There was supposed to be a pumpkin here

I bought a pumpkin a week ago and went to carve Barack on it last night only to find it has started to rot. Now I have to find a new one the day before Halloween which I suspect will be like trying to find a flu vaccine. So now you'll get a list of the links I read on a regular basis.

Not Martha - Right now she has a lot of Halloween stuff, but on a regular basis she has a little bit of everything: reviews, links, knitting, and wit.

Angry Chicken - Mostly crafts and some cooking. She also talks about her children (whom I have to imagine are adorable) and it kind of makes me wish Daughter was interested in more than just having the cat chase yarn when I talk about knitting.

Today I Made - I just discovered this blog about her crafty endeavors. Makes me think I should come up with a banner of some sort for mine. Oh, and it makes me wish I had more time in my day. Maybe if I gave up sleeping.

Regretsy - The best of the worst. A warning, some of the items are not safe for work.

Mason-Dixon Knitting - I'm a big fan of the ball band dish cloth which without these two girls I wouldn't even know existed.

Smitten Kitchen - This is an occasional read right now since I don't have a lot of time to devote to cooking anymore. Look up her chili recipe though. It's amazing.

striped

I forgot that the more stripes there are, the more ends to weave in. So perhaps foolishly I kept knitting on my merry striped way and I was left with so many ends. I hate weaving in ends. Hate hate hate it. But I persevered and made it through without to much harm done and got this.

Not terrible, but I don't love it. Maybe one day when I'm bored I'll make the second one, but not yet. I'm not quite over weaving all those ends in yet.

sneak preview

I'm working on some wrist warmers that I pulled the pattern out of nowhere for. I know, wrist warmers aren't exactly hard, but I did have to learn how to do a jogless stripe. These instructions are amazingly simple. Up until I found them I had only seen the lift up a stitch from the row below and k2tog and I could never make it work. These instructions are like jogless striping for dummies. I'm so beyond excited that now I want to make striped everything. I'll start with wrist warmers and slowly take over. Perhaps next, a striped hat.

P.S. I decided the stripe pattern based on how much I wanted to knit of that color at the time.

Gold Rush Chili

I made this chili last night in my fancy new pan and while I should have taken a photo, I didn't. Daughter and I loved it, but Husband wasn't as excited as we were. As much as he says he wants to go more vegetarian I secretly wonder if he means it. He's not a picky eater and he usually loves everything but mushrooms, but he was very mediocre about this. He even liked the undercooked pumpkin bread that I made and nobody else ate, so I'm not sure what went wrong with this. Even though he wasn't a fan, I would make this again. Next time I think I'll halve the beans or use two different kinds (I stuck with kidney beans; I feel like they're necessary in chili). For the record, I left out the oregano (couldn't find it) and chipotle chili powder (I can't handle the spicy).

In other news I'm making some fingerless mittens and hoping they're not going to turn out too small. I went up a needle size because the stores closest to me didn't have any size 5 dpn's and I didn't want to drive to the next town with a child in need of a nap. I'll finish one and then decide if I'll do the second.

Is beret me like sleigh me?

She's quite the looker isn't she? How could she not be with all that blush, eye shadow and painted on eyelashes? Oh and the lips. Let's not forget about the lips. I shall name her Marge and she's showing off the beret I made. (She's not actually mine so it may not be my place to name her, but she's in my blog so I'm doing it anyways.) On to the beret...it's small. As in really small barely fits my head kind of small. I'll add that I do have a surprisingly large head, but I think this hat is better suited for a child. Or maybe an adult with a small head. If you have a medium size head it will fit but won't be floppy like berets should be. If you have a large head like mine it just looks small. But Marge here has a head on the small size and I must say it looks rather stunning on her.

Do you like my floors? They're bamboo. A lot of work went into putting them in last summer and we're very happy with them.

Back to the beret though, a close up. If you look really close you'll notice that her eyelashes are actually in her eyelids. Oh Marge.

Beret Me

Son is in his bouncy chair and is currently trying to turn around so that he can feel the fabric on the chair. As someone who goes into fabric stores just to feel the fabric, it is a very proud moment. I'm unsure that other people would care about this quite as much.

I've started the Purl Beret with my leftover yarn from the Icarus Shawl. I paid too much to let that yarn go to waste and somebody out there must want a cream colored beret. (Isn't there a song rasberry beret or a song that at least has those words in it? I'm thinking Prince or is he the Artist Formerly Known as Prince now? I never can keep track.) It should be a nice quick easy knit which will be a nice break after the shawl. I'm thinking I need to get better at blocking lace which will require knitting more lace. I never thought I'd be knitting lace, but I'll just put it on that very long list that I have of things I never thought I'd be doing.

Almost finished

I had to post twice because my Icarus Shawl is blocking!!!! I'm glad I skipped one of the repeats; the thing barely fit on my bed to block it. The top won't be perfectly straight because I had neither blocking wires or crochet thread, but I still love it. As an added bonus you can't see any of the mistakes. Below are the 3 best photos of the copious amount I took. (The ends will be woven in after it dries.)




P.S. I use this blocking method. Some tips: Use those pins with the large ball on the top and make sure you get them all out when you're finished, otherwise your significant other might get a little mad or you hurt yourself.

short and a little sweet

I'm on the bind off row of the Icarus. Then maybe I'll do some hats or a scarf or two. Something quick after this shawl. Of course there's also the ballerina shirt I want to make Daughter.

If you live in the Chicago area and listen to NPR, now's a good time to pledge as you could win an iPhone. I have both an iPhone and an NPR membership and can attest that both are wonderful things. I especially love All Things Considered. If it weren't for that show I wouldn't know anything that was going on in the world. There's also an NPR news app. And no worries, even if you don't win the phone there are some awesome thank you gifts this time.

early in the a.m.

Actually it's not that early, at least not for me. On Tuesdays and Thursdays everyone in the house is up and getting ready for preschool, but today's a quiet morning of sipping coffee and eating cereal. I think the dark foreboding sky outside is helping children sleep. I wonder if it will rain or snow.

Hoping to make another bag today and finish my Icarus Shawl. I only have two rows and the bind off left on it. Woo! I was able to do a lot of knitting on the car ride thanks to my MIL being the entertainment committee. There are so many stitches on the thing that it takes me 20 minutes to do one row. Good thing Glee is on tonight.

vacay

It got cold while I was gone. Of course, where I went was colder and snowier. Yes, I said snowier; it actually snowed on Saturday night, just a dusting which disappointed Daughter horribly. She was really excited about making a "really really big snowman" even after I tried to explain there wasn't enough snow for that. In case you're curious, I spent the weekend in South Dakota where my children were spoiled and I was able to sleep in, drink coffee, play scrabble and see some dear friends (I would call them old, but they might get offended). And then today reality came back. I spent the morning doing errands with Son while Daughter was in preschool and came home to do laundry and dishes. The two things in my life that never end. I also made another bag. An Ani Difranco one this time. From the Fall 2006 tour I give you this bag:

front


back

The details you may or may not care about (stolen straight from Etsy): Tour dates are on the back and the Righteous Babe Records logo is on the front. Bag measures approximately 12" x 11" and straps measure approximately 25".

Free Patterns!

This was apparently posted back in September, but since I didn't know about it until today I figured that there was still a chance other people didn't know about it either. Melanie Falick Books is letting you download a bunch of patterns. There's knitting, sewing and even a printing pattern. I'm especially looking forward to the produce bags and the baby booties from Vintage Knits. And it's successfully done what they wanted it to do because I now want to check out some of those books. I actually went to Border's today and saw the Weekend Sewing book by Heather Ross (who has a very nice blog also with some free patterns). I'm debating about whether to go back and buy it just for the wrap around skirt.

the longest 2 straight days in a row ever.

I've been spending my time scrapbooking. I hate scrapbooking. So instead of doing it a little at a time, I wait about 6 months while I pile up a whole ton of photos (in this case 162) and then do it for like 2 days straight. Or at least it seems like 2 days straight; I might be off by a few hours though. And I'm not really counting meal times. What happened to the good old days where you could just shove photos in an album and then years later look at them and say When was that taken? What were we doing? How old do you think they were here? Oh how I long for those days.

This C25K is a special form of torture that kicks my ass halfway through. I hesitate to say that by the end of the 20 minutes it gets a little better. I downloaded an app so that I can listen to my music and it tells you when to run and when to walk which is really great except that I do believe that they have you alternating between running and walking for 21 minutes, not 20. I know a minute doesn't seem like a lot, that is until you're running on the side of the road praying for someone to hit you on the way back to the house. Then, it's comparable to scrapbooking for 2 days straight.

Oh, and Glee is my new favorite obsession. Thank you Hulu.

New Bags

I had something really witty to write, but I'm exhausted. I started the Couch to 5K program today. At first I thought I was going to die, but it got better. Perhaps it was just because I knew the 20 minute end was in site. Thank you treadmill for having a timer. I'd been flirting with running since Daughter was born (3 years ago), but I think I'll date him for a while. As long as he doesn't hurt my knees after a while.

I had a commission. Kind of exciting. I had stopped making these bags years ago, but I had kept a few. I put them up on Etsy, they sold, and then someone asked me to make one. I like it, but I'm a heathen like that (and a huge Tori Amos fan). This was a t-shirt from the Boys for Pele era. It was so popular that they reissued it a year or two ago (but now those are gone too), but this is definitely the original shirt. I got it from a friend eons ago (or what seems like eons ago).

the front

the back

the whole thing (it's hanging funny because of how the strap is on)