Florida Vaca

So Florida was great. As usual. Every year my mom and I go (here's 2007, here's 2006). Every year I try to remember to take lots of pictures. Every year I forget. I emptied my camera last night and seriously I have twice as many that look like this:

Dexter hating the snow

Than of anything Florida related. It’s frustrating. But perhaps next year… I did take a few pictures, though so let’s work with those.

We started the trip by doing a little souvenir shopping:


Did you expect anything else?

The shop is called Uncommon Threads and it’s owned by a friend of my grandma. It’s good when your friends own yarn stores! In the car on the way my mom and I were wondering… It’s really hot here. All the time. So what do people in Florida knit?

Answer? Everything:


Seriously this store was amazing. So much variety in such a little space. It was wall to wall to wall yarn with a good amount of beads thrown in. I could have spent days in there. Here’s a blurry picture of just one area of sock yarn:

Crazy variety going on there. And I was thinking it would be a store of cotton and novelty yarn! Silly me.

We bought lots of fun things

but the most exciting for me is this:

4 skeins of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran

See for almost 2 years now I’ve had this sitting in my stash taunting me:

I bought it at a going out of business sale and have enough for a sweater… I’ve swatched so many times with so many different ideas but this dark purpley yarn doesn’t show patterns very well. And I’d be bored just knitting a plain old sweater. Then thanks to my recent obsession with stranded knitting I got it into my head that I wanted to knit this with it:

Hela

Beautiful, right? Problem being that I didn’t want to pick out colors online. And nowhere around here sells this yarn. I know I could have used something else but I just wasn’t feeling that. So when I saw it in this store I was super, super excited. We laid out all of the colors and thanks to the wonder that is Ravelry I was able to quickly pull up the pattern in the store so we could all discuss color options. In the end I decided on a simple, 2 color route:

I think the creamy white against the deep plum will be spectacular.

Anyways here's the rest of the haul:

Indie dyed roving that is only sold at this yarn store and at another one in Georgia.

Jitterbug in Parrot

Maize in Miami Nice

The pile is actually missing some sock yarn that my mom immediately started knitting with. She swore she wasn’t going to buy any more sock yarn and managed to come home with 3 skeins. Uh huh. True confessions later on revealed that she has enough to make something like 11 pairs of socks. I don’t think that’s unreasonable at all (someone back me up on this).

The other highlight of the trip was doing this:


We made gnocchi! I’ve never done that before and it was much easier than I thought it would be:

We were worried about making them too tough and overcompensated by not using enough flour. So they were a bit on the soft side. Even so they were amazing compared to the lumps of lead that you can buy at the store.

Like little potato clouds. Mmmmmmm.

Other than that the trip was pretty typical. We walked every morning, napped every afternoon, and soaked in as much of the sun as possible:



We were lucky and managed to completely miss the snowstorm that blasted Ohio while we were gone (Michelle has some good pictures of it here). The airport was closed for a good chunk of the weekend and there were signs of that all over coming home:

Bags piled up at the airport. I wonder where there owners were…

Monday it was back to reality and dealing with bus stops that look like this:

And crazy work deadlines that are going to make the next month very… interesting.

It was so nice to get away, though!

The Prove Matt Right Hat.

So here’s an actual conversation that happened recently between Matt and his coworkers:

Coworker #1: It’s so cold out! Sucks I have to go on site all the time now – my ears freeze!
Matt: Dude, you just need a hat.
Coworker #1: Hmmm.. yeah.. .that might help. I don’t think I own a hat.
Matt: I’m sure Jeanne would knit you one if you wanted.
Coworker #2 whose wife is a knitter but not a Knitter if you know what I mean: Ugh you don’t want a handknit hat. They’re always ugly and never fit right and aren’t very warm.
Matt: WHAT?!!! NO. You are WRONG. Handknit hats are the best – warm and soft and not at all ugly. Jeanne’s even designed and published patterns her hats are so good.

Isn’t that sweet!!! He defended my honor and my knitting abilities! I’m totally flattered. And now clearly I need to knit Coworker #1 a hat that redeems all flawed handknit hats of Coworker#2’s past. Also (and perhaps most importantly)? Matt wants me to prove him right because and I quote “I was really offended for you.”

This needs to be an amazing hat.

Obviously for a stylish architect I should knit a Koolhaas. For those of you not sucked into the world of Ravelry Koolhaas is a hat designed based on the Seattle library by the star architect Rem Koolhaas:


Yeah it’s pretty cool.

So I bought a skein of Mmmalabrigo in a nice, respectable green:

I’ve been waiting for Mmmmalabrigo March to start before I cast on but now it’s full steam ahead.


I plan on bringing this with me to Florida as my plane knitting.

The other project coming with me to Florida?

Durrow. Aka the Britt Killing Sweater.


Holy crap I actually finished knitting this!!!! Crazy, right? So now all that’s left is the seaming. Fingers crossed all of the pieces parts fit together w/o issue.

Ok that’s a lot of blogging in a short amount of time. And with that I'm sure I'll be out of contact until Sunday so have a great weekend everyone!!!

Updates and more Snow.

Ok so another post of lots of words and no knitting to get caught up with the whole blog thing. Tomorrow will be all knitting all the time, promise.

1.) We’re both feeling better – thanks!!! Although last night we had to initiate a “no making me laugh” rule because laughing caused coughing and coughing hurts. Unfortunately we spent the evening flipping between CNN election results and American Idol and the whole point in watching either of those things is to mock. Ruthlessly. I had to leave the room after Matt caused me to cough up part of a lung with this gem:

"Someone needs to get that guy his own drag show STAT”

I’ll leave you guessing as to if we were watching CNN or AI at the time.

2.) So did anyone else notice that we went through every type of precipitation possible in like 2 hours last night? Rain, sleet, hail, slush, and then finally snow. At one point all of our windows looked like this:




It felt like we were underwater or something. Very freaky. Then this morning of course there was this:

Cell phone pic of the shoreway. Can you tell I’m enjoying the insta-blogging capablities of my new phone? Oh yeah we got these. They are awesome.

The news said 1-2 inches but we had at least 4. Downtown was buried in about 4 as well although it was hard to tell with all of the drifting.

3.) The snow is fun because it allows me to see what’s going on in my backyard: Pics taken after work today w/ my cell phone camera.

And while it’s kindof fun now to wonder whose these are (a bunny I think from the way it hopps) and to follow them from my neighbor’s yard across the edge of my raised veggie garden:

And under the fence at the back of my yard:

Something tells me come spring when that raised bed is acutally filled with veggies this little critter and I are going to have issues.

4.) All of this snow also means that I can post these photos that Matt's dad requested:



It's working great! Thanks!

5.) I don’t care about the weather because this weekend I’m going to FLORIDA! Time for another vaca with my grandparents! Matt’s not coming with me – instead he’s having a full-on guys weekend. I think there’s something like 7 or 8 guys from out of town descending on my house? Yeah. No chance of it not smelling like feet when I get home. But I don’t care because I will be tan.

6.) Speaking of my grandparents – my grandpa responded to my last post with his grandmother’s Hot Toddy recipe so I thought I would share:

Quantities vary according to personal taste:

Boiling hot water, Tea, Rum, Lemon, Honey, Butter.

Drink down and jump into bed with alot of covers. Wake up the next morning and go to work.

Sounds pretty good! We got the one we use from our friend Lori Beth who makes them the way her grandma did. So once again we have dueling Italian family recipes… and while I may like my Toddies with whiskey I do NOT like my pasta with milk in it. Sorry, LB.

7.) Big CONGRATULATIONS goes to Jennifer!!!! So excited for her… and so many possibilities for cute baby knits!

Weekend at the HV

So I’ve been meaning to post this for over a week but never finished the post because of the sickness…

Last weekend we went to Holiday Valley for a ski vaca with our friends:

So much fun.

We left Friday afternoon and only stayed through Sunday but plenty of skiing happened in that short amount of time. Also? Our first stop when getting into Ellicottville was at the wine store.

Flawless.

Sat. morning the 4 of us who were experienced skiers got up at the butt crack of dawn and got on the slopes as soon as they opened. Yeah we’re that guy. But seriously the best skiing happens early – and it was worth it because conditions were about perfect.


Fresh powder and 28 degrees.

After about noon it cleared up and the rest of the weekend was all “sunscreen skiing”.

The early morning skiers – not quite sure why my brother and I didn’t take off our goggles… we look ridiculous!

Later on we met up with most of the rest of the crew and did a few runs together:

That night was all about the hot tub and games:

The next day about half of the group went out for another day on the slopes.

Matt rocking the moguls

Andy rocking the moguls

And Andy even tried the halfpipe:

Looking good going into the wall…


FAIL

Don't worry - he made it out ok.

Funtimes were had by all. I love skiing and it was nice to get to go two days in a row. Sadly we don’t have any big ski trips planned for this year but hopefully we’ll get at least one more day in locally before spring.

In Sickness

So when one of us is sick both my husband and I are very good at being caretakers. It’s sweet, really. We both employ the same exact strategy for caring for our better half when they aren’t well: Medicate heavily and then leave the hell alone.

Did I mention that neither of us are very nice people when we’re sick?

Yeah. Usually this isn’t a problem because one of us picks something up at work and is a few days ahead of the other one as far as sickness goes. Well this time we caught a Death Cold (possibly a version of the Plague) from one of the friends we went on a ski vacation with last weekend. So we’re both sick. At the same time.

It was not a fun weekend.

There was a ridiculous amount of whining, a good deal of bitching, and not nearly enough bad movies on TNT to get us through. Many conversations started out like this:

“What the hell did you do with the sudaphed/Dayquil/Nyquil/Kleenex/juice/remote/whiskey?”

The most horrifying moment of the weekend came when we ran out of honey. Hot toddies (see footnote)* are the only thing that makes the coughing stop so clearly one of us had to put on real pants and go out for supplies. Luckily for me Matt lost that coin toss. He also came home with something called “Sudaphed Severe Cold”. Right. Let me just tell you that is some good stuff. Must be laced with some sortof horse tranquilizer because literally 10 min. after I take it I’m a babbling idiot who can’t hold her own head up. And then I fall asleep, luckily for Matt. It’s awesome. And also how I spent all of Sunday and most of yesterday.

So today we’re back to real world… I still have a cough and the sniffles but I’m off the tranq’s for the time being. Also?

I voted today.

(sorry but a shitty cell phone pic is all I have in me right now)

EVERYONE GO VOTE RIGHT NOW.

And if you’re the type of person who gives a crap about a blog’s opinion – I endorse Cimperman for Congress. For lots of reasons – I’ve met the guy a bunch of times and I like him. He's good people. And I'm pretty sure that he genuinely cares about Cleveland. I could go on but considering the lingering effects of the Death Cold that’s about as much clarity and enthusiasm as I can muster at the moment.

Hopefully regular blogging and participation in the world of the living will resume sometime soon.

*Yes. This blog has a footnote. I blame the cold meds.

When adding links to this post I couldn’t find a recipe for what I know of as a Hot Toddy online so I thought I would share considering these were the only thing that stopped the coughing…

Hot Toddy (aka how to survive the Death Cold):
Step1: Try to convince spouse to make Toddy for you.
Step 2: When spouse refuses because spouse is also in fact sick and hey while your up would you make one for me? whine, bitch, and/or moan.
Step 3: Realize whining isn't getting you anywhere and boil water.
Step 4: Put teabag (we used sleepytime tea) in mug, pour boiling water into mug until it’s about 2/3 full.
Step 5: Add Whiskey. About a shot will do depending on how sick you are and how much you like whiskey. I usually use less Matt uses more.
Step 6: Add a glob of honey

Step 7: Stir, Sip, then fall asleep.

Just a warning here - for whatever reason this concoction is awesome when hot but completely disgusting when cold.