Category: Uncategorized

I sat down on Tuesday night, determined to finish Clapotis. I was worried that I hadn’t left enough yarn for the decrease section, but as I knit on and the size of the ball barely seemed to change as the tip of disappeared, it turned out not to be a problem.

The worst part of finishing was that as the rows got shorter, I had to stop and drop down the stitches more frequently. As much as I enjoyed the flush of success when I reached the next dropped column, actually undoing the columns was kind of a pain. My yarn (a wool and silk blend) definitely had a halo, and was sticky. Instead of the dropped row being like undoing a zipper, it took a good five minutes to untangle the stitches and pull them all loose. Perhaps a cotton/silk blend would have been more slippery? Or bamboo? In any case, it’s a good lesson if I ever do another pattern with dropped columns of stitches.

Here’s the last column, waiting to be dropped:

Since I purled the drop rows, it just looks like an extra wide column.

After I finished dropping stitches, I took a before shot for the blocking.

It’s always such an amazing transformation. Here’s clapotis all laid out and wet after a quick trip under the tub faucet, after I pressed out the water, and blocked it as a rectangle.

I lost a little bit of blue dye, but the yarn took the water well and blocked extremely quickly: no pins, about 4 minutes. And now, it’s just been sitting for two days on my garbage bag “blocking pad” waiting to dry. It’s holding the shape perfectly as it dries — I love wool. What a difference! 🙂 The pattern really wasn’t looking so great to me while knitting as the scarf just got longer and longer. Kind of old cat lady. But after blocking it just looks crisp and lovely and shows off the yarn. I couldn’t ask for more.

The colors are particularly great when the yarn is wet and the blues look more saturated.

How pretty!!

It’s now dry, and after I weave four ends in, will be done! Even better, tomorrow is Saturday, so there’s a slim chance that I will actually manage a daylit shot for a project summary post. Given the early, December sunsets and the low, Seattle clouds, daylight isn’t exactly overabundant recently — maybe the weather will cooperate?

What a fun week! I had to win in order to tie for 5th and make the playoffs, and my team pulled it together for a 92-57 match. So now I get a playoff spot. How cool!

QB
	Chad Pennington, NYJ	14
RUNNING BACKS
	RB Marion Barber, Dal	19
	RB/WR Shaun Alexander	15
RECEIVERS
	WR Terrell Owens, Dal	8
	WR Reche Caldwell, NE	12
	TE L.J. Smith, Phi	0
DEFENSE
	D/ST Patriots	15
KICKER
	K Jason Elam, Den	9
BENCH
	RB Laurence Maroney, NE	1
	WR Deion Branch, Sea	2
	WR Reggie Brown, Phi	15
	WR Keyshawn Johnson, Car	3
	TE Jermaine Wiggins, Ari	3
	D/ST Seahawks	16
	Seneca Wallace, Sea	0
	QB Jon Kitna, Det	4

Marion Barber continues to make me happy, and I was afraid that after last week’s 22 points, Shaun Alexander would boomerang much lower than he did. I’d picked up Reche Caldwell in place of Reggie Williams, and he was strong. Poor LJ Smith didn’t do much, but by that point it didn’t matter, and it was such fun to see the Eagles win Monday Night Football regardless of whether they threw to him. Luckily, I had Maroney on the bench, but I hope he gets well soon. Elam continues to do well, but now he has a hamstring injury. I’ve picked up Dave Rayner (the Green Bay kicker) in case it’s looking like he won’t play this week. I probably should have dropped Seneca Wallace for him now that Hasselbeck is healthy and starting, but I love Wallace so I dropped my backup tight end instead. This means that LJ Smith needs to come through with points this weekend.) And the Seahawks D outscored the Patriots this week. Crazy!!

We’ve been having technical problems that have cut into my football viewing. Kevin has a digital antenna, so we’ve been watching and recording games all season using his computer and his new(ish) widescreen tv. (not flat panel, to his chagrin. The common sense side of his brain won out over the usually dominant gadget side.) We even cancelled our cable, since we get the networks in high def. Then, his motherboard went on the fritz, so he sent it back right before Thanksgiving and we’ve been watching football through the flurries without recording since. I never thought that I’d be this invested in my ability to (a) watch football (b) on a fancy tv, but I’ve completely joined the dark side on both points, I’m afraid. (For balance, it should be noted that the same issue is affecting my Grey’s Anatomy viewing as well.) Kevin just got word that they’re shipping the new board back now, so with luck everything will be up and running in time for Sunday’s matchups.

And, since I try not to post without pictures, here’s the Christmas mantle:

I’d gotten the sparkly candles a while ago because I thought they’d look nice with the painting, but adding the dark greens for contrast takes it to a new level — so pretty. Between this, the tree and our monster snails in the fishtank, I’ve been spending way more time than usual in the living room. 🙂

Tonight was our night to host the more-or-less weekly potluck Brown dinner. Last year I just didn’t feel festive for some reason, but this year I’ve been wanting tradition, so we settled on a theme of peppermint (either the flavor, or red and white food. Jonathan took it all a step further and made pepper and mint pesto. yum.).

Since our apartment wasn’t holidayish at all, I went questing in our neighbourhood for greens to make an advent wreath.

The berries were a major find. Every other year that bush has been orange. I don’t know if it’s a maturity thing, or due to the recent cold snap, but I love the red as an accent. And I found perfect, little pinecones under a tree up the street. How pretty! And, best of all, this is the first year that the types of evergreen available hasn’t grated against my sense of a proper wreath. Am I finally settled in Seattle?

I neglected to take pictures of everyone, but the early arrivers are all bustling in the kitchen here:

Ginger even dressed for the theme. She made soup, Graham made mozzarella pizza in peppermint candy form, we made drinks including hot chocolate and peppermint schapps with a candy cane swizzle, and everyone else brought desserts, appetizers, homemade peppermint stick ice cream, and other pastas… we never seem to lack for food.

And Andi and Ginger helped me decorate the tree. Here’s Andi trying to follow the (my) exacting tinsel protocol.

🙂 And just for fun, since we’ve now been getting together for over a year, a list of past themes:

Fall foods	The letter ‘S’
Stuffed food	Home cooking
Finger food	Pizza
Cheese	Mexican
Grown in Washington	Crepes
Spheres	Kids’ food
Fresh fruit	Spice
Nuts	Layers
Summer	0s and 1s
Food that shares a name with a country/state/city	Breakfast
Brown foods	Beer
Things which aren’t brown	Thanksgiving
Foods in songs	Grilling
Uwajimaya	Things that go with lasagna
BBQ	Aphrodisiacs
Mother’s Day	25 for $25
Triangles and wedges	Johnny Rockets
Frozen foods	Food you can use as a weapon
Irish food	Chopsticks
Appetizers	Americana/elections
Colors of the rainbow	Peppermint
Honey

Look what I have here!

I’ve finally turned the corner and started the decreases on my Clapotis! I brought it with me to PA, and after a week of steady work (80+ rows), I finished the last 30 or so over the first part of the week. I turned the corner Wednesday night, and last night decreased through another section and a half on each edge. It’s starting to feel like running downhill, since I have one less stitch each row and they go faster and faster. It’s very motivating. Also, the lengths of the columns of stitches that I have to drop are decreasing too. Now I only have two more full-length columns, and the ones on the other side are very short. I can’t wait to be done.

The only point of concern is the amount of yarn left. I had two balls of yarn, and didn’t weigh the scarf after finishing the increases, so I can only count the rows before and after joining the yarn to decide when to start decreasing. If the first ball has much more yarn than the second, I may have to rip the entire decrease section and redo. I gave myself two full rows worth of grace by starting decreases after 128 rows instead of 130, but we’ll see… It’s not going to look like much left of the ball when I get down to the finish.

(PS. I’ve finally finished updating all of the posts I meant to write over the last two and a half weeks. Enjoy! Sorry about the delay! To see all of them, read November 2006.)

We’ve been having major problems with a red algae that’s taking over our tank. When we went to seed the refugium, we went to the fish store and came home with Caulerpa, Chaetomorpha, and a little bit of pretty red stuff that we couldn’t ID. The Caulerpa and Chaetomorpha grew quickly, and I was regularly having to prune it back, but the growth was nothing in comparison to our mystery red stuff. The red choked out caulerpa and killed it, and was nearly impossible to remove, since it’s composed entirely of filaments that each cling to the surface and then fall away and blow all over when it’s scraped off. After three months of amazing growth, I ended up spending a weekend completely removing
all algae from the refugium, vacuuming the sand endlessly, and finally replacing some of the scrubbed-off chaeto. Our refugium has stayed mostly clear since.

However, by that point, some of it had spread to our main tank. By early November, we were both feeling desperate. I’d called the fish store and gotten vague and unhelpful advice. We couldn’t pull out the rocks and scrub them without losing lots of encrusting life off of them, pulling it off the rocks only seemed to spread it, and water quality, light, and current did not seem to have the slightest effect. We needed something to eat it, that hopefully wouldn’t also go after our corals, but we still didn’t have a name for it. I was spending lots of time pulling out the new growth, and even so, it was covering the bottom third of all of the rocks in the main tank and still spreading.

Not only did it cover the rocks, but it was taking over our leather and xenias, covering and killing our zoos, and encroaching seriously on the ricordias.

Here’s a closeup of some growing on the cord for one of our maxijets — you can see the filaments. Each of these bulbs are only half to three-quarters of an inch across, and if you squeeze them, the algae compresses down to nothing.

Finally, I turned back to the internet and started googling the description of the algae, since we still didn’t have a name for it. I came up with the general family: red turf algae. Many also called it the red scourge. And then I found this article, which described our current straights to a T, and recommended using Mexican Turbo snails.

The snails are amazing — about two inches in diameter and very heavy. By the time we got them, another two weeks had passed, and the gramma’s rock — the biggest in our tank — was nearly entirely covered in red. We started with five, which is way under the recommendation of 1 per five gallons of water (we have 55 gallons in our main tank and 40 in our refugium), but they just seemed so enormous. We put them in and they started munching right away, but a week later it’s clear that our tank can support more. Here you can see two of them on the gramma’s rock — look for the white shell at the top, and down on the left by the leather.

And, a closeup of the shell, with the threatened orange zoos and creeping red algae in the background.

We also picked up twenty blue leg hermit crabs, which are impossibly tiny. Here’s one (in the long black shell) riding one of our existing snails. (You can tell that the snail has been in the tank for a long time by the purple algae encrusting its shell.) The hermit crabs live in shells about a quarter of an inch long. So tiny!

As you can see, we are completely buried in snow:

(poor mint and chives… they look so cold.)

Microsoft sent out emails early saying the campus had been closed for the day and roads were unsafe for travel, so we both stayed home and worked from here — similar strategy that everyone else used, apparently — the servers don’t handle such high volume well, and so we both keep getting booted off the connection. Definitely feels like a vacation day.

We’ve been watching cars and people slipping down the big hill on our street all morning, and even though the snow cover on the grass has mostly melted, it’s still all crisp and pretty out. The snow on the pine trees has also mostly disappeared, but they were so beautiful earlier in the day. I tried to get pictures, but they weren’t very good, so you’ll just have to imagine.

This week got off to a bit of a scramble, since I didn’t realize that there would be pro games on Thanksgiving. Luckily, it was truly for the best, since Kitna (only 2 pts) was playing the early game, and was well-replaced with last-minute pickup Chad Pennington (14!). The Dallas crowd did well in spite of all of the muttering against TO and for the Eagles in the conference (we were still with Kevin’s family for that game) — Marion Barber had an amazing game. L.J. Smith held his own despite another abysmal outing by the Eagles, and I was pleased that I hadn’t played Reggie Brown, as he had another unimpressive week. Sunday night, the fantasy score was 70-78, so as long as Deion Branch and Shawn Alexander (who’s finally back!! my #2 in the league draft pick… I’m eager for him to make up for lost time.) didn’t double team for -8 points, my winning streak would be extended to three matchups.

QB
	Chad Pennington, NYJ	14
RUNNING BACKS
	RB Marion Barber, Dal	20
	RB/WR Shaun Alexander	22
RECEIVERS
	WR Deion Branch, Sea	3
	WR Terrell Owens, Dal	17
	TE L.J. Smith, Phi	8
DEFENSE
	D/ST Patriots	15
KICKER
	K Jason Elam, Den	4
BENCH
	RB/WR Laurence Maroney, NE	11
	WR Reggie Brown, Phi	6
	WR Reggie Williams, Jac	3
	WR Keyshawn Johnson, Car	3
	TE Jermaine Wiggins, Ari	5
	D/ST Seahawks	10
	Seneca Wallace, Sea	0
	QB Jon Kitna, Det	2

It was a very frustrating game, due to the snow. I got home before traffic, and the plan was to go out somewhere in town to watch the game. (We dropped our cable two months ago! Not paying $75/month for basic service makes me constantly happy. I can’t wait until Verizon finishes installing its network in our area and we don’t have to deal with horrible Comcast anymore.) It took Kevin more than three hours to get home (a seven mile commute), given the snow and traffic. He had his Sirius radio with him at least, and so could listen to the game. I only ended up hearing the final 6 or so minutes when he finally got home. Bummer.

Despite the lack of visual or auditory status on my end, Alexander was great at 22 (wow!). Deion Branch is clearly suffering from a lack of practice with Hasselbeck (I called it, unfortunately), but I have confidence that he’ll get stronger. And the Seahawks defense even rocked.

Notes for management: I dropped Jerricho Cotchery for Chad Pennington — probably should have ditched Reggie Williams — he’s next to go. Cotchery was so unpredictable, though, that I’m not regretting the choice. Laurence Maroney was way better than last week, but now contends with Shawn Alexander again — a daunting prospect for him when Barber is playing so well. If nothing else, he’ll be a prime draft pick next year.

For some reason it’s next to impossible to find cheap (or even reasonable) flights from Seattle to Philadelphia, so for the second year in a row we flew into a different city on JetBlue and then drove the rest of the way. Though 95 probably would have been quicker, we brought the atlas and wended our way through New Jersey on state roads. Driving in the northeast is always such an adventure, and being tired didn’t help. We laughed and laughed when we saw this sign — the only reason I got such a clear shot is that we didn’t understand quite where we were supposed to turn and had to loop back for a second go at it. (Answer: we didn’t want 514 E, we wanted 518 W. Oops. Clearly the navigator – me – wasn’t all awake…)

Spirits were definitely high, though, especially with the constant sightings of old east coast favorites… Somehow I missed getting a picture of Wawa (a PA coffee/food/convenience chain that Kevin is devoted to). One intersection had a CVS, Dunkin Donuts and Wawa on three of its four corners, which fueled enthusiastic conversation for the next few miles. 🙂

On Monday, we headed down to Maryland with Kevin’s mom to see her mother. I was in the back, happily knitting my clapotis, when we ran across this gem:

Jesus recycles people?! I’m not sure if the sunbeams make that statement more credible (or at least relevant), or less so. Huh. Yay, roadtrips.

Wow, what a great week for football. We headed back to the east coast for Thanksgiving week — we flew on a redeye into JFK
first thing on Sunday morning, then drove to Kevin’s parents just in time for the Eagles game. We were the only people in the room without Eagles jerseys on. (Though, thankfully for family relations, we cheered for the correct team.) The game was horrible (13-31!!), but my fantasy guys were fine (if a disappointing game from Reggie Brown), and everyone else enjoyed that TO had a lousy game — there’s no love lost from those Eagles fans.

QB
	Seneca Wallace, Sea	14
RUNNING BACKS
	RB Marion Barber, Dal	15
	RB/WR Laurence Maroney, NE	17
RECEIVERS
	WR Terrell Owens, Dal	7
	WR Reggie Brown, Phi	3
	TE L.J. Smith, Phi	11
DEFENSE
	D/ST Patriots	17
KICKER
	K Jason Elam, Den	10
BENCH
	RB Shaun Alexander	0
	WR Deion Branch, Sea	18
	WR Reggie Williams, Jac	1
	WR Keyshawn Johnson, Car	3
	WR Jermaine Wiggins, Min	6
	WR Correll Buckhalter, Phi	5
	D/ST Seahawks	5
	QB Jon Kitna, Det	3

My relatively recent pickups (tight end Jermaine Wiggins for week 9 and Buckhalter after week 10) proved not to do much — good thing that I left both of them on the bench. I was very pleased with myself for playing Seneca Wallace instead of Kitna (who played Arizona this week) — I’m sad that it’s his last week starting. He’s been a great player for the run of Hasselbeck’s injury. Maroney is back to being great for points after quite a few off weeks, and Marion Barber had another good game. Jason Elam was very strong, and earned kudos, and then the Patriots D were awesome. 35-0? Not bad.

The final piece of news is that Deion Branch had another awesome week. Such a pity that Seneca is due for a return to the bench, since that relationship is clearly great for fantasy numbers. And it might be time to trade away Reggie Williams…

After setting a new record for November rainfall in the first two weeks of the month, we finally got a view of the Olympics. They are so pretty with their snowy tops!

Between the Olympics and the Cascades, the drive to work on Friday was amazing, and runs for last minute pre-trip errands today were equally spectacular.

While I was up at the top of the street to take pictures, I came across this guy:

It always seems a bit incongruous to see him at the end of the driveway of a 1.? million dollar house, but I’ve never seen him in his rain couture before. 🙂 Very stylish. It keeps making me laugh.