I met the lovely Karida of Neighborhood Fiber Co. at Stitches this year (seriously - she’s adorable, and a total hoot). I picked up a few things from her (you’ll see some of it next week, too)

Studio Sock yarn for Kris in “Foggy Bottom”

Seriously - tell me these aren’t Penn State colors. How could I resist?

So, do you remember back in July, when I was madly knitting on those three dragons for our friends’ little boy? Well, I did deliver them in July, but didn’t get a picture. And Karin’s camera was broken, so she couldn’t get them. I got an email from her last night, including pictures of the dragons (Knitty’s Norberta in blue, green, and purple) with her little guy, Sam, in his very appropriate (and TOO CUTE FOR WORDS) Halloween costume.

Other than that, it was a quiet weekend here. Kris and I didn’t do much, which was absolutely lovely. I did finish up Cherie Amour, and am hoping to get some pictures when Kris gets home. I’m very happy with how it came out.

I also started a new project. I picked up a copy of the new book “Son of Stitch ‘n Bitch”, and I decided that Kris needed a scarf to go with his “We Call Them Pirates” hat. So, I’m doing an “Uncle Argyle” scarf for him in black and white. It’s my first attempt at double knitting, and I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s not difficult, but it’s challenging enough to keep things interesting.

Front (or back):

Back (or front):

Incidentally, the scarf pattern was designed by Lindsay of Storm Moon Knits - as in she who dyed that gorgeous sock yarn I got at Stitches East this year!

Ellen’s Half Pint Farm!

I picked up two hanks of this lovely purple alpaca-silk lace yarn at Stitches. When I got home, I checked the Icarus Shawl pattern (which I thought it would be perfect for) and realized… I didn’t have enough.





Luckily, when I stopped by the Ellen’s booth at Rhinebeck, she had another hank of it. And, it was even from the same dyelot (per Ellen herself), so now I’m good to go! Icarus, you will be mine!

Well, Spanish Dancer looks pretty much the same, only wider, and although I’ve finished sleeve #1 on Cherie Amour, I kinda want to keep it under wraps until it’s done, because I ended up doing something totally different with the sleeves, and I want you to get the full effect, rather than seeing it part way.  Clearly, I’m hoping for praise and adulation on this. I hope y’all won’t disappoint when I do reveal it. ;) And yes, I am aware that it is a little sad that I did the entire body of the sweater in a day and a half, and it took me a week to do one sleeve, but I had to let it marinate for a while as I decided for sure what I wanted to do.

(Oh, and when I did decide what I wanted, I also realized that I screwed up the lace repeat on the bottom of the sweater. Somehow, I missed the K1 at the beginning of every chart row, so my lace looks a little off. I like it, though, so I’m not going to worry about it. The weird thing? The size I am making is the ONLY one where I could have done that without catching it, because it’s a 12-stitch repeat, done 11 times. I did an 11-stitch repeat, 12 times. Any other size, and it wouldn’t have worked out - I’d have caught the mistake. D’oh!)

Anyway, since I’m not showing you knitting WIP’s today, you are getting one of the things I worked on to take to my cousin’s house for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

What do you get when you…

Melt together 1 pound of butter, 1 pound of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and 8 oz. of unsweetened chocolate:

Mix 6 eggs, 3 tablespoons of instant espresso, 2 tablespoons of vanilla, and 2-1/4 cups of sugar:

Add the chocolate to the eggs, and sift in 1 cup of flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt:

Stir in 3 cups of chopped walnuts and 12 oz. of chocolate chips which have been tossed with an additional 1/4 cup of flour:

Pour it into a greased half-sheet pan:

And bake it for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F?

The best brownies ever.

Specifically, the Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies. I adore them. They are really quite easy to make, freeze beautifully, and are to-die-for yummy. Although I don’t think I ever want to calculate the calories in them…In addition to these, I made a 4-pound batch of Firecrackers (spicy pickled carrots) for our poker party next Saturday night (they need a week to marinate and get good and hot), my Dad’s favorite stuffing (or dressing, technically, since this isn’t going in the bird), and sweet potatoes with buttered pecans on top. It was a good cooking day. :)

So, to all of you in the US, I say have a happy Thanksgiving. For anyone not celebrating, just have a good Thursday, and I’ll see you for Yarn Pr0n Friday!

You may or may not know this, but Kris and I are kind of Ikea-holics. Seriously - it’s bordering on ridiculous just how much of our furniture has come from the House of Swedish Design. Anyway, a while back, we bought a bed from them, including one of their foam mattresses. We liked it a lot, but the mattress isn’t all that thick, and eventually, it smooshed a little.

Kris and his mom had been doing a little research into foam and latex mattresses, and we decided that we wanted to change ours to one of the latex ones. We checked it out at Ikea, thought about it for a couple of days, and decided to get it.

We made a run up last night (Sorry, Carrie - Kris was wiped when he got home, but hit a second wind a little later. Just late enough that we couldn’t make it to the show. *sigh*), and picked up a mattress for our bed. We went through the checkout, paid for it, and then went over to the pickup area. They brought out the mattress, we wrestled it out to my van, and got it home.

Once we got it home, we dragged it upstairs, stripped the bed, and then flopped the new mattress on the bed. Where we discovered that instead of the queen sized mattress we requested and paid for… they gave us a full. If you’ve ever met Kris and I, you know that this is just not going to work. We’re not petite people. I mean, I’m 5′9″, and he’s 6′. We just don’t FIT on a full-sized bed!

So, today, we dragged the mattress back down the steps, shoved it back in the van, and drove back up to Ikea. (Incidentally, if you are wondering if I am over-stating the annoying-ness of the mattress moving, remember that this is a latex mattress. There is no structure to it. So, when you pull on one corner, the rest of it doesn’t necessarily follow.) We went to Returns and Exchanges, where a lovely young woman waited on us, and got us a new mattress in fairly quick order, especially when you consider that it’s a Saturday afternoon. This one was not only bagged, but also boxed. We checked the box, confirmed that the item number matched the receipt, and that the label did indeed say “Queen”. We took it down to the van (We always park in the lower lot behind our Ikea - it’s never as busy, so we get a closer space.), tried to get it in while still in the box, realized it wasn’t going to work, so we ripped the box open.

That’s when we saw the mold. Black mold. All over one corner of the mattress. So very, very many levels of “ew”.

Back on the cart, back to the elevator, back upstairs to Returns and Exchanges. We took a number, and I sat on one of the benches. The same girl who helped us before finished up with a customer, and then noticed me. She gave me a questioning look, and I just said, “Oh, wait until you see what we found.” She came over and took a look at the mattress and was absolutely horrified. She went straight over to the warehouse and had someone pull another mattress, which was also in a box. We opened it right there, and all of us checked it all over. Clean! Yay!

So, back down to the van we went. Got it hope, took it upstairs, and it’s perfect. So very, very comfy. I am really looking forward to sleeping on it tonight. Poor Kris has to work tonight (ugh), so he won’t get to try it until either some obnoxious hour of the morning, or tomorrow when he gets home.

Hope everyone else is having a less interesting Saturday! :D

(Does anyone even vaguely recognize that rather tweaked quote?)

While at Stitches, I had the pleasure of meeting Lindsay of Storm Moon Knits (her shop’s not fully up just yet). She’s absolutely darling, and her yarns? GORGEOUS. I was drooling over one called “Let There Be Lips” (Yay Rocky Horror) but missed out on it. I did, however, find two fabulous colors that I was able to snag.

First - “Mandragora” (and yes, I know you saw this before, but as Kris pointed out when I asked him why he took pictures of it again, it’s really pretty.)

I picked it up at least five times and kept putting it back before I finally realized that if I picked it up that many times, I clearly loved it, and should just BUY it. (Yes, I’m a little slow sometimes)Second - “Rockabilly Blues”.







I picked this up for Kris. I really thought he’d like it, and I was right. When I showed it to him, he loved it. So, there will be kickass socks in the future for both of us.

(Oh, and the post title? It’s a reference to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Beer Bad”. The line “Beer good… foamy” gets used around here from time to time)

I stole this from Amanda.

30 years ago I……
was in kindergarten, learning to read.

20 years ago I……
Was in 9th grade, and I believe doing rather badly in biology. That was also the year I was elected president of the French Club, which my circle of friends somehow thought was a major coup, because I beat Jason Schusler, who was one of the “in crowd”. We weren’t so much part of it. I’m not entirely sure how we thought the French Club was the key to popularity…

10 years ago I……
Was just starting to date Kris. It was a bad fall for me, and he helped me get through a lot. I was also working on a production of “The Man Who Came to Dinner”, which was the last show I did at the Academy Theatre.

5 years ago I……
Was working for Circuit City, probably tearing my hair out getting the last few new stores opened up for Black Friday.

2 years ago I……
Was dealing with the news that FOUR different people I knew (including both of my cousins) were pregnant. It was not a good fall.

1 year ago I……
Was preparing for Thanksgiving dinner at our house, which included us, my parents, our friends with their 18-month old and his folks, and other friends of ours with their 7-year old son and 6-month old daughter.

1 month ago I……
Was at Stitches with Betsy! And prepping for my Rhinebeck and SAFF trips.

1 week ago I……
Was working on the Passin’ the Dress Code capelet.

1 day ago I……
Was watching Cameron and Edyta get eliminated from Dancing with the Stars while working on my Cherie Amour.

1 hour ago I ……
Was beating Kris at Scene It on the XBox.

And right now?…
I’m watching The Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 5, listening to Kris snore on the other end of the couch, and talking to my buddy Steve on Google. It’s an exciting night. (This is what happens when I lose track of time and realize I’m going to be late for my knitting guild meeting, so I decide not to go at all.)

I’m glad that our adventures with the plumbing amused all of you. No long-term issues going on, and we’re waiting for the estimate from the plumber to find out what’s ahead for the spring and the repairs. Oh, and I don’t believe that ANY of you wouldn’t have thought of the alternate meaning of “Kris’s Python”. I know y’all better than that.

Spanish Dancer is making progress. According to the calculations I’ve made, I’m about 45% of the way through the shawl, but that seems just insane. I’ll double-check myself, but if I’m right, woo hoo!

Monday night, I started another project - Cherie Amour from knitty.com, using the Brooks Farm Solana that was featured in last Friday’s Yarn Pr0n post. (Hmm… I’m sensing a pattern here. I’ll have to think carefully before I decide what to post this week!) I started Monday night, and made it almost to the waist ribbing. By last night, I had finished the body and had picked up for the right sleeve. I’m doing my sleeves differently than the pattern calls for - top down, in the round, and without the cuff ribbing. I’ll either do a bell sleeve or a straight sleeve. I’m not sure yet. The yarn is just wonderful to work with - soft and snuggly, nice stitch definition, and superwash to boot! If this keeps moving this quickly, I might even be able to wear it this weekend!

So, some of you may know that Kris has to be at work at 6am. This generally means that I wake up enough to say goodbye to him around a quarter to 6 (yay short commute!), and then go back to sleep until my alarm goes off at 7. This morning, however, things were a little different.

He kissed me goodbye, and went downstairs to leave. A few minutes later, he came back up and said, “I’m sorry to wake you, but our downstairs is slightly flooded.” Keep in mind that we JUST brought a 75-gallon fish tank into the house this weekend. These are NOT words I wanted to hear.

I came downstairs (in, not surprisingly, a bit of a hurry) to see two big puddles spreading across my kitchen floor and the floor of our powder room looking like a small pond. Ugh. (But, on the upside, the fish tank was fine) When he came down in the morning to grab coffee, the floor was dry. After his shower, puddle. This was not a good sign.

So, we grabbed the shop-vac and sucked up all the water from the floors, and started troubleshooting. We were, of course, worried that a pipe had burst in the wall somewhere, but we couldn’t find anywhere it could have happened. So, my thought was that the wax ring on the toilet had let loose, which seemed to be supported by the fact that the toilet was, in fact, just about empty. Kris had me run the shower for a few minutes while he watched downstairs - nothing. He flushed the toilet downstairs. It filled up, and wouldn’t drain. We were baffled.

So, we moved on to stage two of the experiment - I actually took a shower. I washed my hair and face, and was thoroughly soaped up when I hear feet thundering up the steps and Kris yells “Cut the water!” Of course.

So, what we finally figured out was that the drain from the house wasn’t, well, draining. It was backing up into the toilet, which then overflowed its rim onto the bathroom floor, and then around the wall into the kitchen (and then very slowly drained to leave the toilet mostly empty). Since I was still soapy and standing in the shower, I made him shop-vac the water out of the toilet so that I could at least rinse off, and then we called the City of Bowie Dept. of Public Works. They had a guy here in, I kid you not, FIVE minutes (and yes, I was dressed by then). He looked at the sewers, but there wasn’t a blockage in their area. So, Kris called a plumber (after calling work to tell them that he wouldn’t be in today). By this time, it is now about 8:40, and they said he would be here between 10 and noon. All told, not too terrible.

While we were waiting (and as I started typing this post), Kris decided it would be a good time to drain the old 20-gallon fish tank. He hooked up his Python (get your minds out of the gutter) to the hose outside, and walked around the corner of the house to turn on the water (that’s how they work). Of course, he left the END of the hose RIGHT BY THE OPEN DOOR, so when the water turned on… well, let’s just say I had to drag out the carpet scrubber to dry out my carpeting. *sigh*

As I was finishing with the scrubber, the doorbell rang. It was the plumber. He was here a full half-hour BEFORE their early estimate. He is my new best friend. He is snaking out the main drain pipe from the house, and hopefully that will solve the issues. Kris has the old fish tank all emptied, and I have an amusing tale for all of you.

Things could have ended much, much worse. :)

ETA: Well, they’re a little worse than we originally thought.  It looks like the roots from one of the trees in our front yard invaded the drain a bit, which was what caused the slowing of the drain.  So, at some point we are going to need to get that section replaced.  But for now, we’re flowing again.  :)

Brooks Farm Solana, purchased at Rhinebeck to make Cherie Amour.

And, as promised, the pictures of my SAFF acquisitions.

On Thursday before SAFF, Aimee (AKA the Evil Enabler) took me to The Yarn Shop by Rainy Day Creations. I picked up the Cascade 220 to make these cute cabled gloves that she’s making, and probably a hat to go with them. The Opal is earmarked to become Kelp! Knits’ Ironwork Socks.

Friday, Cristi and I ran over to Charlotte Yarn, where a ridiculous amount of stuff jumped into my arms. I picked up the Malabrigo Chunky I used in the Passin’ the Dress Code, some Malabrigo Laceweight in “Applewood”, Blue Sky Alpaca & Silk in a lovely peacock blue for a Clementine Shawlette, and that big ball of squishy goodness in the back is some Fleece Artist Scotian Silk. No clue what it’s going to be, but damn is it soft. And pretty.

Saturday morning at SAFF, we tracked down Jana from White Oak Studio to get some of her TV Yarn. I was thrilled to find that she did have some “Doctor Who”, which I snapped up for Kris (on that, we finally got our season 3 dvd’s and watched the infamous “Blink” episode. I’ve been hearing about it for months, and OHMYGOD now I know why. SO GOOD!), along with “The English Patient” and “Sesame Street” for me.

And yes, I promised myself I wasn’t going to buy any fiber at Rhinebeck or SAFF if I didn’t spin up some of what I already had. Er… I fell down. I picked up some lovely Happy Hippy Optim in “Commune” and some… um… really pretty mystery orange and brown fiber. The bag of Jacob/Angora and the big ball of Lorna’s Laces roving? Yeah - I blame Aimee for those. Like I said - the Evil Enabler. See, Aimee was standing in a booth, oohing at the Lorna’s Laces roving, and I was outside the booth, talking to May. Aimee was yelling colors to us, and I looked at May and said, “As long as they don’t have…” and as the words “Black Purl” were ON MY LIPS, Aimee yells over, “They have Black Purl!” Curse her timing. (The Jacob/Angora was less evil - she showed me some Jacob/Alpaca she bought from a booth, and told me about the angora. I had to check it out.)