Friday, February 29, 2008

Feeling better, finally

So, I can breathe again, which is handy what with it being necessary for living and all. Thanks to copious doses of cold medicine, zinc, and vitamin c, the cold didn't progress much beyond my head, which is good because I hate chest colds. Although the weekend full of sinus headaches was not much fun either.

But! I'm feeling fine, and the school week is over, and I'm really looking forward to this weekend, even though large parts of it will be spent cleaning my apartment or reading in the library. I've really let the apartment go, which I tend to do when I'm stressed. I've been finding little tumbleweeds of cat hair under all the furniture, so it's time to vacuum again. I keep telling myself I should do these things more often, and then they wouldn't be such Herculean tasks each time I finally get around to doing them. Maybe it's time to dust off my Flylady stuff and try to create a routine that works for me. There are large parts of her program that rub me the wrong way, but I can't deny that that timer thing really works.

There's not much knitting progress to report. My mom's socks are stalled out. I thought I was being clever by knitting a plain vanilla toe-up pattern. "It will knit up so quickly," I said to myself. "You will be done with these socks in no time."
Not quite.
They're boring. And they don't even have the dubious benefit of ease/speed, since I don't have much time to work on them right now. I'm not even to the heel of sock #1. I actually started a new project because the socks just weren't doing it for me. I really don't know if I want to frog and start over on them or just keep on pushing through. Arrgh.

I'll be back with pictures soonish. Maybe after I clean up enough to have space to take some :) In the meantime, happy weekending!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

So that's what that noise was

Saw this widget on Knelly's blog and couldn't resist:

William Shakespeare

We have heard the knitting at midnight.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:



There's a cold that's been going around school for weeks now, and its finally my turn. I'm spending some quality time with my bag of Cold-eze, a box of kleenex, and my kitty. More blogging later when I can swallow without wanting to cry again. :)

Monday, February 11, 2008

Muffin Recipe

So good I had to share!
Here's the link to the recipe:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Cappuccino-Muffins

Somehow my muffins never get as round on top, though. I guess I'll just have to make another batch and try again! :) Also, apparently I can't spell Cappuccino. Oh well.

p.s. Thanks for the compliments on the monkeys!

Sunday, February 10, 2008

The Monkeys are off my back!

And on to my feet!

Monkey2
Monkey1

I finished them on Super Bowl Sunday, and had them done in time to watch the Giants win. Yay! (for the socks and the Giants!) I immediately cast on the Jitterbug for my mom's socks, but have had to start over since they were looking a little big. I'm using the generic toe-up recipe from Wendy Knits. I may put some fancy ribbing on when I get to the leg, I'll have to see, but I'd like this to be a relatively speedy knit (speedy for me, at least, which isn't really objectively speedy at all.)

I've also been on a yarn buying kick, which is bad, but hopefully after my order from the Loopy Ewe gets here, I'll have the buying urge under control for a while. I just can't say no to pretty sock yarn.

Things have been a little crazy for me, school-wise. My part-time job got sorted out at last, and I think I'm going to really enjoy it. It is surprising how it's affected my schedule though. Having one less day to get my reading done is making it a bit hard to stay caught up. I don't really like having to go in to the library on the weekends, but it looks like I'm not going to have much choice.

Yesterday I had a much needed Day of Fun. A friend came in to visit me, and we hit Dinosaur BBQ (pretty good for not being in Texas :) ), the New York City Police Museum (a really interesting museum. I saw an actual sawed off shotgun in a violin case in their historic weapons section. I thought that was just what movie mobsters did), and the Fraunces Tavern Museum. The last one was really interesting. Aside from being the oldest standing building in NYC, it was also the site of several important events in the Revolution and early Federal periods, including George Washington's farewell to his troops when he resigned command of the Continental Army. We happened to come on Benjamin Tallmadge day, which is an important date for the Sons of the Revolution who run the place, and there were reinactors all over the place, including a brigade (?) of dragoons from Connecticut. They had very cool uniforms. Sadly I had no camera with me. After touring the museum, we went into the restaurant/bar on the ground floor and had a beer. It was fun to drink in the same historic place as George and his pals.

Today I puttered around, did some reading, and made muffins. Cappuchino Chip Muffins, to be exact. They're delicious. What you do not see in this picture is the coffee cream cheese spread that I made to go along with them. With the topping, they're really more like cupcakes, and that's fine with me.

Cappuchino Chip Muffins

Mmm...muffins. Not a bad way to end a weekend.