Title, title, I need a title

So, what does one do when the computer is out of service for a whole three days?

Read on and see!

First, I found the time to finish off my second pair of socks. I've already blogged about this, so I'll spare you a long ramble about my new-found love of short rows, and the fact that I need more practice with kitchener before I ever consider giving away a pair of socks. Here they are, in all their little footie glory. Cute, aren't they?



With the socks off the needles, and needing a (short) break from the knitting, I headed into the kitchen. Among other things, I finally found a recipe for good old white bread that turned out pretty good. You see, my husband is a breadivore and can demolish an entire loaf in a couple of days. Needless to say, a good chunk of our grocery budget goes into satisfying his love of the sammich! And since I'm thoroughly convinced that I can do better than wonderbread and that my efforts are both rewarding and cost-effective, I've worked for some time to find an easy and good recipe with little success. This one came from (of all places) the back of the yeast package. The first loaf was demolished with grilled chicken and a salad of orzo and fresh veggies. The second disappeared along with a pot of spaghetti. Yeah, I know- carb overload- but you only live once.



Done with the bread and eager to pick up the needles again, I got started on this secret project. Secret only because someone who reads here might be receiving this as a gift at one point or another. Here's a little sneak preview. Afterall, how could I possibly do my very first project with cables and NOT show them off?



On Saturday I finished the cabled project while in the car on the way up to a Vierra. They just recently opened an A.C. Moore up there and I was dying to check out (you'll never guess) their yarn selection. I was seriously impressed. Around these parts you can't buy anything but crap, so it was refreshing to find a place within an hour's drive that carries anything decent. Their prices seemed a bit high to me, though, so I resisted the temptation to stock up on all the fancy fibers and just picked up a couple of sets of DPNs instead.

Oh, and get this- just a few days before Wil and I had been discussing how nice it would be if they sold Mr. Potato Head parts individually since Jonas has an entire bucket of parts but seems to have lost all of his eyes. Poor "Toe" has been running around with a nose stuck in his ocular oriface for way too long. Well, A.C. Moore is your Mr. Potato Head mecca, selling every part and piece in individual packages. We stocked up on eyes, and simply because we HAD TO, we bought him a little party hat and a mouth with a birthday blower in it. And of course, we couldn't resist the fireman gear! And they have the largest selection of Thomas trains and accessories I've ever seen. I know where I'll be doing my Christmas shopping for the J-man this year.

Ok, so Monday rolls around, and I've finished off my secret cable project. Once again, the needles are bare, but Jonas wasn't in the mood to let me get started on anything. Instead, he and I headed back into the kitchen for adventures in train cake making. I'm determined to make a three-dimensional train cake for his birthday, and it really doesn't look all that hard, but I figured I should go ahead and do a trial run, just to sort of work out the kinks. Man, am I glad that I did. I now know that I need to use a denser cake batter, I need to flour my pans better. And as far as pans go, I need to find a couple of smaller loaf pans than the ones that I have. I'm hoping that Granny has a couple that will fit the bill. But despite the fact that the cakes stuck to the pans and ripped in half when I turned them out, I think that the train is quite workable. I'll probably do another test with a different batter over the weekend, just to make sure. (A great excuse for dessert, right?) The best part of the practice cake was letting Jonas be the baker. He loves helping me in the kitchen, and since he's so small, there's really very little that he can do. But the handheld mixer was just perfect!


Finally, after J finally decided that he wanted a nap, I got started on knitting my mesh bag. About 20 rows in I realized that I had messed up somewhere, and so I ripped it back down to almost nothing and started over. Yes, I know, it's just a silly bag and it's mesh, it doesn't have to be perfect, but I was adamant to figure out where I went wrong, and besides, with no computer-meaning no school work- what else was I supposed to be doing with my time?

Here's a picture of it this morning.


Not long after taking this picture I somehow screwed up again. Figures. But this time I'm just going to keep going and see how it ends up. Worst case scenerio, I frog it again, right? Amanda, did you have any trouble knitting yours? Somehow, about every fourth repeat I end up with a lonely little stray stitch at the end of the round that I don't know what to do with, but when I go back and check my row I haven't skipped any yarn-overs and all my K2TOG's are fine. *shrugs* We'll see how it turns out.

Anyway, that's the very long round-up of the past few days.

In more important news- the exterior house repairs are moving along swiftly. The painting is complete, except for the part that is getting the stucco replaced. That part is stripped bare to the wood as of this afternoon. There's a huge pile of scrap on the ground outside my front door, a stack of wire behind the house, a roll of tar paper on the roof, three bags of stucco mix on the porch, and a huge pile of sand in my driveway. Somehow I'm supposed to believe that it's magically going to turn into a finished product by tomorrow afternoon. Here's hoping.

And now, it's after midnight, my eyes are blurry from sitting here. We've just about got this computer back to where it needs to be. We've got drivers loaded and programs registered. By this time tomorrow I won't have any more excuses to avoid getting back to work on my transcription courses. But I'm well ahead of schedule, so having a week off is a bit refreshing and not such a big deal.

*yawn* Goodnight, y'all.