Aside from the zipper (which I still haven't purchased, but did receive recommendations of places where I might be able to find one), my sweater is finished. (There is also still debate about whether I want to buy another ~30 packs of Kool Aid to over dye the sweater.)

From Knitted Objects

My mom commented last night that everytime she's ever seen a fisherman knit style sweater, she assumed it had taken the knitter at least a year. This took me about half a month, so she has revised that to figure that they just must all be knit by crazy fast (unemployed) knitters like me.

From Knitted Objects

I love this sweater. I fell in love with it months ago, when I had no job, and no yarn to knit it with (despite the absurdly large yarn stash). I thought about it for months and months, and then one morning, while temping, I woke up and decided I needed to make it. I needed to make a sweater. I needed cables. I missed Knit Happens intensely, and realized that I didn't have a new yarn store here that I knew I could go into and find the yarn I needed to make the sweater. And so, I ordered the yarn online, having determined from Ravelry that many people were using Cascade Eco, and bought it. I didn't think I liked the colors that it came in pre-dyed, so I decided to dye it myself. It sucked up dye. On the three skeins of yarn that went into the sweater, there are 71 packets of Kool Aid (it was meant to be 72, but in the morning I found one that I forgot to put in). It was (basically) equal parts Cherry, Tropical Punch, and Black Cherry (because there was no grape, and it needed to be darker). And then I learned that my biggest pot wasn't big enough. I went on a pot hunt, I borrowed a large lobster pot from a friend, which was also not large enough, and wound up buying an even bigger pot from the Evil Store (Walmart). I cast on right after my last temp job ended. I wove in the ends yesterday.

From Knitted Objects

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For dinner, I made a loaf of bread (using my cookbook for no-knead breads, and it turned out beautifully), and vegetable soup, using random vegetables out of my fridge (and a leek I bought especially for the purpose). Our organic food deliver was bringing us a celery root a week, and we were running out of things to do with them, so I shredded it and put it in the soup. It was pretty simple soup, with celery root, leek, carrots and celery, with orzo on the side (soup is nicer if you don't cook the pasta in the soup, but keep it next to it, and put it in the bowl at the same time. Less statchy.) And then I spilled a bowl of soup all over my leg and the couch. _

The vet could ifnd nothing wrong with Sam's ear, so she pulled out the hair and found a cut, and gave me stuff to wash his ear with. And painkillers. _

I am so tired of root vegetables and our inability to do anything with them other than roasting them. I want leafy green vegetables in our box, or broccoli. And more fruit. _

Sam is at the vet because everytime I scratched his ear this morning, he cried. Also he was very shaky and shivery. Poor puppy. _

What to do with slightly burnt, slightly salty, slightly solid caramels? _

There is something very satisfying about going from this:

From Knitted Objects

To this:

From Knitted Objects

The knitting took less than a week, the dying process was long and involved and fraught with tears and a trip to the Evil Store (Walmart) to get a giant pot. I sneezed red for days, and we were wiping red off the counter for even longer (Kool Aid). _

Shockingly, these two caramels taste pretty incredibly different. It's not hard to guess which tastes a little burnt.

From Food

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I have made a mess of my stove, my favorite pot (which just needs scrubbing, it's not ruined or anything), and kind of burnt tasting caramels. They're not terrible or anything, and I won't feel bad about sending them off with my brother for his ski trip this weekend, but, yeah. So, clean up the kitchen mess and start over, making my tasty delicious caramels. _

My mom asked me to make caramels for her to take with her as a house gift to the people she's visiting this weekend. I love making candy, so I said yes. (I think I like making candy because it combines my love of cooking sweet things and my fear of hot ovens. Considering that I have burnt myself making candy and haven't burnt myself taking something in or out of an oven, it's pretty irrational, but I hate taking things out of ovens. I used to make other people do it for me, but then everyone got frustrated that their cookie baker made them sit around in the kitchen for hours while the cookies baked, and I had to sort of get over it.) This weekend, I got fancy salt at P&J's health food store/food co-op (like Whole Foods, but smaller, and run independantly by Vermont hippies), and I've been considering trying to make salted caramels. Or else I could just make the recipe I got from Rosemary that has yet to fail. _

Soon, I am going to need a zipper, and I haven't a clue where to find one. _

Today, Sam went running through some trees at the park, and came back with his face and feet covered with burrs. Not sharp burrs, but ones that were pretty hard to pull off of him. We got them off his face, and decided that he's pretty matted and it's time to shave him anyway. So, we got home, I changed into clothes that we thought could handle massive amounts of dog fur, and we went outside and I tried to shave him. I'm really glad that I didn't start by running the clippers down the middle of his back, because that's probably all he would've let me do, and then, oh, man, would he look funny. I started with his feet, because they were the most important. I had to hold each paw, and he jerked his whole body around and squeeled. Now he has stupid chicken feet because he is a stupid chicken. _

My  mom and my grandmother can't really see purple. My grandmother is always convinced that it is brown, and my mom is convinced that my very purple blanket is actually blue. This makes me worried that I will, at some point, no longer be able to see purple. _

My random theory about Dollhouse is the FBI guy is Alpha. _

My lips keep getting so chapped they crack. It sucks. I slather on lip balm (I am a Burt's Bees girl). I stay hydrated. I even got this fancy exfoliating lip stuff from The Body Shop, and none of it really seems to help. My lips have cracked in two spots over the past four days. _

It almost makes me want one. _

I suspect that either Trader Joe's has stopped selling my favorite cookies or else they just don't sell them in Massachusetts. I loved the chewy ginger cookies. _

Having Peg and Jyles over on Oscar night, but Jamie and I won't start (on the TiVo) when they leave to drive back to Vermont in the snow.

I miss Nate and Rebekah. _

I had a sort of knitting breakdown this weekend, and decided that it was vitally important that I knit this sweater. It has everything I love, no seams, cables, shaping for a fitted sweater...(as Jamie pointed out, all it needs is pockets to be my idea sweater, so I might add them in, because, hey, pockets.) I broke down and bought the pattern, and then I ordered some yarn (I spent a while on Ravelry seeing what other people had used to knit it, and settled on what I did) in grey to be dyed red with Kool-Aid. Because while they did sell it dyed, I don't trust computer colors, and they all looked duller and browner than I wanted in my red. I'm itching with excitement. _

I felt kind of vouyeristic this smorning, reading about the Obama girls having chores and their parents trying to raise them as normally as possible in the White House (which is why I'm not linking to the New York Time's article I read), but it does make me happy that they're trying to give them as normal a life as possible. _