Tag Archives: boh

shoveling, sour cherries, sweetness.

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As you can see, today’s post is also sponsored by the letter S. Despite yesterday’s whining about the snow day that was not to be, all of my students showed up for section. If things had been reversed, I would’ve picked snowshoeing over school, so they all get a great big high-five. When I returned home, a mountain of shoveling awaited me.

The door to my apartment is on the back of the house. I’d say my part of town got about 15 new inches of snow on Thursday and Friday, and then some high winds helped to create some substantial driveway drifts! I shoveled a winding path from the street, zigzagging around the cars in the driveway, and around the back of the house to my door. Every time Boh and I walk down it, I feel like I’ve created some kind of Olympic ice luge or bobsled track. I also had to dig out my car, which I did in two 1-hour chunks.

My friend T. did quite a bit of shoveling yesterday too, and she came over last night to commiserate with a bit of wine and some sour cherries, which we promptly turned into coffee cake!

T. is a teacher, and she used part of her snow day to defrost these cherries and pit them. (So even though I didn’t get a snow day, I certainly got to enjoy the spoils of a snow day project!) We made this coffee cake, and it was fantastic.

T.’s sweet dog, Coltrane, came over to play with Boh, and once we convinced him to get up on the couch, he decided to spend much of the evening lounging.

Best friends. (Though Boh was whimpering a bit at the idea that he had to share his couch with Coltrane!)

One last picture — I think I am subconsciously responding to all of the bright whiteness outside! A glance in the mirror had me laughing at my apparent attempt to wear all of the colors of the rainbow at once. Silly rooster!

in-my-bag knitting.

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I’ve been carrying my handspun lacy baktus around with me, and even though I love how this looks, I find that I’m not taking it out of my bag to work on in those in between moments: after class, between appointments, before yoga. Even though the pattern is super easy to memorize and to read in my work, I don’t always remember where I am, and I think the knowledge that I’ll have to do a little bit of thinking to figure out how to pick up where I left off has been stopping me from pulling this out when I have a few minutes.

So yesterday, I decided to move my baktus to the pile near the couch, and cast on something new to carry around with me.

Yep, this is another seaman’s cap. I’m making this one medium-sized, with a particular friend in mind, though if the colors end up feeling a little too crazy, I’ll keep it and make her something slightly more subdued. I think I do best with in-my-bag knitting that is in the round and very simple: rib or stockinette. This is the worsted-ish Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino I spun up a few months ago in the rest of the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds colorway. I thought I would knit this into mittens, but I think it is a bit late in the season to gift mittens. (Let’s face it, it will be March before this is done, and probably even closer to spring before I get this in the mail.)

Yesterday, for both lunch and dinner, I made Deb’s vegetable dumplings. Last year, as you may recall, my kitchen was the site for many a dumpling recipe test. These emerged victorious. Make them. You will not be sorry.

I’ll leave you with Boh. I eventually made him move so that I could make the bed, but I think he has the right idea. It is snowing here, and I’d like nothing more than to spend the day hunkering. Alas…off to campus.

world spins madly on.*

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I got up this morning, and pulled the covers up to half-heartedly make the bed. Usually, this is Boh’s cue to do some kind of dog stretch and get out of bed.

Today, he didn’t move. In fact, I put the kettle on, ground the coffee, and served up his breakfast, and he stayed in bed. It wasn’t until I grabbed the leash and opened the door that he reluctantly decided to get out from under the covers.

I feel your pain, Boh. I’m tired too.

Despite my sleepiness this morning, I do have some knitting progress to share. I woke up early yesterday to give myself a bit more knitting time, as I’ve been feeling a bit overextended this semester.

My Kerrera is starting to look like a cardigan! I’m into a very soothing stretch of stockinette, and I absolutely love how this Ultra Alpaca feels in my hands. Even though I should keep reading the book I have to teach this week, I’m going to try to squeeze in a few rows this morning before getting to work.

Time for coffee, but before I pour my first mug, I wanted to mention The Weepies. Their first two albums, Happiness (2003) and  Say I Am You (2006) — which I have only just learned are actually two shorter albums, rather than one full length album — are some of my favorite early in the morning or late at night things to listen to. (*This is the name of a track on Say I Am You. I’m listening to it right now.)

boh reads, while i knit and eat cake.

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I took a break from my work on Friday night to make another cup of tea, and I returned to find that Boh had decided to sit, and then lay, with my book. If only he could help with the reading. I alternated reading chapters with knitting increase rows on my snowbird cardigan, and now I’m working on the first sleeve.

This is the first pattern I’ve knit that calls for knitting the sleeves before the body, and I think I like this approach: after knitting the longest rows — the raglan increases — I get to knit the shortest rows!

Also, the birthday celebration continued on Saturday. Boh’s favorite people and his best dog friend Coltrane came over with a full-on triple-decker coconut cake! (Which, by the way, is every bit as delicious as it looks. I might eat part of this piece for breakfast.) We ate cake, and then took a nice wintry walk. Boh snored, with his head on my lap, for the rest of the afternoon.

The combination of the cold weather and my need to feel extra cozy means I’ve been wearing a lot of handknits lately. I snapped this picture yesterday morning before heading out to a nearby coffee shop to get some reading done. (With some books, I just need a bit more din to stay focused.)

Yesterday I was looking for an extra layer, and dug out my sassymetrical, which provided just the right amount of warmth under my slouchy navy (store-bought) wear-all-the-time cardigan. And that’s today’s handknit-in-action.

(I feel sort of weird taking pictures of my outfits in the mirror, but these are the photos that I really like to see on other people’s blogs and on ravelry — how they actually wear the stuff they make. Sometimes seeing a handknit incorporated into someone else’s wardrobe convinces me that I could/would wear said handknit.)

Alright, enough of that. Happy weekend, folks. I’m off to curl up with my (canine) valentine to knit a bit/read a lot.

golden.

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Today is my golden birthday. No, I’m not turning fifty. (Yet.) I am, however, 28 on 2-8, which is apparently what makes today golden.

Mondays are super busy for me this semester, so in terms of celebrating with friends, I’m pretending that my birthday isn’t until later in the week.

I do think that birthdays require deliciousness, though, so last night I baked myself a cake — one that I can justify eating for breakfast.

This is the walnut jam cake that Deb posted earlier this week. I topped it with my homemade strawberry balsamic jam, and as soon as I finish this blog post, I’m cutting myself a hearty slice. (I may have eaten a small piece last night after this photo was taken…)

Other things worthy of celebration?

I finished the double garter stitch waistband of my Kerrera. Despite the frustration of my false start, this went a lot faster the second time through.

Boh understands…something about Kerrera, and I’m happy that he’s keeping an eye on it. He was clearly less worried about it yesterday, don’t you think?

Also, on Friday night I cut off my hair. I can’t exactly articulate why it became so important for me to rid myself of most of its length — something about my hair being sort of inconsistent with the person I am and would like to be. And more specifically, it was getting way too long to spontaneously eat soup. And it required detangling.

So I got out of bed on Friday night and chopped it off. In handfuls. I tried to take a few pictures over the weekend, and here are two of my favorites — more for the way they demonstrate my complete incompetence when it comes to photographing myself than for how they highlight my haircut.

(This is me attempting to capture how long/short it is on the side. But it just ended up looking silly.)

And this one…well, you get the idea.

Time for cake!

boh gets a visitor.

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This is the kind of week we had. Me: scrambling to stay on top of things. Boh: patiently waiting for attention.

See?

And for once, all that sitting waiting wishing paid off. Our dear friend P. (you may remember her from her former north country farm fame) arrived last night for a quick visit.

Somebody was VERY happy to have her around.

Boh and P. went for a walk while I went to class. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

And when she left this afternoon to continue driving south and west, Boh assumed a contented position on the couch. (And so did I. So good to see dear friends. The north and east will miss you this spring, P.)

KAL cast on.

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Mick, Laura, and I had so much fun KALing with our garter yoke cardigans that we decided to do it again. We agreed on a start date of February 1, and I’m not gonna lie: the knowledge that at some point tonight I’d get to sit down with my needles and some luxurious Berroco Ultra Alpaca to cast on for Kerrera helped get me through a very long Monday.

After looking at other projects on ravelry and reviewing the pattern, I decided to cast on for the smallest size. I have a rather boyish shape — no hips, no waist — and the pattern seems to be written for women far curvier than this rooster. My plan is to work the hips for the smallest size, and then only decrease down to the body/bust stitch count for the 36.5″ size so that I’ll get a cardigan that skims my shape, rather than someone else’s. Good plan? Boh doesn’t seem to have much of an opinion on the matter at this point.

Something else that helped with a long Monday? This recipe for cheesy pasta. Simple, delicious, and sometimes exactly what I need.

I’m exhausted from a super busy day, but I think I’m going to make one last cup of tea and knit a few more rows before heading to bed.

Happy February, folks.

spinning/silliness/sunday.

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The sun came out yesterday while I was spinning the first bobbin of my first (of two!) bump of Hello Yarn shetland in Sour Fig, from the Fiber Club. I had to stop and take a picture. Twenty minutes later, my bobbin looked completely different:

I’m super excited to see how this ends up. I’m aiming for a 2-ply dk weight, but this stuff wants to be spun fine, so we’ll see what happens.

And now, the silliness:

I am a lucky girl.

Yep, another picture of this sweater. The fit is a bit awkward, the armholes are huge, the seams are wonky, even the ends are poorly woven in. I love the big ribbed collar, but I think the reason I wear this sweater more than any of the others I’ve made is that it was my first, finished in February 2008.

I wear it to late night reading groups, to dinner at friends’ homes. I pull it on to take Boh outside in the morning, I curl up in it on the couch. I buy groceries and write papers in it. It fits over many layers, even other sweaters, which is often how I wear it. It warms me, in more than the obvious way. I’ve been reading/discussing Rushdie this week, and these rather silly ruminations on my green sweater make me think of something his narrator says in Midnight’s Children. “Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real” (230, in my 1991 Penguin edition, though this was first published in 1980).

Time to slip my arms into the green sweater and get back to work.