Author: Susan

Last year for Christmas, my great-uncle Buddy gave me a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. I’ve been enjoying having it all year, and have used bits of it, but when he just gave me another one for Christmas ’04, I decided to go wild and use up the balance on the 2003 version. (I *love* gift certificates, but they bring out my hoarding side. The same is true of art supplies.)

So, last night I went over to the book store, and found the Reader’s Digest Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting and Crochet Stitches. It’s *so* cool. 🙂 I got home and dug out my crochet hook (Christmas ’88, from Mrs. Claus, and barely ever used), and promptly got confused. The light of day made things clearer and today I managed this:

How neat! This is all acrylic scrap yarn from ages ago, and the medium blue is quite bulky so it doesn’t look like the picture in the book in the least, but I’m happy! What fun!

Want to see one of my favourite things in the world?

New socks! And the two on the left have angora (thank you gap!!) and were on sale for $2 a pair, and the two on the right are all fancy and for boots. Sarah Duggan used to love socks in high school, and I never got it, but what? seven years later? I finally see the light.

Sadly, I can’t claim the same affection for these:



They’re moving along, but I’ve completely been weaned from my desire to knit k4 p2 ribbing for many feet (har har…) on size 2s. The heel turn was really exciting, but that came and went and now i’m just continuing in pattern for 7 inches. All you sock addicts out there have earned my respect.

Want to see our bucket collection? 🙂

The three silver-blue ones are brand new (yay!), and this picture doesn’t include the one filled with saltwater that was heating in the living room. Our 7-bucket collection may not seem blog-worthy (I’ll bring back the knitting content tomorrow, promise.), but it’s exciting to us because now we can do twice-weekly water changes! 😛 (If that doesn’t make you think “yeehaw”, I don’t know what will…)

To go with our buckets, and in anticipation of our next fish, we also bought a little 10-gallon tank to serve as a quarantine tank. The idea is that new fish can stay there for 2-3 weeks, or sick fish can live there to be treated, and therefore you minimize disease in your main system. It fits on the counter perfectly, and we got a bunch of PVC tubing for hiding places. The quarantine tank is supposed to be easily scrubbable, so this is the limit for the decor. We still need siding so that the fish won’t have a heart attack when the front door opens, and a heater & thermometer, and to fill it with water (see the bucket part above), but we should be ready for our next fish sometime this week!

Happy New Year!

I’m not generally a resolutions person, but I have two this year:

1. Learn to buy stylish shoes, like my sister.
   
   She always looks great, I only sometimes do. I think shoes would help. Perhaps look into pointy toes?
2. Take out that box that’s been sitting by the front door and recycle it.
   
   It held the lights for our tank, is as tall as I am, has been there since november, and has to go.

Oh, yes: and get a job.

Addendum, 3:30 pm:

The box is out. I’m 50% of the new person I want to be. 🙂

Kevin had his first beer (I believe I can get this story right) when he was in Amsterdam for Model UN in high school. He had a Westmalle trippel (a Belgian trappist ale), got blitzed, then had to ride by bike back to his host family’s house. He’s been trying to repeat the experience since.

It turns out that there’s a distributor near us, so yesterday afternoon we headed over to Bottleworks in Wallingford (I think?) and picked up some Trappist ales (two bottles of each) for a tasting:

I’m a beer person in general, but these really belong to a whole separate category. Mmm! We split a bottle of each kind while watching the Two Towers, though after the Westmalles it seemed like any more would be wasted on us, so the two Chimays will have to wait for another day.

Here’s the best that we could capture it, given the limitations of my camera timer and the fact that i’d put on my high heels for the occasion and almost didn’t get back to the couch in time:

Not a bad way to ring out 2004! It’s good to be back in Seattle.

I booked my tickets home for Christmas back in October after being scalped for my Thanksgiving tickets. Nonstop flight to Boston on American for $450, not too bad. Unfortunately, I booked it back when I thought I might have to return for work, so I made it a short trip (Wed-Mon, including flying time). I wasn’t ready at all for yesterday to be my last night home. In a fit of optimism, after staying up late talking with my mom, we checked the flight status to find that my 9am flight had been canceled due to snow!! The earliest that they’ll be able to fly me out is Wednesday, and I got a seat on an afternoon flight through Dallas. Kevin is supposed to land in Seattle an hour later, so the timing couldn’t be better. And I get a few more days home with my family and Comet, the best dog in the world:

I know there are a lot of people who’ve been inconvenienced and living in airports, but at least after all of the airline meltdowns this past week, there’s one person who’s happy!

Dave’s hat fits!! And the plane rip-out was the last one, so it was finished and under the tree by Christmas morning. (I don’t know how people manage all of these Christmas knitting deadlines. One project strains my skills.)

And from the back:

Thanks again to Laura for the great pattern and for hosting the knit-along!

My sister Sharon brought her Sophie and flower home from school, so I finally got to snap a picture. 🙂

Again: Happy Birthday, Shar! and I can’t wait til your visit!

On my (nonstop! yay!) flight home to Boston yesterday, I had more of a lovely time with Hayden. Turns out that the ripping spree I went on last night was completely unnecessary. I made it through about 90% of the decreases, and then somewhere over middle america realized that those three inches were really quite needed, and then some. Bum-mer. Why can I never knit hats correctly the first time through??

I magic-looped for the first time, and after a few unsuccessful attempts got the hang of it. I think that dpns are easier, especially w/ multiple colors of yarn going (I kept getting tangled), but somehow I don’t have any #8 dpns, so the two circulars did the trick!

Well, really early January, in the “retroactive post, now that the gift’s been given” category:

I’ve been working on the Hayden Hat in the blue, light blue and beige Encore that I bought a few weeks ago. I love the pattern, but the decreases have been tricky for me. Dave’s hat was coming along a little too well… I knit an extra three inches, and then had to rip back. Here’s a picture half way through the ripping spree:



and another once a few rows had been added to the carnage:

On the plus side, at least I’m ripping so that I can start decreases, so it won’t take as long the second time around…