Cheers/Jeers: The weekend

I'm totally stealing this from my pal JT

Cheers: I got to bake a birthday cake and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins
Cheers: The baking was for two different parties we were invited to over the weekend. Parties! I love parties. Steve's birthday was nice and low-key on Friday, and Deb's baby shower was fun. I freestyle-painted a onesie (a green dinosaur with purple spikes. Alas, I forgot to bring my camera, so no photos exist).
Cheers: People that I don't actually know about read my blog. The proof was when we walked up to the house where the baby shower was yesterday and one of the hosts greeted me with, "Hey, I read your blog!" It was the first time anything like that had remotely happened to me. In the Swim, if you're reading this, post a comment, lady! What a small world, that the friend of the person who teaches the classes I take at the gym is a blogger, reads my blog, and recognized us because sometimes I put up photos of us here. (She found me initally through the lovely Leah.)
Cheers: After a cold and crappy week, weather-wise, Colorado paid us back by a couple of exemplary fall days. They were warm and gorgeous. The one regret I have about the weekend is that we didn't get up into the mountains to see any foliage at all, but we had a lot of other things going on. Like parties!
Cheers: Chu's wax works just as well when I do it myself. Plus, we got an excuse to buy a new pot.
* * * * * * *
Jeers: The baby shower was for the person who teaches the classes I take at the gym, and today is her last class for at least 8 weeks, and I am trepidatious about who might be taking over for her! I generally only take classes from instructors I like.
Jeers: Target, while normally a place that has everything I need, did not have several things we were looking for on Saturday. Including canned pumpkin, which the grocery store did not have either. I guess there was a run on canned pumpkin all over Denver. Luckily, I still had some frozen processed pie pumpkin mush from last year in the freezer.
Jeers: Fame, the recently released version. I was so looking forward to this, even despite the presence of SYTYCD-alum Kherington Payne, who I disliked when she was on the show but was willing to keep an open mind about. I love movies that have dancing and singing and all manner of talented kids in them, but I think the movie tried too hard to straddle the balance between performance and plot, and didn't have enough of either. It didn't help that some of the actors cast as the main character kids were terrible, and what little plot there was about them didn't give me any reason to care when bad things happened or whatever. If the movie had done more performance, it might have come close to awesome. If it had focused on one year rather than trying to get in all four, that might have helped. If they'd scrapped some of the performance and gone in for a really interesting plot, that would have been good as well. But as it was, the movie was just really disappointing. And a note to Kherington Payne: Stick with dancing. You can't act your way out of a paper bag, even when you're essentially playing yourself.

Heat makes knitting less than fun

Just for posterity's sake: the finished blanket I made for the soon-to-be-appearing baby of the person who teaches some classes I take at the gym. I've been taking classes from her for nearly two years and we're pretty friendly, so I thought I'd put together a simple blanket. She told me the nursery for her son was going to be bright colors, so I took that and ran with it.


The yarn is big and fat and soft, machine washable and dryable of course. Loki kindly provided some scale for me.

It would have been finished weeks ago, except it's not especially fun to knit when it's hot outside (and inside, since we don't have A/C).

The week of stuff

Big stuff and little stuff happened this week.

Big stuff:

Scarlett moved to town! She and her boyfriend arrived with the u-haul on Tuesday, just in time for a seriously spectacular smoky sunset, courtesy the fires in LA and Utah and western Colorado. Her new apartment is wicked awesome and only a half block away from us.

We went on a hike on Saturday and reached the summit, though it was only 11,700 feet and not 14K+. I keep forgetting to upload the photos.

Little stuff:

We got amazing pears and peaches at the farmer's market, and I baked some peach cupcakes (adapted from this recipe). I frosted them with browned butter icing, which is super-tasty but also very, very rich. I gave half the cupcakes to Scarlett.

Our contribution to dinner with friends on Wednesday (game night!) was chocolate chip cookies, which means I baked twice in one week.

I gave blood yesterday and got my 1-gallon pin! I know I've donated more than that over the years but have officially given blood 8 times with this particular blood bank.

We watched Milk last night on DVD and it was fantastically good. It made me wonder: had it been released in October last year instead of December, would it have had any effect on the passage of prop H8 in California?

I finished a baby blanket for the person who teaches my classes at the gym, who is now 8 months along. I'll take some photos before I give it to her next week.

Here there be dragons (and blankets)

Since everyone I know appears to be spawning, I've been busy with some knitting projects recently. My cousin gave birth to Baby #3 last weekend, and named her something I actually don't hate: Eliana. (Her first two children have kreeyative names using "k" sounds; my cousin and her husband both have K names as does their last name start with a K.)

Cousin's first baby gender-determining ultrasound showed fetus to be a boy, so I bought yarn accordingly. (Generally I try to make blankets somewhat gender-neutral, but I found this yarn I really liked and, well.) Then gender-determining ultrasound #2, a few months later, determined that no, she was actually going to be a girl. Hm.

I went back to the store, but didn't find any good "girly-colored" yarn that exactly matched the already-purchased stuff. So I found something else that would work (not nearly as soft, unfortunately) and came up with a design to use all three yarns - a blues/greens/purples (original), a whites/blue/green (original), and a light purple (new). If you look closely at the photos you can see my pattern - it's actually basically the same pattern I used for my other cousin's baby blanket I made a couple of months ago, except without side borders and with an outer edge of crocheted-on light purple. I like it a lot.


The other project is actually the second one I've made of its kind (or very similar). Back in December I made a green and yellow dinosaur for Wombat and it got sent out to California along with the other stuff we sent the Agirlandaboy family for Giftmas before I got a chance to take photos of him. Leah has been kind enough to do so here, along with a very cute baby who appears to enjoy how the dinosaur tastes. I wanted to do something similar for Spats, except in perhaps a more feminine vein, so instead of a dinosaur I made a dragon. She's mostly yellow with two kinds of purple (some of the leftover light purple from Eliana's blanket), and I'm sorry Jive Turkey I wanted to save it for a surprise, but you'll be getting the dragon in the mail in a few days and I wanted to post photos.




I've got two more projects in various stages of completion for yet another friend due in May; a skater or snowboarder-style baby hat (finished!) and some matching booties (not finished!) that I'll display before I mail them out. This baby will be a girl and her name will start with the letter E, because she's going to be named after an ancestor and that's how they roll in my friends' family.

* * * * *

I'm thoroughly uninterested in food these days because our weather finally seems to be cooperating and giving us nice, warm spring days. I'm hoping the lack of interest in food will bring a lack of appetite, because it's about time my body gives up the ghost of the winter layer and starts slimming down. It's been more than six weeks since I gave up eating chocolate from the work candy jar (haven't slipped up yet!) and I haven't really seen any results. It's really frustrating, and I am not sure what else to do. I'm already in the gym about 6-7 hours a week and have started walking or running some days after work as well. For example, I went running in the park on Tuesday after work (only 1.5 miles) and my legs have been killing me since. Today the left one only feels somewhat sore but the right is still bugging me. I hope it's better by tomorrow, since that's when our new work softball team has its first practice (!) I don't know what convinced me to join such a thing, but I did, so there you have it. I haven't played any softball since sometime in middle school and I have no idea if I have any ability to hit a ball with a bat, but I can run so that's something at least.

Also, the instructor for my two favorite classes at the gym (the ones I have been going to for a year and a half) finally fessed up to being pregnant on Monday. Since she's about a size zero, the little belly bump she's got going on made it pretty obvious (Suck in your abs! she yells, and her belly doesn't move). She is due in October. I am going to make her baby something as well.

Deaths, weddings, births, and ploofs - four life milestones

Things that are on my mind recently:

How I am far more bothered by people dying relatively young in accidents (Natasha Richardson, of course) than by people dying of old age or dying of diseases. Accidents are unpredicatable and scary, but there's not much you can do to prevent them. I do my best to prevent illness and disease, but short of encasing myself in a bubble for the rest of my life and never being able to experience the world again, I'm just going to have to chance it. I'm really sorry for her family, though.

How even people who consider themselves to be nonconformist and easy-going can get all worked up about wedding planning, especially when looking at other people's wedding porn (tm Ariel of Offbeat Bride). I confess to being this way myself to a small degree, but knowing the constraints of time, budget, and space, I never let myself get too worked up over stuff other people were doing for their different and/or unusual weddings. Ours, quite frankly, ended up being far more traditional than I expected but there were enough quirky touches to make it our own, I think. I remember posting on Hillary's blog while she was still working out the last kinks of wedding planning, trying to reassure her that honestly, nobody will notice if the flowers aren't exactly what you were hoping for. And you won't notice, either. It's hard to look back and think that reassurance from anyone who's already gone through the whole wedding rigamarole would have helped matters for me, because you don't really know until it's all over. I hope my comment way back then helped Hillary, and I hope that in the hypothetical future when I am hypothetically doing things for weddings, I'm able to impart a bit of serenity.

That I know a whole lot of people who are currently in the last stages of gestation and will be giving birth soon. (JT, holla!) Am currently working on yet another blanket for an April arrival, and will probably do a hat and booties or something for a friend due in May because I just don't think I'll want to be doing blanket knitting once it really warms up.

That we just went through the warmest, dry-est winter I can remember since I moved to Denver. We've hardly had any snow at all and it's been mostly in the 50s and 60s for all of February and March. What the hell, Colorado? Where's all my snow? I only got to see ploofs ONE TIME this year. ONE TIME ploofspotting is not enough for my necessary ploof quotient. WHERE ARE MY PLOOFS? (I do realize that having written this, the universe will hear my hue and cry and we'll get another March blizzard that dumps 2 feet of snow downtown or something.)

And tonight, we're having an out-of-town friend over for dinner who we haven't seen since New Year's Eve of - 01 to 02 I think? Should be fun!

A blanket for Spats Turkey

Once upon a time, my pal Jive Turkey went and got herself all knocked up. This was a long-awaited occurrence, and I was so happy when she told the internets the big news that I wanted to do something for her and for Husband of Said Turkey. So I decided to make a blanket for the baby-to-be that became known on her blog as Spats.

Just after that, a new issue of the online knitting magazine knitty.com went live. In it was an amazing pattern for a baby blanket called Op Art, and the example shown was in black and white. The pattern was designed by someone who had studied infant visual development and was intended to be visually interesting for babies. I found this to be fascinating and decided to make this pattern (albeit in more interesting colors yet maintaining the dark/light contrast) for Spats. I found this gorgeous soft yarn in a pearly white and wine color, not too Christmas-y but still with the visual contrast to make the pattern functional in addition to cool-looking.



Then, one of Leah's friends went and made the same blanket for Wombat so the blog world had seen the blanket. That blanket was black and white, so mine would be different, but I was glad that I'd decided on this pattern for Spats and not for Wombat!

When it came time to actually start the blanket, I was, to put it mildly, a little confused by the directions, which say to use two circular needles - something I'd never done before. After about six false starts I gave up and just started the thing on double-pointeds, transfering up to circulars as it slowly got bigger (the blanket is knitted from the inside out, with increases evenly spaced each quarter of the way around). At one point I had over two hundred stitches on one long circular and was running out of space, so I knew I had to switch to two, but I had no idea how. Solution? I scoured the internet for other people who had made the pattern to ask advice. I found some videos on youtube showing a two-circular knitting technique. And finally I had the courage to give it a try myself - and it worked! Yay! It was like wrestling badgers, but it worked. I never did figure out how to knit the pattern mindlessly; I had to count every stitch I knitted to make sure I'd be increasing at the right places and even marked my place verbally to Dan whenever he'd say something to me so I wouldn't forget and have to recount.



The directions call for much thinner yarn and a smaller gauge needle, so I knew I wouldn't be making the entire thing according to the pattern. I learned a lesson with Wombat's blanket; larger blankets might be nice for later but babies need small things if they are really to be useful. I didn't want Spat's blanket to get too big, so I finished up at about 450-odd stitches, bound off, and called it a day. Blocking was challenging; the pattern called for wool yarn which I can't use (allergic) so I'd used a lovely soft machine washable acrylic but acrylic is far more difficult to block into shape (blocking is the process of getting a finished garment or object wet, stretching it out to size, and letting it dry that way). I usually block the things I make even though they're less likely to change shape because it does help even out stitches and makes things look nice and finished, but unfortunately what was supposed to end up a square will probably be forever kind of an odd shape. Oh, well; I think it looks pretty cool the way it is. What do you guys think?


I took photos in the morning before I mailed it last Thursday. Someone didn't want to get out of the bed.

It's my opinion birthday balls should be held every night.

The past week or so has been filled with productivity, accomplishment, and a general getting-stuff-done attutude around these parts.

Case in point: The house is clean. It took 2 days, but it looks awesome.

Case in point: I spent Monday (had off for dead president day) doing things like culling books and working on Secret Birthday Projects in between the running in the park and the lounging on the bed and the playing with the kitties.

I am definitely feeling better. Saturday's highlight was a surprise from-scratch paella (made by Dan) accompanied by the best appetizer ever (smoked salmon, Humboldt Fog cheese and fancy herb crackers) and 2 amazing Spanish wines. I made dark chocolate mousse for dessert, making a 2/3 recipe from the Joy of Cooking and it still took us 3 days to eat it all. All of our laundry got washed, dried, folded and put away (even the throw rugs!); all of our dishes were at one point washed, dried, and put away. Spending part of Monday in the house felt good instead of oppressive.

An interesting thing has happened recently: I have reconnected with some old friends through one of those social networking sites all the kids are talking about these days. Except these aren't just old friends, they're people who at one point were like my brothers that I wasn't actually genetically related to. The younger one goes by a different first name than how I always knew him, but in his photos he and his brother look just like they did when they were kids, except they also look just like their parents. And like themselves. I might meet up with them the next time we go to California; there is something both nostalgic and immensely satisfactory to trade stories with people with whom one shared one's childhood. We were at each other's houses multiple times a week. We took baths together and had sleepovers. They were my brothers 20 years ago, and now they can be my friends.

Four overdue packages got mailed off yesterday: housewarming, thank-you, and new baby boxes are winging their way to the East Coast and to California. My newest cousin baby (#4 for them) was born in January (and thankfully her name is a real one, Jenna). Here is the blanket I made for her.


(As you can see, it's significantly smaller than the one for Wombat.)

And here is the sweater that I made Dan that got finished in January. He wears it all the time, so I think he likes it. Either that or he is just trying to make me feel better for spending so much time on it!



(He was thrilled that I wanted to take a photo of him in it this morning, obviously.)
I want to share photos of Super Secret Birthday Project, but I think the recipient might see them, so they will have to wait. It's not a knitting project, but it's going to be awesome.

Speaking of birthdays, I have been invited to a 30th Birthday Ball in Southern California for Oldest Friend. I will be attending. What should I wear to a ball? Gloves? Mask? Should I actually try to find a ballgown, or wear something I already have? I'm excited about the prospect of dressing up but I'm already flying and renting a car, so don't exactly have hundreds of dollars to spend on a fancy dress. Ideas?

Blue

Sometimes it is difficult to write about things that I really want to write about, because of my blog audience. Needless to say, those of you who read my blog regularly may have noticed that I'm not posting as much as usual and not writing anything of substance. Part of this is because I've been feeling a little blue recently, what with it being winter (though we've had sunny warm days this week, it depresses me more to have that kind of weather when everything outside is stark and brown and bare; I'd rather it snow, honestly) and what with having had a cold now for more than two weeks (Day 18, and still not done being sick) and what with the impending arrival of my Official Descent into Decrepitude. That's right, my 30th birthday is coming up in 5 weeks and I always have a hard time this time of year, but this year is different than most because it's a big birthday.

I haven't done anything for my birthday in years other than maybe Dan makes me a cake and a nice dinner. The parties I've attempted to throw since moving to Denver never seem to work out, but this year I really wanted to do something to mark the occasion of my becoming one of the hordes of women in this country who are unimportant because we are out of our 20s (because everyone knows, women lose their looks and their importance to cultural relevance once they're 30+). For a while, I was tempted to just start celebrating anniversaries of my 29th birthday like someone I know used to do, but my Oldest Friend turns 30 a week before I do and she's embracing the new number in our age so I suppose it would be kind of silly for me not to do the same thing.

I feel like I'm in a holding pattern right now, waiting through the last bit of Dan's schooling, waiting through the next few months at my job (which is another post entirely that I can't write for obvious reasons) until our circumstances change and I can leave, waiting for a sign of spring somewhere to give me hope that the world isn't going to be drab forever. Waiting to see friends and new babies. Waiting to be over this damn cold so I can start running outside again, and refocus on losing a little bit of weight I'd like to lose before we start seriously getting down to the business of baby making. Waiting until our savings account has more padding.

Since there's nothing I can do to speed the passage of time, I've decided to take a page from several other bloggers I've seen, to find grace in small things. Mostly I try to stay positive, stay on the bright side of life, but in the dog days of February in 2009 I'm having a difficult time making this happen. So here's to a recommitment of positivity.

1. I am making a baby blanket for Spats Turkey, and it is going to be awesome.

2. Leftover spaghetti for lunch, so tasty.

3. Finding out the giftmas present we sent for Wombat was received.

4. Renting a cabin in the mountains for the weekend

5. Matching dad and baby 'staches.

A baby blanket for a wombat, in numbers

The plan was developed in stages. I went to the store, looked at yarn, and found what I wanted back in July some time.

Initial skeins of yarn: 5 (2 multicolored, 1 green, 1 purple, 1 yellow)

Skeins of yarn purchased by the end of the process: 9 (3 multicolored, 2 green, 2 purple, 2 yellow)

Dan and I tossed around ideas for how to use the yarn I bought. We each used colored pencils and graph paper to brainstorm. Dan's design ended up being the one I used. Then, he calculated how many of each kind of square I needed to knit (4 solo multi, 10 half multi half multi/purple, etc.)




Ideas drawn before determining a winner: at least 10

Squares in winning design: 64



Patterns used in squares: 64 different (each square a different pattern)



Patterns I made up myself, either stitch patterns I knew or ones I concocted using graph paper: approximately 40

Patterns I obtained from a pattern book: approximately 24

Squares with suit patterns I made up: 4 (1 heart, 1 club, 1 diamond, 1 spade)



Size of each square: 6 by 6 inches (approximate; some squares were slightly larger and some slightly smaller)



Size of blanket, finished: 4 feet by 4 feet (after blocking, it appears to be somewhat bigger)



Hours spent knitting blanket: approximately 100. Maybe more.



Places I knitted: the couch, my national conference during sessions, hotel rooms, airplanes.


(Loki liked to help, too.)

Hours spent stitching blanket together: approximately 6



Time spent blocking: 1 hour, plus 15 hours drying time



Time spent finishing (crochet border): 2 hours



The yarn is machine washable and dryable and I hope I have constructed it such that it will be fully functional and easy to care for. Mostly I hope that it helps keep a very special baby warm through a cold and damp Bay Area winter.

Made with love,
Emily, who met his parents on the internet

More tease re: baby blanket

Tomorrow I will have a great big post with tons of photos. Tonight, well, here's another tease.

Good things come

a. I am feeling much better today neckwise. I hope this is a permanent and not a temporary thing.

b. Last night, I got that much closer to finishing Wombat's blanket.

c. Also, I made a successful brand new dinner (ie, made something I'd never made before): wild rice pilaf with turkey kielbasa and sauteed mushrooms, and I baked 2 halves of a golden acorn squash with brown sugar and butter. Super yummy!

d. Next week I get to see Leah and Simon, and Oldest Friend, and Scarlett, and spend time with my family, and spend time with Dan's family, and go to H&M, and go to Trader Joe's, and get a Specialty's cookie (the best cookies in the whole wide world), and go to Berkeley Bowl. And I don't have to do anything related to weddings.

e. A friend of a friend wants me to help with her wedding flowers (I offered before) and this has me very excited.

f. And I got my hairs cut today, finally! What do you all think? (It's not the most flattering photo (hello, bad skin in fluorescent light!), but you can kinda see the layers).

Taking a page from Sara

and posting a sneak preview of the knitting project that has been forefront on my mind (and the thing I've spent the most time working on) since July.



It's Wombat's blanket, and it's awesome.

Full post with details and photos after his parents get it on Monday.

I am so close to being finished I can taste it. A few more evenings' work, and it will be fully baby-ready.

Disappointment, Contentment, Anticipation

We've seen two big summer movies so far (Iron Man and Indiana Jones), and the big summer movie I was really looking forward to seeing was Prince Caspian. So this weekend, we made a date to pay 8 bucks for a MATINEE, good lord, and headed down to the local Theater that Shows Big Movies on the 16th street mall Sunday afternoon because we'd heard it wasn't doing terribly well and might be gone from theaters soon. After being more than pleasantly surprised by the first one, I was really looking forward to seeing what they did with book two.

Unfortunately, my excitement was short-lived. The movie was not what I was hoping it would be, and though it's been many years since I read the book, I think they took quite a few more liberties with the story than I might have liked. One of my favorite parts of the movie didn't actually even happen in the book, and they were far more heavy-handed (in my opinion) on the religious undertones than they were in the first movie. I left the theater feeling like I'd seen an entertaining movie, but it wasn't what I had wanted to see. Not that I consider myself a fanboy or anything, but it's always a bummer when you walk away disappointed. If they make a movie of book 3 (Voyage of the Dawn Treader), I hope it's better. Prince Caspian did not live up to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The rest of the weekend, however, was lovely. There was some relaxing and some chore-doing and two delicious breakfasts, shoe shopping but no buying, and we planned to grill outside but the weather didn't cooperate on Saturday or Sunday (too windy, not warm enough) (we tried again last night and the damn coals just wouldn't light despite direct flame for several minutes. We just need a better grill I guess, but we made do with the George Foreman). On Sunday, we made our way through the People's Fair on our way to and from the movies, and while it is generally interesting to watch people and gawk at merchandise and sniff overpriced food smells, there was nothing particularly camera-worthy (though in the car on Saturday we did see the best yard sale sign ever, with its perfect message of STUFF and an arrow pointing right, and I wished I'd had my camera with me). As Dan remarked, PrideFest is more interesting for people watching, and the Taste of Colorado is more worthwhile to consume overpriced food, so maybe we'll try again later in the summer.

I also knitted a baby hat for the baby who was still in utero last Saturday; she was born on Thursday the 5th and hadn't been named yet, so I whipped up a cute hat real quick in the baby yarn I had left over from other projects, and I'll give it to Julie in a day or two to bring to the new parents. I knitted the hat while we watched the Bourne Ultimatum (less confusing than Matt Damon Kills People and Runs Around A Lot II) and while we watched the Goonies (Sean Astin was my first confirmed crush; when I saw that movie I totally swooned, and I was only like six) and I finished it up on Sunday morning while breakfast cooked (that, and finally finished Monkey's giftmas/birthday present that I will be bringing with me this weekend).

Because hooray! We are going to Southern California this weekend to witness my little sister's college graduation (what does one wear to a graduation at 9 AM on a Sunday in a beach town?) We fly in and out of LAX, will be driving up the coast on Saturday, and making a stop at San Simeon because I've owed Dan a trip to Hearst Castle since he moved me to Colorado in January of 2003. I'm not sure what else we might do; perhaps just have an adventure and make some stops along the way up. I'm excited because we get to meet Oldest Friend's cat (unfortunately, OF will not be in town, but we get to stay at her house anyway) and because we get to hang out with Monkey and Big Bird and (I have heard tell) some other people as well on Friday night. A Friday night! Out in a big city! It should be a smashing good time. Oh, and we'll spend part of Saturday doing beachy things, and getting to spend time with my family, and I bet there will be something fun to do on Saturday night in Santa Barbara. Plus, after the graduation on Sunday we're having a party for my sister who is leaving for a 3-week trip to Ireland right afterward, so that should be fun too.