Recipe for a twice-baked burrito (well, maybe only once-baked)

1. Run a bunch of errands on foot in the snow.
2. In the midst of these errands, realize you are hungry and buy a burrito at the local Taco Del Mar.
3. Stop buy the yarn store on your way home. Get in long conversation with the gal that works there about the best yarn to knit a hat for a chemo patient with. (oh crap, ended with a prepostition, ah well.)
4. Get home and go to check email, completely forgetting about food.
5. Realize ten minutes later that you had food waiting for you that has now gone stone-cold.
6. Heat oven to 300 degrees (or whatever random temperature you think will heat said food)
7. Put burrito in and forget about it for fifteen to twenty minutes.
8. Take out burrito and, wearing oven mitt, eat, making sure to peel off foil as you go.


I loved my snow day. It wasn't so good to start with-- our heat went out and left our apartment at around 47 degrees-- but once the heat got fixed I had a wonderful day. While the house warmed back up, I ventured out into the 14-or-so inches of snow to get some tea and stop by the Black Drop Coffeehouse. I was planning to sit down and knit for a while, but they were packed, so I got my cambric and left. I went and picked up some tea at a local tea-and-spice shop and, after picking up the previously mentioned burrito, headed home, made some tea, amd sat down to some knitting. I am now 3/4 of the way done with another Christmas present. I don't know why I'm not elaborating about the presents I'm working on. I've kept the craft blog hidden enough that I know the recipients aren't going to find out. So why am I so paranoid?

My big goal for this week is to pick up the stuff needed to make home-made bath bombs and lavender sachets. It would be much easier if I had grown lavender this year, but I didn't so now I have to find dried lavender somewhere else. Good luck to me, I guess.

The other reason I like snow days? Living in downtown Bellingham, I'm near quite a few things, inlcuding the local bar, its awesome food, and its Monday Night Football crowd. The boy and I went over there and cheered on the Seahawks while I indulged in one of the best Philly cheesesteaks outside of the northeast. Ah, wonderful snow days....

Let the holiday craziness commence....

Yarn...check.
Beads....check.
Tea....check.
Patterns....check.
Movies....check.

All systems are operational and we are go for launch!

(Maybe it's the boy's influence, but I've definetely developed a thing for NASA slang.)

I spent a couple of hours today gathering supplies for Christmas presents and now I have the rest of the day to sit down and get to work. I think I managed to pick up everything I need for about five of the things I've got in the works.

I don't want to mention too much about what I'm working on, but I'm okay with talking about the ones for me mom. She's still not too internet savvy-- I just set up her first email account so that she could use Amazon, and then she screwed up her first order, so I'm not too worried about her finding/reading my super-secret craft blog. For her, I'm knitting a tea cozy a la Knitty, and a scarf. She knows she's getting a scarf, and she's been driving me crazy, changing what she wants every two minutes. So I'm just making her what I want to make, using one of the yarns she really liked. Personally, it won't be something I would ever wear (I HATE Lion Suede), but my anti-wool mother really liked the way the yarn felt and looked, so I'll put my own issues aside.

******

The penis hat has been fixed and finished. It still has a little bit of wierd decreasing going on, but there's not a whole heck of a lot I'm willing to do about it now.

(Also, I intentionally put up a blurry picture because I'm beginning to hate looking at pictures of myself.)



Enough jibber-jabbering! Time to knit!

I've been knitting how many years now?--- and somehow I still never learn my lesson-- if you're going to wing it, don't wing it so much it becomes unwearable.

Fact is, half the things I make are either patterns I spontaneously alter or things I make up as I'm going along. And that's all well and good and in most cases comes out fairly okay with only a minor glitch or two. Not this time. This time, I decided to just decrease my hat whenever I felt like it.

When all was said and done, I found that I had made a giant wool condom. Well, technically only the tip part, but either way it was not a good look for me.

So I spent last night ripping back to the point where I started the crazy decreasing business, and today's ferry ride from Orcas Island (where we just went on vacation!) reknitting it with much smarter and more attractive (and less penile) decreases.

Jilliana's personal lesson for the day: Creativity is all well and good, but a little bit of forethought works wonders. (And saves you from looking like a dick.)

'Tis the season....

I think I'm going to forgo any of my current for me projects to try the over-ambitious task of getting some Christmas presents done. Until then, I will just drool over the projects in Greetings from Knit Cafe , and look longingly at my fuzzy sweater.

(Truthfully, I will probably still work on the fuzzy sweater. Merry Christmas to me.)

I've got some ideas for Christmas presents for folks, but getting them done in time may be the hard part. Damn me and my superior procrastination skills!

Scarf action

I finished the I'm-taking-a-break-from-tricky-things scarf, just in time to wear out on Saturday night. I still have a spare skein and am debating about adding fringe, but I think it might be a bit too much. I mean it's already got seed stitch, color variations, and a little shimmer within the yarn--- what more do I really need to add to this?

Yes I know, it looks SO fashionable when paired with my too-big Bumbershoot sweatshirt from '04. :)

The rain has been pouring off and on since Saturday afternoon. Here and there I see a flash of lightning or hear a distant thundercloud. I think this is definetely going to be a stay inside day. In fact, I should probably get moving since I still have a little running around to do. I planned to stop off at my LYS, run by the bank, and lastly, pay those stupid parking tickets.

That's one thing that I'm ashamed to admit I get a sense of pleasure out of--- the fact that the meter maids get to spend their workday in the pouring rain. Now if only it were about 20 degrees colder....

We're in the process of having our kitchen re-drywalled, so I think I may take laundry and knitting over to my mom's so I can stay out of the way. It's really strange to see the walls in our kitchen... well, flat. They've always been slightly warped since I moved into this place a year and a half ago, but building construction last spring caused giant cracks to spread all over the place. We're talking big, gaping cracks, some as much 1 1/2" wide. While I won't miss that, I will miss the big flower that was painted there.

I started it on a whim one day to give my kitchen some fun color. It was giant-- about four feet tall, give or take. I had to sit on top of my fridge to paint the top petal and at the time chuckled at how I must have looked to anyone walking by. It was probably funny looking to begin with, but got even funnier when I almost toppled off the fridge. I had planned to add a few more and paint the part of the wall below the chair rail pink, but once things started getting all crack-y that went out the window. Ah well, the one big flower was fun while it lasted, back to boring off-white. For now it just looks like the bottom picture-- bare grey drywall.

Okay, I've sat here long enough. Time to get moving!

This round up thing sounds good!

I got this idea from miss Samurai Knitter-- a quick log of what you finished in the last month, and what your goals are now. I kind of like it, especially since I am one of those who is easily distracted-- hence, the scarf I just started and the socks currently languishing.

I'm cheating though-- I'm recapping from when I started this blog so that I can include the stripey sweater.

So let's see...
Long-awaited stripey sweater....check.
Addelle's bracelet.....made and finally given. check
Leaf armwarmers......finished and being worn constantly. check!
Another skinny scarf.....like I need another one, but check nonetheless.

As for this month....
Priority one is finishing the fluffy sweater, if only so I can stop getting fuzz everywhere! After (and most likely during) that is getting Christmas presents started. I'm not even sure who's getting what yet, so I better get cracking. I'm probably going to finish the scarf within the next couple of days, since I'm about six inches from being done anyway. As for my kool-aid socks, I'm keeping them in mind but since I'm starting over, they can wait for a bit while I find a pattern I like better. I'm also going to help Jen tackle purl stitches next week. She wants to be done with the scarf she's working on by then, so we should have a fresh project to work with.

Now let's see how close I actually come to this list by the end of the month!

Now that I've finally given it to her, I can write about the bracelet I made for my friend. I had already made a similar one for myself, but changed hers up a bit. I was starting to run a litttle low on the red and orange beads, so I added some yellow/gold ones in to compensate. It definetely adds to the fall feel I was going for with the first one. I also found a small Buddha charm at the Bead Bazaar and definetly wanted to incorporate that for my newly buddhist buddy. I had to change the placement a couple of times to get it where I wanted it, but ultimately I like the end result and, most importantly, so did she.

Next up is a pair of star earrings for me! The same day I found Buddha, I also picked up some super cool star beads-- two big ones in (I think) mother-of pearl, and about a half dozen each of small white and hematite (shiny black) stars. I found a design in a beading book I picked up that used a bunch of headpins threaded through eachother that looks pretty nifty so I might try that.

It's a good thing it's been rainy and cold, cause I now have about 9 projects that make me not want to leave the house!