Late Breaking Pet News

Tchazo has recently discovered the bliss that is the heating vent. He can most often be found laying on the rug with his face taking the blowing heat full on. If the heat turns on and the bathroom door is shut, he will wait his turn outside. When the door opens he eagerly pushes his way in to resume his post in front of the vent. We have a very tiny bathroom so sometimes both dogs crowd in with me and all together we consume the entire square footage of the bathroom.

Before we brought Fanny home, I went to the store and got her a few things. One of those things was a little cat bed. So far Jack has been the one occupying it. He is far too big for it but he curls up real tight trying to fit all of himself on it.

Fanny doesn't think much of her new bed. She is more of a high-tech kind of kitty. She is quite attentive to the laptop screen and sometimes tries to catch the arrow. Once when Paul stepped away from the laptop she continued an IM chat with a friend of his. I think she said something like this, ";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;l".

This past week also marked Tchazo's 6th birthday. To honor his birthday there was a round of soft food for all feline and canine members of the TrinKnitty household. Here I am preparing the feast with the diners waiting eagerly in the wings.

The next edition of pet news will include documentation of Fanny The Destroyer and the story of SUPERCLAW.

Veggie Bday with Beets

After a Friday afternoon snowstorm (work closed early!) and an unexpected evening of hibernation, we had to venture out on Saturday to procure Veggie Dinner ingredients. Hosting the dinner helped me meet my 3-new-recipes resolution as we tried 2 new recipes: Mushroom Noodle Goulash and Composed Beet Salad from Moosewood's Daily Specials cookbook.

This week is Sylvie's birthday so we turned our non-marshmallow Rice Krispy bar dessert into a birthday cake. A birthday cake isn't quite complete without the little candy letters on top. So, when the first store didn't have any candy letters (I didn't trust myself to use the colorful tubes of icing to create the happy birthday message) I had to trudge through the snow to a second grocery store. I was determined to make the dream happen.

Sylvie's cake read "Happy 67th Birthday Sylvie." Paul added the numbers after we finished placing the "Happy Birthday Sylvie" letters and noticed how many leftover letters and empty space we had.

This dinner marked the completion of our 3rd round of hosting, which means this was roughly the 1 year anniversary of the Veggie Dinner Club. That was a year of good eating!

Dedication to Completion

I've been dedicated to completing the projects that I have on needles before I move on to my next projects. It has been quite a challenge to stay focused because there are so many tempting projects on my knitting queue. (Dang Ravelry! Why are you so inspiring?!?!) I finished a few things recently, which just leaves my Cascading Cardigan to be finished before I am free to start a new round of projects. I am getting really close to being done but I may be thwarted by a shortage of yarn. I am approaching the bottom half of my last sleeve and the yarn is looking sparse. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Now, for the finished objects. I can only give you a peak of one because it is a gift for a pregnant friend (sort of the story of my knitting lately!)

In addition to that, I recently finished a Bainbridge Scarf out of RYC Cashsoft Aran.

I had intended to give this to my mother in law, but now that it is finished, I am not so sure it is the right style for her. I've got someone else in mind for it instead and I've got something else in mind for her.

I finally finished my Oblique Openwork Socks (pattern from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks). I made these out of a yarn I bought on clearance from Circles. It's a sport-weight Cormo wool yarn made by Running Wild Yarns. It has been in my stash for a long time because I was having a hard time deciding what I could knit with a scratchy wool. I finally knitted up a swatch and washed it. I'm glad I did because I was amazed at how much it bloomed and softened up after being washed.

After all of the plain stockinette socks I have been knitting lately, these lacework socks were a total treat to knit. The Oblique Openwork stitch pattern was easy to memorize and kept me interested while still being simple enough to knit at knitting groups and while commuting. I followed the instructions for the Eye of the Partridge heel flap and am really pleased with how that looks too. These were socks that I immediately tried them on, admired them and then thrusted them in Paul's face while declaring them to be "SO PRETTY!!".

You might notice that I was a bit skimpy on my project details this time around. I'm thinking that it isn't necessary for me to post so many details on my blog now that I put even more detail into my Ravelry entries. I'd rather not double up the efforts by posting the project specs in two places especially since a lot of my blog readers don't give a darn whether I knit my socks on 2 circs or on dpns. Any objections?

Dancin' Shoes

Anyone feel like dancing?

Recap

This weekend was packed with fun, friend time. Here is a little recap:

On Friday night I made dinner and caught up on some Netflix watching. Dinner was a doctored up batch of Mac & Cheese. Paul and I love to take Annie's Mac and Cheese and make it a little bit better. This week's version was made with white wine instead of milk and included sauted mushrooms and carmelized onions. Yum! My Netflix watching included National Geographic: China's Lost Girls and Life + Debt. Both documentaries were really interesting and slightly unsettling. I would recommend both of them.

On Saturday Becky and I went to Lowell. Becky hasn't been there before so I needed to show her my usual Lowell haunts: Hub Mills and Life Alive. I got to spend most of the gift certificate that my mother in law gave me for Christmas. I was very disciplined about my purchasing. I only bought yarn if I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. I even came prepared with some patterns to help me shop. I bought a book that had a pattern in it that I can make using yarn from my stash. Now all I need is tons of uninterrupted knitting time to make all this stuff!

Sunday morning started with a Frank Sinatra brunch at Lucky's Lounge. Arturo and Sam knew of this "down-low" "den of cocktail cool" and wanted to check out their breakfast. I hadn't seen them since late December so it was great that our plans could finally match up. If you go there, I would recommend getting the french toast. The bread was like a cinnamon roll. Super tasty.

Sunday evening I drove up to New Hampshire to Abby and Jeff's house. Jill was visiting from New York so we all got together to catch up, eat dinner and drink some wine. Those girls can drink some wine! I am no competition for them. None at all. Abby and Jeff recently went on their honeymoon to Costa Rica so we got to see their picture and hear their stories. It totally made me nostalgic about the trip that Paul and I took there. We were there exactly a year ago!

I realized this weekend that I am slacking on my 3 recipes a month resolution. So yesterday I researched some recipes for dessert. I was overjoyed to find that there are tons of recipes for making Rice Krispy Treats that don't use marshmallows. Ever since I found out about gelatin and its non-vegetarian components, I have been steering clear of marshmallows (with the exception of smores on two occassions). But I love Rice Krispy Treats and get a craving for them from time to time. I made up a batch yesterday that are peanut butter flavored with chocolate on top...just like my mom used to make them! I couldn't tell that they were made any differently. I am super excited that this dessert is part of my life again.

Hire a Granny

What an idea! A Swedish company has put up this website called Net Granny (here is the link) that allows you to hire a granny to knit you a pair of socks. They all use Sweden's Lang Wool - Jawoll superwash sock yarn. It seems that most of them finish your socks in 14-18 days. That is, unless you hire a popular granny that has lots of orders to finish before yours. You can even chose the funky sock which means they design something colorful for you. The prices are in Euros or Frankens, but I did a little exchange rate calculation and came up with the cost for a pair as roughly $40. That probably seems outrageous to most people but a steal to us knitters who know how long it takes to knit a pair of socks.

Go! Grannies! Go!

Did someone build the ark?

The weather in Boston yesterday was a mixed bag. Some snow, some icy rain and then a whole lot of rain to finish it off. When I got home from work, I encountered a lake where our road should have been. Drivers were not letting the deep, deep water deter them. They kept plowing through it until someone stalled out and blocked most of the road. On the bottom right of this photo you can see where the water hit our building and you can see that the water is up to that car's headlights.

The commuter rail kept going right through the water too. In this photo you can see it crossing the road. Underneath all of that water is the road and a curb and a sidewalk. There has to be a lot of water to cover all of that up!

Playing

On Friday night Beth came over to hang out for the evening. We cooked a dinner using ingredients that each of us had on hand. We roasted a bunch of veggies (butternut squash, turnip, carrots, potatoes, beets), simmered some wild rice, chopped up a little salad and munched on cheese and crackers and grapes to tide us over while everything cooked. It was fantastic, if we do say so ourselves!

Beth and I are each sporting an apron in this photo. Beth is wearing a vintage Little Ceasar's Pizza apron that was purchased when we visited her, Mark and Jerri in Chicago. Their neighborhood had some good stoop sales. I am wearing my new apron that I got from Etsy. It arrived in the mail on Friday so of course I had wear it for our evening of cooking. Perdoozy made it.

Beth came over at an exciting time in our house. After dinner we played Cribbage and Wordsearch, but our game kept being interrupted by pets. This is our first weekend with Fanny. Friday night was her first chance to spend time in the house with the dogs out of their crates. She was a pretty brave little kitty. I had been worried that she was going to spend all her time under the bed, so it was great to see her showing some of that curiousity that cats are famous for.

On Saturday morning Paul and I got ourselves out of bed early to meet up with Jen and Jamie for breakfast at the Neighborhood Restaurant. No photos, but if I had taken a photo it would have been of a review they have framed on their wall. It said something to the effect of "the quality never rises above standard but what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity." Now if that doesn't warrant bragging, what does?!

Saturday evening we had tickets to see the Bread and Puppet Theater's show called the Divine Reality Comedy (the photo above is of the artwork they had displayed before the play started). I have been wanting to see them perform for quite a while as their shows always sound interesting and I love puppet shows for adults. So, when I heard about this show, I got tickets right away. It ended up being a sold out show, but truth be told, I wish I hadn't gotten tickets!

I don't generally like to use my blog to say negative things but every now and then I gotta let it out. This play was such a let down. It was held in the Cyclorama, which is an amazing space but they didn't take the space into account when staging the show. All of the seating was on the same level as the actors. A lot of the time the action was lost to everyone but the people in the first few rows because it wasn't possible to see what was going on. Also, I just didn't get most of the play. It was so out there and so symbolic at times and then they would throw in something so literal that it was ridiculous.

Towards the end I was so ready for it to be over but it just went on and on and on with all of the actors moving in slow motion (literally moving in slow motion!). At this point in the play I heard a kid near me ask his mom, "What's going on?" and not surprisingly his mom couldn't answer the question. Through the play I kept thinking, "this has to get better." I looked at Paul a few times throughout the play to see if I was the only one who felt clueless about what we were watching. He was sitting there all straightfaced looking engaged. Turns out that after watching the first few minutes of the play, he decided he'd rather spend the time daydreaming about superpowers.

Let this be a lesson to me. Always bring your knitting! If I had had my knitting I think it would have been so much easier to get through. Paul would say that the lesson is that we need to have an agreed upon signal so that if something sucks this bad, we can let each other know that we want to walk out. I might be too polite to walk out on a performance, but I will definitely knit through one.

New Knit and New Kit(ten)

Who's that? That, my friend, is our new feline friend. Remember my birthday present from Paul? The "thing" that this knitter was missing? It's my kitty (ok, OUR kitty)! We adopted her from the MSPCA shelter, which is a totally amazing shelter with a great facility, great volunteers, great employees and now, they are less one great cat!

This little one was brought in a week and a half ago because she and two other cats were found in abandoned in a building. Because they were brought into the emergency vet that is connected to the shelter, they don't have any more information about her. Judging by her size and her teeth, she is a young kitty. Not a little kitten but definitely not yet an adult. She was named Fanueil by the shelter and the other two that came in were named Prudential and Hancock (all names of important buildings in Boston for those that aren't locals). We thought Fanueil wasn't quite the right fit so we have shortened it to Fanny. Plus, Fanny lends itself to lots of playful nicknames and silliness.

We adopted her on Saturday but since she wasn't spayed yet we had to wait until Monday night to take her home. She seems to be settling in nicely although she has yet to meet the dogs. We are letting her recover from her surgery and get used to us for a few days before we let the dogs meet her. They have definitely been smelling each other underneath the door but the dogs don't seem too anxious to come after her. Hopefully that is a sign of an easy acceptance from them.

Last night Paul and I cuddled with her on the bed while we watched a movie. I knit her up a little toy to see if she is interested in playing and she liked it. Now, let's just hope that she doesn't discover how much fun yarn is!

This is one of the few pictures in which her eyes are open. She is so darn happy that in most of the pictures she is squinty eyed and purring or else she is trying to smoosh her face into my hand for some more lovin'.

As long as the dogs and Fanny can get along, I think we've found ourselves a winner!