A Post for Bugheart

Ha! You've bullied me into it. Now you get a post named after you.
Can I blame my lack of posting on too much olympic watching? No? Ok then. The truth is that I used to get a lot of blogging (or LJ'ing) done in the morning at work. When people get to the office late, I often didn't have much to do until 10. However, last week was the workiest week I've ever had. There was no down-time, nor lunch breaks away from my desk. Not even sudoku or the panda-cam saw the light of day! That's intense. Thursday was the peak - I was at the office until 1:30 in the morning and then had to get up again at 4:45 on Friday to be at work by 6.

It's now 1 week after the annual meeting and I guess it took me about 4 days to fully rejoin the land of the living. I got to watch Tai Shan/Butterstick hang out in a tree, have read all necessary blogs, and on Thursday I enjoyed a lovely SnB w/ a small crew.

First up, we have photos of the layer cake I made last week for Valentine's Day - Chocolate layers, with raspberry buttercream filling, and vanilla cream cheese frosting (a rough replica of our wedding cake flavors). Oh was it rich - it was not a good precursor to Erich's cholesterol tests. I apologize for the odd lighting on most of these shots. There is a long story that went into the baking of this cake. But the short version is that it is VERY hard to live with someone and keep something food-related a complete surprise for 24 hours. Thankfully, he made my job somewhat easier by going along with his friends whom I convinced to keep him at a bar for at least 2 hours after I got out of work - surprises are easier to pull off when booze is involved. Can I also say that I might have bitten off more than I could chew as evidenced by the fact that I DREAMT about the stupid thing? And it was borderline nightmare. See, I wasn't able to finish everything before he got home. So I put all the unassembled pieces and fillings into a huge box and hid it in the closet. My plan was to wake up at 6am the next day to put it all together. Of course, I then dreamt that when I opened the box the next day, a rodent of some kind had gotten into the box and nibbled at everything. That disaster never materialized though, and the cake was a hit. I think we're a bit fatter though now. It's as if the marriage license came with a rider that we must gain 20 pounds before our 1st anniversary. Erich and I are right on track.

Next on the list are the mittens I finished during the first olympic week. The mitten you saw in the last post is ready to be unraveled because it really didn't fit properly. It did teach me a lot about the pattern and how to calculate all of the measurements. Mitten #2 was really the first of the pair I would end up wearing. Mitten #3 was on track to match it's mate, until I found a stupid break in the yarn half-way up the palm - except it was tied together at a color-point much farther away. In other words, because of the break they had tried to repair, the mitten suddenly went from yellow/orane to dark red. That TOTALLY disrupts the beauty of Kureyon!! My OCD self slowly got over that though and I've come to terms with it - besides these kinds of mittens just beg a Punky Brewster aesthetic.

And finally, we have the olympic sweater. Do you get the double meaning? Both in the timing of when I finished it and in the way this project reached monolithic heights - hannging over me for over a year and mocking my inability to pick the pieces up, tapestry needle in hand. I must confess that it's not really done yet. That would just be too easy. I still have to sew over the collar, crew neck style, as well as weave in the ends. And truthfully, its much too big for the man. The sleeves and torso are too long - I sort of knew that would be the case because I picked the pattern size based on his chest size, but then never decreased that number of pattern repeats in the body to yield a shorter garment. Meh. first time knitting a garment - it could be worse. At least there are holes for a head, and 2 arms. At SnB, Bugheart reluctantly suggested that there is a method that involves cutting away a chunk at the bottom and then unraveling to the correct length (taking into account the final section of ribbing. This of course scares the crap out of me. But because of the nature of this sweater, it kind of deserves to at least FIT the owner. Right? Perhaps that kind of yarn surgery is the only option. Any volunteers?

Final thoughts: I had my first tastes of podcasts this week. It started with Cast On and NPR's Story of the Day. I'm hooked! First of all, I take back all the skeptical silly thoughts I had about the idea of a knitting podcast. It's surprisingly engaging and funny. Thanks PassionKNITly for cluing me in. I highly recommend checking out Cast On with Brenda Dayne. I've had trouble locating the NPR clips that I usually listen to on the radio: All Things Considered, This American Life, etc. Instead, I've only downloaded Story of the Day and Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. The only drawback to these podcasts is that I now find myself walking down the street or sitting on the bus with this dopey grin on my face because I'm so amused. Its worse than just tapping my feat to a song. But I just tell myself that the world needs more people wearing dopey grins as they commute to work.