So cute, but so complicated

Well, we made an offer on a house today. We'll know by 6:00 Sunday if they'll accept it or not. We're both a little nervous.

I've been working on the second baby hat. I've made both of them with Sinfonia cotton yarn. The first one is pink, because H. grinned when I shook the pink yarn in front of her, but not when I shook the variegated pink yarn. I think she likes the brighter color, the variegated pink is more of a rose and white. I came to a knot in the yarn, where the end had been joined to a new piece at the factory. It worked into the design okay, but this is for a baby. It's just a little knot, but it's cotton yarn, and the knot makes a kind of hard lump. I didn't really like the lump in there, and I don't want the baby to be uncomfortable, so I unraveled it up to the knot, cut it off, and I'm starting over with the yarn that's still attached to the skein. That's been interesting, though. I'd gotten about 6 rounds in when I noticed that it wasn't laying quite right. I checked, and there were 12 double crochets in each 8-chain loop. Then I realized that the flower in the center of the design had five petals instead of four. I don't know why that was so hard, but it was. For some reason, round 3 kept coming out wrong, and it took a ridiculous number of attempts to get it right. I'm finally back on track, though, although I quit after round 5 of the final, successful attempt. I think I threw my sleep schedule off a bit, and between that and nerves, crochet is just a bit beyond me at the moment.

It did occur to me that I have a third of a hat done. I intended to do three, but I'm really doing the third one because I think I should. With the others, I'm making them because I want to, and I think the girls will look so cute in them, particularly when their heads grow enough to fill them out. H.'s hat sort of fits her, but her head's still a bit small for it, so the top sticks up like a gnome hat. Hey, she is my goddaughter, after all. Anyway, I have a third of a hat done, and a skein of white yarn. I could finish that one with the white and call it done. I need a refresher on changing colors in crochet, because I'm pretty sure I can do it without the hard little knot. I'd really be surprised if that particular hat is worn at all, anyway.

Maybe a little off-topic

So far, I've been better than I could have been, but not as good as I'd hoped to be about updating. I have a decent reason, though. It's been a crazy week, and we're buying a house. We think we finally found the one. It's the first house that we actually agree on! It's 4 bedrooms, so we can have an office and room for (hopefully) future younglings. The living room....could be bigger, but it has a wood burning fireplace, and the kitchen/dining room is awesome. Oh, the game nights we can have in that room. We need a nice buffet/cabinet for the dining room to hold the stereo and our board games. It's probably the first house we've looked at (aside from the one that would have been perfect if it had actually been ON its foundation) that doesn't have a slot kitchen (galley kitchen? The long, narrow kind that's obviously not designed by someone who actually cooks). I've had those for about 4 years in the apartments I've lived in, and I'd rather not have another kitchen like that. SO painting over the yellow, though. It's also the perfect combination of nice house/decent-sized lot/lack of steep slope. We've had trouble finding that combination. Except for the kitchen/dining room, which is painted Chinese lacquer-red, the interior is painted yellow. It's pretty.....for yellow, but I don't like yellow. For Neale, the dining room can stay red. I want to paint the red part of the kitchen sage green. The house also happens to be across the street and two doors down from two very good friends of ours. Honestly, we're not interested in the house for that reason. That's a nice bonus, but we really just like the house.

I did finish the scarf, though, and I'm now working on a hat to go with it.

Snow day!

I woke up to a phone call from my boss at 5:58 am. Normally, I don't like phone calls that early, but she was telling me that school was closed, go back to bed. I could have done many, many things with my snow day. I did.....not a whole lot. I'd intended to really work with the Turkish bellydance dvd I got, but never quite worked up the energy for that one.

The only really productive things I did today were to wash some fabric, order some seed catalogues, and knit while watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." That's about it. Today was a sleepy day. It's been cloudy and cold and dreary, it's stay in bed and sleep all day weather, and I sort of wallowed in it today. Tomorrow is likely to be an actual snow day, maybe with a little real snow and everything, and I'm going to try to be productive tomorrow.

Yes, I ordered seed catalogues, instead of buying seeds at the store. I requested catalogues from companies that specialize in heirloom and organic seeds. Yeah, this year, I may not do more than a couple of planters with tomatoes and basil, but I want to do it right. There are a lot of varieties of vegetables, fruit, and domestic animals that are in danger of becoming extinct, because people don't grow them anymore, and that's just wrong. Biodiversity good, homogeneity bad. Besides, all of the heirloom tomatoes I've tried have been awesome! Cherokee purples may not be the prettiest (the purple comes out kind of bruised-looking), but they're delicious. I have high hopes for other heirlooms. Worst case scenario, my seeds don't sprout, and I replace them with plants from a nursery.

I'm not a fan of cheesy promotional items, but......

I just saw a story on CNN about the chia Obama. Normally, I'm not a fan of commemorative merchandise, but this is so cheesy, it's awesome. Plus, it's environmentally friendly, and reduces your carbon footprint. I mean, it's a bunch of little plants.

I'm finally starting to feel a little better, but wiped out. My stomach has been upset since last night, but settled down late in the morning. I don't know why, I'm just glad it's over. I've been breathing easier today than I have since Monday. If the sinus congestion clears up in the next day or so, I'll be doing pretty good.

I'm finally starting to see progress on the scarf. It's not long enough yet to wrap around my neck, but I can finally tell that it's getting longer. Sometimes, when I'm knitting with fine yarn, it's hard to tell that I am making progress. Chunky yarn grows really fast, but with really light yarn, sometimes it seems like I'm knitting the same row over and over again.

Tee hee!

Bobby Flay actually went up against a Japanese-American sushi chef with decades of experience on "Throwdown." He had a sushi tutorial from Masaharu Morimoto, and still couldn't beat the guy. I am SO glad that Bobby lost. Between his sous chef saying "is presentation important in sushi?" and the fact that she then went on to make better looking nigiri than Bobby, he shouldn't have won. Of course, he tried to put his own spin on it. He made a pineapple sauce for the nigiri and put chipotle in the spicy tuna roll. Why? Beautiful, fresh seafood is so good, it barely needs anything. A little soy for saltiness, maybe a very little wasabi, and the rice, that's about all.

My big problem with that show is the arrogance of it. Yeah, Bobby Flay is a professional chef with 20 years of experience, but from what I've seen, he's not all that versatile. He does his grilling/southwest thing and the basics, but I haven't been terribly impressed with what I've seen on tv. Granted, I've never eaten in one of his restaurants, but I'd like to think I know enough about cooking to judge to at least some degree of accuracy by what I see. Yeah, it's great exposure for these small businesses, but it kind of seems like the big, bad, Iron Chef going out to pick on these people who specialize in this one dish. That's why I always giggle a little bit inside when he loses.

"Interesting" day.....in that Chinese curse way.

So, today got complicated. I didn't actually get much of anything accomplished today. Didn't go to the gym, I'm probably going to knit a little before I go to bed, but not much. Husband was up all night in pain. We were debating about whether to go to the emergency room or not, but he decided to wait until morning and go to the doctor. We thought it was a urinary tract infection. Since his back was hurting, I thought it had spread to his kidneys. Well, the initial tests came back a little funky, so they sent him to the hospital for a CT scan. This freaked me out. Turned out to be a kidney stone. By this point, I was desperate to get away from work, I wanted to be with my husband. I cashed in my comp time at work to leave an hour early, and spent it waiting in the urologist's office for the final verdict. Basically, they gave him medicine and sent him home, he's going to be fine. In fact, he may have already passed the stone. But, nothing much in the way of crafty things was accomplished. On the plus side, because we had a very early dinner after leaving the doctor's office, I got to watch the entire replay of the inauguration on C-Span. The music was AWESOME! Why is "My Country 'Tis of Thee" sung by Aretha Franklin NOT our national anthem? Itzhak Perlman, YoYo Ma, and two other equally gifted musicians (including a clarinetist who looked a bit like Taye Diggs) playing an arrangment of "Simple Gifts" by John Williams is probably the most perfect thing ever.

Yesterday, though, I cashed in an Amazon gift certificate to order a couple of things. I ordered a dvd on Turkish style bellydance. I'd really like to see how it's different from Egyptian style, and this seemed like the best dvd for the purpose that was readily available. The reviews said that it had a lot of information on culture, which is cool. I also ordered Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire, which I've checked out from the library, like, twice already, and Ricki Carroll's book about cheesemaking. So, yeah, SCA-wise, I'm continuing the Turkish trend (except in summer, cause saris are the best summer garb, I think....or unless I feel like doing 14th century, cause I kind of dig that, too).

As for the cheese.....well, it's part of another, bigger project. I want a garden. At the very least, I must grow tomatoes. Many other things are fine when purchased from the store, but with the very rare exception of the odd heirloom tomato and the good vendors at the farmer's market, the only way to get really good tomatoes is to grow your own. If we get into a house anywhere near soon enough to plant anything, I must have tomatoes, even if I only have time to do a pot or two this year. What goes really well with tomatoes? Homemade mozzarella! Imagine homemade margherita pizza, with olive oil brushed over the crust, then sliced tomatoes still warm from the garden, homemade mozzarella, a little fleur de sel, and shaved parmesan, then, when it comes out of the oven, a few chopped fresh basil leaves. Sure, it's kind of a lot of trouble, but if perfect pizza isn't worth it, what is?

Beginnings

I'm going to try to stick with this one. I've said that before, but I think a fresh start is in order this time. This blog is going to be about knitting, sewing, garb, cooking, all the projects that I take on and sometimes actually finish. Not that other aspects of life won't creep in, but I'm planning to focus on what I'm working on at the moment.

I just finished a crocheted baby hat this afternoon. Well, almost. There's a little flower that goes on the side, but the hat is a different shape than I was expecting, and I'm afraid something may not be right. So, H., the goddaughter, gets to try it on tomorrow, and we'll see how it goes from there. In the meantime, I'm back to working on my scarf. It's just a plain garter stitch scarf. The yarn is lovely, it's a light weight merino wool that Neale bought for me for my birthday. The line is called "Jitterbug," and they're all variegated. The ones at the yarn shop now are very close shades of the same color, but this one is different. It's called "raspberry," and it has just about every shade associated with raspberries, from pale pink to bright fuscia, shading into purples, with a hint of green here and there, I guess for the leaves. This is the third time I've started the scarf. I only have one skein, and I'm having a hard time balancing the width with the length I want. This time, though, I think it will work.