It’s a Winter Miracle!
I spent the entire day in my kitchen yesterday. There were pies and rolls and cranberry sauce and pudding, etc to make. At about 5:30pm I was making my apple pie and was flushing the peelings down the garbage disposal. All of a sudden the disposal started to sound weird and the sink began filling with water. I flipped it off. "I think it's broken, TheBoy."
He came to the kitchen to inspect. "No, the disposal is working, the sink is clogged. We did buy a plunger, right?"
Thankfully, we did have a plunger. We bought it when I moved in 2.5 years ago and haven't ever had call to use it. Upon attempting to plunge the sink we discovered that there is an overflow valve built in so as pressure was applied the overflow would spill out gross grey water and teeny bits of apples all over the counter. We despaired. We debated calling the apartment manager and realized that at 6pm on a Saturday and the day before Christmas Eve that there was no way anything would get fixed before Tuesday and figured we'd just have to wait it out.
I finished the apple pie and put it in the oven. I made homemade chocolate pudding for the chocolate cream banana pie. I sat down on the couch, finally done and started knitting a hat for charity. TheBoy went back to the kitchen to try plunging again. No luck. And then...Duct tape. Over the overflow outlet which allowed the plunging to suction the clog away. And now we won't be stuck staring at a kitchen full of dirty dishes until Tuesday. He's my hero, and a very good man. The fact that he loves me is the best Christmas present of all.
To any and all that read this have a very happy holiday, whichever you celebrate! Drive carefully if you have to, and enjoy your families!
Christmas Mitts!
I have known TheBoy for a hair over three years now. He has known that I am a knitter for almost as long as he's known me and yet I don't think that he ever realized what that meant for him in the long run. Pieces of yarn everywhere, piles of yarn everywhere, and [until recently] watching me knit and spin for swaps with other people while never having anything for himself.
A lot of women feel their male counterparts don't appreciate their crafts. At one point during Socktoberfest TheBoy voiced his sorrow at not having anything that I had made for him. The result of that conversation was these mitts. Knit on size 2 needles from a kind of generic mitt pattern I've culled from various places and constantly tried on during the knitting and we have a mostly finished pair of convertible mittens. I need to knit the mitten caps yet but a recent cold snap forced me to finish these so that he can hold the cold steering wheel in the morning. They're an unofficial Christmas gift since I really wanted to surprise him but wanted more to get a good fit. The mitten caps will be knit and attached shortly. I'll post full project specs then but the yarn is hand-dyed from a semi-local etsy seller. I'm not going to link to it because I wasn't thrilled with the dye job from the end I started from. The first cuff ended up almost half black and half orange and the striping became very random. The yarn was intended as sock yarn for a man's foot and I knit at both a gauge and size compatible with a foot [TheBoy's hands are large] and just got weird results. The girls from the Guild agreed with me that the dye job seemed very random and poorly thought out. TheBoy is happy with them and doesn't mind the weird areas of color or else these would never have made it past the first cuff. It's a risk you take with hand dyed yarn I suppose.
Partway in.
Last week began the somewhat frantic and mostly hectic packing of the two offices that my department have inhabited in order to move into our one fancy new space. They began the physical move yesterday and finished it this morning. I do not yet have keys, but we'll remedy that as soon as we get wired for phones and data. Until they do that we can't begin to set up our furniture and printers. We're happy with the space otherwise and we love our color choices. Eggplant/plum and artichoke heart green:
The green looks yellow here and we're pretty sure that's due to the regular bulbs in the lights. We're going to be replacing those will full-spectrum bulbs in hopes that that will give us more true color both in our walls and with projects that come out of our printer. We're pleased anyway, although the most common comment has been "those are interesting colors." Meh. We like it.
And near our office is a bathroom where the 80's still reign. Bright seafoam green and bright purple in there:
Talk about scary.
Holiday Gifts Abound!
I mailed the last of my family's gifts out this evening. I do have a few other packages to go out, but one is waiting on an item [and I'm prolonging the Christmas excitement for the recipient, she's heading out of town before I could get things to her so it'll just be there when she gets back] and the other will go out on Wednesday.
I got the first gifts I've been allowed to open early last night [gifts are starting to trickle in from our families but those go under the tree to be opened with TheBoy's family on Christmas Eve/Day.] Last night we had our Guild meeting her at the apartment and I was presented with gifts from M, S, and E. M spun me some beautiful suri alpaca yarn which she then overdyed a grape-y purple and added some pale purple beads to it. It's so soft and lovely and I just need to figure out what to make from it.
S made me many lovely stitch markers and if we got more sunlight there would be a better photo of them here. Since we don't, here's the best I could do:
E presented each of us with a 4 ounce baggie of Merino/Tussah blend and a challenge. We drew names from a hat and have been challenged to secretly dye, spin and then knit an item for our recipient from this same beginning point. Without conversing about it amongst ourselves. I have from the 21st of December to the 21st of March to complete this task and I have to admit I think it will end up being a lot of fun. Now to figure out what colors of dye I might need to purchase. We're allowed 5% "foreign" material in our project apart from the dye. I won't be blogging about the procedure until after March, but keep a look out on that.
Snowman, Snowman, Snowman
You Are a Snowman |
 Friendly and fun, you enjoy bringing holiday cheer to everyone you know! |