Oh Happy Day!

We're in a recession. Unemployment is going up. The stock market is coming down. It's raining out. BUT MY HANDMAIDEN YARN JUST ARRIVED IN THE MAIL!!!

2 skeins arrived, neatly packed in a ziplock bag. What a pick-me-up! I purchased the Seasilk yarn - 70% silk, 30% sea cell (a cellulose fiber made with seaweed...). I only ordered this after doing a good amount of research on it, since it is pricey. But everyone on-line and on Ravelry said this was amazing to work with. I hope to be able to agree!

The color I chose is called "Monarch" - it's got lots of golden tones. I'm going to make the clapotis scarf with it. The clapotis pattern involves a lot of intentionally dropped stitches to make a ribbony effect in the scarf. Click here to see a finished one!

One interesting thing I've read about this yarn is that it smells like the ocean. There was the faintest smell of salt water when I first sniffed it! But now that I've had it out of the bag for a couple hours, it seems to have gone. I'm amazed at all the beautiful colors and the silky (yet strong) texture of this yarn. I can't wait to get going on this project!

Happy St. Paddy's Day (Belated)

Who doesn't enjoy a parade? (At least for the first 45 min, before your back starts to hurt and all the good floats have gone by). Again this year we had great weather for the Morristown St. Patrick's Day parade. This is a really nice event - it's the second year we've attended (this year we met my parents there) and it was a great morning! We had breakfast at a bagel shop (Jason's breakfast sandwich on a green bagel was very festive), found some good parade real estate, made camp, and enjoyed the event!

One of the parade marchers was NJ Governor Jon Corzine. In this photo, he has somewhat of a defeated expression - lots of parade-watchers were boo-ing him when he walked by. (For any of you out of state residents, Corzine has a pretty low approval rating - he's cut funding for a lot of educational programs (Rutgers had many of their athletic teams cut a couple years back), raised major state highway tolls, increased taxes, etc. Apparently he has some plan to get NJ out of debt by leasing the GSP and NJTPK? How does that work???). Not to mention his car accident, where a state trooper was driving his motorcade 90 mph up the parkway.... Anyway - I felt that the booing was kinda rude - so I just hissed "wear your seat belt" under my breath when he walked by. I wonder if he participated in the Hoboken parade - they probably would have thrown a beer bottle at him (or worse) from the article I read!

Hey, BTW - did anybody see John Stewart rip Jim Kramer apart on the Daily show? That "Brawl Street" show just MADE my week! I think Stewart really captured everyone's frustration with those CNBC market-analyst clowns.

I digress. After the parade, Jason and I went to his parent's house for an Irish dinner. It was wonderful - his parent's make such good corned-beef and cabbage! The meat has practically no fat on it and just falls apart (kind of like pulled-pork) thanks to a lot of trimming and preparations they do in advance. Generally I don't even like corned-beef yet this main course was fantastic.

Holidays like St. Paddy's day are great. I think you need to get out there and enjoy them, otherwise every day just blurs together with the last. I'll leave you with an Irish toast to friendship:

"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door".

Second Sock Syndrome (SSS)

Hooray! I've completed one sock of the KOIGU pair my hubby requested! Now I just need the motivation to complete the second one! Why am I not ready to jump in and complete the pair? Because 1) there's always the temptation to start one of the new projects that you found while you were knitting sock #1 and 2) in my case, completing sock #1 did have some knitting drama associated with it... (hence this post). Enter... second sock syndrome (SSS).

So I'd just completed about 4 inches of the foot portion when I "requested a fitting" from the future owner (my husband). He donned the sock, and I measured that I needed to knit another 2" before starting the decreases for the toe. So I knit, knit, knit and requested a second fitting. Jason tells me "you know, it doesn't really seem any longer". So, I continue to knit, knit, knit, WITHOUT confirming that the sock was positioned in the same place on his foot during fitting #2 as fitting #1. So I complete the toe decreases and after a brief kitchener stitch youtube refresh (compliments of the KnitWitch), I graft the sock and am done. Excitedly, I show the sock to Jason, who tries it on, and behold - the foot was easily THREE INCHES TOO LONG!

His foot looked like a Dr. Seuss character!!! I was crushed! I think he must have pulled the sock up higher on his foot, in fitting #2, which I definitely should have noticed. I thought of knitting an identical misfit sock, and then shrinking them in a hot laundry cycle.... but I realized this KOIGU is 100% wool, and they'd felt. So.... at midnight last night, I un-sewed the toe and proceeded to rip out 3" of sock! Amazingly, I was able to pick up all the stitches and resume at a safe point. Looking back, I should have taken a picture of his Dr. Seuss sock because it looked really funny, but I think I was too crushed at the time. Here is a photo of the properly sized sock #1, which I completed an hour ago. The final product did come out great. BTW, that's my husband's leg, not mine. :)

So I'm kinda pooped on the socks. Hence the SSS.

Most knitters remedy this condition by knitting 2 socks at once, using 2 circular needles - and also because I think using double pointed needles (DPNs) has a bad rap. But I actually love DPNs - they're more compact and I think you can knit faster with them, rather than sliding stitches along a cable, if you don't have a perfect length circular needle. But... to each their own.

Single sock.... I promise to knit you a mate.... but enjoy a solitary lifestyle for a bit - it might be a while until you meet your match.

Do You do Shabu?

Enjoying a great meal is another way to unwind! With these challenging economic times upon us, dining at home seems to be the way to go - since going out to dinner is less frequent, selecting a good restaurant for the times you do splurge and go out is key! This past weekend we went to one of our favorites - Shabu Tatsu, in the East Village. This place is great. New York magazine selected this restaurant in their top critics pick list and indicated "Shabu-Tatsu is messy fun for a generation of foodies who were denied the interactive delights of the sorely lamented fondue pot, that recently resurrected staple of the bad-taste seventies". I love fondue and am not afraid to admit it (heck, if I'm admitting my addiction to knitting, most other things pale in comparison)... The restaurant features "Shabu entrees", consisting of thinly sliced cuts of meat, which diners immerse in boiling water to cook. Two savory dipping sauces accompany the meat, in addition to salad and a bowl of white rice. After the meat course is over, a platter of veggies and noodles are served, which diners immerse into the broth, and enjoy ladled into seasoned soup mugs.

I like the integration of courses at Shabu - during the meat course you prepare your own broth for the veggie and noodle course! Very cool! We've been to Shabu Tatsu with a bunch of our friends over the past couple years, so if you go for the first time 1) ask for instructions from the waiter if you're a newbie because otherwise I think they assume you know what you're doing - if I didn't go with an experienced friend the first time, I could see myself eating raw meat and boiling the salad 2) be fairly competent with chop-sticks - I've never seen any forks and don't think they'd work anyway 3) be prepared to get a steam facial from the cauldron of boiling water. The only thing that would make Shabu better would be for them to bring back the ginger ice cream. Overall this place is one of my top picks.

After dinner, our friends took us for "Bubble Tea". This drink was a first for me - Saint's Alp's Teahouse offers these really neat tea drinks that have tapioca balls ("pearls") in them. How cool is that!? The tapioca blobs are the size of large blueberries, I'd say. You use a pretty wide straw to drink them up - I was envisioning myself choking on them in the middle of the street, but our friends assured us they travel up the straw pretty slowly, so everything went smoothly. It's always fun to try new things!