Dog versus Junior Bacon Cheeseburger

To keep you amused while I drag Pants to Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.
(warning: contains graphic images of a dog eating food)

Also? After 14 months of couch-free living, the new sofa will be delivered hopefully within a week. Woo!

Three Eyebrows are the New Two Eyebrows

Thanks, waxerlady.  I was hoping to have a giant, gaping hole in the middle of my left eyebrow.

My head just imploded

I don't know what to make of the second picture.

And we have bread!

I was all set to have a weeks, months, years long saga of the quest for gluten-free bread that would have the taste, feel, appearance of wheat, rye or otherwise gluten-y bread.

Two weeks ago I started a gluten-free sourdough starter (brown rice and water).

One week ago I made a loaf of sourdough from this recipe.

You see all the ingredients in that? Yeah, it wound up, uh, gummy.

(according to the comments, Annie likes gummy bread so I wish she had been here to eat it) It also wound up short with a fallen dome because, I guess one of the drawbacks is that gluten-free bread is, uh, short in stature and doesn't keep a nice domed top.

This week I decided I'd try a Bette Hagman honey sourdough recipe from this book. For among other reasons, it's one of the only recipes I've found that doesn't use ricotta cheese (I don't understand ricotta's role in it either...), and is entirely lactose free.

Me, not being much of a baker, decided I could make it better, too. Ha! The arrogance of naïveté. So, I omitted the egg replacer, the gelatin, and subbed 1/3 cup of water for the 1 and 2/3 cup water, and after mixing everything for 3 minutes, I added 2/3 of a cup of room temperature club soda.

I plopped it in a greased pan, let it rise for an hour.

(I may have forgotten to mention the last loaf didn't rise at all and that there was a decided lack of air bubbles in it and it was just gross. but the crust was okay!)

Then I baked it for 60 minutes at 350 degrees, and LO! There was bread.


It was the height of the pan, and it didn't fall down. It was airy, the crust was, well, crusty, like sourdough should be.


Now, it's not perfect. I'm hoping that the starter will get more sour the more I use it because, frankly it wasn't sour at all. Next time I'll try either drastically scaling back or omitting the honey because it's a bit more sweet than I can handle. I'm oddly encouraged by this, and hope that in future endeavours, scaling back the wet ingredients will improve ALL of the scratch baking... because every last one has been gummy. (If you're curious, I used a gluten-free flour mix that was 3 parts brown rice, 3 parts sorghum, 2 parts potato starch, 1 part tapioca starch)

I'm just looking forward to cinnamon toast for breakfast tomorrow morning.

You know, if I had a toaster...

(ps - i went to a bridal shower yesterday and they had personalized M&Ms! I also figured out how to work the macro on my new camera, so woo!
)

Ernie with a blue bandana

Ernie with a blue bandana, originally uploaded by swandive00.

My little guy, the geriatric, is starting to show his age...

He's getting cataracts... :(

As long as he isn't running into walls, I guess.

Look! Deers!

Yesterday? It was an amazing day.  I got a fancy new haircut (woo!), had lunch with a friend, bought a new pair of work shoes.  Just before leaving the mall, Pants wanders up and oohs and ahhs over my hair (he's a good boyfriend), and hands me a Nikon Coolpix L18.  

You know, since my crappy camera I'd had for 2 years died in December.  Time to reiterate the "he's a good boyfriend" parenthetical note.

Before I forget, something many people do not know but that is TOTALLY TRUE: Nordstrom will price match if another retailer carries the same item for less.  And has free shipping.  And the best return policy and customer service ever.

Anyhow, we've started walking around 2 miles a day, every day.  Last night, I'm waffling about whether or not to bring the camera.  Decide no, because although Crestwood is beautiful, and abuts Rock Creek Park on 3 sides, there's nothing I feel like photographing in particular.

We had been walking for 15 minutes when I saw a gorgeous flowering tree in front of a gorgeous house in the dusk lighting, and I thought, dude, I wish I had my camera...

About 10 minutes later, we're walking and discussing how we had seen a deer on the park slope about 8-9 months ago.  We round the corner, and there's a deer standing in the middle of the road.

There's another deer peeking out between two houses.

The first one makes a break for another backyard, is followed by another deer hiding behind a car.  The one between the houses takes off and meets his friends.  Then a fourth deer emerges and crosses the road.

The only sound is deer hoofs on the pavement.  

We start walking again and see the 4 deer have leapt a fence and are milling about in a backyard eating berries.  In the center of the District of Columbia.

I'm never leaving without my camera again.

Unsubstantiated rumors, or, it's Armageddon, people!

The District of Columbia is NOT where you want to be right now. It gets a bad rap for the crime and the pomposity of its residents but in the last 24 hours, there were:

• Highway closures from burning or overturned vehicles
• Manhole fires resulting in power outages
• Rumors of armed robberies at the new Target in Columbia Heights (the Metro muggings were not from the last 24 hours)
• My co-worker's apartment was used as a staging area for U.S. Marshals and MPD to take his fugitive neighbor into custody
• Several people lost water last night
• The people who drive my shuttle said the numerous cop cars (and, a co-worker later reported ambulance was present) at L'Enfant Plaza station were for a reported jumper on the tracks. No service disruptions reported on WMATA website, though.
• The Eliot Spitzer story doesn't really fit in the timbre of these other occurences but has a DC element to it.
• Also not an unsubstantiated rumor, but a darn good graphic in this story about pedestrian safety.

Nice to know my student loans went toward something useful...

You Should Be an Artist

You are incredibly creative, spontaneous, and unique. No one can guess what you're going to do next, but it's usually something amazing. You can't deal with routine, rules, or structure. You're easily bored. As long as you are able to innovate and break the rules, you are extremely successful. You do best when you: - Can work by yourself - Can express your personality in your work You would also be a good journalist or actor.

What Should You Be When You Grow Up?

filched from cyn

Stop and smell the bandwagon

I think this may very well be my fifth (and final) post for the month of February. It's a long month, I may as well have extra posts.

Of course five posts in February is a ballpark estimate. I could go and actually count my posts, but where would the fun in that be? There I go, justifying laziness as whimsy! Try it, it's fun.

This month has involved much contemplation on the topic of food. Not as in what should I eat to help me lose that 989123 lbs. I'd like to lose some, but more by way of feeding Pants and I healthily, thoughtfully, and deliciously. I've still been ever so obsessed by thoughts and chapters and meals in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Reading Sarah's thoughts and challenges on eating locally, taking the plunge and chucking all the processed food out to make room for the good stuff invigorates me. Even more so, reading her posts on the Dinner Guest Blog (especially this one) start to light a fire under me.

But...

And there's always a but. I'm looking at my checking account. I'm thinking of the time I spend waiting for the shuttle, then the Metro, then the Bus and the idea of going to the grocery store seems so horrifying. I see the free range, grass-fed meats and eggs and dairy products. I even found a dairy that delivers to DC, heard of a bodega selling local foods at 200 Rhode Island NW. My landlord says I can grow potted tomatoes and chiles in the back yard this summer! I think of the rows and rows of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce that I will have canned to last me through the winter.

But...

That threshold isn't easily crossed. My bargain hunter thinks of the half-gallons of milk that cost $3.50 that are from happy cows who wander around pastures eating grass and contemplating entropy and doesn't want to justify the purchase when I could get a gallon for $3.79. I see the organic chicken who eat worms and beetles and grass and peck at the dirt and wander around but notice that it's $11 for 0.80 lbs when I could get Purdue chicken for $6.00. I open my cabinets and see the lovely, healthy boxes of Pacific Organic broths and soups - organic and gluten-free that have been driven conveniently to Silver Spring, MD from the exotic, far-flung land of Tualatin, OR.

The gluten. That's the other issue. I don't have a lick of gluten in my house.

[Okay, that's a lie. Ernie's food (made of fish and potatoes since he, like his mama, has food and skin allergies) has salmon as the number one ingredient. However, he has barley as the number two ingredient.]

Going gluten-free is better for me. I feel better, I'm happier with my choices at home. i make more foods from scratch and experiment with alternative grain flours. (However, I'm not so gluten-free outside the confines of my humble abode. That's my other issue to conquer) The fact of the matter is Bob's Red Mill is, like so many other wonders, in the Pacific Northwest. 'Cause You're Special is also not all that nearby (Wisconsin). There's also the issue that if I want to bake cookies or bread or birthday cake without gluten, I've got to add xanthan gum to the mix or it will all fall apart. Xanthan gum. You may know it as a thickener in your processed food. That's not part of "natural." So, I can't go to a local grist mill and get some whole wheat, stone-ground flour. I need to get mixtures of rice and starch and exotic things called quinoa and amaranth and millet.

It's clearly not going to be all-local, all the time around here. But I'm trying. The urge is there. It's crossing over into my purchases.

I picked up some garlic, saw the "Product of China" label and put it back down.
I made chicken stock from the leftover carcass of my roast chicken the other night and used it in Esau's soup for dinner tonight. Instead of buying injera from the Ethiopian bodega around the corner, I made it (almost comically dismally) from scratch - I started fermenting the teff and water on Wednesday and by tonight it was wonderfully sour. My coffee is Brazil Organic Fair Trade from Peaberry (okay, it was "local-ish" because I was in Denver when I bought it).

It's a process, and it just won't be 100%. But for me, for us, it doesn't need to be. We have our vices that we're allowing. For me, the biggest is coffee. And until I can grow coffee beans in Columbia Heights, I will work hard to forgo the Dunkin' Donuts in the grocery aisle and support the small farmers who are paid a fair wage for their labors (and make a damn fine yergacheffe... business practices aside, Starbucks can do the right thing!) I will use less and less white rice flour and gravitate toward whole grain flours (sorghum, teff, brown rice, buckwheat, millet) and experiment and play. I will work hard to find a CSA to support local, organic farmers. I will sit down and make a budget that allows me to spend extra on healthy, organic animal products, even if that means - gasp - less yarn. I will clean out my friggin pantry and put some order into it and throw out what doesn't have an expiration date, to make room for the canning I will start this summer.

It's hard for me to recognize that it won't be 100% out of my own backyard all of the time, but I will stop and be grateful for what I can do.

Celebrity Morph into ScarJo

My disdain for ScarJo is pretty well known. It's based on very little, and rather unkind. I think her eyes are too far apart and her voice is like that of a pre-pubescent boy's. However, I know people think she's lovely (or boomin' hot) so I was wildly amused when I came up on myheritage as looking 75% like her (which I reject on principle. If anything, she looks 75% like me) and decided to take the opportunity to turn my face into hers.

I am a giant dork.

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph

"Hmm... it's missing something..."

"Hmm... it's missing something...", originally uploaded by swandive00.

"Dude, I know! Maybe a monkey?"

Moi?

Oh, dearie me!

The ever lovely Bryony has told me that I make her day! (Probably amusing only to me and possibly h a i k u g i r l, is the fact that I forgot to copy Bryony's URL and the first link I put in was for the last URL I copied which was this. It came up in a discussion of Teeth. This is no reflection on Bryony.)

She nominated me because I kick her arse at Scrabulous (although it's dead even in our most recent match), but I have to nominate her right back because she calls me Petal and tells me to KNIT MORE, both of which are beyond awesome in their own right, not to mention the swapping of gluten-free (mis)adventures. I hope her broken nerves calm down soon so she can sew and knit and frolic about the webbernets more. And she TOTALLY makes my day. :) (I am now waiting for chocolate and dog bubbles, missy)

Who else makes my day? That has to be the aforementioned h a i k u g i r l, because we talk about boys and local food and cute glasses and the French and knitting and vaginae dentatae.

The blogfallow for 9 months but Twittery semaphoria, for always being my friend even though we've only seen each other twice since 1994. I love hearing about her family, her job, her travels to Alaska in winter, as well as miss the heck out of her on a daily basis. She also introduced me to the crack that generally is Orisinal and specifically, Winterbells.

Another person who makes my day is Chris Cope, who will likely mock me and smack me around for giving him a blog award, not to mention one with flowers. However he's an excellent blogger and commenter and columnist, even though he's frustrated with all of those, as well as university, but he speaks Welsh and is the only reason Pants comes to my blog - on the off chance that Chris has left a comment, so suck it, Cope. I mean, congratulations Cope!

Certainly not least is Cafemama. Now she doesn't read my blog but I wait with baited breath for the days that she does a new post as she and I are both at the same level of obsession about local food and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle... Alas, I have not been as good as she has about starting to eat local (and I'm still trying to figure out how to get gluten-free flours and whatnot locally, or if that will have to be on my exception list... And basically I need to start buying more locally, but there's a CSA I'm interested in near Frederick, MD that will also allow me to spend some time learning about farming/gardening so that when I have a home with some land to work, I'll have an inkling of what to do. Still haven't decided how I'll deal with getting dirt on my hands, though...)

So, youse guys make my day.

And I have to get back to my salsa verde carnitas. And exercise huge restraint, even though Elise posted a red velvet cupcake recipe.

Prevalent Themes

I'm writing a paper for work, and "Prevalent Themes" is one of the headers. So it seemed appropriate to address what has increasingly become a prevalent theme around Chez Caribou.

Hi! I forgot to blog for 3 weeks!

I finished knitting cabled purple legwarmers, but my camera's still dead, so you don't get to see them yet.

I'm working a lot.

Knitting not quite enough (although I am swatching for the Eunny's Deep-V Argyle vest right now and about to undertake some gift knitting).

Playing the guitar almost never which makes me sad.

Becoming increasingly fixated on local eating (due to dietary restrictions, locavore is not in my future) and thoughtful about food choices.

In a related vein, becoming very excited about cooking and experimenting and creating foods again.

Wishing I had a camera with which to photograph my knitting and food.

And snuggling Ernie, and making lagomorph noises in the proximity of Pants.

A new year, a new hat

It's not my hat, but it's the Pants' hat. He wanted a hat with an Autobot. So I thought of the We Call Them Pirates hat, naturally. Because really, can you think of even one thing between an Autobot and a Pirate that is different? Can you?

I don't believe you. The two are completely the same.

But I digress. Since they are the same, I figured I'd just use Autobots instead of skulls! However, the amount of detail involved in an Autobot logo is significantly greater than that of a skull. So, I had to write an Autobot chart for fewer than 32 stitches wide but greater than 8... And, since it was greater than 8 stitches wide, I couldn't do stranded colorwork.

And since the word intarsia makes me cry, eat my hair and throw up a little, I decided to do a doubleknit Autobot hat in approximately the same shape and layout as the pirate hat. (the fact that the color schemes reversing is a lame attempt at making the hat, say, actually transform was just an added, corny bonus).



So when I cast on in November, I didn't realize I would cast on, knit, frog, re-cast on many many times trying to get it Just Right in size and design and technique.



But persistence pays off, because it is Just Right in size, I love it beyond words, it fits Pants perfectly and he has declared it my best knit ever. (I think the fact that he was the recipient may have also had something to do with the latter) I'm very glad that he's pleased because it took me 2 months to make a hat. Although technically since it was doubleknit, it is two, two, two hats in one. Whee! I actually liked the Telemark but it's really hard on my carpal tunnel syndrome... but,

FO REPORT!!
for: The Pants, el Hombre, la pomme de mon oeil
pattern: we call them pirates (sorta), by helloyarn
yarn: Knitpicks Telemark in black and gray squirrel
needles: 3.25mm Inox circs
started: sometime November 2007
finished: 11 January 2008
mods: many! different technique, different motif, different yarn. I had to wind up casting on 2 fewer stitches per panel in order to get it to fit, since I wouldn't have those floats making it snugger.
notes: yay! I love it! He loves it! My hands are tired!

2007 Knitting Triumphs

2007 Knitting Triumphs, originally uploaded by swandive00.

I find it unlikely that I will finish the pants' hat before 2008, so a bit prematurely, here's the collage of what i finished in 2007.

Noticeably absent (at least to me) is Coachella, which although finished looks like crap on me and will be frogged soon enough.

I love knitting, I just have less time to do it. I guess being unemployed for 9 months after grad school spoiled me for all the time for yarn and needles that I had come to expect for myself.

I also put Ms. Marigold in there twice because I wanted to have a somewhat even mosaic and I like the half-drunk picture.

Hooray for knitting! And click through the pic for details!

hello? bloggy mojo? are you there?

Every so often The Pants will say to me, "you haven't been blogging lately. It's been a while since your last post."

Ain't that the truth.

Not to mention, the only thing that's been keeping me going lately is the ability to post pictures. But since the demise of my sad camera that I was so excited for when I bought it in NYC, even though I couldn't stand the damn thing, my blogivation has been waning and waning.

But I'm not ready to make a public declaration that I Am Quitting The Blog, so I'm going to post when I want about what I want.

Oh wait, I did that anyway.

However, here is my news for today:

I am doing Christmas baking
I have no Christmas tree
I made butter today with cream from Eastern Market
I made in in an early Christmas present from The Pants' Dad (thanks again!)
Ernie is laying on the floor, as is his S.O.P.
Pants and I are going to the movies tonight
I am knitting legwarmers (1.2 down, 0.8 to go!)
I am knitting the Pants' Autobot hat (doubleknit, 3.0mm needles, very slow)
I am taking next week off entirely, and going in on New Year's Eve (seriously?!)

I sort of miss the conception of blogging, but don't have the motivation.

But, dude. I made butter.

Skin Ship

Skin Ships, originally uploaded by swandive00.

Here's the last picture my camera took before crapping out. The dreaded (and it turns out almost urban legend in nature) E18 message came up.

I may need to get a new camera. :(

Although I hate my camera, so that's not the worst thing ever. But it's annoying.

My favorite flavor

My favorite flavor, originally uploaded by swandive00.

"A fine combination of crunchy malt-puffs and chocolate."

(this post is also known as any excuse to create a crunk tag.)

Ernie is 8

Ernie is 8, originally uploaded by swandive00.

Eight years ago tonight in November, a hairless blind puppy was born on a horse farm in Winterville, Georgia.

Seven weeks after that, I took him home, and named him Ernie. Since then, he's driven to wherever I've gotten an inkling to move (Georgia to Maine via Ithaca, NY; Maine to California; California to Colorado; Colorado to California where he lived with the Pants and his family; California to the District of Columbia where he lives today.) He's been too rowdy for words, peed in excitement before my friends, played fetch with my mom, delighted and intimidated my dad, and maybe bitten one or two along the way. I have been less than ideal of a friend to him sometimes (he just wanted to play, I just wanted to knit...) for such a sweet, silly high energy mutt. But he's never been anything but extremely devoted and loyal to me.

So today, Ernest P. Givens XVIII (Not his real last name), in honor of you eighth birthday, you are presented with a bacon double cheeseburger, a Nerf basketball backboard, and an unlimited amount of belly rubs.

Ernie gives thanks

Ernie gives thanks for a blurry dinner, originally uploaded by swandive00.

I am a day late and a dollar short. In saying happy Thanksgiving and that I am very thankful.

I started off yesterday taking pictures of my Very First Thanksgiving Dinner that I have ever made. I took pictures of the turkey in process, of the roasting pan with a Built In Rack, of the gluten-free bread (which may or may not have been gluten free...) for the gluten-free stuffing.

However. And there always seems to be a however. I lost my enthusiasm with the blinding migraine that forced me to push away my dinner for fear of tossing my cookies. I did, however take a picture of the spoiled dog's thanksgiving dinner because his begging paid off in the form of turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes on top of his kibble.

And because I went to bed at 8:30 last night after a mid-morning migraine nap that lasted 4 hours, I've been up since 2 am. Today, I am still thankful, and doing laundry and getting ready to pack for my 10 day business trip to Tokyo.

On my Tokyo agenda: Sushi, yarn shopping, avoiding chikan, and I suppose working.

I'm bringing my camera, I'm bringing yarn for the flights. Here's to hoping my needles aren't confiscated.

Things that are good and girly but good nonetheless

• First and foremost, Maryam is coming to town today!!
• We are going to eat Ethiopian food and Persian food and laugh and knit and...
• Have an Anne of Green Gables (The Kevin Sullivan flavor) movie marathon with Pandles.
  
• I finally got a new bedspread and sheet set to replace my polyester "Quick! I just moved to town and it's snowing and I need sheets and a bedspread!" The new one is cotton. And polka dotty. And brownandgreen. And it's from Target. And I am pleased. I also got a mattress pad. The mattress pad is not pictured. And it is wrinkly because I haven't washed it yet and I can't be arsed.
  
  
  
• Ernie is wearing a batman (well Bacardi) bandanna so that he can fight crime.
  

I swatched Ravelry

I swatched Ravelry, originally uploaded by swandive00.

Yay Beta shirts!

Seriously?!

It's November 8 and Starbucks has already gotten rid of the Pumpkin Spice Latte in favor of the Christmas drinks? Two weeks before Thanksgiving?

And they're not even letting the Pumpkin Spice syrup run out like they normally do?

Edited to add: I totally wrote a complaint to Starbucks. I am a nerd.

Tagging

I was tagged for a meme. I'm never tagged, but frequently participate if I'm out of blogfodder. But this time, I was tagged by the lovely lovely CiCi.

7 Random Facts! Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. (truth be told, I'm unlikely to tag. Because many, many people have been tagged for this. And because I have very few friends.)

1. I have intermittent fits of domesticity. I love to cook (frequently off-the-cuff, sometimes using a recipe as a bit of a guide), bake (frequently from a recipe, but rarely measuring things smaller than a tablespoon), knit (duh), sometimes sew, sometimes plan how to decorate a home space (but I suck at this) and have fleeting fantasies of being a farm wife. However, with an exception to the cooking and knitting, these things rarely stick longer than a week or two (rarely) or a few hours (more likely). But I really wanted to learn how to can this summer. I didn't have time.
   
2. I've reached a point where if I sleep for longer than about 7.5 hours in a row I have a blazing headache when I awake. So on weekends I frequently have blazing headaches. In fact, I sort of don't love this Fall Back weekend because I wound up awake at 5:30 on a Sunday morning with a blazing headache because I went to bed at 10 pm last night. My grandfather on my mom's side had a similar problem.
   
3. I love puzzles, especially visual spatial puzzles. Jigsaw, horseshoe, 3-d puzzles. I find the solving of puzzles to be very satisfying and soothing. People hate finding giant knots in yarn, but I will spend days and days working on a single knot because it's relaxing to see how all those threads intersect and unravel them. That being said, I've never had the interest to figure out a Rubik's Cube and never fiddled with one for longer than about 30 seconds.
   
4. I love being Catholic. I'm rarely good at it, but I love it nonetheless.
5. I have never really liked Starbucks coffee. That being said, the Pumpkin Spice latte appears to have been created by Satan to be the Best Beverage Ever. Also, Starbucks coffee, which I think tastes burned, has ruined me for all other coffees now... I always think they taste funny if they're not Starbucks. Yet somehow, the cafeteria at work has found a way to make their Starbucks coffee taste like donkey feet, so I will usually stop at Au Bon Pain for coffee in the mornings unless I suck it up and go to Starbucks for a Pumpkin Spice Latte.
6. I get the "Freeeeeeeeeeee credit report dot com!" jingle stuck in my head a TON. Crap. There it is again.
   
7. I think I'm the funniest person, like ever. If you don't then I will punch you in the face. See? That sounds fun! Ha ha! (I'm going to add as an addendum to this item that I'm also a giant dork, and if you like to laugh at giant dorks, I'm your gal)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm out!

wait! come back!

Dear person who came here searching "Moby Dick Gluten Free",

YES! You can eat gluten-free at Moby Dick. Get the kabob plates (I have experience with the chicken and ground beef kabobs) with rice, ask for no bread and you should be fine.

Hopefully you'll come back!!

Did you know that Englebert Humperdinck wrote an opera called Hänsel und Gretel?

I have a lovely friend. She is a panda. She really is. See? This is her baby brother. He's 2, but I swear he outweighs her by like349091023 times.

Approximately.

So, anyhow, she recently moved to DC. Like, 2 months ago recently.

There has been much hanging out, much fun, much growing pains and culture shock associated with said move. And I didn't talk much about it, 'cause, see, I forget to blog. I could go into my sad, sad story about how I sit in front of a computer all day, yada yada, but really, I just come home, cook dinner, chill with the Pants, and do various nerdy things like watch Law and Order in syndication or play Starcraft do other completely cool things.

cough.

Anyhow! Panda! So she asked if I'd make her a hat and I told her to get in line. You know, because I have a line of greedy knitting. Followed by a line of things Pants has requested of me. And his Autobot hat, while it will be freaking cool, has taken a while to fudge the pattern, and Panda found the pattern she liked and the yarn she liked, and I sat down and hardly even blinked and then it was done! (Dear Hats, Love you! Heather)

So, Lo! Gretel (Ravelry) was born.



Started and Finished: October 2007
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool Ease in Green Heather
Needles: 5.0mm (US8) KnitPicks Options
Size: Standard Tam (a.k.a. Medium)
Mods: Nada dude
Notes: yay! Pretty! Hat! Cables!

Here are some more pics taken in fits of ridiculousness at the Moby Dick's House of Kabob (yeah, baby!) in Dupont Circle.

and some that I took one morning before 7 am because Dang I felt cute that day.

It is in Panda's custody now. Fare thee well, Gretel. Keep her head warm or I'll kick you in the (hat)shins!

yawning and wagging.

yawning and wagging., originally uploaded by swandive00.

I haven't been to the blog in a while. I bought Ernie a ninja costume for halloween because he's a ninja. It both pleases him and fills him with ennui.

I finished a hat for pei lo mein/pandles, and there are flickr pics but I haven't the time right now.

Cop-out blogging!!

i could go crazy on a night like tonight

i'm having major issues with the refusal of fall to take hold... this weekend? the initiation of fall weekend where the pants, the panda, and the... [um, doesn't have a webbername]friend and i will trek to the mysterious, wild and wooly land of west virginia (appalachian music? love it! also there are no laws regulating religious snake handling there!) for to pluck ripened apples from the tree, partake of freshly pressed cider, buy pumpkins for breads and cookies and pasta, traverse a corn maze and play on a pirate ship.

all of these are activities to be conducted in jeans, hiking boots, and cozy hand-knit sweaters.

but people? it's supposed to be 91 degrees in harpers ferry this weekend. the mornings are foggy, the nights have the chill of the ultimate surrender of summer... but it's too freakin' hot and humid during the day.

i'm trying my hardest, i'm doing my best to hasten autumn along, though. i'm baking, knitting, and even finishing things!

for instance, my back-to-school u-neck vest? that's done, and i've even worn it to work.



whoops. see what happens when you try to take FO shots at 7 am on a Monday morning? you get backlit crappy shots. here's a poorly photoshopped version showin' off the details:



i really like this vest. for a few reasons. one of which is i figured out how to work in short row shaping even though the bust is in a patterned stitch! can you tell?



yeah, didn't think so. i even planned out doing an edit so you could see them. unfortunately i couldn't find them so i approximated...



the only other modification i made (other than saying "meh, i'm not really getting gauge, i'll just keep knitting anyway!" and having it sort of miraculously work) was to just do a single set of purl rows around the arm holes... i tried one of the arms with the double rows to match all the other sets of two, but it made the shoulders too wide.

i also made the body a few inches longer because i'm just like that.

i have another quick and dirty FO... calorimetry. i cast on during dinner before seeing the yarn harlot, i cast off a about a half hour before she wrapped up her talk. quick, cute, warm!



i used a leftover button from the knitted corset top...



and photographed myself in it, with the omnipresent dogbutt sneaking into the shot



made with lion wool in teal on size 7 needles... mods? i cast on 104 stitches instead of 120. i knew i wanted to cast on fewer, but didn't know how much so i cast on with the twisted german cast on until i ran out of yarn. 104 stitches it was.

and it worked!

if only i needed warm things in this darned heat...

shhh...

don't be too noisy, because you might wake me up and i may actually post something...

although i have a few things to blog about, including directions for playing War and Whist, the great Yaymee reunification project of 2007, two FOs (!!), and upcoming autumn shenanigans including a pirate ship and a corn maze.

also, this is just for my reference: when making a single batch of Nestle's toll house cookies with gluten free flour, 3/4 tsp of xanthan gum is just about perfect.

i love my life

Single side of an actual conversation

Pants:

If humans were to become extinct and meerkats were to rise and evolve and take the place of humans as the dominant life form on Earth, they’d have a really hard time creating space shuttles because everything they’d make would be SO TINY. I mean if dinosaurs weren’t extinct and had created space shuttles, they’d be heavy, but huge and have tons of thrust, but meerkat shuttles would be little and so easily blown off course.

Why are you laughing at me?