At the store, this was labelled as "The Curious Kingfisher Gawain Teacup". I'm not quite sure why it was called that, but it cracked me up. _

The pasta worked just fine. I am relieved. _

I just had a stupid moment where I forgot to check the pasta when the timer went off, and it was far from done. So I stuck it back in the pot with more water and am trying to cook it again. I don't know if this will actually work. _

I'm pretty confident about knitting, it's been a while since something has made me just completely stuck. It certainly hasn't been lace. But there's a scarf in Jamie's lace book that I've been eyeing. I tried to start it today, and it just keeps making me all messed up. It's really disappointing. _

My favorite new TV show is Leverage. And may I just say, that it delights me to no end that the girl who always seemed to hook up with Archie appeared to play older drunken Robin Hood like Nate. _

Crazy tiny knitting. I am half tempted to try, but I would go mad. _

I should not read food blogs when I'm hungry and while we have a lot of food in the fridge, it's all weird pureed vegetables that my mom got into making this weekend. _

I wish more people shared my joint obsessions with Heroes and The Winter Prince so that more people would find it hilarious that after acting like a royal jerk and hunting his little brother with the help of someone even more jerk-y/evil, Nathan called his mother to relate the entire story. I died laughing, and then started making Claire into Goewin. _

I have been trying to figure out when I started making up the pronounciations of names in books. I know I had completely incorrect pronounciations of just about everyone in Greek mythology in sixth and seventh grade because my books hadn't come with pronounciation guides. My mis-pronounciations of Welsh/Welsh based names was even more ridiculously absurd (my stepbrother Zeb read Lloyd Alexander before I did, and he made up the pronounciations, and so I didn't even bother), but by that point, coming up with pronounciations and not caring how "they were meant to be said" didn't matter. I'm guessing it was The Wind in the Door that really did it me.

I would have never, at 13, when asked what I thought of a book someone had given me for Christmas, said "well, the names are all weird and hard to say." _

It is a relief that my brother's radiation is now over. _

This is Sam's favorite perch during the day. He guards the house from birds in the bushes and squirrels in the yard and people walking by. And the mail carrier. He is with Ellie, who is more concerned with the people and other dogs than she is with birds and squirrells.

From Dog Pictures

I realize the picture is washed out, but you can't really take a picture of dogs in the window on a sunny day without them getting washed out. _

The right mitten is completed:

From Knitted Objects

From Knitted Objects

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My completed first pair of gloves:

From Knitted Objects

From Knitted Objects

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My hands are so dry I have cuts on them from accidentally touching them with my fingernails. _

I finished the right mitten, and I seem to have major problems starting the left mitten. I can't seem to cast on. I cast on the stitches, and then I count them, twice, and get the number I'm supposed to have, and then I start knitting them and suddenly there are too few. _

I don't know much about most of the Supreme Court Justices, but my mom really likes Ginsberg. I'm guessing, now, that she will be the first Justice Obama replaces. My family had all thought it would be Stevens, who is like 90. _

After I had poured the risotto rice into the melted butter and garlic, and was about to add wine, I realized that we were out of broth. So, my stepdad handed me a bunch of spices, and said "use water". Which I did. I wound up adding a whole bunch of salt, and for whatever reason, the rice bits weren't creating the false creaminess that it does when I use broth, so I added some milk and half and half (and a lot of parmasean cheese). And then it was delicious. _

Our organic food box is a bit like a top chef challenge. Create food for a week using apples (easy), carrots, parsnips, turnips, a celery root, alfafa sprouts, beets and radishes. It's the turnips that have us at a loss. _

Because I finished my gloves, I figured it was okay to start a pair of mittens.  I did wind up buying a skein of yarn to do these, because I had the black but nothing to go with it, but I figure that's okay (the sweater I started broke the resolution of not starting a new project). I love my mittens, this project is fun, faster than I expected, and I think they are beautiful.

_

Two weeks ago, I made spectacular caramels to eat while we watched the football games on Sunday. This week, I was thinking about trying to make torrone, but that seemed to involve so many things that I don't even know where to get (like edible rice paper wafer stuff) that I got discouraged and decided not to make. (My mom suggested trying to find it at an Italian grocer in the North End.) So, because dessert is my territory, especially when my sister makes her mac and cheese, I was trying to figure out what to do. I thought about chocolate fondue, but that is pretty much an activity in and of itself, and also I lost the plug for my fondue pot. So, I cast about looking for recipes on my computer of things I wanted to try to make, and I settled on David Lebovitz's chocolate almond toffee. I made it last night, while the rest of my family tried to figure out what to do with the twelve pounds or so of asparagus that my mom had bought for $3 in Haymarket. (Answer: soup and soufflee, and we're still trying to figure out what to do with the last half of asparagus.) It was easy, and fun, and delicous. Instead of using a full teaspoon of vanilla, I used half a teaspoon of vanilla and half a teaspoon of bourbon. And it is very very tasty. We all had little bits while I was breaking it up this morning (and when the Trader Joe's brand Oreos fell on the toffee last night, we ate the bit that fell off), and it is very very tasty. Pictures may come later, depending on how inspired I am to take pictures of things. _