Oh my god there is so much water. My back yard courtyard thing that feeds right into my basement bedroom has at least four inches of standing water, which are seeping under the door to my bedroom. Everything non-furniture is off the floor. The next level in our yard is also flooding. There is too much water! I can't handle having a flooding bedroom! _

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Yesterday was going to be a further experiment in bizarre flavors of meringues, but then it started raining. So I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but the oatmeal had millet mixed in (we aren't sure why). They are tasty, even if they have a bizarre little crunch.

I have now been forbidden from making Anne's fleur de sel brown sugar cookies for book group, though. I'd've made those instead if I realized that I wasn't going to be allowed to make two batches of cookies this week. _

And also to do: read Kavalier and Clay. In a bored moment on Friday, I found myself on Dark Horse's website looking at the price of "their" comics. And I have never read superhero comics. (I read Sandman, all out of order except for The Kindly Ones and The Wake, which I read as they came out. And I read a few Books of Magic, because Death would show up and chat with Tim from time to time.) _

Also to do: figure out beach vacation. Not quite sure what sorts of details need to be figured out for this, so am glad that I have help with the details. Woo go Peg and Tori planning team and kitchen team! _

Knitting projects to do list:

1. Sew on buttons, sew up button holes, weave in ends on the sweater of Olympic failure.
2. Finish the green featherweight piece of endlessness (soft and lovely, but OMG I want to just wear this). Is it possible to have this completed to wear it on Wednesday?
3. Figure out the math for my Morningstar creation, and cast on. Goal is to have this completed by May 22 to wear to L's wedding.
4. Redye red sweater and sew in zipper before it is to warm to wear it again. Where does one get one of those bags you cook a turkey in?

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What I want to be working on tonight.

From Knitted Objects

I am converting turning this into a cardigan. I need to figure out the math. Possibly not the best thing to do during Lost. (TiVo rocks.)

From Knitted Objects

Instead, I am working on this. I have like three rows left, and buttons to sew on. This is the project I failed to complete during the Olympics.

The light in my house tends to be weird, and so I don't generally like taking pictures at night. I have lost all the purple, pink, and green subtleties in my Morningstar swatch, and the cardigan is black.

And, because they turned out to be on my on memory stick, here are the few pictures I have of the stole I knit for Julia to wear to her cousin's wedding.

From Knitted Objects

From Knitted Objects

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Went to see Alice in Wonderland yesterday. It was pretty, and an interesting Return to Wonderland. It bore about the same resemblance to Alice as Hook bears to Peter Pan. The 3-D didn't really add anything, and there were times when it felt poorly done and it made me a little sick. _

Random creativity day today:

I dyed lace-weight silk yarn olive green. I'm not sure it has enough dye, but I want to let it dry out and maybe rewind it before figuring that out for sure.

I have been experimenting all weekend at converting a stitch pattern from a triangual shawl into a sweater for a sweater I have been working on creating in my head for more than half a year. I haven't entirely figured it out yet, but I think I might have figured out the right math (this shouldn't be as hard as I am making it).

In my oven, I have a batch of strawberry-orange meringues, and a batch of chocolate-hazelnut meringues. The uncooked meringue gunk for both tastes awesome. The strawberry-orange was created by using all natural orange extract and some of Trader Joe's freeze dried strawberries which I crushed (easily) with a mortar and pestal. The chocolate hazelnut is hazelnut extract and chocolate powder. Yum, yum...

And now, I finish cleaning up the kitchen, and I start cooking soup for dinner. And then I will clean up the kitchen a second time. And watch the Oscars. (Hopefully, without too much a delay this year. I miss the Eagles!) _

Do they make games for seniors with dementia that are like the sorts of games you play with little kids, but that don't look like they're for little kids? If not, they should. Because I would buy them for my grandmother. _

I really can't decide if I am excited about Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland movie, or if I find the whole idea to be really dreadful. On the one hand, it looks pretty, and I love Alice. And on the other hand, I love Alice, and I'm tired of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in Tim Burton movies. (I also seriously thought about typing men and de instead of on the one hand and on the other hand. I think Greek broke my brain.)

Also, I kind of want to see something in 3-D again, and I have something against Avatar that I can't really explain. The more I hear how pretty and wonderful it is, the less I want to see it. _

Last night, I handed my grandmother a stack of cookbooks and said "I'm going to make cookies, but I don't know what kind, want to help me figure it out?" After flipping through one of my Barefoot Contessa cookbooks for a while, she decided that what she wanted me to make was Fruitcake Cookies with Peanut Butter frosting. We argued a little bit, until ultimately I decided I was just going to completely ignore her and make Sugar Cookies. Which are awesome and delicious. I rolled them in turbinado sugar and they taste almost like those little pretzel shaped cookies you get in those blue tins of Danish Butter Cookies. _

The woman at Flatback made a pretty design on the top of my raspberry mocha thing this morning (I usually drink regular coffee, but I decided I wanted something more interesting), carefully pouring in foam, and then doing pretty things with the chocolate syrup. And then I had to put a lid on it, because it is cold and rainy.

I am so tired. I started making cookies at 10:30 last night for Book Group tonight, because apparently I felt it was more important to make cookies than to work on reading the book, sleep, watch the cross country skiing/bobsled, work on the cardigan that I have until Sunday to finish or I will feel like a personal failure, or watch Tuesday's episode of Lost. I pulled the last sheet of cookies out of the oven after midnight, and then I cleaned up the kitchen. I want to curl back up in my warm bed and sleep. And then wake up slowly at my own pace and read. I'm not even really sure I care what I read right now. I've finally broken through a wall in Middlesex where I've started to enjoy it, but I'm not sure I actually care. I had a Book Group avoidance fit a few weekends ago and actually started reading The Colour of Magic which I had always sort of avoided because I don't like Rincewind. Or I could start something entirely new.

Or nothing at all, since I am actually at work, like a responsible person on a Thursday morning, with a frighteningly sweet raspberry coffee drink. And I am less than 30% finished with my book for my Book Group tonight. (Weird thing about Kindle reading: I am thinking about in percentage read.) _

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I don't really know why the frosting is so runny, possibly it was the limoncello. Or else the butter and cream cheese got too soft. The cupcakes are lemon-limoncello cupcakes, inexpertly filled with homemade meyer-lemon curd that wound up more on my hands than in the cupcakes. But they are delicious. _

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I was seriously disturbed on Tuesday night by NBC's bio thing about Yevegeny Plushenko during the short skate. I mean, seriously, he's driving around, talking about wanting to crush his enemies, while there is dark forboding music...and random shots of statues of Stalin? And the hammer and sickle? It could be the story of someone determined to beat his rivals to get two Olympic gold medals in figure skating, and instead it's like some anti-Soviet thing. Did anyone else watch this? Was anyone else disturbed? _

Caveat: this is likely to be a little incoherant because I'm trying to write about something that's mostly visual.

I started a cardigan when the Olympics started. About 8-10 inches in, I realized that I wasn't making it quite as wide as I ought to have been (I think I screwed up the math when when I decided I liked the way the stiches looked at larger gauge than the pattern suggested I shoot for and tried to convert down). But, I figured, it's okay, because I have to pick up a bunch of stitches to make a button band anyway, so I'll just make it wider than the pattern says, and it'll all look fine. It was something I'd been thinking about anyway, because the rib at the bottom is like 4 inches, and the button band is supposed to be 1, and that struck me as out of balance. So, I will have a 4 inch ribbed button band down the middle, and it'll all be fine.

Now, I have buttons to go with this sweater with the smaller button band that I had originally intended. Shiny pretty buttons that I really want to use (see! So shiny!)



Now I'm not sure they'll be large enough to look right. What do you think? Should I get larger buttons and save the shiny buttons for another project? Or do you think I can get away with them? _

Okay, I just have to say, incest in modern realistic fiction makes me so much more uncomfortable than it ever did in Greek mythology, King Arthur, or any fantasy (collected Darkover novels and Tigana, I am looking at you). Middlesex is...weird. _

Hey, Martin, you called this four years ago. No Russians on the podium for pairs. _