fire - for real - but we won't talk about that either.)  

 

I'm not sure if I'll get back here before Christmas, so Happy whatever-holiday-you-celebrate, happy solstice, and have a great week!