Humpernickle Bread Day

A rainy Wednesday...I've got a big batch of beef stew on the stove, and I just baked some chocolate chip cookies. I'm a little antsy, and tired, and need to stay awake till the stew's finished, at least. So here I am, with a few odds and sods from the last week...

Ravelry get-together on Sunday - good times with the knitter-folk, but my knitting was seriously kicking my arse. I was not feeling the yarny love. For anything. After a few frustrated attempts to work the decreases of Fawkes' Sock #1, I realized that instead of actually reading the chart, I had just been knitting the same damned row of the chart over and over. For about 8 rounds. Frack me. I ripped it back to the heel, picked up the stitches along the flap...and resisted having a tantrum. There wasn't even any pie to console me.

I put it away, thinking I'd cast on one of the front pieces for the cardigan...couldn't even manage a 2x2 rib. Very, very frustrating. And again with the no pie.

I realized that, while I have a number of projects on the go, most of them are "loose ends" pieces - obligations, and getting tedious at that. I needed something to inspire me, tempt me, seduce me. A carrot, if you will (do sheep eat carrots?) to get me through the "should-do" knitting, via the anticipation of the decadent knitting.

Fortunately, Three Bags Full was open, and I had the best kind of enabling company. (Or worst kind, if you want to look at the damage this association is wreaking on the bank account!) I found another skein of Malabrigo Sock in a sexy blue colourway called "Impressionist Sky" (Seriously, I'd buy yarn and paint my house based solely on the cool names for the colours. Ask my Sis how we ended up with an Easter egg for a bathroom based on that principle.)

Also....ummm....well....there was some lace-weight. Even though I don't really see myself ever knitting with anything that fine. I couldn't help it. It had to come home with me.

OK, OK, it was cashmere, alright? 100%. My first. I mean, I've done some "heavy petting" with cashmere blends, but this was the real thing, the full meal deal, the home-run of yarn lust. What was I supposed to do?

So. Yeah. Found me some inspiration. Coz you know, I need more blue sock yarn!

I played around this week with some different sock patterns...I really wanted to do Rivendell in the Malabrigo, but the gauge was way, way off. Maybe if I still played with Barbies, I could knit it for them. (And let it be known that the Barbies I did play with were only ever used as victims of the murderous lust of my Darth Vader action figure. I'm just sayin'.) But no way was that going to fit my foot, no how, not ever. Got to re-think that one, though, get creative. Coz that pattern makes me squee, in a sort of "I really should not make those sounds in public" kind of way.

Settled on River Rapids in the meantime. Knitting is my friend again. Though I still think it should buy me dinner. Or pie, at least.

In not-yarn life, Mr.Q came home from work with a giant zucchini last week. I mean huge. The kind of "huge" you have to say with a Mike Meyers accent. He was tricked into taking home by one of the guys from work - some story about what a great gardener his wife is, look at the size of her zucchinis....blah blah blah.

See what I mean? There's not-so-wee, and then there's frickin' huge! I had this irresistible urge to dress it up:


What killed me was that the hat actually fit it!

Then, I gutted & shredded it, to be frozen and used in soups and muffins. I have this food processor that I use maybe once a year, and somewhere at about the 6-month mark between uses, I start to wonder why I keep it around, it takes up so much space, etc.etc.

Then a giant alien zucchini from outer space comes along, and I remember why I keep the food processor.

Seventeen cups of shredded zucchini.

In other vegetable-related matters, somewhere in that last week of summer I raided the garden I'd helped plant in a friend's back yard. I use the term "garden" loosely, as we didn't do anything to the soil beforehand; I think it's been weeded twice all summer; and I'm not sure that it's been watered much more than that. And not by me. So I left the zucchinis for them (hah!) and if that pathetic spaghetti squash survives, they can have that, too. All I wanted was a tomato. Not even a tomato plant, just a tomato. One single, solitary, sun-ripened tomato, picked and eaten fresh from the vine. On toast, with cheese and fresh-cracked pepper and a dash of sea salt.



OhmiGAWD it was amazing!