Tuesday, April 22, 2008
I'm down in Atlanta for a few weeks helping my parents clean out their house in preparation for their move to Beijing. After years and years of my dad threatening to relocate to no less than a dozen different places around the globe (including Taipei, Geneva, somewhere in France, Zambia, Johannesburg, South Africa, and also Birmingham, Alabama) for job-related reasons, my head started spinning and I stopped listening. Just call me when you're about to board that steamship and I'll show up on the boardwalk to wave goodbye, k?
So it has really, finally happened. It was bon voyage to dad on Monday, as he took of for his new life and new job in China. My mom is sticking around for another month or so to tie up loose ends before she joins him for their couple of years there. They've rented their house out to several friends of my high school friend, which I think is hilarious, all of my good furniture and books and piano and other possessions worth keeping were shipped to us in Boston several years ago, other large pieces of furniture have been sold or given away, the cars are sold...So all that's left to do is to throw out, pack up, store away 20 some-odd year's worth of clutter. As well as 20 some-odd year's worth of GRIME. The most aggressive kind of grime known to man. That part is making me cry. I now can blame my parents for me not being a neat freak. They are DIRTY PEOPLE.
Anyway, before my dad left we all took one last roadtrip to New Orleans, which is one of our most favoritist cities, so we could eat our most favorite critter, the crawfish.
Crawfish eaten daintily for breakfast. Yeah that's right! I had crawfish at 8 am!
Eating crawfish is probably as much an acquired taste as it is an acquired technique. They are boiled en masse in a vat of spices, to which some ears of corn and chunk of potatoes are also thrown in. To get to the sweet, spicy meat you break the body in half at the tail, suck out the head innards which has absorbed all the flavorings, and squeeze out the tail. It's not a lot of meat, so you have to go through at least 2 lbs of crawfish per person to be really satisfied.
Once you're had your fill, and if the spicing is done right, the outer rim of your lips will be swollen and chafed from the heat, your finger tips will be shriveled from the salt, your shirt will be splattered yellow with crawfish innards, and you'll be half-drunk from all the ice-cold beer you washed down. The whole process is filthy, disgusting and totally AWESOME.
I acquired my taste for crawfish during the several years we lived in Louisiana when I was around 10. Had I encountered my first crawfish plate at this time of my life, this post would be the topic of my Least Favorite Things. Because it really is just about the most unappetizing thing once you've gone through your however many pounds of crawfish, there are flies buzzing all around, and you're left with a heaping pile of exoskeletoned body parts.
Crawfish eaten not-so-daintily (or, the proper way)
It is utter crawfish carnage. Mmmmmm!!
Filed Under: Tuesday is for Favorite Things
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
I made Chevron Scarf - in the same fashion as the first one - for a friend's birthday, using the remainders of Sundara Yarn's Bartlett Pear (made entrelac socks with it), and a skein of this Koigu in a colorway that is both beautiful and craptastic, depending how far you stand. I really am not sure whether my friend is going to like the color combo. Us knitting insiders know that for the Chevron Scarf, the more the colors clash, the better (er right? I think?)...but will she feel the same way?
Lookit all the pretty colors.
I asked Bunny, always the most willing and photogenic fashion rabbit, to model it for me.
I think it'll do. As soon as I remove all the cat hairs.
Filed Under: Cats | Chevron Scarf | Completed Projects
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Pattern: Pomatomus
Yarn: Sundara Yarn, Ltd Edition Aqua Over Lilac
Needles: US1 dpns
I decreased the shell pattern to a 10-stitch repeat, giving a total of 60 stitches overall.
* Also, you omit rows 10, 11, 12, and 13 of both charts. The pattern is now a 10-stitch by 18-row repeat.
Aside from a pair of socks, it's been a really unproductive week. I mean really. un. productive. I've had this stupid itchy dry cough that peaks between midnight and 5am, despite the barrage of syrups and pills. I'm all bloodshot, drugged up and still coughing. I don't understand the reflex of coughing when you have nothing to cough up. By the way, have scientist figured out why we yawn? And isn't it weird that cats do it too? Yawn, that is. But they don't cough. Now why is that. If you've ever seen a coughing cat please let me know.
PS Rambing Rose cardigan remains in a heap in the corner, waiting for me to just take the 30 minutes already to finish the button bands. I'm still not in the mood for it. I'm visiting my parents this week in ATL, so I might pawn the job off to my mother.
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks | Pomatomus
Friday, April 04, 2008
We all have a preferred sleeping position. I like to sleep on my side with my palm under my cheek. Duck likes to sleep with his arm thrown over his head. Veebs likes to sleep on his back.
But I think Bunny's favorite sleeping position takes the cake. Have you seen anything so unorthodoxed and cute at the same time?!
Filed Under: Cats
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Thank you for all the tips on how to properly pick up for button bands. I could have sworn I had done it before but amazingly this is the first time I've knit button bands. Which would explain why I thought it would be a snap. Of all the techniques that I had to overcome while knitting Rambling Rose - intarsia, back and forth yoking with intarsia, back and forth yoking with shortrow shaping with intarsia - I really didn't think I'd be stumped by the button bands when all was said and done! I don't have any more updates as far as that's concerned (it's still banished in a heap in some corner), so now...
...Here is this Tuesday's installment of my Favorite Things:
The Belle de Brillet Sidecar oooooooo
Belle de Brillet is a pear cognac. It is my very good friend. I am not a huge fan of pears nor cognac per se, but together they make a really lovely couple. This stuff is not exactly cheap ($40 a bottle) but really, you get what you pay for. You get some French. You get some class. You get it in a sexy pear-shaped bottle.
The cognac is not pear flavored, but pear infused, so this is about as far from the nasty, sickly sweet fake stuff as you can get. It's delicately pear-y, very floral, very smooth, and even after overindulging on a couple of sidecars (very easy to do), your mornings will remain hangover-free. And you'll think to yourself, Why, what a tasty little drink I had last night! I just might do it again real soon! So treat yourself to a bottle and try it out. We make these when we have friends over and let me tell you, they're always a huge hit.
For a perfect serving of a Belle de Brillet Sidecar:
1.5 oz Belle de Brillet
1 oz cognac (optional, can substitute with more BdB)
1 oz Grand Marnier (or triple sec)
juice of half a lemon (absolutely no substitutes for the real thing!)
about 1-2 oz simple syrup, to taste (or dissolve 2 tsp of sugar in 1 oz of water)
Shake with plenty of ice, pour, and get ready to FALL IN LOVE. 
Filed Under: Cocktails | Tuesday is for Favorite Things
Monday, March 31, 2008
For I have just knit the ugliest pair of button bands ever in the history of knitting.
Don't come any closer. I am ugly.
Poor Rambling Rose. What did you do to deserve such inelegant, pigeon-toed button bands?
All I did was pick up the selvege (slipped stitches) along the front panels, like we do when we pick up the slipped stitches along the gusset of a sock heel. Why did it pucker so much here? Did the ribbing of the button bands pull the fabric in? Should I have gone up a needle size? Should I occassionally knit into the front and back of a few of the slipped stitches to increase the pick-up count? Will you do this for me?
As far as mistakes go, this is pretty fixable. Easily fixable. In all the time I spent screaming "EFF! EFF ME! EFF me in the effing HOOHA," I could have ripped out the bands and redid them three times over. But for some reason I just so don't want to do it. I don't want to figure out how to knit a smooth button band when it shouldn't have required any thought to begin with. You're supposed to simply pick up the slipped stitches and, the end! But no! Now I've got to experiment with RATIOS and different needle sizes and whatnot so I've tossed it aside for the moment. I am angry at it. I am angry.
I'm seeking a little therapy by knitting socks again.
Pomatomus (or the Best Sock Pattern Ever) in Sundara Yarn "Aqua Over Lilac"
I'll finish the cardigan once I'm feeling a little more rational.
Filed Under: Rambling Rose | Socks | Pomatomus
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Why, I'm glad you asked. The three things I would bring with me to a deserted island would be 1) mojitos, 2) VanBuren, and 3) a Jane Austen book.
Don't you wish she had written more??
The problem is deciding which.
It would probably be Emma, being the most humorous (I think) with the added bonus of being the lengthiest.
Even so my time on the deserted island should not last longer than a couple of days. It would take me only that long to finish the book, the mojitos would be long gone for sure, and Veebs would be too since I wasn't given a fourth option (Cat Chow, or roast beef...Or Pride and Prejudice. The cat needs something to read too).
Filed Under: Tuesday is for Favorite Things
Monday, March 24, 2008
I've just finished the yoke and will be starting the neckband and button bands tonight. Oh the bliss of knitting from a single ball of yarn!
Filed Under: Rambling Rose
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