A day of photos.

Because I'm a little nutsoid with all this baking, and the baby's cute, and I had the camera out.


I started The Last Damn Scarf. It's almost as easy as the light green one. Two pattern rows instead of one. Easily memorized (or would be if my brain were functioning), and kind of cool looking. Think eyelet honeycomb. And I like this color a lot too; beige/tan with gold highlights. If you're ever stuck knitting something with Doucer et soie (poor you), get a pastel color. They're very subtle and pretty, much more so than the darker colors were. For some odd reason they seem easier to work with, too. Though that may be because I'm finally getting the hang of working with this crap.


The Baby has two new hobbies.
One: toy throwing.


Two: dancing.

She circles around on her knees, waving her arms, in time (vaguely) to music as it plays. This is the best photo I could get (to 'The Immigrant Song' by Led Zeppelin). When I get out the camera, she stops and smiles. I'm working on getting a better shot of it. To call it cute is an understatement.

The inevitable happened yesterday, I think. I'm pretty sure The Baby uttered her first profanity in the grocery store. I was trying to find red and green colored sugar and they were out of the green. I said "SHIT!" and The Baby immediately said "-it!" with the exact intonation I'd used. Oh boy.


For those of you who think I have my act together, I am posting one last photo, of my kitchen counter.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I've trashed yet another batch of cookies (red and green chocolate chip, this time - not a big deal except in time expended, WHICH I CANNOT SPARE) because my landlord is a fucking cheapskate and we're saddled with the cheapest oven on the market. It's uninsulated. It makes the kitchen hotter than a summer in hell, I can't let The Baby near it for fear she'll get burned, and now it's got another hiccup - it heats so unevenly that I can only bake one tray of cookies in it at a time. Which DOUBLES my cook time on everything. Grrr. Snarl.

And I'm screwing with my medication again, hence the babbling and whining. But I'm much more awake than I usually am - yay. Seriously. Yay. I'm quite tired of feeling drugged.

Bah, humshit.

Warping space-time.

How did I make those cookies so fast yesterday? Here's how:

Parchment paper and cookie scoops. Gifts of the gods. (Well, okay, Alton Brown. Same difference.)

The parchment paper is available at most regular grocery stores, often near the foil because it's made by the same company that makes a lot of that. (Reynolds.) It is treated with silicon and resists temperatures up to 420 degrees farenhiet (in celsius, that's, um... a lot). You put it out on your cookie sheet, scoop your cookies onto it, and put them in the oven. When they come out, you scoot the whole sheet of parchment onto your cooling rack, all at once, and leave them to cool before you have to touch them again. Then you pick up the cookies by hand and put them in a storage container. No more mutilating warm cookies with a spatula.

Last night I lined a baking dish with this stuff, put really really sticky batter in it (it contained molasses and honey), baked it, and then lifted the whole deal out of the pan and plopped it on the cooling rack. Later I cut it into bars with a pizza cutter and froze it. The pan took maybe a minute to clean; a tiny bit of batter had leaked out the corners. Often I don't wash the cookie trays at all.

Then, there is the true secret: The cookie scoop.

If I had to choose between the parchment paper and the cookie scoop, I'd choose the cookie scoop. (Though I'd cry over the loss of the parchment paper.) This is a #40 (that's how they're sized). I've also got a #20 (larger) and a #70 (smaller - shown in the photo at the top), but this is the one I use most. It will make three and a half dozen perfectly round cookies from the standard tollhouse cookie recipe, in about ten minutes. You can pick them up at restaurant supply stores, or order them from the internet.

There are two common ways the scoops are built, if you look at the top photo. The all silver one has a squeeze handle, and the purple-handled one has a thumb key. If you've got hand problems, I suggest sticking to the thumb-key style. I used one of the squeeze-handle ones yesterday and today am calling my doc for drug refills.

Those two dozen macaroons I made yesterday? Did it in half an hour. And I'm talking start to finish, from separating the eggs to pulling them out of the oven. This stuff is really, really worth buying, if you ever make cookies at all. In fact, I wouldn't make cookies if I didn't have them.




Oh, and I've gone back and fixed the shortbread cookie recipe. I said that one stick of butter is 1/4 of a cup. It's not. It's a HALF a cup. (That's how I screwed up the lemon cookies yesterday.) The one stick of butter figure is correct for the recipe. Duh. Sorry if I caused anyone any problems with that. Really, really sorry.

Today's toll.

-Five dozen toffee-chip shortbread cookies. (I lost my head and ate half a dozen.)
-Two dozen macaroons. (The husbeast lost his head and ate three.)
-Two dozen ginger bars. (I hate ginger.)
-One trashed batch of lemon cookies in the trash; I'll try again tomorrow. (Too much butter. Duh.)

And, drumroll please, one green scarf done. Eeeee!

I now plan to goof off the rest of the night.

My feet hurt.

Oh, and a question.

What does one buy their sister-in-law whom they like but don't know that well?

She's a professional cellist and mum to The Baby's Cousin, who is three months older and looks enough like her to be her brother. (Twin brother.) She has no known hobbies (at least, not known to me, I'm sure she has them) and likes to wear earth tones.

Lacking a better idea, I'm going to putz out and buy her bubble bath and crap. One of you guys has to have a better idea.

Help!

I'm international!

Check this out. It's from my statistics logger, that keeps track of hits on this blog:

Nearly half of my visitors are from somewhere else. I'm all about diversity (in case you hadn't noticed) and started this blog to meet people not-where-I-am, so this is really freaking cool. (And if you ARE from the US, you ain't chopped liver, either. Really. But, I'm sorry, different cultures are interesting to me. I KNOW yours.)


This morning I suddenly realized it's the twelfth of December. (Yes, I'm a little slow these days.) Which means we're leaving for Ohio in a week or so. WHICH MEANS I NEED TO FINISH A DAMN SCARF AND A SHITLOAD OF COOKIES!!! So the oven's pre-heating and I'm going to try baking while The Baby is awake. She's completely blocked from the kitchen by a baby gate; safety is not an issue. But keeping an eye on her while IN the kitchen, ah, that will be a trick. We'll see how it goes.

The light green scarf is nearly done (I expect to finish it today, even with cookie baking) and the last one (in beige/tan) isn't 'due' until the 26th of December, so I can work on it in the truck and in Ohio if I have to. I will also take along the Steeked Jacket to work on, but I can't work on it openly until after my father-in-law opens HIS, so that it's a surprise.

I'm babbling.


I think I finally figured out what the problem is with the migraines.

I'm a vampire.

It explains everything. Yesterday I went outside and as soon as the sun hit my eyes, it was instant headache. I've got a pair of super-dark sunglasses that I wear nearly everywhere but inside... see? Vampire. I've told the husbeast I'm in danger of disintigrating if I go outside, but he's not buying it. He wouldn't go to the grocery store for me (he's been working 18 hours a day), so I have to go today.

On the Air Force base.



Ohohoh. Almost forgot. See this hat?

(Okay, it's a bad picture, going up The Baby's nose at a strange angle.) My mother-in-law knit it for The Baby while I was pregnant. It was a bit large for last winter, but this year it fits just fine, and it even matches her coat! It's the only hat she'll leave on her head, too. Awwwwwww.

Language question.

It stands to reason that whatever words a child hears most, they learn to speak first. That's why so many toddlers have 'NO!' figuring so largely in their vocabularies. With that in mind, I want to know why The Baby's first sentence is not "Sekhmet, you fucker!"

So freakin' domestic.

It's making me sick. (Work with me here. I was always one of those kids who was going to get the hell out of my small home town and live the high life in a large city, juggling men and partying 'til the cows came home. Never mind that I don't LIKE partying any more, and juggling men got old fast.)

Anyway.

The new scarf pattern, it turns out, knits up REALLY FAST. I sit down and read a chapter of a book or watch Iron Chef (I prefer Iron Chef Japan, but Food Network isn't running it any more), while knitting, and the next thing I know I've got another six inches knit up. And the COLOR! It's a sea green, but it's got odd aqua blue overtones in certain light. I love looking at it. (It's color #8512.)

I'll post a formal pattern, such as it is, when I've got this thing done and a decent photo taken.



While I had the camera out, the baby was being cute, so I snapped a photo for the baby fans among us:

How do you stay in a bad mood with that looking at you?



And this brings us to cookies. I've had several questions about it.

When it comes to cookies that travel well, anything small, dense, and round works best. Without icing. Those types of cookies can take a beating. It's possible to transport cut-outs and other, more fragile things, but in that case I try to take them frozen (straight out of the freezer, into a cooler in the truck) and add the icings or toppings when I get to where I'm going.

In Hawaii, I would freeze everything as I baked it, and then in one rushed fit of speed, pack it all into pre-addressed boxes and take it off to the Post Office (which was a couple miles away). The cardboard of the boxes was fairly insulating, and usually when I posted them someone would ask why the box was cold. They would thaw within the first day or so, of course, but it gave them a slight edge on freshness. I suggest mailing in the US during the first week or two of December; that's when the post-office is geared up and ready for more packages than usual, but they aren't swamped yet. It would usually take less than a week for boxes to get to the mainland, if I mailed then.

Last night I made toffee-chip shortbread cookies, and had a request for the recipe, so here you guys go. (I'm so freakin' domestic.) These are really fast, really easy, travel well, and are rather cheap to make (compared to, say, fruitcake).

TOFFEE CHIP SHORTBREAD COOKIES:
-1 stick (1/2 cup) butter REAL BUTTER. It's shortbread, for crying out loud. Do NOT cheap out and get the margarine or I will hunt you down and make you knit Lion Brand.
-1/4 cup confectioner's/powdered sugar
-1 cup all-purpose flour
-handful toffee chips (if you can't get these, chop up some Heath bars or other toffee candies)

Mix it all together into a paste. That might take a little time. Scrape it all out onto a sheet of aluminum foil and roll it into a log shape. Roll the log in the foil and toss it in the fridge for an hour or so. When it's cold, take it out, unwrap it, and slice it with a thin knife. Lay the slices on a cookie sheet and bake at 325 degrees F for about 15 minutes, or until the edges just barely turn brown. Yum.

Le gauge swatch.

All rightie. The gauge swatch. Here is our chart:

THE PATTERN REPEAT IS OUTLINED IN RED.

You can click on it to get a larger version, then print it out (if you use a black and white printer, make sure to outline the pattern repeat with a colored pencil or something). Keep it near you at all times. Sleep with it under your pillow. Hug it regularly. Light candles to it. It's all you're getting from me in the way of a pattern. The rest you're doing yourself. (You, in the corner, quit hyper-ventilating. I'm going to lead you through it.)

Now. As you can see, the pattern repeat is 18 stitches, plus one (to put the vertical stripe on both sides and make it all nice and symmetrical - think about it). I also like to put two stitches at either side of the gauge swatch as a selvedge. So three pattern repeats, plus the extra stitch, plus four selvedge stitches:
(3x18)+1+4=59. (If math makes your head swim, just take my word for it.)

Using some kind of provisional cast-on (in this case, 'provisional cast-on' means anything that you can pick out again; I used a long tail cast-on, with smooth cotton yarn for the tail - a crochet cast-on is also good, or you can go crazy and use an actual provisional cast-on), cast on 59 stitches.

Using BOTH YARNS, knit into the back of the first two stitches. (This locks in the yarn and keeps things neat and in place.) Then knit the first row of the chart, doing three pattern repeats (plus the soild vertical stripe stich at the end), then knit into the back of the last two stitches with both strands of yarn to lock them into place.

Then cut the yarn.


Then skoootch the stitches back over to the other side of the needle so you're ready to start knitting on the right side of the fabric again:


Repeat this, working from the chart and cutting the yarn at the end of each row, pushing the stitches back over to work them on the right side again. Do at least two pattern repeats, or about thirty rows.

By keeping the right side facing you, you're essentially knitting this gauge swatch in the round. Since you're knitting the jacket in the round, that's how you want to do it. Make sense? Good.

When you're finished, DO NOT BIND OFF. Get a smooth, thin yarn (whatever you used for your provisional cast-on would be fine), and just run it through the stitches to keep them from unraveling. Leave a lot of space for the stitches to move around during the washing process; you want them to be able to spread out or shrink as they like. Do the same for the cast-on; pick out the stitches and put them all on another strand.

Then hand-wash your swatch, and leave it to air dry, spread flat.

Next up, measurement and calculating jacket circumference.

Steek-along signups!

Today's the day, gang! I'll be listing all our steek-alongers in the sidebar as they sign up, and dropping this link to a couple message boards, in invitation. (I don't know if I want a lot of signups or not. haha)

For those just wandering in, we're going to be knitting a stranded-color jacket, steeked up the front to be a cardigan:

Swatch knitting is from now until January second. On Janurary second, we'll cast on and begin knitting.

Anyone needing gory details can click away:
Skills needed.
Yarn requirements and closeups of the jacket.
Steeking how-to.
Stranded color how-to.

I'm following up this post with another one on how I did my gauge swatch, if you want to do it my way. You're welcome to skip that bit and do it your own way, I just thought I'd include the info in case anyone was interested.


E-mail me, or leave a comment to sign up.


And buttons! These are linked to an archive page at Samurai Patterns, where I'll be listing links to every how-to and direction on knitting this jacket, so that anyone not knitting along with us now, can go back and do it later. (This is my first-ever attempt at creating buttons, so, they kind of suck. You're welcome to make your own with a photo of your gauge swatch.)

But you're welcome to link the buttons to anything you want.

Hope to see you!

Just in time!

Sometimes I wonder if the blogosphere has some great psychic connection thingie going on. Because whenever I'm getting ready to do some kind of knitting project, all of a sudden, there's a kajillion other people doing the same thing, and articles out the woz on the subject. (Okay, it's far more likely that what I'm doing is in the front of my mind, and therefore I NOTICE the articles more often, but don't ruin it for me. We're psychic. It's more fun that way.)

Yesterday the knew Knitty came out, and lo and behold, just in time for the Steek-Along, is an article on stranded color knitting, and how to do it. With photos. (If anyone cares, I do stranded color by running the dark color through my index and middle fingers, and the light color through my middle and ring fingers, of my left hand. I never knew it was a legitimate technique until recently - I made it up myself in the knitting vacuum of the 1980's.)

THEN, when I was thinking I needed to drop that link to youse guys, who else is steeking, but the Knitting Curmudgeon herself. And she took photos. And did a crocheted steek, no less. Just like we're gonna do.

So if you're still not sure about your techniques, there are two more places to go look and have a read. And remember, I'll be doing tutorials as we go, also.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go do something about the 25 pound bag of flour I bought earlier today. And I just took some medication, so I may well be back later, swearing over the mathematician who figured out how to divide by zero. (Because imaginary numbers aren't useless enough. Terby, don't argue with me, they're useless. They ARE. ARE TOO. I don't care about the surface area of a sphere, and I don't need a freaking negative square root, and neither does anyone else. DO NOT.)

Time to bake!! Whee!

Last night I sat down and made the list of holiday baking to do. The last couple years I've gotten a little carried away with it, because we go to Ohio and I don't have to cook the actual holiday meal. And the cookies are a good thing to hand out to everyone - these days, hand made anything is considered a real treat.

By the time I made a list of all the old favorites, there wasn't much room for anything new and fun to be added (each year I like to try something new, which often gets added to the old favorites list, making the list grow every year).

Here then, is the proposed (NOT FINAL - stuff gets ditched as time runs out) baking list for Christmas 2006:
-Buckeyes (chocolate-dipped peanut butter candies)
-the date cookies
-toffee chip shortbread cookies (roll and slice, very fast)
-Snickerdoodles (rolled in colored sugar to look festive)
-cut out cookies (geckos - a tradition I started in Hawaii)
-lemon cookies (a successful experiment from last year)
-macaroons (really fast and everyone oohs)
-scandinavian orange bars (like soft biscotti - fast to make)

And the new experiments:
-chocolate dipped arrowroot cookies (a joke for my father-in-law)
-macadamia lace cookies
-ginger bars (I hope these work like fast gingerbread, 'cause I hate making gingerbread)


Other than the buckeyes, date cookies, and cutouts, nothing is labor intensive. I get out my cookie scoop (small-sized ice cream scoops, available at restaurant supply stores) and the silicon parchment paper, and can whip through a batch of cookies in an hour. I also start with the more classic 'cookie cookies' because they freeze well - do them two or three weeks early and chuck them in the freezer.

Once the freezer's full, I quit baking. That's the rule. Haha.

Before I had The Baby, when we were in Hawaii, I would mail out baked goods instead of Christmas cards... The baking would start the day after Thanksgiving, and everything would be in the mail (still frozen, usually) by the second week of December and I would sit back and drink Cosmopolitans while the thank-yous would roll in.

This whole waiting and baking fresh is a new idea, but it's kind of fun to hand the stuff directly to the people who get it.

I love baking.

I hope I don't gain 20 pounds this Christmas.

Oh, fine.

Here, The Baby greets The Husbeast as he arrives home from work. (Dadad is her favorite person. To hell with me.)


And here, the baby models the Surprise Jacket again. Hopefully without the zombified look on her face.
Okay, she's slightly zombified. I don't know what she's looking at in that photo. I suspect she's getting tired of the camera flash. She's quit looking into the camera.

You're lucky I was posting photos on the Zimmermania blog anyway.

Good news/bad news/good news/bad...

The knew Knitty is up. Always good news.

I am not in it. That was puzzling, because I'd sent in an article that I thought was good. I hadn't heard anything from Amy, but she's been swamped (appearance on Knitty Gritty, book tour, writing another book) and I knew she doesn't have time to hold the hand of every person who writes for her.

So I e-mailed and asked what was up. While I was waiting for a reply (not that long - she was quick), I started thinking, maybe my article got lost in e-mail heaven, and I could re-submit it for the spring issue and not have to write another one by January 2. That started sounding pretty good to me.

Then Amy replied. I'm in the surprise part of the issue, so my article will, eventually, be up. Which is cool.

But this means I really do have to write another article by the second.

Anybody know how I feel about all this? I don't. Haha.

Anyway, I'll give everyone a teaser for the article. It explains how to choose colors, and I used that method to choose the yarn I just got for the Geometric Star. (In fact, I would have explained it here, except I knew the article was pending.) And a photo tease:

(I did all the swatch photography in the driveway, for natural light, and got some seriously weird looks from the neighbors.)

I have gone to the dogs.

Me, the least domestic person I know, the person who vowed to never settle down, has a kid, a cat, a husband, and a knitting blog.

And now I'm posting recipes. Life, as I ever knew it, is over.

Ah well. Maybe another tattoo will cheer me up.


BUZZY'S DATE COOKIES FROM HELL: (Buzzy was my mother's nickname.)
Mix:
1/2 cup butter
2 beaten eggs
1 cup white sugar.

Heat in a good-sized skillet. (I use a #10 cast iron skillet.)

Add an 8 oz package of dates, cut into small pieces.

Cook for five minutes, stirring constantly. Your arm will want to fall off.

Gradually add 1/3 cup of flour, still cooking and stirring until thick, seven to ten minutes. At this point it will look like boiling vomit. You were warned.

Stir in:
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped nuts (I say pecans, she always said walnuts)
2 1/2 cups rice crispies (yes, rice crispies)

Mix it all into a sticky, unholy mess. Keep slightly warm so it doesn't congeal, and roll into small strawberry shapes, using greased hands. It's best to get two or three people at work on that, or you'll wind up with the rest of the gunk solidified in the bottom of the pan.

Roll them in red sugar, and pipe on little green leaves. (Lazy method, roll into balls and cover with colored sprinkles.)

Best eaten at room temperature.


I have no idea where my mother got this recipe (though it may come from her sister, the woman who makes sauce for Swedish meatballs with hot sauce and grape jelly). It's unlike anything else I've ever encountered. But if you have the patience to make it, a few little strawberries tucked into a cookie plate gives it real pizzaz, and you can play 'guess the ingredients' with people for hours.

More knitting stuff.

There's a clever title for a knitting blog, "more knitting stuff", because, you know, I never discuss knitting stuff around here.

Ugh. The temperature's started to fluctuate again and the migraine is back. I feel like I've goth an elephant standing on the bridge of my nose. It's supposed to freeze tonight, and I hope it gets damn cold and stays that way. Then only my asthma will bother me. Ha.

Anyway, I sewed together the Baby Surprise Jacket and got a couple bad photos of the baby in it:

The top photo, you can see the length is a bit on the long side, and get a feel for how the shoulder seams go together. The bottom photo doesn't show a lot, but you can see the sleeve length is okay. I think the gauge is wonky because I knit this really loosely and the garter stitch stretches out in all directions. (And get a load of that pink leopard-skin sweat suit. Yes, Ang, I thought of you when I bought it.)

Better photos will be forthocoming; the Baby was zoned on "Go, Diego, Go!" and when I tried to get her to stand up for me, she had such a whiny hissy fit she wound up getting put down for a nap. I need a good photo to post over at Zimmermania, a group blog I'm part of that's a bunch of people knitting Eilzabeth Zimmerman and Meg Swansen projects.


I started another damn scarf:

The dark green one was bound off last night; it's as long as my outstretched arms, unblocked, and I decided that was long enough, regardless of what seemed like a half ball of yarn still left. This new light green one is simple lace netting. Yarn over, knit two together across, then purl back the other way. I can read while doing it, and hope that I'll get it done faster, because of that. (That was the great attraction to the Baby Surprise Jacket.)


I've also suddenly realized (last night) that we have a little less than two weeks before we leave for Ohio, and if I want to do any Christmas baking, I need to do it soon. Normally I enjoy baking (to the point I once considered it a hobby, before my weight hit 150 and kept going up), but not with a baby to ride herd on. Which means I'll be doing my baking in the evenings, when the husbeast's around to watch the baby. Fun, fun. Not to mention, my brother's family has requested date cookies. Since my grandmother and mother died, I'm pretty much the go-to girl for any traditional family recipes, so I always try to take requests when I can. But the date cookies are hell. (Maybe I'll post the recipe here so you can suffer too.)

Why can't they ask for chocolate cake? I'm good at that.

I'm blogging and I can't shut up!

...mostly this is due to the husbeast working lots of hours this week and leaving me to deal with a small human who has a vocabulary of five whole words. It's making me squirrelly. (More squirrelly.)

One deadline met:

The gauge swatch for the steeked jacket. It's currently soaking in the sink, so it'll be all nice and clean and dry by the time I need to measure it in another three weeks. I'm not thrilled with the dark blue color, but I ordered it on line without a shade card, and shit happens.

Another blocking job came in the mail today. (April, I can't find your e-mail address. I got the package and it's already soaked and pinned out, drying. If I take my time, I'll forget it and feel like a shit later.) April apparently slipped and fell on her wallet in the children's section of some store, because the box contained baby gear, among them, a lovely tee shirt. Here The Baby models it while doing her Gloria Swanson imitation:
If you can't read the shirt, it says "Cute but stinky. Things balance out."

And here, The Baby says "Thank you!" (So do I.)

Her mouth isn't really THAT crooked... she's missing a tooth on the lower left side (we think permanently), and whenever she smiles like that she looks like a goof. Heredity has nothing to do with it. Really.

And there have been several requests for a tattoo photo, so here you go:

I was warned by people when I got it that the detail would blur and I'd wind up with a solid blue stripe around my wrist, but that was over ten years ago and it still looks fine. I've been meaning to get another one for a while now, and just haven't gotten around to it. Hmmm.

Now I'm going to go work on meeting another deadline.

Bah, humshit.

Eeek.

The Elann yarn got here. You know, the stuff for the Geometric Star. I ripped open the box and dumped it all out on the couch.

My head swam a little bit and I swear I got dizzy. But I separated the colors into piles and put it in a more orderly pile and turned on the full-spectrum light, and, well, I think the colors work.

Even having written a couple articles on color theory and knitting, I'm amazed it looks this good. The blues on the left will be used for the stars and the backgrounds of the hexagons, and the other colors on the right will be used for the small patterns inside the hexagons.

This is going to be either the coolest project in the whole world, or an utter disaster. I can't see any middle of the road, here.

I hope I have enough yarn. (That was a joke.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go knit like crazy on something. Anything.

Slob or perfectionist?

Or both?

I've been documenting my swatching process for everyone (photos by the husbeast) and it's the first time I've ever really thought about it. It's really an obnoxious process. I mean, it works, but the attention to detail is ridiculous. And I find myself wondering, how is it I'm sitting there, turning that little swatch into a work of art, and then turn around and knit other stuff with no gauge swatch at all?

I washed the Baby Surprise Jacket last night, and the yarn relaxed, and, well, I laughed and laughed. The jacket's now big enough to fit the baby on through to high school, I suspect. The whole thing was an experiment, so I don't care. It's drying, I'll put buttons on it, wrap her in it, and roll the sleeves up. It really doesn't matter to me. If it had been too small I'd have given it to someone with a baby. Just didn't matter.

And the scarves. I start knitting, and if it's too wide, I just rip back and start over (in mohair, no less). That does annoy me, but not enough to make me knit a gauge swatch.

Yet here I am with this jacket swatch, picking out the cast-on and putting the stitches on a string, so the gauge can spread out properly.

Maybe I have multiple personalities?

Feeling better.

I don't know if it's because the weather has steadied and the temperature has been in the same ten-degree range for the last twelve hours, or if it's the unholy amount of caffeine in my system (it'll be a miracle if I sleep tonight), but the migraine has backed off.

I celebrated by finishing this:

The Baby Surprise Jacket. Yes, the only project I had on the needles (of, um, four?) that wasn't on a deadline and didn't NEED to be done. So of course I worked on it.

I'm not sure if the surprise involved is that it turns into a jacket, or because it's designed to accomodate girls or boys, and you can wait until the baby is born and sew the buttons on whatever side that needs them. Either way, the thing is a wonder of engineering. I'll get a photo of the baby wearing it when it's seamed; at the moment it's soaking in the sink with baby shampoo, to get the rest of the food coloring out of it.



Tonight the husbeast spent about fifteen minutes bouncing a nerf ball off the baby's head.

That's riotous laughing she's doing, not crying. I swear. Sometimes it's hard to tell in still photos. (I take an excellent action photo, if I do say so myself. This one only took three tries.)



I just (as in, fifteen minutes ago) got a massive virtual pile of comments from my blog today, so I'm sorry if I haven't responded to anyone, if they needed responded to. Blogger is apparently fucking up.

Gasp.

Bloody, buggering, pig-fucking hell.

That one's for the profanity afficionados I've got around here.

The husbeast just called. He's got leave for Christmas.

It's official. I've got to finish these damn scarves. By the 20th.

Fuck.