Ay! Bake me some pie!

I had a little conversation with a co-worker over email today that made me feel oddly self-satisfied in ways that it shouldn't. It also tells me I need to learn how to interact like a total non-dork sometimes. That will be tricky. We'll call that one a "long-term goal."

Co-worker: I made a peach pie with a half the sugar the other day. It is surprising just how different it was. Not so sweet, and maybe a touch less flavor, but my goodness, it was really refreshing and light. It was one of those mistakes that turned out not what you wanted, but good nevertheless.

Me: I bet if you made it with 2/3 the sugar it would boost the flavor but keep the lightness and refreshingness. I really want to make pie. Pie pie pie pie. With blueberries. Or blackberries. Oooh! Or chicken pots.

Co-Worker: I so want to make blackberry ice cream I can almost taste it. What are chicken pots?

Me: Duh, they're what you use to make chicken pot pie.

Co-Worker: You want to make a chicken pot pie in summer?

Me: No, but I wanted to confuse you with references to chicken pots.

Co-Worker: I'm lost…. You have succeeded.

Me: I believe my work here is done. I'm going home.

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.

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.

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.
  

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!

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.

that panda...

pei lo mein's so vain, she probably thinks this song is about her.

ETA: she has confirmed that in fact, she KNOWS this song is about her.

falling, falling

it's september in the lovely capital, and it's still in the mid-90s. i'm ready for fall, people! so to hasten it, i'm still chugging forth on my back-to-school u-neck vest (wow! hyphens!) and am about 2/3 of the way through the body. pictures would be dull, so there are none.

the pei lo mein is getting settled, and when we were leaving a grocery store today i had a completely great one-liner blog post to put up, but have completely forgotten it. panda, do you remember what it was?

in helping her procure a mattress upon which to sleep, i rolled in beds where many have rolled before. that's actually pretty gross and i feel more than a little skeeved out about that, having just typed that. and one mattress store went so far as to advertise that you will be sleep-free until 2010 (or that 2010 will be sleep-free year). either way, the sign made me giggle at first glance. she did not purchase this store's mattresses. partially because that's a less than ringing endorsement and mostly because it was pricey.

the pants is a funny pants who utters sentences like "YOU ARE A RABBIT" not hoping for a response, or even acknowledgement which makes me happy. therefore i bought a pizza pan in which to bake him homemade pizza... mmm... pizza.

for the past year, the bloggobug has been limited and it continues - so my posts are going to be knitting related, sarcastic, cop-out, or just plain boring like this one.

p.s. i sort of wish i lived in boston. for many reasons, but right now i refer to this place.

in really excellent news..

butterstick, originally uploaded by swandive00.

...i am terribly pleased to announce the relocation of the panda, better known as pei lo mein, as the newest resident of the district of columbia!

okay, so what if someone else moved her since she got here thursday night that i don't know about? i don't care about them, i care about the panda!

welcome panda - it's been a rough move for any number of reasons, but i'm so glad you're here. let's drink to you going back to being normally whelmed. you know, like we're in europe.

quietly, quietly

i am feeling underwhelmed with blogging. many things going on. alternately good and not so good.

work is very good lately.

my uncle passed away on monday from lung cancer.

panda lo mein got a job in DC and will be moving here in the next month.

calling panda lo mein "butterstick" is also good.

not going home for my uncle's funeral is not so good.

the mosquitoes also suck.

i miss my dad this week. well, i miss him all the time, but much more keenly this week.

labyrinth will be playing in a local theater next week. (patrick just did a post on david bowie's codpiece.)

ernie is a good dog. clover is a good cat.

so goes the year of the niner

it's not until tomorrow, but happy birthday darlin'. i hope we can catch up in the city next month!

i love you!

the most i'll probably ever say "placido domingo" in a single post

i have seen many things this weekend. and the best of all? one of the things i seen was the lovely mariamamama with her supercute hair!

we went to jaleo for dinner with pants, and back to her hotel, where there's a slim chance she forgot her room number and tried her key in 18 of the 20 room doors on the floor. her room would have been the 19th. there were...um, sounds... coming from some of the rooms, so we deduced those were probably not hers. at least we hoped so.

we got into her room, she gave me truffles (god love her), and i was amazed that she had a prime number of pillows (if you don't count the brown one) on her bed all lined up sideways.

at any rate, mariamamamamamamama came down from nyc to sing for placido domingo!

the crappy part of that was she didn't sing for placido domingo because he wasn't there.

but i went and picked her up after her audition, and pulled up in front of a limo. out of which popped placido domingo! good ol' placido checked out mariama in her smokin' hot dress and blue converse, and mariamamama hopped into the car, and away we went.

i also saw the airbus 380 through my boss' window yesterday as it flew near washington DC. what a gigantic plane. it looks like it's gonna fall out of the sky. let's hope it doesn't.

in sadness

i just heard that an old friend, fellow guitarist, and apartment mover extraordinaire chris branson of guarding virtue just passed away. may he rest in peace, and may his wife and 3 kids find comfort this night.