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Mar. 13th, 2005 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSorry I missed yesterday, but I went to Philly for a friend's baby shower and when I got home, I was too tired to do much of anything, including build a fire. I cranked the electric heat and went to bed. I have opted out of all of the life events that lead to showers, which is probably for the best. I'm not a shower sort of person. They're too girly for my tastes.
Guys don't have showers, so the guys in our group went and did guy things, lord only knows what. As with the Girls Weekend Out, the girls do girl things and the guys do guy things and I go to the girl thing and sort of wish I was at the guy thing, but that'd be all weird and stuff and then I wouldn't get to see the girl friends and the food's way better at the girl things and *sigh* this isn't very much different from the entire rest of my life, so what else is new?
not_your_real and I snuck out a little early from the shower to check out her local yarn store. She's working on the beginnings of a fairly complicated sweater project for her husband. Now, while I kind of grab needles and yarn and strike out for the horizon, not_your_real actually swatches and attempts to get gauge so that the completed project will fit the intended recipient instead of, say, an orangutan. (More orangutans need sweaters than you think.) Hers is probably the more sensible approach... but my way is so very educational, for values of educational that include swearing and much frogging of wrongly-knit stuff. Ah, well. Her local yarn store is a delight, full of things that my WalMart doesn't have. It's got designer yarns, silks and alpacas (so soft!) and self-patterning sock yarn and cottons and all kinds of lush textures. It has needles in ranges and styles (bamboo!!) that my WalMart doesn't carry. I picked up 29" size 4 bamboo circulars, which I will need for further forays into the tank top realm. WalMart has a variegated blue cotton that isn't ugly and I think I want to see what I can do with it. (Last week I resisted purchase of this item because I didn't have circular 4's suitable for further tanktopping. That barrier no longer exists.) I also got proper metal yarn needles that weren't horrible blue plastic to replace the one that fell into one of the cracks on my floor and disappeared.
Since cooing over teensy socks and things called "onesies" isn't particularly my cup of tea, I took along the hat project to entertain me while I was at the shower. You might be surprised to hear that there is a hat project, since I only mentioned that I wanted a hat on Wednesday, but there is a hat project and it's in full swing. The materials for the hat project arrived in the mail on Friday by way of Kaleidoscope Yarns, an online yarnery with surprisingly prompt service and a shopping cart system I can live with. If you HAVE a local yarn store, by all means go to it. They're wonderful places, a delight for the senses, and generally chock full of interesting people who will talk to you about what cool things they are doing with their sticks and string. I do not have a local yarn store. I have a WalMart. Stuff like ten-dollars-a-skein fancy hand-dyed blue wool sock-size yarn is not sold at WalMart. Everything, however, is sold online. These folks are pretty organized and they're speedy and they have the sorts of things I want, so they can be my not-so-local yarn store.
Anyway, great strides were made on the hat project. I'll have pictures a little later today of the hat project so that you can see how it's going. I mentioned t3h sexay mittens over at Yarn Harlot and people wanted to see them, so Donna helpfully cranked up a browser and we all looked at t3h sexay mittens. (They're here if you want to go look at them.) They almost (almost!) make me want to learn to do two-stranded color knitting. Almost.
At the shower, I also ate many of Cousin Sue's ginger crack cookies. They were delightful. I asked for the recipe because they were that good... not entirely crispy, not entirely chewy, but a solid mix of both and extremely ginger-flavored. I had been planning to take some food item to the shower, but so many other people signed up for desserts and stuff that I figured we'd have way too much as it was. There will be other times when I can bring something.
Guys don't have showers, so the guys in our group went and did guy things, lord only knows what. As with the Girls Weekend Out, the girls do girl things and the guys do guy things and I go to the girl thing and sort of wish I was at the guy thing, but that'd be all weird and stuff and then I wouldn't get to see the girl friends and the food's way better at the girl things and *sigh* this isn't very much different from the entire rest of my life, so what else is new?
not_your_real and I snuck out a little early from the shower to check out her local yarn store. She's working on the beginnings of a fairly complicated sweater project for her husband. Now, while I kind of grab needles and yarn and strike out for the horizon, not_your_real actually swatches and attempts to get gauge so that the completed project will fit the intended recipient instead of, say, an orangutan. (More orangutans need sweaters than you think.) Hers is probably the more sensible approach... but my way is so very educational, for values of educational that include swearing and much frogging of wrongly-knit stuff. Ah, well. Her local yarn store is a delight, full of things that my WalMart doesn't have. It's got designer yarns, silks and alpacas (so soft!) and self-patterning sock yarn and cottons and all kinds of lush textures. It has needles in ranges and styles (bamboo!!) that my WalMart doesn't carry. I picked up 29" size 4 bamboo circulars, which I will need for further forays into the tank top realm. WalMart has a variegated blue cotton that isn't ugly and I think I want to see what I can do with it. (Last week I resisted purchase of this item because I didn't have circular 4's suitable for further tanktopping. That barrier no longer exists.) I also got proper metal yarn needles that weren't horrible blue plastic to replace the one that fell into one of the cracks on my floor and disappeared.Since cooing over teensy socks and things called "onesies" isn't particularly my cup of tea, I took along the hat project to entertain me while I was at the shower. You might be surprised to hear that there is a hat project, since I only mentioned that I wanted a hat on Wednesday, but there is a hat project and it's in full swing. The materials for the hat project arrived in the mail on Friday by way of Kaleidoscope Yarns, an online yarnery with surprisingly prompt service and a shopping cart system I can live with. If you HAVE a local yarn store, by all means go to it. They're wonderful places, a delight for the senses, and generally chock full of interesting people who will talk to you about what cool things they are doing with their sticks and string. I do not have a local yarn store. I have a WalMart. Stuff like ten-dollars-a-skein fancy hand-dyed blue wool sock-size yarn is not sold at WalMart. Everything, however, is sold online. These folks are pretty organized and they're speedy and they have the sorts of things I want, so they can be my not-so-local yarn store.
Anyway, great strides were made on the hat project. I'll have pictures a little later today of the hat project so that you can see how it's going. I mentioned t3h sexay mittens over at Yarn Harlot and people wanted to see them, so Donna helpfully cranked up a browser and we all looked at t3h sexay mittens. (They're here if you want to go look at them.) They almost (almost!) make me want to learn to do two-stranded color knitting. Almost.
At the shower, I also ate many of Cousin Sue's ginger crack cookies. They were delightful. I asked for the recipe because they were that good... not entirely crispy, not entirely chewy, but a solid mix of both and extremely ginger-flavored. I had been planning to take some food item to the shower, but so many other people signed up for desserts and stuff that I figured we'd have way too much as it was. There will be other times when I can bring something.
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Date: 2005-03-13 10:34 pm (UTC)I wouldn't mind having a gander at the Ginger Crack cookie recipe sometime, if you don't mind sharing. I have a couple of very good ginger cookie recipes, too. I have the one from Todd's grandma which is sublime and usually goes into my holiday goodie boxes. I can share if you're interested.
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Date: 2005-03-14 12:39 am (UTC)Cousin Sue (not my actual cousin) promised to email me the ginger crack cookie recipe, but she hasn't yet. She's usually pretty good about remembering stuff like that, but I'll email her in a week or so if I haven't heard from her before then. The cookies are allegedly similar to the ones at Trader Joe's, but I've never been to a Trader Joe's, so I dunno. They were really good, though.
Understand that I don't ask for recipes to be polite. I only ask for recipes if I think the one I'm eating is better than the recipe I already have for that genre. I have a decent gingersnap recipe, as it happens. Just because I don't MAKE them doesn't mean I don't have a recipe for them. I have many recipes I do not use. See, if I'm making cookies, I would rather have one the pre-approved best of breed cookies (oatmeal-raisin-walnut, sand tarts, moravian spice, currant, or brownie) than something I like less-well.
The ginger crack cookies aren't like the gingersnap recipe I already have. They are... better, with less snap and more ginger. Mom's gingersnap recipe, which is pretty straightforward, only has one kind of ginger in it. Cousin Sue's apparently has three (dried/powdered, candied, and fresh). I think they might also benefit from a small amount of red pepper, but I won't know that until I get my grubby paws on the recipe and twink with it for entertainment purposes.
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Date: 2005-03-14 02:00 am (UTC)I like to chop up some candied ginger and put that in, too, for variety.
I've never been to a Trader Joe, either. It's mostly pre-made food, I think, and kind of expensive. Ditto for my avoidance of "Whole Foods," which one of my friends calls "Whole Paycheck."