I Got Nothin

So two out of three of my last posts have been about ... clean laundry? Christ on a cracker! Can you say boring? This is what happens when you are home all the time with two midget tyrants and a third on the way. You start relishing things like clean laundry. Someone needs to have an intervention. And perhaps, it could involve some prime steak, chocolate and a Louis Vuitton or two? Hello? Anybody? Damn.

Last week I did have the pleasure of slipping on some black ice and landing into a position known as Tebowing (going down on one knee with your head bent forward in your hand), NOT to be confused with teabagging, that is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.  Anyway, me, black ice, Tebowing.  Oh, and did I mention it was right in front of about a gazillion people at ESPN?  Yah. Awesome.  Also, I am still immature enough that I jumped up "laughing" in an attempt to mitigate my humiliation and did not instead start crying like a baby because HOLY! SHIT! my Tebowed knee HURT.  And, for the record, STILL DOES. I fear I will be that 70 year old lady who falls, breaks a hip, and insists on walking away thus causing more damage, and ends up quadriplegic.

Anyway, other than my bimonthly fall, things have been pretty quite here.  There has been a bunch of finished knitting ...

Like Juliet's stocking.  Which, actually, I finished knitting two years ago, seamed up last year (and made a liner that was too small) and just this year finally made a new liner which was sized right. 

Like a cowl for a friend.  Which I did for "Craft It Forward" a most AWFUL idea, and something that one year later I have yet to complete.

Like a different cowl for me.  In which I learned that the power of my mind can not affect physics.  Or, alternatively, I am an idiot. 

I have put them up on my Ravelry page but have yet to blog them.  Which I will.  Soon.  I think.  In the meantime, I need to go upstairs and make sure my two year old has not dismantled the child locks on the window and attempted to scale the roof.  What?  That isn't normal for a two year old girl?  TELL ME ABOUT IT.

Smile

Starting the New Year off with happy feet in clean hand knit socks!

Annual

As you may recall, I like to name my Christmas trees.  So, without any further fanfare, behold this year's Christmas Tree: CHARLIE SHEEN.

Yes, he looks just fine.  Handsome.  He's not as tall as I'd prefer.  But still.  Seems good looking. Suave. HA! When you get all up in his business you realize he is CRA-ZY.  His branches grow every which way, up down, right, left, hell, some even grow back into the trunk of the tree.  He randomly sprouts HUGE GAPING HOLES.  And ...

And an ENTIRE branch just fell off.  FOR NO REASON.  Like I said, this tree is bonkers.

Winning!

This morning I went to check the laundry situation and was greeted by the most heartwarming sight ... My husband had washed my hand knots and then smartly, correctly, awesomely left them out to air dry! Score!

Done!

My version of the Moderne Baby Blanket is dooooonnnnneeeee!

My pictures leave something to be desired (to put it mildly), but I am so done with this baby, that I can't see me waiting for nice light and doing another proper photo shoot.

Yarn: Knit Picks, Swish Worsted, White, Sugar Plum, Amethyst and Parrot. Less than 3 skeins of each.
Needles: Knitters Pride Nova Circs, size 4.25 mm (US 6) ** These are a lot less expensive than Addi Turbo Circs and were just as nice **
Pattern: Moderne Baby Blanket
Modifications: Made MUCH smaller and improvised on squares once I figured out what I was doing.
Time: Less than 2 months.
Care: Machine wash and tumble dry low.

Armageddon

First the freak snow storm. Then 12 very long days without power. Now on day 14 of no cable/internet/phone. As of those alone weren't signs ... It is 11:11 on 11/11/11!!!

Progress

One more (quite) large block and it is on to the border!

Fancy Schmancy

I, without waiting in line (because I'm not a kid anymore), got the brand new iPhone on Friday! And I just figured out that I can blog from it. I also, assuming this works, can add pictures. Like the following screenshot of a conversation I had with Siri, the phone's artificial intelligence, last night.

Moving Along

Slowly but surely I am making progress, and a few modifications, on the Moderne Baby Blanket.

And, truthfully, I am enjoying this. It is pretty brainless knitting I can do while I am catching up on bad television, but at the same time, the blocks are small enough that it keeps me interested. I had mapped out how I was going to knit the various colors, but I already changed that twice ... and am probably gonna do it again. Am I crazy fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants knitter or what?

Show & Tell

This week's Ten on Tuesday is Ten Things You Did This Weekend and guess what? I actually did ten things ... you know, other than sitting on the couch and catching up on the DVR!

1) Indulged in some Starbucks Shaken Iced Green Tea, caffeine and all!

2) A family field trip to Magic Wings, a butterfly conservatory in Massachusetts. Now, I suspect I might have mentioned it, oh like a gazillion times, but I really, Really, REALLY don't like bugs. At all. So why in the hell did it not occur to me that I might not like being swarmed by butterflies? It was like Hitchcock's The Birds, only with bugs. Kind of pretty, colorful bugs, but bugs nonetheless.

Despite the fact that my skin was crawling, I sucked it up for my kids. This is what is called AWESOME PARENTING (and probably the only example of such this weekend).

3) Next to the Bug House 'o Horrors is the Yankee Candle Flagship Store. We stopped there, where, it seems Santa is fond of the knitter folk as he decorated the top of one of his trees with yarn.

4) Late lunch/early dinner at Red Robin. Specifically, a Teriyaki Chicken Sandwich with a salad ... delish!

5) Cleaning up regurgitated Red Robin. Come on now, you didn't think it was all kitten and candy over here, did ya? Take one little girl with a hacking cough which leads to coughing fits, and throw in a belly full of food, and well yeah.

6) Knitting and unknitting a Moderne Baby Blanket,

7) Harvested all of the carrots in the garden. Which, even though they average about four inches long, is way more than we'll ever eat. Ever. Want some carrots?

8) BJ's ... the store, not the verb. Y'all ain't nuthin but a bunch of pervs!

9) Outfitted my eldest with el cheapo shirts from Old Navy. There was a sale. So now she has forty-three hundred long sleeved t-shirts. Of which she will probably only wear two. Despite proclaiming her love for each and every one in the store and again before I washed them. Because she totally likes to bust my chops. Of the joy of being three years old.

10) Repaired the stroller tire that EXPLODED in the car as we were driving to the Bug House 'o Horrors. What? Stroller tires don't explode? Bullshit! It sounded like a bomb went off as we were driving down the highway. I almost messed myself. But the kids were there in the car too so I kept it together. Oh, wait a minute, why I do believe that is another example of AWESOME PARENTING. Go me!

Ribbit MDLXXXVII

SONOFABITCH! So you know how people say, "READ THE PATTERN, IN TOTAL, BEFORE YOU START KNITTING!" Yah, well I did do that. Even so I still started knitting the WRONG &^%@!$^* blanket. There is a big, adult-sized, blanket on the left page and a smaller, child-sized blanket on the right page. Some dumbass (yours truly) cast on the stitches for THE ADULT SIZED BLANKET. All that knitting I finished ...

Rrrrriiipppp. That 'swatch' up there was basically two squares, instead of one. I could have finished block two already if I was paying attention, but no, I wasn't. Dammit! I couldn't figure out why I was using up so much yarn on the first square and then it hit me that perhaps I should check the pattern again. So, note-to-self, if something seems hinky, it is!

Being Nice

So a friend, my old personal trainer, asked me if I would knit a baby blanket for her so that she could give it to her best friend as a baby shower gift. She offered to pay me, but it seemed weird since I had just asked her an exercise question and well, now, let's say I find myself knitting a baby blanket. For a friend's friend. For free. And I need to finish it like, yesterday. Mind you, I don't knit for other people. Ever. So I had to really search far and wide for a pattern that seemed quick. And easy. And interesting. Or at least not boring. Though let's be honest here, quick was more important than interesting. So now I have this ...

And I am hopeful that it is going to turn into a Moderne Baby Blanket. Like yesterday. Oh boy.

The letter B

For some reason blogger has taken to hatin' on me. Holding posts in limbo for a month or more or just refusing to publish them. Hatin. On. Me. Perhaps from my lack of use? I'm sorry. Geez. Get over yourself. Someone else might go and block and copy and try to publish the fuked posts that way, but I am, apparently, not that someone. Which you know. Sad for you. They were AWESOME posts. Not.

Anywho, I am trying again to post. In a timely manner. So we'll see. And this post is brought to you by the letter B. As in ...

Juje and I were driving in the car and I hear her sweet little voice perk up from behind me, "Mom! I have a Bug!"

Me: You have a bug?

Juje: Yes! Wite he-uh (Right here).

She holds out her hand: Bug!

Me: You want me to take the bug?

Juje: Yes, take me bug!

Me: Uh, ok ...

I use my Go-Go-Gadget Gumby arm and reach my hand back behind my seat and body and blindly aim for her direction. We make contact, and I feel something in my hand. I bring my hand back to its normal position and realize ...

Me: JULIET! THAT IS A BOOGAR! NOT A BUG!

Juje: Yes, mommy! Bug!

Perils of Gardening

Time marches onward. Apparently without my words of wisdom littering the information super highway. Who'd of thunk it? Even so, I do feel the need to tell you, no warn you, no WARN you, about the deadly dangers of gardening. What? Gardening you say. Pushaw, gardening is for little old ladies with little hats, hardly what one would call dangerous let alone DEADLY. Yah, I thought so too. Lies I tell you. All lies.

This year Jillian decided she wanted to plant carrots (thank you Curious George) and so when she got carrot seeds for her birthday, well one thing led to another and BAM we have a garden with things like basil and chives and oregano and mint and eggplant and broccoli and tomatoes and lettuce and parsnips (snuck under the radar as "white carrots" when someone was a whiny pants) and of course, carrots. Well the garden has been going along swimmingly. Sort of. There have been many animal intrusions on my tomatoes including one that took the fence down and ripped my fence polls out of the damn ground. A bunch of acrylic yarn later and that bad boy was back in business. Since then neither deer nor Hurricane Irene were able to take down the fence again. All hail acrylic yarn ... well for all things not knitting.

Anyway, I was weeding this garden of our when I almost died. Every day or so when we'd be outside, I grab a weed or two and relocate it to the "forest" that borders out property. As I never was a formal weeder, I never did formal things like "wear gloves" so it was with a bare, virgin, hand that I grabbed a weed. A weed which immediately sent pins and needles into every place in my sweet little hand that it touched. Fingers, palm, thumb, zowie! A weed so painful to touch, that when I looked down at my hand, I expected to see raw, open, bleeding flesh. A weed so deadly that it caused two of my fingers and my thumb to throb and then go almost numb. HOLY SHIT, RIGHT? This all happened in less that a minute of touching the little bastard. HOLY FRIGGEN SHIT, RIGHT?

Obviously I dropped the weed immediately, but at that point the damage was done and I planned the last words I was going to say to my children and located the perfect place to lie down and take my last breath. I took a picture of it so that when I was found dead in a heap, CSI would view my pictures and be able to determine which foul biological weapon had attacked me.

Instead of say, being SMART, and calling 911, I texted my Garden Savvy Friend Michelle. Her response to my dire predicament, "Duh, you should have worn gloves." To which I was all, yes, thank you Captain Obvious but how long until I DIE? Her response, "Well, you're not dead. Yet. Don't worry about it." In hindsight, now that I have lived, I know to never contact Garden Savvy Michelle regarding matters of life and death. So, anyhow, as my afternoon progressed, I did not in fact "die" though I did continue to have ridiculous pain in my hand. Every time I examined my hand, I expected to see slices and cuts, but there was nothing was visible. It was so damn weird. I was having a nerve damage paralysis thing going on inside where you couldn't see it. I googled the hell out of everything I could think of (like to know if it was safe for me to sleep or if I would be sleeping an eternal sleep) but nothing came up. Bizarre.

The next day, the pain had mostly gone away, but there was still some residual nerve tingleyness that I DID NOT LIKE. Which is why, that night, when I met with my knitting ladies, I relayed my near death experience. At the end of my tale of woe, my LEAST garden/plant/landscape savvy friend, was all, "Ohhh, you weeded a stinging nettle." And LO AND BEHOLD SHE WAS RIGHT.

So there you have, my near death experience. With two important lessons. First, stinging nettles (which apparently have medicinal value ... SUUUURRRREEEE) hurt like a mofo. Second, when you are about to die from an unknown plant attack, ask a knitter for info, she will know more than Google.

Maybe I Need Cats

I'm not sure who decided that canned tuna and pasta were a winning combination. It most certainly is not. Hell, I'm not sure who decided canning tuna was a good idea. It is, in fact, also not. Fresh tuna? Fabulous! Canned tuna? The opposite of fabulous. That being said, I've been hard up for EASY and QUICK dinner ideas for the kids. Jillian refuses to eat almost everything and Juliet eats almost everything. So, with this all swirling in my little pea brain, I decided to dump a teeny tiny can of tuna in a bowl with some plain ziti and some butter. A simple tuna casserole type thing. I mean millions of (fucking weird) people LOVE tuna casserole so my paired down version would be okay for the kids. This is what I thought. I mean knew Jillian would be suspect but I thought Juliet would eat the hell out of it. So it was worth the experiment ... also hello Omega-3's nice to see ya!

Well, Jillian was indeed suspect and with the whining and the whining and ohmygod the whining, pushed my buttons to the point where I threw down a bowl of un-tunaed plain ziti with enough force to create a ziti shower ... Woot! Woot! It is raining ziti! Now, while my crazy level is HIGH, it is not so HIGH that I did not realize that perhaps things would be better if I walked away for a few minutes. So I did. And when I returned Jillian had eaten the plain ziti and Juliet, dear sweet, I will eat anything but ice cream and greek yogurt (what the hell is that all about) Juliet, she had also eaten the ziti, while picking off the tuna. Every. Single. Bit. Then she took the tuna bits and rubbed them all over herself. So now I have a baby who smells like cat food. Let this be a lesson ... a-note-to-self ... don't think you can fool your kids into eating something you know is nasty. It will backfire. Spectacularly.

Girly Food

A certain little girl turned three in these parts and there was some crafty (craFty not craPPy, though there was some of that too) baking going on as a result. Like a cake! A pink cake! A pink cake, shaped like an apple!


I have no idea why she wanted such a cake or how she dreamed it up. But here is my version of an apple shaped cake (pre-frosting). I copied was inspired by the Apple logo and, if I hadn't been up until three in the morning alternating between the cake and dealing with a sick baby, I think I would have remembered to swish the bottom part. She was happy, even without the bottom bit carved all right and proper, so WIN!

We also had some cake pops! And sugar cookies! With regard to the cake pops ... FAIL! I mentioned I had some cake pop problems and knowing that I tried another test round. Because you know, my kids is turning three which is such a big deal that I needed to practice. Ha! Me = Nutjob! Anyway, test round number two? That worked a little better and seemed to have helped with my dripping issue. So, of course, the final "real" batch turned out fucktastic. I ended up with three pseudo Hello Kittys who were really Hello Kitty's demonic sisters. One has a tumor, one is cracked out and one is perpetually scared like something is being rammed up her ... oh wait, there was, a lollipop stick. Anywho, there were many duds which I threw on a plate and referred to as a kitty graveyard.


'Twas only after I spent a day slaving over those motherlovin' cake pops and icing a gazillion cookies, that I realized I had nothing to shove a candle in, and well, you kind of need a candle to blow out on your birthday. So an uber-early morning trip to Starbucks netted us the cupcakes. Though I totally could have made them. And they would have looked just like that.

Socky Sherbet

This weekend, while sprawled out on a couch during a girls' weekend, I finished the Sunday Swing Socks. As soon as they were done, I put them on and went for a walk along the beach hunting for sea glass. It turns out, I am a MUCH better sock knitter than I am sea glass finder ... even after consuming an entire bottle of wine and some Poochi Poochi Sake.


These socks were so unbelievably easy to knit. So easy that I never actually printed out the pattern. I looked at the pattern online and knitted from the iPad for the first round or so and then realized that the spacing was six stitches and eight stitches and that was then end of my need for the pattern. I did goof at one point and switch the eight and the six so one repeat is off, but I am pretending that it never happened and in fact, that last bit of the sentence is going to self-destruct as soon as you click away from this entry. Seriously. It will. Though you shouldn't click back and double check or my secret Sycophant Zombie Army will have to come and assimilate you into the fold.

Anyway, I digress. These socks are easy. Though I suspect that if these were your first socks, you might want to refer to the pattern a little more than me. I didn't alter anything in the pattern, except the cuff/ribbing, which I had started before I determined what pattern these socks were going to be. I'm not sure what the pattern calls for but a simple k1,p1 rib works fine.

Also fine? The yarn. It is ArtYarns and it is lovely. I am a fan of ArtYarns yarns and am bummed to hear (from several unrelated sources) that the woman who is ArtYarns is a bit of a yahoo who is trying to re-brand herself and in doing so is pricing her self out of the market. Well at least for cashmere. Which these socks are not. But still. I don't like the word on the street. Assuming the sock yarn stays affordable, and you are interested, I'd say it is a nice knit. Not splitty. Not knotty. Smooth and flowy and squishy. I'm not sure how it will wear and if the colors will fade (Koigu I'm looking at you ... fader!) as I have only used the ArtYarns cashmere and silk before, but I am hopeful. Really hopeful. I have a skein leftover, as well as a bit left over from each skein that I knit the socks from and am thinking kid socks (though these aren't superwash which could be tricky with the under three crowd).

So, as the great Charlie Sheen would say, these socks? WINNING, Duh!


Yarn: ArtYarns Ultramerino 4, less than two skeins, color 127.
Needles: Addi Circs, size 2.5 mm (US 1)
Pattern: Sunday Swing Socks
Time: 4 weeks!
Care: Hand wash and dry flat in shade.

I Tried

Yesterday, for St. Patrick's Day, I decided to spread my culinary wings and make corned beef in the crock pot. I somehow ended up with a slab o' beef that did not include a spice packet, inconvenient as that is the other ingredient in 99.9% of slow cooker corned beef recipes. The internet told me to use pickling spices, to which I thought, vodka? 'Cause I use that to pickle my liver ... other than that, I have no clue what makes up pickling spices. By this point, both of my kids had decided to climb the walls and/or eat dog food, so I said, "to Hell with it!" quit my research and tossed in some mustard powder, black pepper, white pepper, a truck load (about half a cup) of garlic cloves and water. I cranked that baby up to high and hoped for the best. Which it turns out, was a good way to go as severalhours later the corned beef was quite tasty. I took my tasty corned beef, put it on some bread with the garlic and coleslaw and made a Reuben sandwich. Because you know, nothing says Happy St. Patrick's Day like a Reuben.

Thank You Sr. Sheen

I've had this big plan, or rather, BIG PLAN to make cake pops for Jillian's upcoming birthday. WINNING! I've even dropped some murmurings about fancy cake pops. BI-WINNING! It is all very exciting. Or rather was. You see, I've had this plan for awhile and was quite bummed when Starbucks started carrying cake pops (in hindsight this probably was the universe telling me to get the hell off the cake pop bus - a bad batch of tigerblood must be why I missed this sign). I was bummed because it both took some of the wow factor away from my future unveiling and also raised the bar being that the Starbucks ones are pretty darn good.

So, with that in mind and knowing that my kitchen is perhaps the world's, or at least my town's, most sucktastic kitchen and such sucktasticness usually negatively affects my baking (yah, dozens of loaves of blank tasting pumpkin and zucchini bread I am talking to you), I decided, for probably the first time in my life, to practice. I went out and got all the fixings and dudes, if I had a tail it would have been wagging on hyper drive, I was so psyched. My kitchen was where it was at and beat anything 99% of the world was doing. I baked the cake and it tasted good. No, GOOOOOOOD. WINNING, duh! Then after it cooled I made the cake ball mixture and it was, well okay. The frosting was meh and took away from the greatness of the cake. But I could use different frosting for the final product so no worries. Tail? Still wagging happily. Once all was mixed, it was ball making time and that wasn't too bad either. My balls were not perfectly round, but they were okay. I tried a few other shapes and they were less okay than my balls (yes, that makes me laugh), but not too totally terrible. Next was stick insertion and even that went well. The last step, the most crucial step, the dipping. The dipping, it is where things went ... downhill.


BYE WINNING! I dipped and I dipped and then I dipped some more and apparently you need a degree in physics or rocket science to get this done right because my balls turn to crap. Lumpy dripping balls of crap. My fingertips radiate not sunshine, but death. My Adonis DNA has let me down. I've watched the Bakerella Cake Pop video, repeatedly, and even another cake pop video, repeatedly. And yet, without fail, my dipping turns to dripping and my pops become massive balls of FAIL. My tale is not over yet, DEFEAT IS NOT AN OPTION! I shall continue to drink tea made of pulverized dinosaur fossils and practice. And practice some more. And if things look still bad, well then I can only hope a team of Vatican assassins take me out before I break my baby's heart with substandard birthday fare.

Olfaction

Another Tuesday, another chance to wow you with ten things! This week? Ten Favorite Smells and with that, we're off ...

1) Teen Spirit. COME ON. You had to see that coming a million miles away. A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido, YAH! I have no idea what Teen Spirit smells like ... locker rooms and desperation? Wait, I think that is the NFL. (Oh, and for the record, I realize that you will now have that song in your head for an eternity. You're welcome.)

2) Cookies baking. I suspect that this one is on everyone's list. Well, everyone that is you know, human.

3) L'Occitane Aromachologie Volumizing Shampoo and Conditioner. These are really flowery girly smelling (especially the shampoo, the conditioner is a but more muted) and I typically prefer more herbal smells for hair products. This stuff, however, wins me over. I remember using it at the Four Seasons hotel in Miami after my aunt died. I was sadder than hell, beat down and generally dog tired, but this shampoo/conditioner managed to perk me up a tad. When the smell wafted out as I scrubbed the shampoo in, I felt pampered, and in fact, when I use it now, the smell still is pampering to me.

4) A burning fireplace. But not mine. I can never really get my fireplace to send out that fireplace smell. Well except for the one time I forgot to open the flue and almost killed us all. But normally, when I am not burning my house down, I can't smell 'fireplace' in my own home. I can, however, crack my bedroom window as I am going to bed in the Fall and winter, and smell it from my neighbors.

5) Steaks on the grill. Because apparently I am, smellematically anyway, a pyromaniac.

6) Philosophy Amazing Grace. About a month or two ago I was at Sephora and there was a jug of Philosophy Amazing Grace hand lotion on the counter. I took a pump, rubbed it in, and was IMMEDIATELY transported back to Florida. There is something almost sunscreen-esque about the scent that makes me feel like home.

7) My newborn babies. When my kids were brand new, but you know, cleaned up, they had this delicious smell. Kind of like oatmeal? I dunno. I can't describe the smell, and suspect that there is some sort of biological pheromone thing going on to help a hormonally wrecked new mom glom onto her new baby. Whatever the reason, my babies both smelled Del.I.Cious when they were brand new.

8) Sunshine. I remember as a kid, coming inside and my mom giving me a hug and saying I smelled like sunshine. At the time, I thought it odd. Now that I am older, I know what she meant. A day in the sun has a scent. A yummy scent. And it is not body odor, you know, in case you were worried.

9) Coffee. I suspect this is a common one. But that is okay because coffee, coffee smells gooood. I love the smell of coffee so much, that after a night of stitching and bitching at our local Starbucks, I don;t mind walking out smelling like coffee. In fact, I like it!

10) Beer breath. I know, that is weird. The opposite of baking cookies and coffee. Really weird. I am not sure what whacked childhood trauma it taps into, but I find there to be something sexy about beer breath. Mind you, the owner of the beer breath can't be falling down drunk or it turns from sexy to repulsive in seconds. But in the right circumstances, I find beer breath hot.