Friends, Wine, Cake, Yarn.

So.

I planned on taking a picture called “still life of awesomeness” tonight but sadly I did not. Still. A bunch of us girls got together at Jill's and ate cupcakes (only one per person. I left the rest with the guys as a form of imposed self-control), drank wine, and knit. It was AWESOME. The guys are still here playing Halo 3. Muffin just kicked Gerbil’s ass but I don’t really care because once again my house smells like feet and beer. Also pizza. Whatever it was a fun night. We’re going to do this once a month (although perhaps not always with the cupcakes – gotta prevent the muffintop) so more random semi-wine induced blogging is sure to follow. And Matt (the Real Matt aka Husband-Matt not the Faux Matt because literally half of our friends are now named Matt) won a bunch of money playing poker and that’s always good. Perhaps I’ll see if I can convince him to use this windfall to take me to see Juno this weekend…

Right. I just realized this was the most pointless post EVER.

I’m thinking about maybe doing another contest soon?

Still not so much with the content…

I wore my back to school U-neck for the first time today and everyone loved it. It fits me perfectly and seriously this might be the best most wearable thing I’ve ever knit ever and I loooove it?

Again. Not so much content w/o pictures and I still don’t have those…. how about a great link?

http://www.projectrungay.blogspot.com/

Good stuff. Well if you watch project runway that is.

Right.

G’night all!!!

PS - Gavin is REALLY good at Halo 3. They are all debating this right now. He shouldn't be this good appparantly because he does not own a Xbox360. Whatever. Let me see if I can find some good eyecandy for this post....

Ok. I searched my entire computer. This is the most completely and totally random image I could come up with. It was in a folder titled "Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job." You can't get more random than that:

This was taken on January 9, 2003 making it about 5 years old (holy shit that was 5 years ago?! Wow. I’m old. But in a good way. I like being now. Now is good.) It is of a time when myself, Rebecca, and Alison decided it would be the best plan EVER to give my friend Mark – who had really long, curly hair – a mullet. It was hil-ar-ious. He didn’t keep it, however and we ended up buzzing him before he went out in public. But the picture lives on to be dragged up 5 years later and posted on the interweb for all to see…

On that note… ‘night! For reals this time!

Any bets on how long this post lasts before I realize what I've done and delete it?

Mittens and snow

So I never did make it to the grocery store yesterday. Instead I did a workout DVD and then this:

That would be the start of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Norwegian Star Mittens. (here’s the Ravelry link).

Way better than groceries. Way better. Colorwork it turns out is extremely awesome.

And completely fascinating.

And since it’s blizzarding out I don’t see any grocery shopping in my future tonight, either.

Well that and I’m almost to the star part….

Frozen soup sounds good for dinner tonight, anyways.

Resolution #2

Ok so it’s cold and dreary out and my brain still thinks its Sunday. I have nothing interesting to say at all right now…but I’m procrastinating going to the grocery store. Boo. ...so how about a finished project?

That would be the Norwegian Star Earflap Hat by the wonderful knitblogger Tiennie. As soon as I saw it on her blog way back when I knew I wanted to knit it. So last weekend after I ran out of yarn on Juliet I stash dug some Patons Classic Merino (I have an embarrassing amount of Patons in bright colors from the Felted Bag Bender of ‘06) and went to town:

For some reason the lighting in my bathroom is better than anywhere else… can’t wait for the sun to come back so my photos will stop sucking. I hate this dark when I leave in the morning / dark when I get home at night crap. At least we’re on the upswing now…


Yeah. I took these about 10 min before I left for work one day....

I’m not very fierce pre-coffee… ugh.

Despite my issues photographing it I did love knitting this hat. The pattern was clear and simple to follow and the chart was extremely easy to read.



Which means that I have conquered Resolution #2. Color work does not freak me out anymore. In fact I even knit it double handed holding the blue in my left hand and the gray in my right.



Clearly, a pair of matching mittens are in order.

Pasta Day Version 3.0

So what started as a random way to spend a Sunday has morphed into a full on yearly tradition (v1.0 here, and v2.0 here).

We all love pasta day:

As per usual the girls made pasta and drank wine:
While the guys played games:
Although this year Matt had a new shiny:

The Xbox360. And Halo3. There was lots of death going on in the living room while we were working.

Again, Jill was the master of the meatballs:

And LB supervised the ravioli production (although I still claim that my pasta is way better than hers. Milk. WTF.):
We had some equipment failures which Matt “fixed”:

Matt “fixes” stuff by taking it completely and totally apart and then forgetting how/why he took it apart in the first place. He will deny this to the end but I have many things, including a vacuum cleaner, a cordless phone, a lawnmower, and now a pasta machine that say otherwise.
He was very determined, though.

I dealt with the equipment failure by making an emergency trip to my parents’ house to retrieve my mom’s pasta machine…. Only to find that it was actually at my house from when I borrowed last. Oooops:
I blame the wine.

This year our sauce was beyond amazing. It was a combo of my homemade meat sauce that I had frozen, and Jill’s homemade meat sauce that she had frozen. Unfreeze, mix together, and AWESOME. Andy helped with the stirring (grandma, don’t worry, he stirred in the right direction, heh.): I also turned things up a notch by making my family’s ravioli filling recipe. It involves cubed veal that I had to ask the butcher for special, and I’ve never made it before, and there are some big shoes to fill with this recipe so I was a little freaked out. But honestly? I nailed it:
And yes that means that we had meatballs in meat sauce on top of meat ravioli. Apparently we have no self control.
Yup. None at all.

We weren’t completely veggie free, though… Jessica and Carolyn rocked out some sweet spinach ravioli filling with some sortof creamy, sweet vermouth sauce. Tasty.

And Shayne made a kick-ass Cesar salad from scratch (Michele remind me to get that recipe from you guys):

Oh and we made a batch of plain old noodles, too – because really, you can’t beat that:
I seriously love my new curtains, btw. And the fact that we actually put up some decorations other than just the tree.

Then during cleanup someone discovered a giant box of sparklers in a random drawer of the kitchen. Don’t know why we had those but man were they fun:

Btw while the girls were playing with fire the guys dealt with the mess. I think that’s totally fair.

The night ended with a rousing and very competitive game of Trivial Pursuit.

Jill reading the questions in a British accent, just to throw off the other team, was hil-ar-ious. And I have no idea what we’re trying to do in this picture:

This team of geeks still won, though:

The little dog made the rounds:

Before finally settling in with me. Yes. I passed out on the couch spooning the dog.

Again, I blame the wine.

Such a fun tradition!

Alrighty then - have a great weekend everyone! And if you happen to be at the Garage Bar tonight say hi! We'll be there for a happy hour that one of my friends won...

Ohio State Superfan Hat Take 2

Hmmm…. Well I wrote this back on Monday before the game but got distracted and didn’t get the photos together until right now. Things have, um, changed a bit since then what with the loss and all…. But I’m still going to post it b/c I like this hat even if all of the people who would want to wear it are depressed right now:

Well as I’ve previously stated I don’t really care either way about Ohio State. But there is a huge game tonight so I thought I’d at least mention it…. Our plans for game night are pretty tame since several of my friends and I have decided that while we’re not going to give up drinking as a New Years Resolution because that would be completely unsustainable with our rock’n’roll lifestyle we were at least going to run next to the wagon and hop on whenever our livers got tired. Which would make us hop ons. Which of course means that George Michael is probably driving the wagon. Seriously, why do they cancel all of the really good shows? Why?

Anyways! Not what I wanted to blog about…moving on…

Way back in June I knit a hat for my friend’s sister’s yet unborn baby in an attempt to lure the kid out. It worked and the hat was much loved – although the new baby’s three year old big brother was super-jealous. So my friend had him call me (cutest phone call ever, btw) and ask if I would make him his own hat. A gray one. And since I knew his whole family was Superfans I threw some red stripes in and he had his very own Ohio State hat. It’s adorable. I actually have pictures of him posing in his hat but I feel weird posting pictures of someone else’s kid – even if his mom did give me permission. So yeah… the hat went over huge. So huge in fact that his dad (really a Superfan) hinted strongly that he would like one in his size. I made him one for Christmas:


The pattern is my Ohio State Superfan Hat only modified a little bit to accommodate a bigger head. The original hat fits me and I figured for a guy I should add some stitches.

So… here’s the new, improved, guy-sized,

Superfan Hat Take 2:
Lion Brand Woolease in Oxford Gray and Ranch Red. You won’t need very much of any of it – about half a skein of the gray and ¼ skein of the red.
Size 7 circular and double pointed needles (or just the DPN’s)

Using the Long Tail Cast On and Oxford Gray, Cast on 88 Stitches
Knit 9 rounds of K2, P2 ribbing

Stripe 1: Knit 5 rounds plain in Oxford Gray
Stripe 2: Knit 5 round of Ranch Red

Repeat stripes 1 & 2, 2 times more. you will have 3 red stripes at this point.
Knit 6 more rounds in Oxford Gray (hat should measure 6 inches from cast on edge)

Knit 9, K2tog around
Knit 1 round
Knit 8, K2tog around
Knit 1 roundKnit 7, K2tog around
Knit 1 roundKnit 6, K2tog around
Knit 1 roundKnit 5, K2tog around
Knit 4, K2tog around
Knit 3, K2tog around
Knit 2, K2tog around
Knit 1, K2tog around
Knit 2 tog around

Cut yarn and thread through remaining stitches, draw together and tuck in end. Tuck in the rest of the ends.

Because really...there’s always next year, right?

This is so not a good idea

So have you ever known something was a bad idea and done it anyways?


Yeah. That would be the start of Juilet. I do not have enough yarn to finish this project. Not even close. I have approximately 300 yards - the pattern calls for 600.


Uh huh.

See last night about 10 min before the Steelers playoff game (I’m a Browns fan but my husband is die hard Steelers so for the sake of a calm household I want them to win) I realized that all of my knitting requires paying attention.

I can’t pay attention during the playoffs.

So I looked in my basket (not time for stash diving upstairs) and saw the 2 and a half skeins of Patons Shetland Chunky in Soft Teal left over from the hat/mittens combo. Somewhere a little bell went off in my brain – didn’t Michelle knit Juilet out of this yarn?

5 min. later I had printed the pattern and was casting on. I did this with the full knowledge that my yarn reserves weren’t going to make it.

I just didn’t care.

But really, this is a commercial yarn. Somewhere in one of the many stores that sell this in the area hast to be 2 little skeins of this colorway, right? I’m going to go make some phone calls and find out…. although something tells me that this was a bad plan...

Edited to Add:

Thanks for all of the suggestions, guys!!! I actually spent some time on the phone on Sunday calling all of the area craft stores trying to track down the yarn. Noone has it. Apparantly it doesn’t exist in the greater Cleveland area. Eh. That’s what the internets is for! So I did a little googling and thanks to this fun website (which Andi later recommended, actually – thanks!) www.knittingwarehouse.com my yarn should be here tonight!