fruity custardy tarty things!

 

And other distractions from knitting, I should say.  Well, there's only so much time one can spend stuck on the couch with laceweight merino before the stir-craziness hits.  Or the hand cramps.  Or the Charlie horses.  Besides, it's nice being able to work in a medium where the worst case scenario involves eating the screw-ups.  So, um, behold my attempt to combine pastry crust, fruit, and custard into something vaguely edible (above).  One day they might even turn out pretty.  Though I'll settle for not being impossible to pry out of their tinfoil casings.  Then maybe the recipe would be worth disseminating.

In other news, apparently plastic to-go dishes can double as decor.  Just add water, knockout roses too short to go in a vase, and tea-lights, and voila instant elegance.  And I'd been wondering what to do with my living room to make it look more me and less previous occupants.  Fun with flowers and fire, apparently.  Yeah, wut?

Oh, and I promise I'm actually making progress on lace sleeve.  Pictures to follow.  Meanwhile, have some soothing music or something...
I kid, but I did manage to snap some decent photos at the Bellagio in Vegas the other weekend, so at least you might enjoy the view.

The ??? Post

I'm doing penance for having gone a whole month without sticking so much as a comma into blog territory.  What I offer up in contrition is a free scarf pattern, listed here.  Thanks be to a sister who not only knows who Franklin Habit is, but just might love his hilariously informative "Stitches in Time" column as much as I do.

Not that I've been idle.  These much-abused hands have done their share of casting on, casting off, ripping, re-casting-off, cursing, ripping, and repeating.  Also I think I might be running low on sewing thread.  Behold, reversible aprons...

 And Holden shawlette.

And what have said much-abused hands learned from these adventures that have kept them from the blogsphere?  For starters, if you're going to order patterned fabric on a whim, be prepared to scale down your apron at a moment's notice.  There's a reason why the water lilies number has a narrower "skirt" than retro pink flowers does: it has nothing to do with planning.

Also, is it possible that most knitters out there pull their stitches tighter than a miser's purse?  I could've sworn Holden called for 440 yards of sport-weight yarn.  So why, using 2 skeins of approximately 230 yards of yarn each, recommended to me at Knit 'n Purl, did I manage to come up an entire pattern repeat short?  By the way, that picot edge was brutal, and not to be attempted if you don't have at least 100 yards left over.  Did anybody else start thinking about that high school geography lesson about the effect of coastlines on the measurement of borders?  Or the math lesson about area vs volume?  Um...never mind.

Which sort of roundaboutly brings me to one of my other observations of the day.  It occurred to me during my morning walk that at almost 30 and with most of my student loans paid off, I am probably old enough and financially secure enough to qualify as eccentric, meaning it's now perfectly acceptable for me to wrap a hand-knit lace scarf around my shoulders and comb the waves like a historical relic.  Not that I planned to do that for long.  It happens to be not just Memorial Day weekend at the beach, but Biker Weekend.  Which I take to mean that the best use of my time just might involve reworking lace patterns and watching food porn.  Or, less hunger-inducing, the SVU/NCIS marathon on USA.  Though that will probably bring on dreams of helping Stabler and Benson solve the rape and murder of a female naval officer that somehow involves a US-size-7 circular knitting needle, all while rocking an Abby-esque outfit and writing about the whole thing on McGee's typewriter.  Hey, I never said my dreams made sense, but they can be quite entertaining.  And on that note it's probably time to finish my tea and get cracking.  And hopefully not mix up ssk and psso in my head ever again.  Damn left-leaning decreases.  Get off my lawn!

The cure to writer's block...

...clearly isn't lace-knitting.  On the other hand, I did spend the weekend terrifying the cat by indulging this inexplicable need to VACUUM ALL THE FLOORS! and after that there was little to do but settle my blown eardrums in for a concerted bit of shawl-making.  Result: Omelet is officially off the needles.  Get excited!  Well, or not, obviously, but somebody's bound to love the pretty pictures.  Turns out it's this beautiful frothy bit of style-over-substance when you do it in true laceweight and big needles.  But who needs substance anyway?  Behold!

Slow Children at Play

Sometimes I wish I'd listened to my mother and become a pathologist.  It's hard not to have creative block when your job isn't exactly the stuff of action movies: "Today I diagnosed 6 people with flu (again), argued the semantics of asthma, and got chewed out/written up for not giving a family the answer they wanted to hear in the tone they wanted to hear it in."  Yeah, that's pretty much a day in the life.  At least dead people and tissue specimens complain less.  And I love a good detective story.  Though I did have that pesky urge to vomit all through first-year anatomy and histology.  Nothing a good mask, chronic sinusitis, and a steady supply of Dramamine can't fix, right?  Or maybe I've just watched too many episodes of NCIS while on call waiting for the phone to ring for the eleventy-billionth time, and Ducky is awesome and I want his job.

Be that as it may, I am the slow child at play in question (thank the gods my easily-offended patient families would never deign to read this blog).  You can always tell how the creative juices are flowing by how many times I fudge a section on lace-knitting.  Omelet shawl is stubbornly still on the needles, and it's a very good thing it's so forgiving.  The pencil line marks where I've finally gotten to in the pattern after much cursing and ripping down to the lifeline (again, hooray lifelines!) and re-knitting.  While stone-cold sober.  This says much about my mental state.

And below is an up-close-and-personal look at the stitches so far.  If you can't tell where I've fudged, neither will I.

Though speaking of fudge, I have successfully managed mousse.  Oddly enough, it's easier than custard.  If by easy you mean it turns out nicely even if you don't have a functional electric mixer and are forced to hand-whisk your egg whites into submission.  Also, teacups make a dainty and quirky serving vehicle if you're into presentation.

If you're curious about the recipe, it's lovingly ripped off and halved from a book called "The Totally Chocolate Cookbook."  Ripped off 'cause I never do anything exactly to specifications, and halved 'cause my experiments have to be small enough to feed one.  2 eggs, separated, 2 tablespoons butter, 2-1/2 ounces chocolate of the bittersweet or semisweet persuasion, 1 teaspoon rum, 1 tiny pinch salt.  Beat egg yolks until smooth (or until pale and increased in volume and your arms are tired), melt chocolate and butter over low heat (makeshift double boiler for the win!), add chocolate/butter mixture and rum to yolks and mix well, beat egg whites and salt until stiff peaks form (ow, the pain!), fold into chocolate mixture until whites just disappear, spoon into ramekins or teacups, cover with plastic wrap, and chill until set.  Makes 4 dainty teacups' worth or probably about 3 normal-serving-size ramekins.

So, yeah, enjoy the humble offerings of my existential crisis while I figure out how to make National Poetry Month count.  Or...something.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

I had one of my oh-shit moments today, but not over what I normally expect.  For someone who spent most of her childhood rocking a semi-photographic memory, I have a lot of brain farts.  You know, the tip-of-your-tongue, almost-have-it, it's-buried-in-there-somewhere-in-all-the-clutter mental malfunctions that make everyday life, well, interesting.  Never mind that it also took me almost to the checkout line in the grocery store to remember I needed garlic.  No, what I'm referring to is my Shakespeareamnesia moments.  I used to be able to quote "Romeo and Juliet" like most people quote Dr. Seuss.  This was only partly thanks to the frenetic movie version that came out when I was in middle school/high school.  You know which one I mean.  If you don't, well, I just dated myself.  Either way, not remember Friar Lawrence's advice to the young couple as they're about to get married?  For shame.  Especially when I'm trying to use it at the beginning of a poem.

There now, that's off my conscience.  I'm happy to report that with the aid of cable TV and a couple of glasses of wine, I am now finished with chart B of Omelet shawl.  I'd've gotten further still with it if I hadn't dithered away both mornings this weekend "recording" songs at the piano.  Oh, the wonders of smartphones.  All I need now is the ability to use it consistently as a phone.

Oh, I don't have pictures of Omelet shawl?  Pardon me while I go and, um, remedy this little detail.  Eventually.  Assuming I don't get distracted by anything e--ooh, shiny!

Second Ball Syndrome

No, not to be confused with second sock syndrome or an unfortunate predicament of the male anatomy.  It's a plight only suffered by those who are poor/space-limited/old-school enough to shun the "modern" marvel of the yarn-winder, though as a side note, at the Knit 'n Purl hand-balling is still taught as a core competency.  Yes, I know, it still sounds dirty.  Second ball syndrome, as a reminder, is the condition wherein, after a long and arduous session culminating in the production of a passable yarn ball from a very large hank of specialty yarn, one finds oneself plunged into an inexplicably complex tangle of knots in the middle of a previously smooth-sailing second hank.  Regard my tale of woe.

So, it was St. Pat's weekend, I'd just settled down on the couch with a bellyful of homemade corned beef and cabbage (a saga in itself, believe you me), a bottle of Irish red (still haven't reconciled myself to the idea of stouts), Food Network on the telly, and knees that had recovered enough from skein number 1 that I thought, eh, what the heck?  With my usual combination of good intentions and irrational optimism, I pulled skein number 2 of beautiful art-deco-blue shawl yarn out of the shopping bag, draped it over the kneecaps again, and set to work.  For every few yards of balled yarn, I rewarded myself with a swig of beer and a gander at the food porn.  Things went smoothly until about 10 o'clock, when, really, that should've been my tip-off to pack it up, but give up halfway through a yarn skein?  Nevar!

And then I looked down.

"What the--?"  (tugs and realizes mistake).

Knot ball about the size of the yarn ball I'd currently succeeded in making.

OK, don't panic, we can do this.  Whatever you do, don't think longingly about the scissors stowed away at the bottom of the knitting bag.  Fingers are already tired and a little stiff, but what're a few tight knots?  No sweat.

Slow, painstakingly slow progress, revealing about an inch of useable yarn at a time...distal to the knot.  Taking a sip of Irish red every now and again to steel the nerves.  Heck, by now it could be whiskey and I wouldn't care.  Probably better if it was, since my liver's metabolizing at a normal rate and my fingers are free only about every 30 minutes or so and I've been nursing this beer for about 3 hours now.  And are those...adhesions between the strands?  What is this, surgery?  By now the food porn's done and the SVU marathon has come and gone and the TV's halfway through playing "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," and I'm still stuck on the couch with my leg muscles spasming and my fingers going numb and all I wanna do is cut the yarn and start over if I could only find a spot where cutting it would solve all my problems.

And then it comes.  The last knot.  Blessed deliverance.  Heck, by now I'm down to the last few yards of yarn, and it's not like I can feel my legs enough to get up anyway.  I finish winding, gulp down the last of the beer, and look up at the clock.  12:30.  AM.  I've been doing this for 4-1/2 hours.  Luckily my cat doesn't care that I have the vocabulary of a sailor with the added advantage of being able to curse fluently in at least 3 languages.  I vow, this time, that never again will I succumb to the idiocy of hand-balling yarn.  Next time, I'll buy a yarn-winder.

Yeah.  Right.  I went to medical school.  Masochism is in my blood.

Pinch me

...I'm, well, definitely not Irish.  Actually it was going to be "kick me," but that would hurt more.  Probably.  No, I'm not actually asking to be physically abused, I'm just attempting to get into the St. Patrick's Day weekend spirit like my North Myrtle Beach cohabitants.  It's a little odd.  Example: bagpipers warming up behind the sea oats.  In kilts.

And on the crafting front, I have acquired new yarn.  And a new project.  This is what happens after adventures in corned beef and cabbage.  Well, I thought I'd be a good little chef and sear the beef before tossing it into the crock pot.  Not accounting for the fact that meat juice plus hot oil equals a lot of flying hot oil.  So, nursing a stained blouse and a rather nifty pattern of burns on my forearm, I betook myself to the yarn shop to finish a second Knots of Love hat (which, unlike cooking, is something I can count on being able to do consistently).  And to celebrate finishing said hat, I bought the yarn.  It was this beautiful art deco blue and it was calling to me.  Specifically it was calling to me to make it into the Holden Shawlette (see the Knit 'n Purl website for the pattern, or better yet, visit the store :)).  Which now gives me...3 knitting projects on the to-do list, along with a couple of dresses, a steampunk costume, and possibly an apron on the sewing front.  The apron would be if I decide to hand-make a present for wedding number 3 within 12 months.  Wedding number 3?  Seriously?  At least I'm not a bridesmaid?

Wait, where was I?  Anyhoo, I shall leave you with the following image from my Tumblr...account...thingy (mournfulcat.tumblr.com).  Because it's a poetry kind of day.