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May 29, 2008
schmed house
So we're not getting the red house. It's a long story involving termites, and I am too crabby to tell it at the moment. Now I am going to bed so I can get up and iron all the fucking faire stuff and pack the car and drive to Tahoe. And there was much rejoicing. Yaaay.
Posted by Kate at 11:58 PM | Comments (5)May 26, 2008
Oscar Challenge: 1939
In 1939 there were ten movies nominated for Best Picture. You think the Academy might have had a tough time choosing. There was The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, the sweet and patriotic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Stagecoach, which is nearly a perfect film.
I'd never seen Stagecoach before, and I was unprepared to love it as much as I did. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen. It should have won Best Picture. Too bad it was up against Gone With the Wind.
Gone With the Wind sort of defines "Best Picture". It's huge and colorful and arouses the passions (either you love it or you hate it), and it's what all Best Pictures should be measured against. I love it. I've seen it a million times and I always cry when Melanie dies. (When I was a kid, I loathed Melanie, but, as Rhett says, it's to my credit that I appreciate her now.) It might not have been the best movie made in 1939, but it was absolutely Best Picture.
p.s. I can't not talk about Thomas Mitchell. He won Best Supporting Actor in '39 for playing the drunk doctor in Stagecoach. If that wasn't enough to be proud of, he also played the differently drunk reporter in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the even differently drunker Gerald O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. Dude was a freakin' god.
May 24, 2008
To welcome in the may-o
It's cool when you get out an egg to make mayonnaise because Ruhlman blogged about it the other day and you've been seriously jonesin' for some mayo ever since and your husband asks if that egg is for him and you say, "Well, I need the yolk for the mayo" and he says, "I need the white for a whiskey sour." I think that's what you call synchronicity.
Damn, this stuff is good. If the artichokes don't finish cooking soon I'm going to go eat all the sauce with a spoon straight out of the bowl.
Posted by Kate at 7:57 PM
| Comments (1)
May 20, 2008
In which I actually dig the nupps
I totally did not think I was going to like this finished Swallowtail Shawl. The nupps pissed me off, and it was so hot outside that it made the 100% cashmere yarn really sticky, and I was stressed about running out of yarn, and seriously concerned that it would be too small to fit an adult human and so on and so forth.
Once again, Our Lady of the Blocking Board smiled upon me and transformed this insipid mess into a really great shawl. I would absolutely make another one. The cashmere is totally delicious now that it's not 95 degrees outside. The shawl is too small for me, but I'll just give it to some deserving thin person. (Though maybe not my mom, because I just gave her the FBS.)
Swallowtail Shawl, by Evelyn A. Clark
Interweave Knits Fall 2006
Cashmere America
2-ply 100% cashmere
50 grams
US #6 needles
May 15, 2008
Poll for Five Readers
I have an important question to ask you, the chronically bored faithful readers of my blog. If Nathan and I decided to buy and renovate an old house in Vallejo, would you care if I blogged about it constantly on this lame excuse for a knitting blog, or would you prefer that I start a new blog so you don't have to read about tearing up carpet and stripping paint and, like, grout and stuff?
I only ask because it looks like the offer on the red house has been accepted.
Posted by Kate at 3:52 PM | Comments (16)May 14, 2008
Lily of the Valley of the Dolls
So I was trying out a speed run on a Swallowtail Shawl. I completed the main body of it in under six hours. Then I got to the Lily of the Valley border. Oh, my god, why didn't anyone tell me what a pain in the ass nupps are? Oh, wait, everyone did. But did I listen? Noooooo. I figured if I can do popcorn and bobbles, I can do nupps. BITE ME, P5TOG!
I wound up doing sl2, 3tog, psso and .5mg of Atavan. The nupps look great.
Posted by Kate at 4:56 PM
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domestic update
So the stucco house is right out. Even as I typed up that last entry about it, a bunch of offers were made on it. Oh, well. The red house also has several offers on it, ours being the largest. We should know in a day or two if the offer has been accepted.
I was able to sort of forget that we had an offer on a house for the first couple of weeks, but now that it's getting closer to decision time, the anxiety level around here is ratcheted up a bit. Is it too early for gin?
Posted by Kate at 10:31 AM | Comments (4)May 10, 2008
In which I apologize to some yarn
Dear Flower Basket Shawl,
I started you with high hopes back in June 2005, and then promptly got mad and stuck you in a drawer. You were just too much for me back then. I've been taking you in and out of the drawer twice a year or so and been giving you dirty looks.
Last month I decided to finish you off (which involved frogging you completely.) I started again and decided almost immediately that you were way too easy for me and, thus, you were very boring. I also didn't like the yarn I'd picked for you. It looked all mottled and gross, like leaf mold. What on earth was I going to wear with a shawl the color of decayed vegetation?
I've been cursing you bitterly for the last three weeks, but I plugged away and finished, even though I was convinced that you were boring, the wrong color, and way too small.
Then (wait for it, Grace) I blocked you. All afternoon yesterday I stared at your surprisingly elegant form on my living room rug and thought that you looked rather nice. The mottled yarn that I'd disliked so much all of a sudden seemed much less offensive, but still I thought, "Oh, it just looks less blotchy because it's wet."
Then I woke up this morning and you'd mellowed to a beautiful rust color and you didn't look like yucky leaf mold at all, but a beautiful, subtle pile of autumn leaves. With suspicion still in my heart, I unpinned you. And you were FABULOUS! The not-really-all-that soft yarn became pleasant to the touch, and instead of a globby lump, you were lithe and pliant. I put you around my shoulders, and you were not too small at all. In fact, you were the perfect size and shape. You rock, Flower Basket Shawl. I'm so sorry I maligned you.
I still don't have a darned thing to wear with you, but that's not your fault.
Posted by Kate at 7:12 PM
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May 9, 2008
in which i uncharacteristically guess right
So I was feeling like I was near the end of the ball of Schaefer Anne that I was using for the FBS. I wandered into the yarn alcove to look for the second ball, and it wasn't in either of the virgin stash boxes. And it wasn't in any of the baskets of used yarn. And it wasn't in any project bags. And then I realized that the same naïve dummy who chose variegated yarn* for her first lace shawl figured that she didn't want a big shawl, so she only got one skein, which was, in theory, enough to make the medium shawl (if you got gauge, which I never get).
Aaaaanyway, I made the executive decision not to sneak one more pattern repeat in. Good thing, that. I wound up with a couple of yards to spare. There was a second there at the beginning of the bind-off row where I didn't think I was going to make it. Seriously, I would have come UNGLUED if I'd run out of yarn on this sucker and was forced to buy more expensive yarn I'm not crazy about to finish a shawl that I'm ambivalent about.
Less talking, more blocking!
*As my tastes have evolved, I've come to strongly dislike variegated lace. I have seen some pretty shawls that were made of lace, but I'd never wear one. They're just not my style. I prefer lace in solid colors.
Posted by Kate at 1:43 PM | Comments (0)May 5, 2008
case of mondays
I totally don't feel like knitting. The FBS continues to bore the pants off of me (don't worry, neighbors, I don't mean it literally). Would it be wrong of me to stick it in a drawer and forget about the ugly brown thing? Should I wear it as a hat instead? If I give it another Time Out, what will I knit? I've got a bunch of cream-colored Zephyr and a copy of Victorian Lace Today burning a hole in my pocket, but do I really want a cream-colored shawl?
Part of the reason I'm feeling anxious and malaise-y is this:
We put an offer on this house down the street a couple of weeks ago. It's spacious and in great shape, and doesn't need too much work (the crappy modern windows have to go and the carpet is heinous), it's got a rental unit in the back (so our mortgage payments would be laughably low), and we really love it. It's taking FOREVER to hear from the bank (we knew that would happen) since it's a short sale.
Anyway, yesterday we looked at another house and sort of fell in love with it. (The massive bottle brush bush in the front has to go - just pretend it isn't there.) It's smaller and there's no rental income, but then we wouldn't have to deal with renters, and the back yard is AMAZING. It's got a hot tub and everything.
Bleeeeeeeeah. I just want to know.
Posted by Kate at 3:39 PM | Comments (6)May 2, 2008
Again, again!
Back from Mousketraz. Despite the incident where we all dressed up like pirates and were not allowed to enter the park, we had a grand time.
It was wonderful beyond words to see Kim again, and her young man is fabulous. That's all I'm saying, because nobody wants to see me all sappy and mushy.
Knitting! I'll talk about knitting instead! Look! Here's me knitting at the bar at the Grand Californian! No mushy stuff here!
