What Dirtbunny has been obsessing about this week

ISSUE NUMBER ONE:  SPECIAL SWEETHEART

Hey!  That's the same color nail polish that I have on now! OMG.  I haven't gotten my nails done since before Christmas. *sends Mr. D out to clear an ice-free path to the car.*

Lazy Day Partial Yarn Update

I think I must have at least 100 photographs of knitting works in progress to show you.  I'll make some cuts to whittle it down, but let's start with 5.

About three years ago, I made my mother a pair of orange socks.  The yarn was a bamboo fiber, and it did not wear well.  Bamboo yarn is not good for socks.  Lesson learned.

My mother got a kick out of them, however, and I saw a skein of orange wool, so I bought it and started some new ones:

The Farm Box

Long-time readers (both of you) know that my aunt runs a non-profit farm in Connecticut that does animal rescue and animal-assisted therapy.  On years when I either have my act together so I knit a lot, or years when I am a complete mess so I don't do anything but eat/sleep/knit, I send her a box of my stuff to sell at her annual fundraiser.  Last year was largely OK but not great, so nothing.  This year I started out with my act together and have ended up a complete mess* so I have stuff to donate.  My aunt sent me a box of yarn spun from wool from some of the animals, as I documented here,** and I finally have some output.

Wretched

Summer continues to trudge along Chez Nous.  The farm box comes every Wednesday and the dogs beg for whatever might be in there, which lately has included a lot of kale.  You want kale?  OK, here you go:

They greedily grab it, chew it a few times, spit it out ("yuck") and then beg for more:

Summer Yarn Post

It is unnaturally hot.  Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say that I am having an unusually bad time with fairly ordinary summer weather.  I really ought to be working on farm squares or I won't have anything for this year's auction.  However, the wool for the yarn squares is rustic and coarse and warm, and it makes me even hotter to think about it, so instead, I'm doing this.

The biggest yarn news is:  The cable love cardi is finished!

It's pretty and it fits and it's way less ratty than the cardigan I keep for work.  For a while, I tried to kid myself that my work cardi was a "jacket" but I now have to face up to the fact that it's the kind of thing you might wear when you're sick because you can wipe your nose on the sleeve and it won't make things any worse.  Now I have cable love to replace it.  If I wear it, I'll get compliments, and that will be embarrassing.  OMG did you make that one too?!  Hm.  And I will have to be gracious about it because people are only trying to be nice.

I have also finished up some Ye Olde Yarne projects from leftover stuff.

 (Yes, that's me in the Minnie Mouse t-shirt.  I was always fat.)

This one was taken on a nice day when it was possible for me to go outside.  Ah memories!

And finally, socks from the last of the crap yarn.

I'm waiting for the yarn for my next sweater to arrive, and I think I know what I want to do with the llama wool I have.  For now, I have farm squares and one pair of socks to finish, and one scarf.  The next big cast-on day isn't for a month, but I probably won't make it that long.

It's the dead part of the summer.  There's no football except for a few junior international tournaments, and the Tour de France is three weeks or so away.  It's too hot to lounge outside, much less exercise.  My hair is too short to put in a ponytail and too long to leave down.  They keep promising me thunderstorms, but all I really want to do is make gelato, eat cold fruit, and take naps.

Spring Update

The Helping Profession has changed my meds again and the adjustment period has been a bear.  I've been feeling sick pretty much all the time, plus confused and depressed about being sick, and angry that I haven't figured out how to regulate my treatment regimen so that I'm not feeling lightheaded and stupid all the time.  I think the worst is over  *crosses fingers*  because I'm back to being ordinarily stupid rather than exceptionally stupid.  I just have to remember to eat before 3 pm and space my calories out more throughout the day.  I've "just" had to do this for the last decade and so far I haven't done that good a job but, hey, tomorrow's a new day.

I've had a few sick days, so I've had some extra TV time and, around here, TV means football.  The season is almost over.  Two more weekends before we enter the Dark Times.   Meanwhile,  ADP just signed a contract extension so he's good for one more year.  The zebes aren't completely out of it yet, but they've reached the point where it isn't enough for them to succeed--others must fail.  Today's Juventus match is probably ending right about now, so you can guess what I'm doing tonight.  There's also the Giro d'Italia.  My boyfriend Fabian Cancellara, along with the Schleck Bros., moved to team Leopard trek this season, but none of them are participating.  Someone from their team actually died today after a crash.  Wow.

More odds and ends

I think I've finally found the perfect coffeemaker.  See if you can find the one thing that keeps me from getting it.

We have a new tenant at our office building.

Yarn Post

It has been a busy day.  I got rid of the dead chrysanthemums, I either prepped or trashed everything in the vegetable bin, and I did the taxes.  The only thing left on my weekend to-do list, aside from making dinner tonight, is pestering Mr. D to verify the taxes so we can e-file them and be done with it.  I've got this one leetle post to finish, and then I can knit, watch football, knit while watching football, or nap, whatever my heart desires.

I've finished a few things, and that has given me the urge to start some new things, but aside from the Cable Love Cardi, I've decided not to cast anything else on this month.  Having a startitis festival once a quarter is enough, but when April 17 gets here, watch out!

So, the finished things.

Whew!

When last we spoke, I had finished the body of the purple Bud Collins sweater and was worrying whether I had enough yarn left for the sleeves.  I had two skeins, one skein per sleeve.  For a while I turned over various scenarios in my head as to how I would get more yarn when I needed it, but I finally decided to find out if I needed it.

Nope.  One sleeve, one skein, with a bit left over, but not enough to trigger leftover yarn angst.  Perfect.

Another Yarn-Related Photo Dump

It was a month ago now, but I recently had a birthday.

For those of you who are new here, a birthday Chez Nous means a wicked yarn crawl.  What happens when you combine snow days, yarn crawls, startitis, and power outages?

Aftermath

It's the fourth day of Christmas.  There are fresh English football matches to watch and frigid windy weather to keep us inside and stale Christmas cookies to throw away and I'm starting to dream about my job again and to make lists of things I gotta do again and new books to read and old knitting to finish and I'm only sleeping twelve hours a day now instead of sixteen.  Time marches on, but before I start on the final 2010 clean-up and embark on 2011, let's review Christmas 2010.

It snowed:

Just barely, but there were five minutes of "Ooh!  Pretty!" to go along with the cocoa and kringle.  Note to self:  write thank-you note to MIL.

Bunny Baking Project

Those Nut Crescent Cookies are also good with their powdered sugar coating:

I really don't see why I ever need to try another recipe for these.  The hardest part was chopping the pecans.  (You can't use the food processor because pecans are relatively oily and the food processor will start turning them into pecan butter before all of the pieces are as small as they're supposed to be.)

Stuffed-up November Blahs

We have a cold.  Both Mr. D. and I are afflicted and we have both missed some work. The fact that it happened to be a Champions League/Europa League week had nothing to do with it.  We're mostly better now, at least I am.  Tragically, we do not feel well enough for yard work, but that's fine, because I'm not obsessing nearly enough about the bulbs I haven't planted, the woodpile I haven't dealt with, the fencing I haven't finished, or the compost heap I haven't moved.  Unless I work myself into a full-blown anxiety attack, I probably won't get around to it until next week, and when I do it, I'll be out there red-faced and weeping about how much it sucks to do yard work.

Simmering the sauce

We have achieved the stage of the bolognese when I don't have to stand there and watch any more.  If I just remember to stir it once in awhile, that's enough.  The biscotti are sitting in a turned-off oven for their final crisping, and they will be ready in time for lattes.  And so I am finally sitting down.  Aaaaaaaaaaahhh.


Today's biscotti is Lemon-Anise, only I hate anise, so they are Lemon-Vanilla.  This is the recipe:

I left the magazine on my knitting bag, so Tiki borrowed it and edited it for me.  Maybe it's compulsive to slog through recipes just because they're there, but if I were really compulsive, I'd be forced to use anise instead of being flexible and changing the recipe, right?

It was a busy month chez nous.  My job got bigger and I had end-of-year craziness to deal with that was never my problem before.  Mr. D had to go to Pork Barrel University again.  We took a vacation for the first time in three years.  The old folks visited.  Football started, and so did both Champions League and Europa League, as well as qualifying matches for Euro 2012.  This year, this means more than just hours watching football and thinking unclean thoughts about football players because now I am writing about it for a online community of Serie A tifosi.  I'm responsible for covering Juventus, so I'm doing match reports after every match (one or two every week), and covering the transfer market and whatever other news may come up.  I love it, but it's a time commitment.  Aaaaaaand,  Kirby stopped walking, so he spent a few days in the hospital getting expensive tests, and his progress since then has been up and down.  When he's up, he can do pretty much everything, but his balance is tetchy and he's prone to falls.  When he's down, he can't walk, has to be carried everywhere, and has to be supported when he potties.  And no, we still don't know exactly what the cause of all this is, and yes there will be more vet trips (including tomorrow) so the doggie neurologist can assess his progress on his treatment plan.  The space bar on my laptop needs to be hitjust so, which means weird things happenwhen I write.  And there has been knitting.

Lame Yarn Post

I am in the black hole of knitting.  I knit and knit and knit and nothing much happens.  I've been working on pretty much all of my projects for at least two months and I have very little to show for any of it. Except these:

These are the Scottish Highland socks.  Mindless monkey knitting featuring STR.  No big deal.


I started a pair of socks for my sister-in-law in July.  I finished the first one this morning, but only after forcing myself to hunker down.  This is where I was before the weekend:

Now this right here, this is the big time suck:

Hm.  In the photo, you can actually see the pattern.  In real life, it's just a pile of fuzzy grey stuff that is lace and therefore, ALL TOGETHER NOW, looks like ass.  I can't believe I'm only halfway through.

Oops.  I forgot this:

Hm.  OK now that cheers me up. Nice lace, huh?

Can you smell that?

If you ask Mr. D, he will almost invariably say "no."  His official position is that he can't smell anything.  So when you overhear him muttering this to the Yarn Bandit:

I can't stay mad at you, even though you reduce our environmental conditions to that of a hellhole.

...then you know you have a serious problem.  It's not like we don't clean up after the devilish urinator--we do--but he can be really sneaky, and it's hard to get it completely out.  Over time, and especially when it gets hot and humid, an above-and-beyond-the-call cleansing of the Hellhole is unavoidable.  And so, this morning, we rolled up the rugs, salvaged the salvageable rug pad and tossed the others, and took the rugs out to be professionally cleaned.  We will be back to the bare wood floors for three or four weeks.

Boing Boing Boing

Today is a Tigger day.


1. I have already done a day's worth of work. A productive Bunny is a happy Bunny, because as we all know, she measures her value according to her accomplishments. It's amazing what not being treated like a stupid person and suspected conspirator can do for one's morale.

2. Two of Bunny's teams are playing/have played today, so there will be excellent footie tonight.

3. I cut Kirby's toenails last night all by myself without having to pay anyone to do it for me and, although there was a shaky moment or two, I did not kill the dog. Hooray! Now he walks a lot quieter.

4. I got Collard Greens in my farm box yesterday. I soooooooo hate them and I was going to just face the truth and throw them out right away but then Ah hed an eyedeear. I'm going to braise them with olives and pancetta and sundried tomatoes and maybe less salt than I used last time I braised greens that way and maybe maybe maybe they'll be palatable! And even if I hate them, Mr. D will eat them because they will contain pork.

More from Day 3

Item One: Tiki spent the day doing like he do.....

......forsaking the comforts that cost me real, actual money (dog beds, air conditioning), to find whatever bits of sun there are so he can bake himself.

WC2010: Day Three

1.   Dirtbunny is all wound up today. It's HHH outside (already), I'm tired and cranky, and Mr. D is making no move to get to the vet for Kirby's refills before they close. He's got about 75 minutes to make a move, or else I'm going to have to go myself. If I have to go myself, that means I have to get dressed, and I was planning on wearing pajama pants all day.

2.   Some critters are eating my 1.8 billion dollar landscaping, which I can't enjoy anyway because it is too hot and too buggy.

3.   God bless Martin Tyler. Of all the ESPN World Cup commenters, he is the only one who refuses to repeat the "one game changes everything" slogan forty times per broadcast, because he knows it makes him look like a tool and it annoys the viewers and because he's about the football, dammit.

4.   John Harkes, who apparently believes that Algeria is playing a mythical nation named "Slovania," makes me ashamed to be a Wahoo. He is a creep and an idiot for many reasons, but anyone with the education he has should be aware enough to learn the names of the non-United States nations playing in the world cup, especially if he is calling their game.