FO: Socks on a Plane

I had high hopes for this post.

The pattern is Socks on a Plane, which I love and the yarn is Gnome Acres, which you all know I am addicted to.  I had planned to explain how this pattern restored my faith in the toe-up sock and how I think I figured out an aspect of my knitting I can change to help prevent the kinds of holes I have gotten lately.

Sadly I have overslept and must now dash off to work, but hey look -- more socks!

For more eloquent FOs, check out the group over at Tamis Amis!

Tangled Yarn of Evil

I had a different post all worked up last night.  It was witty and entertaining and full of self-indulgence.  But then something happened.

I've reached my least favorite part of knitting.  That part where nothing is quite right and all the projects are too close to completion to be fun for take-along or end of the day exhaustion.  I was so proud of myself.  The Holla Back Tank is ready for seeming, the Byzantine Cowl just needs grafting, and I am all set to cast on socks as soon as Sock the Vote officially begins.  Because I was super awesome and actually getting things done I decided to treat myself with a new shawl.  At ten last night I pulled out my swift, some yarn, and that is when things went horribly wrong.

The sun has yet to come up, so there is still the chance that I am being haunted by bad yarn karma.  This is this morning, after I spent an hour last night and finally gave up, ranted about the most tangled skein of yarn ever, and "what kind of sadist hides the end like that".  Chris and Cogsworth just stared in fear of the yarn monster growing on the table.  I stormed off to bed, but sadly when I awoke this morning it is still there.

I am thinking of leaving it there for a few days to think about what it has done.

For less distressing knitting in your day, check out the posts over at Tami's Amis.

In Which Faith Has Started Baking

One of the many things I have discovered about myself since getting married is that I love to cook.  Actually, that does not convey a proper picture.  I don't just love to cook, I love to bake.  I love the blast of heat when I pop open the oven, I love the smell of bubbling casseroles, I love the whir of my fancy KitchenAid mixer (probably the only reason I have discovered this love).  One of the best parts of my week is flipping through my cook books, deciding at what I want to try my hand, and making our grocery list.

Today I decided to combine two of my favorite things, fresh chicken and cheese (this should explain quite clearly why I was never able to make it as a vegetarian).  Chris does most of our grocery shopping these days, and has discovered that the butcher at our local Harris Teeter is better than buying pre-packaged anywhere else barring a good sale.

Thus I have started cooking with chicken that comes wrapped in paper.  Is there anything more decadent?

I made a hybrid version of Buffalo Chicken Quinoa Mac and Cheese, which uses the quinoa instead of noodles.  But we only had about half a cup, which is less than what is called for in the recipe, so I decided to improvise.  I cooked up about the same amount of penne noodles, yielding enough to fill my grandmother's casserole dish.  But the fun did not stop there.

Let me pause here a moment and explain something.  My husband is a really good cook.  He and his mother cook together all the time and have the whole kitchen thing down to a really unfair science.  I, having only recently discovered a love for baking, am quite understandably intimidated.  I have only cooked for his parents one time and that was in my crockpot. Now it seems that I am incapable of baking when Chris is home without having some disaster or another -- using the wrong skillet or forgetting ingredients -- and inevitably setting off the smoke alarm.

This is what happens when you take a recipe at its word when it says "small sauce pan".  Clearly my idea of small and the actual definition of small are not the same.

But in the end I managed to make a really delicious meal.  I used the broiler for the first time and am quite proud of the way my frankensteining of the recipe worked out.  The quinoa combined with the pasta yeilds a really interesting texture that goes a long way to distract you from how spicy the dish actually is.

Now if you'll excuse me, I still have a veggie pizza and apple scones to put in the oven (that is if I'm allowed near it again today).

Geektastic Thursday: This Girl

I have always had a thing for bands that have a strong female frontman.  In high school I was obsessed with Superchick and The Bangles.  As I moved into my college years I discovered Garbage, Metric, and Ivy.  My running playlist is consistently dominated by The Runaways and The Donnas, and when I'm feeling down I can always count on The Veronicas to commiserate and cheer me up.

Last month a new band appeared on the scene from some very familiar faces. Husband and wife team  Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon, best known in my world for their work as script writers for Dollhouse and their work on Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, released the EP for their new project This Girl.  Fans of Dollhouse will recognize track six, "Remains", which was a featured song and music video for the show.

The sound and feel of Remains is carried throughout the EP.  While the duo employ a wide rang of tempo, the preceding five tracks feel as if they are building to the final, slower piece.  They all carry the same haunting quality with imagery of an unnamed female character who could be "Dangerous" or the girl "In Your Dreams".

This album fits perfectly into my collection of "Sometimes-Angry-Sometimes-Loud-Always-Awesome-Chick-Music".  I start almost every day with "Bombs Away" which I have decided must be the credit music if there is ever a movie made about my life.  If nothing else you should check out the free tracks on their site and then notice that you can buy the entire album for less than a dollar a song.  I for one am always happy to help support quality artists who are producing independently, rather than processed through a studio executive's idea of what I want out of my music.

A Lack of Tangible Progress

One of the things I love about participating in WIP Wednesday is that it gives me a chance every week to take a hard look at my knitting and see how I have spent my time in the past week.  Generally I come away with some sense of accomplishment and a reaffirmed sense that I am doing something meaningful and worthwhile.  This is not one of those weeks.  This is one of those other weeks in which I look at my knitting with sad eyes and try to forget the way we have treated one another.

As I mentioned on Monday I have become a two project girl.  I have several things on the needles and I really want to finish something.  I am becoming antsy about the number of projects I have planned and thus really want to free up some space in my mental queue.  In the past few days, however, I have become largely monogamous to my Holla Back Tank.  Which is a development you can blame on Nathan Fillion.

Despite its progress while under the influence of cold medicine, I have discovered that when it comes to colowork I have to draw the line at reading.  Not even I can multi-task that well.

You may have noticed that I am not really that far along for the amount of time I have claimed to be working on this piece.  That is because, dear readers, what you see is the fourth attempt.  Unlike colorwork, it appears that lace knitting and cold medicine do not work -- for me at least.  I had to rip it back to the cast on three times because I ended up with such a snarl at the end of my row.  But the good news is that yesterday Chris was sworn in as a lawyer, a ceremony that is done in open court and takes a really long time.  I got a good three inches done on the back during all of the speaking and other new lawyers.

So there you have it.  Minimal progress for a minimal week.  Hopefully someone else has more inspiring bits of news, which you can find over at Tami's Amis.

Wishful Knitting

Thank you everyone who left such nice comments and get well wishes last week.  One week and an entire bottle of Dayquil later and I am finally feeling like myself again.  I actually thought I was better on Friday but turns out I relapsed during my yoga class on Saturday and fell out of a backbend because I started coughing so badly.  I had to leave early because funnily enough people don't particularly like being near you when there is the potential  you will take them down with you.  Thank God I take my classes at the Y.  Hopefully they will have forgotten about me by the next time.  When I left they still had the guy in jeans and sneakers to puzzle over.

One thing that became ever so apparent while I was sick was that I have a really hard time staying focused on one task when left to my own devices.  Chris went out of town for the week, so I was left alone in the apartment where it turns out I was much more interested in finding everything wrong with my current knitting and picking out brand new projects than I was in actually knitting.  The only projects that are showing any progress are the Byzantine Cowl and the back of my Holla Back Tank (which has been ripped back to the cast on now three times, so no pictures.  It is just too painful).

But if wishes were stitches I'd already have a brand new shawl.  I received my KGASS (Knit Girllls Afghan Square Swap) package in the mail last week and in it was a gorgeous skein of sock yarn.  I immediately decided that the bamboo was far too nice for the abuse of my shoes and started to look for shawl patterns.  I have a skein of Dragon Sock from one of my Dragonfly Fibers club packages that I have been saving to knit a two color shawl and I soon realized that this new skein was the answer.  So of course I then had to look at patterns that use two colors and maybe are in my queue or favorites because there are none in my library and hey should I really be knitting a new shawl when I still have one on the needles?

I did actually pull out my Citizen Shawl for a bit (remember that one?), but I just was not feeling it.  I don't know if it still harbors all of that pre-wedding stress or if it is just the reality of shattered Ravallenic expectations.  Either way I would much rather play with these two skeins.

I am thinking Dancette.  It has been in my queue since the release and is a great take on the striped shawl.  Also, I could then call it my Dancing Octopus, which would just be a blast.

Plague Driven Charts

The plague (or something akin to the plague more commonly known as a cold) has been making the rounds at work and I appear to be its latest victim.  I spent Monday in a medicated haze and yesterday I came home from work and passed out before I even removed my shoes.  Because of this, one would think that I had not accomplished much.  But then, one has been known to be wrong.

Over the weekend I started knitting the Byzantine Cowl, which I got as a kit from Club Dragonfly.  Let me remind you.  I've never done stranded colorwork.  It has always been that "oh, one day when I'm a better knitter" kind of thing.  But for some reason when I got this kit I decided that I absolutely must cast it on (after the wedding of course, there was no way I could start this in the weeks it arrived).

I think I have found a new addiction.  I knit most of this in the past two days, but it seems to be working out despite the medication.  I have not spent time researching how to knit stranded, but finally my immersion in way too many knitting blogs and podcasts has paid off.  I remember reading or hearing someone talk about what it is like for a continental knitter to do stranded and which hand to hold the background color with (my right), and so I just took off.  And guess what?  I'm knitting with two hands!  Just don't ask me to do housework.  I'm far too sick to try that.

Hopefully I can finish the entire project before I lose my mind with these charts -- it is a reversible cowl after all.

For more WIPs and knitting fun, check out Tami's Amis.