Food and knitting

Rosh Hashanna begins tonight which means that today I am busy cooking and baking. The house smells wonderful right now with the combined scents of chicken soup and brisket. Soon enough I'll be adding my home made challah to the mix. I love the smell of baking bread. DS will not be with us for the holiday, but we will call him tonight and speak with him. Tomorrow we go to a friends' house for dinnner (the holiday is two days long with a major dinner each night).

Knitting wise I am being lazy and haven't corrected the error I made on my sweater. I am avoiding it because I don't relish the idea of frogging several rows of carefully made cables. There isn't an obvious hole in the thing so I am not sure where the error was, that has me a little nervous. But I am reasonably sure that the error is not that far down. I suppose I could just unravel the cable part but doubt my ability to do that correctly. I've never done it with cables and have no idea how to rework it so the error is fixed and the section cabled correctly. So it will sit for a couple more days till I get the courage to tackle this. The shawl is coming along nicely. Not sure how big I am going to make it. I'll just keep trying it on till it feels right. Working on it has gotten me to think again about a fingering/laceweight shawl. Let me finish and blok this one first.

Well I have to go off and play with some bread dough. L'shanna Tova to you all.

Knitting in Public

After being in pain for a few weeks I finally went to the podiatrist this morining to have my right foot looked at. After some examining and a few x-rays he told me that I needed a soft cast on it for two weeks and mucho ibuprophen to clear up the inflamation. I'll have to go out and get a pair of black sneakers to wear to work in the meantime because regular shoes will not fit over the cast. (We have to dress in black at work and my sneakers are not only tan but so beat up I will not wear them to work. I need new ones anyway) I'm also going to have to wrap it up in plastic to take showers always a joy to do.

I got some knitting done in the waiting room and even got a compliment from another patient who was waiting for x-rays. She commented that she tries to knit every few years and never manages to get the hang of it. We chatted for a bit and I suggested that she try continental style which I think is easier.

The candle flame shawl is coming along nicely after a few too many false starts while I learned the pattern. At first I had to keep one eye on the instructions and one on my knitting then I got the hang of it and don't need the instructions anymore.

Open house at the high school tonight. I get to walk around the school and meet DD's teachers, she can't come along as she did last year because she has marching band rehersal at the same time. She's giving me a map, which I am not optomistic about being able to follow. I am severely directionally challenged and don't do well with maps. So if I don't show up here in a few days send out a search party I may still be wandering the halls of the high school looking for where to go.

Arrrgh!

I was working on my sweater this afternoon when I realized that one of the cables that was supposed to have 12 stitches in it had only 11. Now I have to go and frog back to find the error. What a pain.

To pacify myself I started a new project. I'm making the candle flame shawl out of red Wool of the Andes.

DH is going to see DS tomorrow. I can't go because I have to work. Life stinks like that sometimes.

Thrummed Knitting

Lupie wanted to know what Thrummed Knitting is. As I understand it, it's the process of putting tufts of material into your knitting to make it warmer. Usually done on mittens. It just never appealed to me.

A Knitting Meme

Saw this on the blog Knitting the Blues and thought it would be fun to do.

The rules:

1. Bold the things you've done.
2. Green the things you are currently doing.
3. Red out the things you've abandoned or will never attempt.
4. Italicize the things you want to try.

Afghan
American/English Knitting (vs. Continental knitting)
Baby Items
Bobbles
Buttonholes
Cable stitch patterns (including Aran)
Cardigan
Charity knitting
Continental knitting
Cuffs/fingerless mitts/arm warmers
Darning
Designing knitted garments
Domino knitting (modular knitting)
Drop stitch patterns
Dyeing with plant dyes
Dyeing yarn
Entrelac
Fair Isle knitting
Freeform knitting
Fullling/felting
Gloves
Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Hair accessories
Hat
Holiday related knitting
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cozies.....)
I-cord
Intarsia
Jewelry
Kitchener Bind Off
Knitting a gift
Knitting and purling backwards
Knitting for a living
Knitting for pets
Knitting for preemies
Knitting in public
Knitting items for a wedding
Knitting socks
Knitting to make money
Lace patterns
Longtail Cast On
Machine knitting
Mittens: Cuff up
Mittens: Top down
Moebius band knitting
Norwegian knitting
Olympic knitting
Participating in a Knit-a-long
Pillows
Publishing a knitting book
Purses/bags
Rug
Scarf
Shawl
Short rows
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Slip stitch patterns
Slippers
Socks: toe up
Socks: top down
Steeks
Stockinette stitch
Stuffed toys
Swatching
Sweater
Teaching a child to knit
Teaching a male to knit
Textured knitting
Thrummed knitting
Toy or doll knitting
Tubular Cast On
Twisted stitch patterns
Two ended knitting
Writing a pattern

Well there you have it. If you decide to do the meme let me know I'd love to read your list!

Whoops

My friend Lupie rightly points out that she has done this meme already so I am now tagging The Grimm Witch of Jersey Enjoy and sorry Lupe I should have just looked down one more entry! I just didn't remember that you answered this one already.

A Challenge

Pepper of Geek of all Trades tagged me with this meme. So here goes:

What are the last 3 things you purchased?
A book, a shirt and some food

What are the last three songs you downloaded?
Haven't done that in a while and don't remember

What are the three best places you visited?
Vermont, Cape Cod and Israel

What are your three favorite movies?
Mr. Roberts, A Lion in Winter and Beckett

What thee things can you not live without?
Books, my knitting, and a decent box of cereal (I eat it every morning)

What would be your three wishes?
I wish that DS would be safe and happy when he grows up
I wish DD would get into the college of her choice and not have to worry about paying for it
I wish I could lose the 50 pounds I have to take off (ok it's really 49 but I like round numbers)

What are three things you haven't done yet?
Learn to swim decently (I can get by in the water enough not to drown but I can't really swim well)
Run or walked a marathon
Fold the clothes we washed yesterday(grin)

What three Celebrities do you want to hang out with the most?
Sandy Koufax -(one of the all time great pitchers)
Temple Grandin- (an adult with autism that has had a successful life.)
Death Cab for Cutie - (my favorite band)

Name three things that freak you out
Roller coasters
Mice
driving out of town always afraid I'll get lost in a strange place. DH OTOH is a human GPS and never gets lost.

What are your three favorite dishes?
Sushi
Chicken Mole (a mexican dish that is very yummy)
mashed potatoes

Name Three Things you are good at.
Knitting
Baking Bread
Counted cross stitch

What are three things you are currently coveting?
The Yarn Harlot's new book
A decent collection of men's sweater patterns
a Tivo

These are three bloggers I will send this challenge to:
Knitnana
Knitting with my Mother's Hands
Vixenpath

An Update and Random Thoughts

I finally had my stress test at the doctor and fortunately everything is fine. He told me to continue taking the medication he'd prescribed (a beta blocker to help my heart work better and a cholesterol lowering medication) and come back in a year. He also told me in no uncertain terms that I had to exercise daily and lose weight. Well the exercise thing is not so hard to do. I can walk the neighborhood or use my Wii Fit. The Wii Fit is a lot of fun it's a "game" for the Nintendo Wii that has aerobics, balance games, yoga and strength games on it. You can get quite a workout on this thing. I highly recomend it to anyone who has a Wii system. (If you can find it that is. the Wii Fit is in high demand and it took weeks for us to nail one) Losing weight is another story. This has never been easy for me but I have no choice and have to take it off. I figure I need to lose 49 pounds. (Yikes!) So I hauled myself back to Weight Watchers and have been following it the last two days. It does work when you work at it but my problem is that I start resenting the program after a few months. This time resentment or no I have to stick with it. My health is involved not just my looks.

I am making good progress on my aran sweater; finished the back the other day and started the front. I should put in more time on the thing but I've also gotten into this wonderful book called The Street of a Thousand Blossoms. I highly recommend it especially if you're like me and love anything to do with Japan. I know I keep promising pictures and I do plan to post some over due ones this weekend. I haven't been working on the socks all that much, I should pick them up and try to finish them. I am disappointed in the socks. I have a ladder that I cannot seem to eliminate no matter how hard I try. But they do look good othewise and the ladder isn't too noticible but I know it's there and it bothers me. Tell me all does working on two circular needles make for a lack of ladders or am I going to have the same problem with DD's socks (which you may remember are my first attempt at socks on two circulars) ?

Had issues in my kitchen this week. We've had trouble with pantry moths in the past. They are annoying little buggers and hard to get rid of. This time we are getting real serious with our latest plague of flying annoyances bent on eating my food. I spent time yesterday cleaning out our pantry closet, throwing things out that looked like the bugs had gotten to them and wiping out the interior throughly. Now we are having the exterminator in to do a treatment. That will hopefully take care of the problem once and for all. Being a Buddhist I have a hard time with killing bugs. I'm one of those people who takes them outside and sets them free. But for pantry moths I make an exception. They are that bad.

We had DS in for 2 1/2 weeks at the end of August. One week was spent at Cape Cod which we all enjoyed and would like to go back to one of these days. The second week was spent at home seeing his friends and watching too much TV. By far this was the best visit ever with DS. This new progam at his school really seems to be making a difference with him. He loves having the vocational training and talks constantly about getting a job. It's hard having him away at boarding school but he's doing so well I cannot complain.

DH had a look at my blogroll and asked me if I actually read them all. For the most part I do. I have them all on bloglines and check them once or twice a day. I skim some blogs and some like, the Yarn Harlot, I read word for word. Not all of them update on a daily basis so it's not as hard as you might think to keep up. However, the list is getting a little ridiculous and I should pare it down a bit. I just hate to miss a good blog and it's hard not to add them to the list. How many blogs do you all read on a daily or somewhat daily basis?

Thanks again to those who commented and wrote about my recent scare with my health. It really helped to know I had friends in cyberspace.