an ent knits

I had all sorts of grand plans for my weekend.  (I nearly always do…)  I was going to find the last thing I wanted for my Halloween costume, I was going to go to Fabric Row and buy fabric and baste a skirt together if I couldn’t find what I wanted, I was going to go to Pearl to get a new fancy notebook for seminars, I was going to go to two Halloween parties….  Not so much.  On Saturday, I left my house for an hour, for a grocery run, sticking to the two places within three blocks of my house.  On Sunday, I left my house for just over four hours, also known as long enough to get to the co-op, cashier for four hours, and go home.  (The co-op is one of the places within three blocks of my house.)  I was, however, moderately productive while at home.  I rearranged my hall closet and moved my air conditioners into it, I did some reorganizing in the living room, I finally (finally!) started hanging things on the living room walls (there had been pre-existing hooks in my bedroom, so there’d already been things hanging there), I spun a bit, and I made gingerbread cupcakes.

This is more or less my standard gingerbread recipe, except I subbed oil for the butter.  I made it as cupcakes so I could bring them to work and not wind up eating an entire cake by myself, and they seem to have gone over pretty well.

I love shadows in bright sunlight.

Now, because none of them are really enough for their own posts, here are a few things I’ve done since last I posted anything other than pictures:

• I went dancing, where (so she said) a friend of mine almost didn’t recognize me because I wasn’t knitting.

• I got the orange hat halfway through the crown decreases and then realized I’d started them too soon. (I also ripped back to where I’d started decreasing, but haven’t really gotten back to the knitting part.)

• I went to NYC for depressing family reasons but felt (somewhat) better for getting to see my family.

• I read The Golden Compass, a few of the Fables comics, bits of a couple of other books, and reread both Leaven of Malice and What’s Bred in the Bone. And I did a few crossword puzzles.

• I’ve spun some more of the orange mohair-wool and knit a few more rows on the Diamond Fantasy Shawl.

• I’ve cooked four different kinds of food this week. I made my version of sweet potato fries, baked soy-ginger-garlic tofu, scrambled eggs with peppers and corn, and, last night, an entirely local lamb curry. Mmmm. (In addition to lamb, I used onion, garlic, chard, spinach, broccoli, a carrot, and a pepper.)

These are more pics from last Sunday.

I love leaves in general, and the prints they leave on the sidewalk (paved road here, but still) after a rain…

One of the extra fun bonus things about yesterday was our scheduled “evacuation” drill. (Evacuation is in quotes because we evacuated as far as one floor down in the fire exit stairway, where we stood for about twenty minutes.) How could that possibly be fun, you ask? Because I was prepared! I grabbed my earplugs and my bag, which contained my knitting. So I got to stand around and knit on the orange hat, while the alarm noises were somewhat muted. My labmates got bored, though, being less prepared, so one of them played with my camera (also in my bag) for a while.

People Standing In the Fire Exit Stairs. (No, I’m not sure why she only actually took this one picture. It looked like she was taking lots more, but this was the only one that got recorded.)

…but in yarn this time.

I’m in the middle of the heel on my sock, and I wanted something on bamboo for quieter concert knitting…so I present the beginnings of a hat.

This was the first concert in the Organ Recital Series. It was quite good. I was not really fond of the Liszt piece, but the Bach was good, the Mozart was excellent. There was a piece by someone named Mader called “Afternoon of a Toad”, which was great. There was also something by a man with a Spanish-sounding name (also 20th-Century) that I liked almost as much as the Mozart. And then there was the encore of a really, really short piece by Haydn that was fun. So it was worth missing the gorgeous and sunny afternoon.

I also finished some spinning last night, and finally set the twist on the smidgen of alpaca-wool I’d spun a couple of weeks ago.

The orangey stuff is more of the wool-mohair from Three Waters Farm (MD & summer ’05), spindle-spun and wheel-plied; the brown stuff is alpaca-wool from Delly’s Delights Farm (MDSW ’06), spun and plied on the wheel.

Days like today are just splendid. And I love having a digital camera, so I can do things like wander around for an hour and take eighty pictures and then look at them a couple hours later. I’m saving some of them for ECFs, but I have to post at least a couple of them now.

(again, I’m being lazy, so I didn’t edit these at all, which means they’ll get a lot bigger if you click on them)

I love this weather.

Last Saturday, I was actually walking around, in the sunshine, not in a hurry. And I saw these gorgeous dahlias. (Pink is one of those colors that I love on flowers, but not much of anywhere else.)

Before I forget, here is the link I mentioned at Fiber Night last week: Grover is Bitter, courtesy of Norma.

Also, last week was a reasonably productive week in terms of baking, although I didn’t do any other cooking. But here’s a picture of the entirely vegan, margarine-free, chocolate-raspberry layer cake I made for a friend’s birthday on Sunday:

And I’ve now passed the 5000-mark on my digital camera. Five thousand pictures, in about three and a half years, a lot of them for various blogging purposes. Huh.

One last bit–the recipe for the chocolate-orange cookies I made last week is in the extended entry.

(more…)

This is definitely not from today, as it’s grey and rainy out. (I love this weather as long as it doesn’t soak through my shoes and the wet part of my jeans isn’t too big, but it’s not so great for wandering around with my camera.) So I present a photo from just over a year ago:

Taken on South Street.

One of the best things about fall is getting to eat lunch outside and enjoy the warmth of the sun (which I can’t do so well in the summer except when my lab is particularly cold). And that’s even better when eating outside and knitting with friends. These pics are from yesterday; the first one includes bits of Ella.

note that these pics will get much larger if you click on them, ’cause I didn’t edit them at all

I love the way my shawl looks in the sunshine! Gotta go now, though, my labmates are getting impatient.