I Am Victorious!... Mostly

"I just hate health food." Julia Child

Ya'll if that's not inspiring, I don't know what is.

How proud Julia would be of me. I have been in my kitchen all morning, baking my tail off, and I promise not a bit of it's healthy. Unless you count the semi-rotten bananas in my banana bread, but then you must also count the two eggs, 1 cup sugar, 1 stick butter- I hope the picture is clear.
Why the wild cookery? Because my dear, land-stuck friends, I am going... to the beach... tomorrow. With three of my friends, we have recklessly rented a house, bought a great deal of booze, and now I am baking copious amounts of sweets and breads, in the hope, one can only assume, we never make it out of the ocean alive, too weighted down with floury, sugary things to fight the sharks and too drink-sodden to care. Ah, the beach. Good times, good times.

So while I have been in the kitchen all morning doing this:

The dogs, in various stages have done this:




They feel we have all contributed equally.

As far as my boastful start, let me just say- the beret is And Done! ("And done" being a saying I picked up in the restaurant biz and which I freely throw around now whenever any project- from dinner to knitting to making the bed- is finished. One can never be too "And done!" I feel.) Actually the beret was finished Wednesday night. At which point, I put it on, instructed Hubster to take pictures of it, and spent the next ten minutes ducking and shrieking "Not the face! Not the face! Just the *bad word* beret!" Love of My Life got a little sulky from that point, so the rest of the photos are just the beret alone. Now my not wanting to be in the pics is less to do with vanity and more to do with a) I have no idea how to wear a beret, as my Irish ancestors weren't all that big into fairly worthless pieces of headgear and so those genes were not passed down to me and b) I have a very large head (think pumpkin and, again, I blame the Irish ancestors, or more to the point, my dad, who is the only person who can wear the same size cap as me). Normally I'm a happy hat-wearing person, as my face doesn't get swallowed up the way a normal-headed person's face might. This hat, however, is not working- it's wearing me, I swear.



As for the sock... ah, the sock, we always come back to it, don't we? We are closer to finished, though I can't yet claim victory. There is a heel, of sorts, now attached to said sock. This particular style of heel is called an "after thought heel" and never a truer word was spoken. My heel screams "After thought! After thought!"



The invisible bind-off, well, not so much. Cathy, the Toe-Up Instructor,did not show up at our knit-night and so I blame her. I've appointed her my invisible bind-off mentor and I don't care if she's awfully sick, I need her there! Any-hoo, that's the sock.

So back to being my groovy Julia-self. Do you think she listened to her favorite tunes (probably not DMB though) and danced while whisking? It's certainly a thought.

Joy, Joy a New Project!

"It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to." W.C. Fields

Thought that quote seemed appropriate after yesterday's post. Lovely, sunny day here, though this morning the fog was so bad I nearly expected a lighthouse to rise from among our trees.
Knitting news- this site has something to do with that, right? Once my sock (note the singular, it will take some time and finding a lost bamboo DPN, size 2, anyone seen it? before I start the companion) and beret are finished I already have the next great knit planned. Of course, my theory is those two pesky projects will be done by Friday- optimisim lives on.
My next project is one near and dear to my heart- one only my Knitty Yoda friend Ann gets excited about with me, but her excitement is so genuine it doubles my own. I've got all the necessary tools, including yarn (in Bordeaux and Sunburst Gold), pattern and needles.



Ready? Alright- it's the Harry Potter scarf from the first two films. The Gryffindor scarf, to be precise, which should be ridiculously long (I have 6 skeins, not just the 4 I photo-ed), and ridiculously wide and which I just want to sing loudly and poorly about when I think on it. I have not one place to wear this scarf and only about a two month period (from what my new local neighbors tell me) to need a warm scarf at all. Do I care? Ha! Ha, I say! I laugh in the face of reason. My Gryffindor scarf will be the pinnacle of all my knits so far.

Harry Potter and knitting? If only DMB would perform in my living room, while I knit, how perfect would my life be? Sigh of joy.

A Thief In My Own Home

"A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation." Mark Twain

There are of course other ways to learn a man's character. Or, more to the point, my character, which it turns out is that of a thief. I'm embarrassed to admit this online, in public, especially as you either know me very well (the shock, you never guessed!) and the rest of you don't know me from Adam and are wondering why you'd read a criminal's blog. I mean, frankly, I'm wondering the same thing about you. Yet there it is, Thief you are Me. No idea until the Apple help technician set me straight on this issue.
Here I was this morning, blog written, trying to upload photos and having one frustrating time staying on the internet. I won't do all the detail (mainly as I don't understand half of it) but basically we have a cable modem, my laptop has an internal router-thingy and we never set up our wireless router because the day the Internet Genies came and installed the modem my internet worked. It was miraculous, I thought, no router, and yet look, my Apple laptop, it is so beautiful, so shiny, so brilliant, as my email springs to life.
Until this last week when the internet went haywire. First, it was ridiculously slow and then no internet at all. Of course, I assumed I angered the Internet Gods (not to be confused with the Genies) and went through necessary attempts to placate them (turning the Internet off, turning the whole computer off, swearing loudly, you know the drill). At some point Hubby suggested, in passing, as we bought the Apple Care Package, why not use the Apple Care Package and call Apple? It's why he's so good at his job; he thinks outside the box.
Of course it was the Apple fellow who helpfully showed me my evil ways. Apparently, through no knowledge of my own (but isn't that what criminals say- I didn't know what I was doing? Or is that the mentally ill? Hmm...) I have been using my neighbor's router to get on the Internet. That's how darned strong this little Apple's internal modem-thingy is. Ashamed and horrified (though not so ashamed and horrified to stop using it for the afternoon until Hubby gets home and locates Netgear router), I stammered my way through an "I'm so ashamed and horrified" apology to the Apple fellow. Who clearly didn't care, and only wanted to sell me an Apple Airport or sparkly Ipod.
Still it's best to learn any unpleasantness about yourself sooner rather than later, isn't it? Some are too controlling, others too judgmental- I steal things. Good to know.
I realize there's been little said or shown about knitting. Here are the pics I wanted so desperately to post before my life of crime was exposed. Let's just hope my neighbor's internet holds out long enough for me to post. And isn't that the point of this blog anyway- we're all neighbors, be us united through yarn on the internet or living side by side and one of us paying $49.95 a month to Time Warner while the other freely uses it? Isn't that what brings us together?
So here, after much time and soul-searching, are my WIPs, the frustration that is my Toe-Up Sock and my green beret.




By the way, my posts usually won't be this long!

Launch!

Hello All! I'm new to knitting and blogging both, so patience is appreciated! I've recently discovered a new addiction- aside from cozy mysteries, Dave Matthews Band, Harry Potter, writing, and cooking- in the form of knitting and knitting blogs. To feed the beast, I decided to start my own, and this seems to be the results.
After blatantly stealing my blog name from Fannie Flag's Neighbor Dorothy in "Standing in the Rainbow" (one of my top 5) I'm trying to decide what else to post. As a launch, it's probably wise to throw out a few basic thoughts, such as I'm Emily. Hello there, lovely to meet you! I'm Southern by birth (Knoxville, TN) and nature ("oh, no, I'm fine whatever ya'll want is just fine") if not by accent (in the South, I am accentless, everywhere else I am Southern). After a brief, and bizarre decision to head north with the Hubby for his job- Hubby refused to line up with the idea of maintaining two households, one with me in the warm South surrounded by friends and family, him up North in the cold, biting winds of Chicago, with, um, one of our dogs?- we have recently come home, so to speak, to North Carolina. Like home, only better as we're only three hours from the beach.
And, good, better, best, here in NC is where I first discovered knitting! Love, love, love it. I found my own Local Yarn Shop, as the cool kids call them, where I took a beginner's class and then fell into a Thursday night knitter's group.
I am very, very much a beginner. I'm more reminded of that by my recent project, a Toe-Up Sock, which is, well, dubious at best. Until now, I've been sailing along, with a garter-stitch scarf (Mother's day gift to my Mum!), and beginner dishcloths (Mother's Day gift for my other mom, Suz!), then several more dishcloths (all except two have become gifts), and a couple of hats (Birthday gift for my Dad!). However, even with the frustration that is my Toe-Up Sock, this is still where I want to put most of time- often to the detriment of everything else! Except eating. I always find time to eat.
Probably enough for now so I'll stop. Good Lord can I chatter! I doubt I'll usually go on this long, but as this is a launch there is some need for ceremony. So here I am in the world of fiber, just one more knitter, trying to find a simple pattern, a little yarn, and make it honest.
"I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today." William Allen White