Thursday, June 08, 2006
I feel like a bride. It is June afterall, and how amazing are these peonies? I saved them this morning from a watery grave, as all blooms were bowed to the wet soggy ground from the weight of their own heads and a day and night's steady rain. They smell heavenly. So much pretty, pink goodness...
"Yes, you are correct. Few can handle my pink little nose.
It is so pink. So little. So devastating."
Filed Under: Life
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Pattern: Pomatomus sock from knitty.com
Yarn: Merino wool I bought on ebay
Needles: Size 0 dpns
I consider this pair a practice pair. After declaring I would never knit socks again due to bad first sock experience, I couldn't help myself and thought I'd try these. The first sock I knit per instructions - top-down, gusset heel, wedge toe, grafted toes.
The second sock I did toe-up, with a short row toe, short row heel, and tubular bindoff. Except for the scallop pattern, they're really two entirely different socks. But it's all good - I have mirrored scallops!
Different heels, same fit
I love this pattern. I have one more pair to complete, done toe-up, and this one will definitely be matching. After this I'm thinking I might go back to the top-down, gusset heel flap method. Fitwise I can feel no differences between a gusset and short row heel. They're both comfortable. I was only sold on the short row for awhile there because it's just so easy. But the gusset is pretty...and it's nice to change things up a bit.
Pretty tubular
One method I'm definitely sold on is the tubular bind-off (Vogue Knitting as reference). Nice and elastic and really neat-looking too, especially with the 1x1 ribbing. I'll have to learn how to do the tubular cast-on next.
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks
Monday, June 05, 2006
Ooooo I have so much to talk about today, so much to talk about. I don't know where to start. Lessee...
How about we tackle the oldest news first before it becomes stale bread. Or should I say, stale yeasty beer bread? Or should I say, stale, yeasty, IRISH beer bread?
When people say to me, "What nationality are you, Japanese? Korean? Russian? I just can't tell You People apart," I can now say without batting an almond-shaped eye, "I'm Irish."
Yes it's official, I am a citizen of Ireland, ba ha ha! Even though I went through all the proper channels to get this, it still seems totally wrong. I think the requisites should have at least been something like:
Applicants must 1) fry within 5 minutes in the sun or 2) fry within 10 minutes in the shade or 3) own all Riverdance videocassettes 4) avoid sushi.
[P.S. I was eligible for an Irish citizenship through marriage. Duck has been Irish himself for a dozen years or so. He was born in the US, his parents were born in the US, but his maternal grandmother was born in Ireland (and a distant cousin of Gregory Peck!). You can obtain citizenship if a grandparent was born in Ireland, and you have the birth certificate to prove it and other documentation that prove you are indeed related.
November 29 2005 was the last day they were accepting applications for post-nuptial citizenship, so I really wanted to get it done before the opportunity closed for good. Why not!?]
None of those apply to me, but worse I have never even set foot in Ireland. Not even for a layover. I am a fraud! I don't know who the president is! I don't drink Guinness and never freckle in the sun! I can take a Jameson on the rocks, but not without some mild gagging. And the Magners cider, it comes in a can that's so enormous, I get stage fright.
[Funny, in the rules it says you "must have had a period of one year's continuous residence in the island of Ireland immediately before the date of your application." Hm. I think they just made that up. There were a lot more rules that applied that aren't listed there.]
People ask me what I'm going to do with this citizenship, like it's the oddest thing to want to have. Hello, I'll get a passport, and then the key to the doors of all of EU will be mine!!! I can live and work in France as a citizen. Or Turkey. Or Greece. Who knows if I ever will, but having the option to someday exercize those options is a no-brainer.
PS The president of Ireland is Mary McAleese. So progressive! I should have known this.
***
Finally we get to some knitting. I feel I've slacked off a lot in knitting even though I still knit a bit everyday. I've just adopted an extremely scatterbrained process. I currently have about 4 projects going on, 2 of which could have been completed a long time ago if I could just focus on one thing at a time.
So, here is another half of what will one day become a second pair of Pomatomus (so I have a complete pair now, but mismatched). I so love this pattern. This one is worked in Koigu, toe-up with a short row heel.
With this half of a pair finished, I've gone back to finish the other half of my first pair. I hate this non-linear approach but it keeps me from getting bored with a yarn.
Remember me wanting to make a table runner/doily/something very lacy? I haven't forgotten about it. It took me awhile to settle on a yarn. I visited a yarn store with my mom last month in Atlanta, it had a 30% off sale on a laceweight cashmere/silk blend. Yummy. I bought 2 hanks with Rose of England in mind. But I hedged. Do I really want to use cashmere for a tablecloth? This was all supposed to be about process knitting so practicality shouldn't have mattered, but still...couldn't bring myself to start.
Later in Michaels I spotted a spool of cotton crochet thread and for $1.50, I thought what the hell, I'll give that a go.
 
Rose of England progress
I started Rose of England this weekend. It took several tries and I nearly gave up after the 1000th attempt of trying to get past round 3, but once I finally did, pretty smooth sailing! I made it to round 23 before I started running out of room on my supershort DPNs. I'm excited about this project though. The potential for mistakes are aplenty and I was convinced that, especially with no end-of-rounds stitch counts given - I'd find myself losing my place or missing a stitch here, there. It hasn't happened so far. The easy-to-read chart and written instructions are really helpful used together. And most surprisingly, working with cotton thread has been pretty decent. Once I get a pair of suitable circs I'll be on my way again.
***
Now I've saved the best for last. A couple of weeks ago a reader named Veronica requested a photocopy pattern swap which I happily (and hopefully not illegally) obliged. You know how I love one-for-one pattern swapping. I sent it off but instead of getting a pattern in return, I got two skeins of HANDSPUN 100% CASHMERE. Can you believe it? How generous is that? I love you knitting people! Come here, let's all get in a big circle and snuggle!
The yarn is gorgeous, scrumptious, edible, luxurious, beautiful, lovely lovely lovely, too lovely to knit with. She sent one 2-ply skein, but because that one turned out "flawed," (whatever!), she included another skein in 3-ply. Oh cashmere what have I done to deserve you? It came attached with a HANDSTAMPED multi-paged card. AND a handwritten letter. I was totally beside myself with glee, but also a little sheepish and embarrassed. So much handiwork and care, and all I did was make a few photocopies and lick a stamp. It doesn't seem fair, but I'll take it!
LOVE the personal card
The spinner of the glorious yarn lives in Seattle and that's all I can tell you. She doesn't have (or didn't include) a website to some online business and doesn't have (or didn't tell me) a blog. Too bad! Maybe she's working on it...?
Thank you Veronica for the incredibly generous gift! If you have a website and/or business, let me know!
Filed Under: Life | Socks | Pomatomus | Rose of England
Thursday, June 01, 2006
We're back from Maine, tanned, relaxed, and full of shellfish. It's amazing how a trip - no matter if it is a mere hour's worth of driving - tricks your brain into thinking you're far away from home, and so how cleaner the air, how bluer the Atlantic, how colder the beer, how tastier the food, so that you must order one lobster at every single meal and not feel even slightly guilty for the indulgence. Vacations put this weird happy smog in your head that makes you think you're full of cash and enough digestive juices to break down the bite after biteful of sweet lobster flesh. I mean lobsters can be had just as easily in Boston, but only on vacation would I ever consider having it for THREE MEALS IN A ROW. It seemed like such a good idea. But though you might not feel that twinge of irresponsibility, your colon will. Your poor, twisted colon will.
I could go down this road further but I think I'll just stop right there.
We totally lucked out on the weather this weekend. You never know what you might get at the end of May in New England, even if summer is technically only a few weeks away. It was supposed to rain on Saturday, the day we set out, but luckily weathermen are idiots and I bet my cats could forecast the weather just as well by reading the patterns they make in their litterbox. After Kitty and Tomcat arrived in Boston, we hustled to Ogunquit and made it there in just over an hour. We checked into the "resort" (really a timeshare of condos) that turned out to be thoughtfully stocked with a huge lobster pot in the kitchen, and was only a 1 minute walk to the action. We walked down the driveway way and across the street, and before we knew it we were looking at ocean.
Later that night we had our dinner out Arrows. FaaAAAaancy. It was dark by the time we got there, otherwise I'd be showing you pictures of me trying to eat the wisteria that were blooming deliciously over the entrance of the farm-house-turned-restaurant. We had a table overlooking the large backyard garden and even in the dark I could make out the bushels of lilacs lining the yard. Wisteria and lilacs drive me WILD. Frothing-at-the-mouth kind of wild. I missed lilac season in Boston when I was down South, but Maine is just far up north enough to be 2 weeks behind schedule, so there were lots of lilacs still in bloom.
The food at Arrows was easily the most expensive I've ever had, anywhere in the world, and logically you would then think it was the best food I've ever had anywhere. It was great food, but I can't say if, considering the price, it was the BEST I've ever had. If you were to graph the price of an entree against its tastiness, I think at the $26 mark, the line on the graph would just plateau. After $26, you could put one more ingredient or one million more ingredients into the entree, and it would probably be just as tasty as if you hadn't at all. Know what I mean? And the starting price for each entree were way over $26...
This was my dish:
Soy lacquered Tai (snapper-like fish) with Thai eggplant, baby bamboo in a grilled shiitake mushroom sauce with a hot and sour lobster broth and daikon dumplings. Accompanying the broth was a quarter-sized dollop of sambal which the waitress told me was made from "like, 50 different spices." The dish was delicious but I'd bet that 3/4 of the price was in that small bowl of broth and that tiny plop of sambal, not the fish.
It is however the little accents like that that I end up remembering most about a dish. Duck and I had dinner once at No.9 Park in Boston two years ago (very highbrow), and the ONLY thing I remember about our entire meal was this shot of tarragon frappe that accompanied my dessert. It was strange and amazing and I can still taste it. The lobster broth and sambal were small but wonderful, so I'll probably be thinking about them long after the main fish.
Sunday was a glooooorious sunny day. A perfect day for long, ankle twisting walks along the rocky beach, a yummy lunch of lobster roll and rum punch by the ocean, then a Booze Cruise along the coast with more rum punch. While we were waiting for our cruise to begin we found out that President Bush the Senior had lunch at the restaurant across the one where we were and we probably just missed seeing him by a few minutes.
The boat ride was nice until I started to feel queasy with 1 hour and 28 minutes to go. The cruise was 1 1/2 hour long.
By this time we had long abandoned our plans of cooking lobsters ourselves. Really, who wants to cook while on vacation? So we didn't. More lobsters for dinner at another oceanside restaurant. Kitty and Tomcat had theirs baked and stuffed, I had mine boiled over a bed of steamers and mussels - and to start with, a really thick and hearty bowl of clam chowder - and Duck was the odd bird out with his bowl of scallops swimming in this bacon and bleu cheese sauce. Oh. My. By the end of this meal we were all clutching our sides crying. Why Lobster why can I not say No to you?
Lobster Four Ways: in a roll, boiled with drawn butter, bisected and stuffed with breadcrumbs and more lobster, as beer
We ended the night with a game of Trivial Pursuit. Boys vs Girls. Obviously the girls won, decidedly. Look at our huge brains, enhanced by lobster tail.
Monday morning Duck made French toast for breakfast. We were all crazed for something uncooked and crunchy. Nonetheless, after Kitty and Tomcat had to leave to catch their train back home, I got another hankering for a lobster roll. After this last indulgence did I finally learned my lesson. That night Duck and I went to the grocery store, bought two ears of corn, boiled them and ate them plain. We couldn't even handle a pat of butter. For dessert, grapefruit. So nice on the digestive system!
The Bush Compound in Kennebunkport
Duck and I stayed for a couple more days. We took a drive to nearby Kennebunkport and without meaning to, meandered by the Bush Compound. It's huge and sprawling and stands on its own peninsula. The Texas flag waves from out front, right next to the Saudi flag. Ha ha.
I took a couple of pictures from across the water and when I got back into the car, Duck told me that while we were snapping photos and idling around, each of us were in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. Do you think?! I said. SO COOL. I suppose that makes sense - but for an ex-President? Oh so ex-President but father of very unpopular, could-really-do-without-him, current President. Yes it does seem plausible. I suppose instead of pulling out a camera I could have pulled out a missile launcher from my purse. Luckily for me I left it at the hotel. I wonder what I look like through a scope?
Perkins Cove at night
Knitting content coming...some day!
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Ogunquit
Thursday, May 25, 2006
 Is it the weekend yet? So close we're so close! For Memorial Day Weekend we're going to Ogunquit ME, and my sweet Kitty and her boyfriend will be joining us from NYC.
Do you know how huge this is? Do you know how many vacations Kitty and I have planned together over the years that ultimately never happened? How many tears I've wept? And do you know how many times it was her fault? (All of them.) I should really start calling her Kitty McFlakesters.
I had put money down that she would back out of this trip (like she did with our most recently defunct plans for Napa Valley this past spring), but to my amazement she has done the complete opposite and already purchased train tickets to Boston. But that's not even the best part! The best part is she put together a Powerpoint presentation of things we'll do. Powerpoint! There were all sorts of matrices and grids and charts. Clearly the girl needs more free time on her hands like I need more sock yarn.
To kick things off, we're having dinner at Arrows the first night. The 2001 issue of Gourmet mag rates it #25 on its list of best restaurants in America. La! But after that we'll be cooking in - the place we're staying has a full kitchen - trying some things we've never cooked before...
Kitty: We will COOK like little MONKEYS.
Me: Maybe I'll bring a big big pot in case. To put live LOBSTERS in.
Kitty: I've never cooked a lobster Cat. I'm scared.
Me: Neither have I!! So we need to look up how before we go. Mm...I may not be able to do it. So cruel. My mom boiled live crabs while I was home and it was sad. Delicious, but sad.
Kitty: I was at the fish store last sunday and there was a girl who worked there who was laughing about a lobster that she poked in the back of the head the way you're supposed to to kill it and it kept MOVING for like HALF an HOUR. She was like, Ha ha ha what a crazy lobster.
Me: Maybe we'll just do clams.
Kitty: Mussels and shimp and clams.
Me: If we can't cook the lobsters though, I'm having trouble picturing the guys being able to. We're all wussies.
Kitty: I think Tomcat would do it. I'll ask him.
Me: I picture us dropping the lobsters and screaming.
Kitty: And them grabbing our faces with their claws (bring the OLD BAY). Latching onto our arms and lips.
Me: ooo la this is going to be GREAT.
Kitty: By the way I can't eat really big shrimp.
Me: Hahah what?
Kitty: Because they're too BUG like.
Me: Hahaha WTF.
Kitty: The BIG ONES.
Me: You're an idiot.
Kitty: You bite into their BIG BUGGY flesh.
Me: BUGGY FLESH you are so stupid.
Please don't rain.
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Ogunquit
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Folds in half lengthwise, then in thirds widthwise.
Four 4-inch wide pockets, and four 2-inch wide pockets.
100% cotton fabrics and ribbons on sale at Hancock.
Total price: $3, maybe? Awesome.
Behind the Scenes: Mom prototyping on a piece of newspaper. Everyone wants to help.
Filed Under: Completed Projects
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
A couple nights ago I was relaxing on my parents' bed, watching TV and knitting (another) Pomatomus sock, with Mouse the cat alongside keeping me company. Every now and then I'd stop to show her my sock progress and she seemed duly impressed.
"Cool huh, Mouse? Don't you wish you could knit?"
Then I left to go to the bathroom.
"I gave it a whirl while you were gone. Bored now."
I was gone for maybe two minutes.
So disrespectful.
Filed Under: Cats | Socks | Pomatomus
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Left: My grandmother with her children (my mother is the one in the back, head poking out)
Right: My mother as a very fetching 21 year-old
Mom at 27 with her first (and only!) baby.
Duck flew back home last week, and my dad left on business in Uganda the same day, so it's been an girls-only slumber party down here. It's been really nice spending time with my mother. She makes breakfast every morning - bowl of fruit, pastry, a cappuccino - then I work for a few hours, then we go out to a long lunch, or shopping, then we talk about what we're going to have for dinner, then knit while watching Pride & Prejudice (movie version) on DVD.
The past few nights we've been going through boxes and boxes of old photos, all musty and curled from age. My goal is to take a bunch home with me, scan and archive them for prosterity. Those photos don't deserve to waste away like that. While it's been fun to see pictures of me back in the day in various stages of my growing pains - the missing teeth, and the 70's fashion sense, the 80's big hair, the BAD high school graduation photos - it's been much more fun and interesting going through photos of my mother back when she wasn't one yet...photos with her own mother, with schoolmates, and group trips with college friends which included one very smitten and very skinny future husband (haha Dad you were so funny-looking!).
I got a weird little sniffle in my nose and a small burning sensation behind my eyes as I went through all these old photos of my mom. She was so. Beautiful. My mommy!
I just hope she's enjoyed being a mom, to me. I don't think it was always easy, or fun, due to that requisite period when I was a complete and utter snot. But thank god teenagers are not teenagers forever.
Although I wish I could have seen my mom as one. Look how cute she was!
Mom (second from left) in high school.
***
And now...knitting content!
My mom's been making this crochet shell from the Kidsilk Haze I bought her ages ago. She had tried to knit with it first and couldn't understand how I ever managed to produce Butterfly ("So many haaairs! Is so steecky!!"), and declared me the superior knitter. Hee hee! She tried crocheting instead, we picked out a stitch pattern together et voila!
We went to Hancock Fabrics yesterday for fabric and ribbons. She is also making me a needle case. Yay!
 
And I'm making her a summer sweater. The stitch pattern is from my book, and I'm using Hempathy (hemp/cotton/modal blend). It's going to be Orangina and Celia-like, with raglan shaping and small sleeves. I could have done this in one piece, top-down but don't have long enough needles and didn't feel like buying any. She's really excited to get something handknit from me, her little knitting protégée.
Filed Under: Life
Sunday, May 07, 2006
We're having a jolly time here in the South. After a weekend with the parents, Duck and I headed to Savannah for a couple of days, then to Jekyll Island, then to Okefenokee Swamp, and then we got tired of driving around and headed back to Atlanta a few days early. I meant to update here more regularly but am trying to make headway in my very neglected photo album. So far I've only pics up of our trip to Jekyll - take a peek.
This past Friday for Cinqo de Mayo we headed with my high school peeps to some bar in Buckhead for some Mexican food, but all they were serving were drinks. Margaritas all night + no food all night = Tim puking out the car window on the way home. Ha ha ha! This is funny really only to me because in all the years of partying, I have never ever once seen him lose equilibrium even slightly, while he has seen me more than I would like to admit. And always with a gleeful, self-satisfied glint in his eyes. So yes I was rather enjoying myself watching him sick out the front seat, even though the mess came back and splattered my side of the window. I have pictures of this too but you probably don't want to see it.
Happy Cinqo de Mayo!
The night ended with a late late dinner at Waffle House, a greasy sort of joint that you'd only voluntarily step foot in if you were 1) a truck driver, 2) really stoned, 3) really drunk. Hashbrowns smothered in cheese at 1 in the morning never tasted so good.
Ah yes, we are all in - or approaching - our 30's. The fun never ends.
There has been some knitting. Some. Mostly the only person getting any quality play time with yarn is the cat. Mouse loves to play with yarn. And rabbits too. She brought one home the other day, much to my mother's displeasure. She's really sprightly for a middle-aged cat.
"Did you know I crochet too? Claws make for great hooks. As do incisors."
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Atlanta
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