Long As I Can See the Light

Okay it's been a busy two weeks. I might have to split this up into two posts. Last weekend, Lisa E and I went to El Mexicano Jr on Wilson Street in Manchester. This excursion is part of Lisa's plan to seek out new and different places, as some times off the beaten track is a hidden jewel. There isn't much ambiance to the place and there are only three tables, but the food was wonderful. Lisa tried a selection of tacos and I got the chile relleno plate and we each got guacamole. Lisa was disappointed as she really wanted to try the tongue taco, but they didn't have it available that night. It was also nicely inexpensive. If you don't mind the hole in the wall atmosphere (which I don't), this is a must try.

On Saturday, I foolishly made my car inspection appointment for 8:00 am, so I trooped up to Grappone, and then visited the Corner View Restaurant for blueberry pancakes while I reread and made notes on my writing group's submissions for the meeting that afternoon. Writing group was hosted by Mary Kate and her 19 and 22 pound cats. Writing group was very helpful, despite the fact that I had not submitted what I wanted to. Mary Kate hosted and served some wonderful homemade bread and some chocolate with chili in it that was just amazing. I arrived home that day to find that Shawn had bought me a box of chocolates and some champagne, but no sculpture. Champagne is good though. And I think it'll probably take me at least 5 years to get Shawn to do a sculpture....at least.

We had decided to really do Valentine's Day on Monday, as we both had it off. What we ended up doing is a cooking marathon. We grocery shopped for the first time since god knows when, so on Monday we got the crock pots running, and made Potato Cheese soup, Green Chile Stew, and Caribbean Black bean soup. We package these up in individual gladware containers and freeze them for lunches. For our romantic dinner, we got two filet mignon, got out the rotisserie and roasted garlic, made a roasted garlic sauce with red wine vinegar, shallots and chicken broth reduced and then blended with 2 bulbs of the roasted garlic. Then we crushed peppercorns and cooked the filet in the rotisserie. The sauce was wonderful.

On Wednesday I made an appearance at the Manchvegas knitting group so I could snag my Thin Mint girl scout cookies from Sarah C. It was nice to see everyone and I needed the laughs. On Thursday, I had made an appointment to get my hair cut at a real salon, 26th on Hanover in Manchester. Brittany talked me into a cut with layers, this is my best attempt at taking a picture of myself. It actually looks better than that. After the haircut, I headed on over to Alison's to meet Edgar. Edgar is Alison's new child, a shih tzu - chihuahua mix. He's only six months old and only six pounds.

During this week, I also worked on the novel a lot. Unfortunately, I did not use the Wii Fit very much. After writing group and seeing Lisa, I've been hellbent on getting the rewrites done so that I can send it out to certain people who want the next installment, but it's been taking longer than I thought it would.

On Saturday, I went to see Gina H's trunk show at the Elegant Ewe, at which she had her new book and lots of the items from the book on display. If you're interested in Gina's book, go here. She's done a really nice job of putting it together and printing it. It's very professionally done and there's some neat patterns in it.

Stay tuned for part II...

Wasted Words

Just a warning to start. I'm cranky due the flu/stomach bug I developed on Sunday evening. I spent most of Monday in bed or comatose or playing games on the wii which did not require any physical movement. Shockingly, they do exist. Because I had left revising my submission for writing group until the last minute on Sunday, it didn't get done as the result of the flu. And while I feel a bit better today, in that I went to work, and there have been no mad dashes for the facilities, I don't feel coherent enough to work on the novel. Spew a bunch of crap on my blog, yeah, but not the novel. So I have posted garbage on my writing group's site for the critique this month and I'm ticked off at myself about it, hence the Allman Brothers' Wasted Words song title for the blog title today. (What is with me and the Allman Brothers lately??)

I also turned 38 years old this Saturday. And while I don't really care about the age thing so much, although I am noticing more white hairs, it's just that I had meant to accomplish more than I have by now. And that sounds arrogant and obnoxious, but it's sort of true. I do hope I'm a late bloomer.

In other birthday news, Kat at work made these lovely cupcakes for me. Notice the skittles and the sour gummy nightcrawlers. The cupcakes were lemon with lemon frosting and were awesome. Given that since Shawn was diagnosed with diabetes I have all but given up skittles and sour gummy candy of any kind, they were such a treat! (Yes, I do have extremely juvenile taste in candy, thank you. I am aware of that.)

On Saturday Shawn gave me a Nintendo Wii points card, a gift card to the Elegant Ewe, and a skein of purple Swans Island Certified Organic Merino Worsted yarn. It's not yarn I would have bought for myself due the cost, but it is lovely and very smooshy and soft. I also got one of Shawn's really lovely cards, but unfortunately, I ended up choking on the cupcake in the pictures in the middle of reading it. So it really didn't have the effect Shawn was going for. Usually I end up in tears because he's so sweet, but this time I was in tears trying to get green coconut out of my throat. Poor Shawn.

Besides the choking, I was also emotionally traumatized on Saturday due to the arrival of my new driver's license. I don't think I've ever had a picture this bad. Mary Kate said I look like I'm Asian. I'm tempted to lose it and get a replacement, but I think they just print them out again from the computer now. Sigh...

We normally go to dinner for each other's birthdays. I really wanted to go to the Hanover Street Chophouse because we had such an unbelievable meal there about a year and half ago. However, because it's so expensive, I had to offer to pay half to get to go. It was worth it. Shawn had the soup of the day which was a white bean soup with pork belly and some roasted vegetables, the truffled filet with fingerling potatoes and roasted vegetables, and a side of brussel sprouts cut in half and grilled with bacon (which I ate half of). I had the calamari with a garlic/spicy aioli and some marinara, the surf and turf which came with a filet, a lobster tail poached in butter, sour cream mashed potatoes and asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. They had a panna cotta served with blood orange sorbet, but I couldn't eat all that so they let me just have some blood orange sorbet. They wrote happy birthday in chocolate syrup on the plate which was very ornate. I love it there, wish I could afford to go more than once every two years or so. The waiter tried to guess my age as 28 or 29, angling for the tip I guess :)

On Sunday I did the Wii for about an hour trying to work off some of the dinner, but I'm thinking it'll be days and days before that happens. I then went to the Sprint Store to get a new phone. Look at the color. I could just cry. But they had to order it, so I won't get it until Thursday probably.

Afterwards I went to guild and had a lovely time. People think that knitters are nice and sedate, but not so much. To protect the guilty, I'll not discuss the warped comments about poultry that occurred.

After guild I went to Joanne and Brian's (Shawn's parents) to visit. I helped Joanne set up their wii for wireless and showed her how to get other mii characters and register her friend's wii's. I got a very sweet card, a gift card to Target and Spore Hero for the wii. Woo hoo!! I did play it for about two hours while sick on Monday, as it does not have much physical activity.

Tonight on my way home from work, I stopped in at the Ewe. I bought a skein of Half Crepe from Mountain Colors. I love this yarn, but I've never bought it because I couldn't bring myself to spend the money. So I used Shawn's gift card.

While I was there, I also picked up the Trekking Hand Art sock yarn I had been eyeing last week. The colors don't really translate well in the picture but I really like it.

And that pretty much brings us up to date. Stay tuned for further transmissions.

Closer to Fine

Today Kiwi decided that the camera was not the Antichrist that she had previously believed, so she consented for a picture to be taken close up without me using the digital zoom.

Then when I walked into the living room two of the hermit crabs were hanging off the thermometer which is stuck to the side of the aquarium. I have no idea how they even get onto it, but they occasionally hang out there. I've never seen two of them do it at the same time though, so since I had the camera in my hand, voila!

The reason that I had the camera in my hand is that today Brian and Gerry who have previously taken some advanced knitting classes with me, had asked me about zippers. Given that the zipper in the last sweater I knit for Shawn took me six (yes, damn it, SIX) hours to hand sew into the sweater, I was interested in finding a better way to do this as well. So we decided to all research, make some swatches and all get together to see what we could do. Of course I needed the camera to document for the blog :)

This event had been planned for well over a month, because October's weekends had been so scheduled, I couldn't manage it before this. So of course, I wait until this week to do the research. I wanted to find a good way to sew zippers in with a sewing machine, because you know, I can spend six hours knitting or spinning, not hand sewing a freaking zipper into a sweater and ripping my fingers to shreds. Those of you who know me, or have seen the list of my knitting library on Ravelry know that I have a few knitting books. When we moved last, I think it was only six to eight boxes of them. Not one of my reference books had a description of using a machine. I did find two blogs that had directions one is here but that's it.

I made two sets of swatches. The first set was two swatches that were ribbed but had a slipped stitch selvage which was similar in pattern to the last sweater I made for Shawn, which is the Manzetter by Kelly Bridges at the Elegant Ewe. The second set was one that was a zipped neckline, but I used a slipped stitch selvage and two seed stitches on either side as described in the blog I found. I wanted to see if there was a difference in visibility in the machine stitch between the two.

Initially I tried to pin the zippers to the swatches. It was not happening. Brian's research had suggested basting, so I basted the zippers to the swatches with long running stitches with sewing thread in a contrasting color. I used the zipper foot on the sewing machine, and sewed down the center of the selvage stitch. Because I am paranoid about my knitting getting caught on the feed dogs of the machine, I borrowed a technique from my steeking bag of tricks and used paper underneath. You end up sewing the swatch to the paper, but it rips off easily and it feeds better. This was the result.
It's not bad. I used grey thread because (a) it was already on the sewing machine and (b) I wanted a different color so I could see what it was doing. I probably would like it better if the thread matched.
(Pictures enlarge if you click on them.)

The second swatches I did pretty much the same thing, except this is the one with the seed stitch, and I sewed just outside the selvage edge in the seed. There's a world of difference in visibility. You really can't see the thread except at the top. I think it would still work even if there was only one seed stitch instead of two. And it took no time at all, which is key.

Since Shawn has lost 60 pounds since the diabetes diagnosis, the two sweaters I knit for him are now somewhat voluminous. I wasn't looking forward to doing another one after the last zipper experience, but now I think I could do it without pain.

Brian found a technique to hand sew his zippers in using a crocheted edge, from a now out of print Barbara Abbey book that he was happy with. Gerry also used the machine, but steeked his swatch, so he was attaching the zippers to a steeked edge, which was cool to see. It was a good morning!

Brian and Gerry were very kind and gave me a gift card to the Elegant Ewe for hosting, as well as some of Gerry's homemade bread, which was so good, and some of Brian's hand dyed corriedale roving, which is just my color :)





I couldn't wait and dragged Shawn up to the Ewe as we had to go to Concord anyway. I got some Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, which I've wanted to try. and the Interweave Knits Accessories Special Issue, and Classic Elites Curvy Knits, which has sweaters sized more generously for the more ample among us.

I've been doing six loads of laundry as I've been writing this, but over all, it's been a really fabulous day. Stay tuned for further broadcasts.

A busy couple of days....

Well, it's been a little while since I last wrote. I feel like I've been in a whirlwind, but this coming week should be calmer barring any unforeseen catastrophes. I'm knocking on wood as we speak, never fear.


Wednesday evening I cleaned the house as I had a knitting/Pampered Chef party planned at my house on Saturday, and planned the menu for the party. Thursday, I had to get a coffee cake fluted pan for the blueberry nut coffee cake I was going to make, so I picked one up on the way to my friend Alison's as I was headed there to knit. My knitting friends are hilarious. My face is usually tired when I get home from laughing so hard. I got home around 10 pm, which gave me a chance to clean the baby angelfish tank. Friday, I came home, went grocery shopping, picked up Vietnamese takeout at the Golden Bowl, vacuumed, did dishes and laundry. So, no major progress on any fronts except some net knitting at Alison's. (In our knitting group, net knitting means additional progress including any amounts ripped out. For example, if you knit 3 inches, but then have to rip out 4 inches, no net knitting occurred).


Saturday was the day of the party. There was knitting of course, and both Alison and I demo'd Pampered Chef recipes. My mom came down from Maine for it and to spend the night. In addition to the blueberry nut coffee cake, I made a rotisserie chicken in the Ronco Showtime Pro Rotisserie (I know it looks lame on TV, but I love that thing!!) and then used it to make a chicken and broccoli pastry wreath. I wish I took a picture, it was so awesome! Lora and Donna asked for the recipe, and it was really pretty easy to do, while looking fabulously gourmet. (Yes, I'm emailing the directions to you both later tonight). We also had some lovely fruit, as Alison tested out her new Pineapple Peeler/Corer. Alison made a fabulous coconut macaroon brownie pizza. It was so good! I also got to see some knitters I had not in a while, although it made me feel horrifically old. Liz and Mary, who are a mother daughter pair of knitters, took a class with me when I first started teaching at the Elegant Ewe somewhere in 1998 roughly. Liz was 14 then. She's now married...you can see how ancient this makes me feel. Also we had entertainment, as the angelish decided to spawn again during the party. I have another 200 eggs, the little aquatic rabbits.

After the party was over, since Mom had not seen the new wheels yet, we took it out for a drive and went to the Rockingham Mall. Given the disastrous state of colors available (everything appears to be orange, brown or teal, none of which I ever wear, unless I want to imitate a corpse), I bought two shirts for Shawn and some socks for me. Mom also bought socks. It was not a productive trip.


Today Mom and I hung out for a while and then I dragged her off to Goodale's bike shop in Hooksett to "look at" bikes. I ended up coming home with a Trek 7200 in eggplant. I spent a bit more than I wanted too, but the bike fit me, it was comfortable and it was purple! How could I not? I did have them put fenders on it though. I'm not into any type of splatter. I also got a doo-hicky that tells me my mph, has an odometer, and has a trip counter, temperature and time on it. After we got back, Mom headed back to Maine, and I headed up to the Borders in Concord for guild. I was pretty late, but I did get an hour of knitting in on the jacket I'm designing for Jen's daughter in New Zealand.

After guild, I met Shawn at his parents' house for dinner. It worked out pretty well, because his dad gave Shawn his old mountain bike, so now Shawn and I can ride together! Shawn is not terribly enthusiastic about the prospect, but it'll be good for him :) And if I can't cajole him into doing it, at least I can ride by myself, and we didn't spend any thing on his bike (other than getting it tuned up for him). Although I have to say, I'm pretty good at cajoling Shawn! I got home too late to try the new bike for a nice long ride, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow night after work.

I also I cleaned the baby tank tonight. There are 3 baby fish left from the first batch I tried to save, 2 left from the second batch, and now 200 eggs in the baby tank. They don't have great survival rates, but I swear I am not going to raise baby brine shrimp to feed these things.

Well, that's the blow by blow up to the minute. I am looking forward to finishing cleaning up the office reorganization this week, getting a writing schedule together, and riding the bike.

Finished Dyeing

Claire and I drove up to Concord together and met Mary and her sister Margaret at the Elegant Ewe. We got some more dye and headed back to my apartment. This is Mary buying her dye from Amy.

We set up in my kitchen, with drop cloths and tarps and newspapers everywhere.

Mary did graduating intensities of the same color yarn as she's thinking about doing some socks from Cookie A's new book. She did both blue and green.

Claire I were a little bit more lax and just sort of wung it. (I don't think I've ever written down "wung", I usually only say it.) But that is in fact what we did...proper English or not.

Claire did a nice purple multi-skein and a kettle dyed green. Mary did a varying intensity blue and dark green. I did a multiple purple skein and a varying intensity skein while they were here. After they left, since everything was set up, I experimented a bit more.

In the Wee Hours of the Morning

Okay, it is now 6 am, and I've been up for an hour already. My mother says that she stopped being able to sleep in and wakes up automatically since her thirties. Thanks a lot for the genetics Mom! Shawn and I are absolute opposites in this respect. The latest I appear to be able to sleep in is 7 am, whereas I don't think he'd ever get up if I didn't wake him up.


Today Mary and Claire are coming over so that we can handpaint yarn. We've been meaning to get around to doing this for a year, I think, so I think it counts in terms of the theme of my blog. I have some dyes and equipment that I have had for probably 8-10 years, which is wigging me out that (a) I haven't hand dyed anything for 8-10 years and (b) I have stuff that I bought at the Elegant Ewe that is now 8-10 years old. I keep thinking that I only moved to Concord a few years ago, but it will be 12 years in August. How did I get this old??


I have some of my hand spun from a Cormo fleece I bought at the NH Sheep and Wool Festival from Starlit Ridge Farms (the picture is the handspun) and some Bare Fingering in Merino and Silk from Knitpicks. I have a bunch of Cushing and Gaywool dyes from way back when, so we'll see how they hold up over time. (I do intend to test them on paper towels first to make sure the color is true still) I'll try to take pictures today in process and after so you can all see the results. I may use my Jetboil PCS to boil the water, as it'll be faster than the tea kettle. Another unorthodox cool use for Jetboil! Anyway, more on this to follow.




To update the progress on the last couple of days, there really isn't much! Wednesday after work, I stopped in at Lowe's and BJs to buy supplies for dyeing, and then I headed to Paula and Fred's. Fred made this amazing tart, which was like a pizza on cresent roll type dough, with cheese, red onions, herbs, and red and green grapes. I was really skeptical about the grapes, but it was incredibly good. The grapes once they were baked on the tart changed flavors slightly so they complemented the onions. I should know better than to question anything Fred does with food. I am almost through the 2 inches of pattern stitch edging on Mya's Jacket, and will start the body of the sweater soon.


Thursday night was almost a complete loss. I went to Michaels to try to find squirt bottles for dyeing, but struck out. I did get some new shells for the hermit crabs though. They are getting surprisingly big. Then I needed one thing at Bare Escentuals in Salem so I ran down to pick it up, thinking I would be in and out of there. There's a consultant in there who is the devil. She's lovely and knitter too, but there's something about her that just makes me buy stuff! I went in to pick up blemish treatment (I truly thought acne was suppose to stop once I turned 18...) and I bought a new Elegant kit, with three little eyeshadows, a blush and lip gloss all in a pewter coin purse, a new eyeshadow Puzzle (part of the proceeds go to Autism, so I had to right??), a new color of concealer, and two lipsticks, as well as having had my face completely made up. So no progress that evening, other than me rewinding the yarn for dyeing into much longer skeins.

Yesterday, again no real progress. I wound some more yarn into longer skeins, and I cleaned so the apartment was fit for Mary and Claire to visit, and to clear work space, but I was beat and went to bed three hours early at 10pm ish...which I guess could explain the 5 am thing...

Anyway, I'll post the results of the dyeing later...