My 7 year old sister, affectionately known here as The Beast, now has a blog.
I’ve been helping her out with formatting and themes, but I need everyone’s help to keep her going! That’s where you come in, faithful blog readers… head on over to my baby sister’s blog and leave her some comments, tell her you clicked a link from my blog so it’s not like you’re a total stranger! I want her to stay encouraged to keep on writing!
Posted in Uncategorized
So I guess I have benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. At least that’s what the doctor said after he threw me back on the table and jerked my head around. It was very strange. Now I am sort of stuck at home, since I am not supposed to drive for a while. When I stand or move my head quickly I get a bit dizzy, sometimes I fall over a bit. I suppose it would be slightly humorous to see, but I’m getting pretty annoyed with the whole thing.
In other news, the more I think about it the more I think that eloping doesn’t sound all that bad. I seriously do not understand how anyone affords to get married ever. (Oh hey, blog readers… did you know that The Boy and I are planning our wedding? Probably not since I haven’t updated since April. But don’t congratulate me yet, we’re technically not engaged yet. Like I was going to do this the traditional way…) Our wedding fund bank account is growing, but whether it will contain enough money by the time September 2011 comes around is anyone’s guess. We’ve picked the venue, a small historic house in downtown Monterey with a private garden where we will have the ceremony and reception.
September 2011 is a long way away and we have a while to save still, but I am still stressing about it and I wonder if we’ll be able to pull it off.
Posted in wedding
It’s been a few weeks since I got back from Michigan and as always I returned to California with mixed emotions. Every time I go back I realize how many things I gave up to come out here – my family, favorite places, feeling like I know where I am and know where I’m going. I’ve been rebuilding here, but it’s not the same. *sigh*
Mom’s ugly socks. I guess Dad felt left out of the photoshoot and snuck his gross feet in there too. (Hi Dad. Your feet are too big for handknit socks… I made Jason a pair and it was torture.) I have to admit, the socks do look okay now that they’re on her feet. Still an awful color though. I learned that Mom handwashes her 2 pairs (3 now!) of handknit socks every time she wears them and she wears them all once a week. I love my mom. ^_^
My grandma and her new socks – a waving lace pattern in Blue Moon Socks That Rock Mediumweight, Watermelon Tourmaline. I knit this pair in under a week! I decided a bit late that I wanted to have a pair to give to my grandma too, but I finished them early Sunday morning before I flew back home.
I like when people wear the things I have knit. I don’t even wear the things I have knit.
ACT 1
(The Boy and yelley are in bed, Tomo-chan is asleep at the foot of the bed. A noise comes from outside, and Tomo-chan wakes up.)
TOMO: erf.
YELLEY: Tomo-chan sleep more.
THE BOY: mmmfffleee.
YELLEY: Are you awake? I was having an awesome dream.
THE BOY: Me too. We were on a date.
YELLEY: We were on a date in mine too! Where were we in yours?
THE BOY: At a restaurant.
YELLEY: That’s hella lame. In my dream we were at an Alligator Park. I totally win.
(All three snuggle back into the blankets and fall asleep again.)
(End Act 1)
ACT 2
(The trio are still asleep about 2 hours later, when suddenly Tomo-chan decides it is time to claw at yelley’s face. Tomo climbs up the bed, settles on yelley’s chest, yawns, stretches, and claws yelley’s face at the same time.)
TOMO: *squeaky puppy yawn*
YELLEY: Ouch, Tomo! Leave my face alone!
(yelley pushes Tomo over to The Boy)
YELLEY: Go wake up Daddy. Daddy really wants to play with you right now.
THE BOY: mmmrrrrffflle I was having the best dream.
YELLEY: Me too! What was yours about?
THE BOY: It was a sexy dream with me and you.
YELLEY: Oooooohhhhh mine was a sexy dream too, but it wasn’t with you, it was with Dave Chappelle. What the hell, right? You were even there and I said to you, “Hey, Baby, you know I love you and after this I’m coming right back to you, but I just have to try this out right now.” And your reply was “I know. If I was you I would too. Go.” And that crazy lady from work was there high-fiving me and saying “You go, girl! You’re awesome!”
THE BOY: . . .
(End Act 2)
Yeah. So, in other knitterish news, the most awful socks ever are complete. I finished them the Saturday before last and they are washed and blocked and ready for gifting. I’ll post pictures of my mom wearing the socks, but I’m not going to post any FO shots because I want my blog to have the least amount of vomit on it as possible. I’ve thought about wrapping the socks in pretty paper and ribbon and telling Mom to not open them until after I’ve left so I really never have to see them again, but I still want to see if they at least fit her. I will be so angry if they don’t even fit her… all that torturous work for nothing. I’ll see my mom this Thursday, I’m returning to The Mitten for the weekend because of my cousin’s wedding. I can’t even express how excited I am to be done with these socks and moving on to other projects. I started another pair of socks with the hopes of having them done before April 11th, the day I return to California, so I can give them to my grandma. Blue Moon Socks That Rock mediumweight in Watermelon Tourmaline, I’m doing them toe up two at a time and I’m at the gusset increases… it’s Monday now, think I can finish before Sunday afternoon? 
The yarn room is finished! Well, almost. I still need new outlet and switch covers, but that is hardly even a thing. I was going for a yarn shop feel and I think that I achieved that fairly well.
My yarn stash and spinning corner. The shelves are Ikea bookcases that we found for cheap on Craigslist and the prints on the wall are things we picked up at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco a couple years ago.
My Ashford Traditional and my baby roving stash. The Boy hung the hooks on the wall for me – I think the roving looks nicer hung up than stashed in the shelves with the rest of the yarn. My wheel was my X-mas gift from The Boy and my parents last year. Still trying to think of a name for her… or him? I guess it could be a boy wheel too…
The table and chairs were another Craigslist find – replicas of 1950s style that fit perfectly with the room. My knitting book library and other knitting supplies. More Ikea shelves from Craigslist. That’s Baby Echo on the upper right shelf! You can’t really tell in the picture, but she is wearing some knitted puppy legwarmers. The flowers on the wall are from Target.
We took the closet doors off and stashed a daybed in the nook. Yeah, pretty much all the furniture is stuff we found on Craigslist. The garland on the top are lights with covers that look like yarn balls that I found in Japantown. Not happy with where they are and how they’re hanging, but it works for now.
We spent a total of $260 on furniture for the room, the tile and equipment was $140, then about another $100 on paint, curtains, and new decorations. So the whole room cost about $500 give or take a bit. Of course that’s not counting the hundreds (thousands?…) of dollars worth of yarn, roving, and knitting supplies….
So yeah, you can be totally envious of me now, I’ll allow it. ^_^
Posted in home improvement, knitting
Somehow The Boy and I both got a three day weekend together, so kitchen renovations are back in full swing. We spent the better part of today smashing out tile and cabinets and now the kitchen is completely empty. Except for some old linoleum that doesn’t want to come up, but we’ll worry about that later.
We made it through the day without injury! Unless you count the window, which The Boy accidentally smashed with the hammer…. so we’re getting a new window too! Yay. So tomorrow we will be assembling and hopefully installing cabinets. We have what seems like thousands of IKEA boxes in our garage full of various bits and bobs that are supposed to come together to form cabinets somehow, but we’ll see how that actually turns out tomorrow. We need to get them up soon, we paid for our countertops today. Assuming things go well(ish), here’s a bit of what we’ll be putting in…
Cabinet color.
Countertops – Silestone.
I am so sore right now and it’s probably going to be even worse tomorrow. The Boy is in the kitchen taping plastic over our window as a temporary fix until we can get the new one installed and I think that maybe I will knit on the awful socks for a while before I collapse for the night.
Oh yeah, I went to Stitches West yesterday and bought a lot of stuff. Lots of roving, a couple sweater quantities, some stuff for my yarn room, etcetera. Maybe I didn’t really need any of that stuff, as it is very possible that I may be approaching SABLE status, but the new additions definitely look nice on my yarn shelves…
For the non-knitters, SABLE stands for stash acquisition beyond life expectancy, when one has more yarn than one can possibly knit in their own lifetime. That’s perfectly acceptable though, right?
Posted in home improvement, knitting
Does anyone ever get to learn a lesson the easy way?
I gave my mom a pair of socks that I made when she visited me last Summer and she loved them so much that she asked for another pair for Christmas. They turned out quite lovely, if I do say so myself:
She absolutely loved them, as she should since they are pretty gorgeous socks. So now I like to knit socks for my mom, I guess. I tell her that her next pair will be her birthday gift in April. So we go to the yarn store and I tell her to pick out the yarn that she wants. She knows nothing about yarn, so I’m thinking I can steer her in the right direction. I’m feeling pretty confident that she’s going to go for the nice blue Claudia’s, or maybe the blue and purple Koigu. She picks up the most awful color of Crystal Palace Taos ever. This one I can handle – Taos felts if you so much as look at it, obviously not a good choice for socks. Moving on. She picks up some rainbow colored Mountain Colors Bearfoot. Okay, not colors I would choose, but I can handle that. We head back up to the front of the store to pay.
On our way to the register she sees It. Berroco Sox Metallic. She nearly dies of excitement upon learning that she can have “blink blink socks”. I gently remind her that the phrase is “bling bling” and quicken my pace towards the register, Bearfoot still in hand. She’s not following. She wants the blink blink socks. And this time I can’t even lie to her about it because the yarn says “Sox” right on it (damn you, Berroco). I trudge back, put the Bearfoot away, and grab the blue and green Metallic Sox, thinking that at least it’s a nearly tolerable color. As my hand grasps the yarn I immediately want to recoil in horror. I wasn’t aware that they were able to spin sandpaper into yarn, but apparently they’ve found a way. She doesn’t want that color. She wants the red, pink, and gray one. She wants the one that looks like a mistake, like if you dyed it yourself at home you’d just throw it out and cut your losses, not even worth the trouble of overdyeing. But I pick it up anyway, because I love my mom. I paid money for that yarn and I brought it home with me. Really, I love my mom. And I will keep on reminding myself of that through every torturous stitch and every agonizing color change until the socks are finished and I can mail them to her, along with the leftover yarn, and forget that such a monstrosity ever resided in my knitting bag.
Lesson learned: never let your mother choose the yarn.
January: Decided to buy a house. Had some awful kind of food poisoning.
February: This blog was born. The house hunt continued unsuccessfully.
March: The house hunt continued unsuccessfully.
April: Under contract for a house.
May: Went to Chicago, saw my family, turned 25 (ew). Went to Las Vegas, saw my family.
June: Moved into the house. Mer moved in too. Started kitchen renovations.
July: Lost The Green Ninja in a tragic accident. Kitchen renovations at a stand-still.
August: Attended Sock Summit. Kitchen renovations at a stand-still.
September: Acquired a small dog. Celebrated 3 year anniversary with The Boy in San Francisco. Kitchen renovations at a stand-still.
October: Went to Denver and Fort Collins. Mer and I got the swine flu. Kitchen renovations… well… yeah.
November: Mer moved out. Worked Thanksgiving.
December: Worked Christmas. Worked New Year’s. Kitchen… still haven’t worked in there.
Jobs Held: 1 (!!!)
Places Lived In: 2 – one apartment and one house (!!!)
States Lived In: 1 (!!!)
States Visited: 4 (Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, Colorado) Needs improvement…
Foreign Countries Visited: None. Not even Canada. Disgraceful.
Boyfriends: 1 ❤
Last year's checklist:
Jobs Held: 3
Apartments Lived In: 3
States Lived In: 2
States Visited: 5 (Michigan, Illinois, Nevada, California, Arizona)
Foreign Countries Visited: 1 (Canada counts)
Boyfriends: 1 ❤
Last year's goals:
1. No buying yarn. Except for Stitches West. I have enough yarn to knit for years.
(Well… I didn't buy yarn between 1/1/2009 and Stitches West… so I sort of did this? No?)
2. Save money. A lot of it. Need to get the down payment scraped together.
(Saved enough for the down payment and then some!)
3. Buy a house.
(Closed and moved in on June 1st!)
4. Add 10 more recipes to my regular rotation cookbook.
(Well… I don't have a working kitchen, but I am pretty good with my slow cooker now…)
5. Knit more for other people.
(Three hats for Mer, one hat for Mer's boy/friend, one hat for Tess, two pairs of socks for Mom, one sweater for Grandma, one scarf for John, one sweater for Tomo-chan… I think I did okay here.)
It's been a good year… such is the life of a privileged 20-something. ^_^
The blog has been a bit neglected, but I have lots of pictures of Xmas knitting and Xmas presents to share as soon as I get back from vacation (!!!). Off to Michigan to visit my family tomorrow!
Posted in blahblah
Well, not right away at least. I’ve lived nearly 6 months without one and I haven’t been living solely off McChicken sandwiches and microwaved Bagel Bites. I’ve been getting creative with the cooking options that we do have: rice cookers, slow cookers, George Foreman grills, an electric skillet, a toaster oven, and of course a microwave. Did you know that you can make lasagna in a slow cooker? I had never even thought of it until I found a recipe for it. Of course the recipe sounded dreadful… it called for canned tomato sauce only, no eggs, no basil, no seasonings at all really… gross. So I made up my own that turned out way more delicious than I expected.
yelley’s slow cooker lasagna
-1 box lasagna noodles
-3 jars prepared spaghetti sauce (I only used 2 jars of Prego original, but next time I will use 3 so that I won’t have to skimp on the sauce layers)
-4 tbsp white sugar and 1 tsp dried basil per jar of sauce used (this is optional, but I like a sweet sauce and I always doctor my jarred sauce this way)
-1 lb. ground beef
-1 medium onion, finely chopped
-3 tbsp olive oil
-1 large container ricotta cheese (or 1 medium container ricotta and 1 medium container cottage cheese)
-16 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese
-2 eggs
-parmesan cheese
-kosher salt, basil, oregano, parsley
-non-stick cooking spray
Heat the oil in an electric skillet on medium heat (or I guess use a stove and large frying pan if you want to be super fancy) and cook the onions until translucent. Brown the ground beef and season with salt as desired. Add in the jarred sauce, sugar, and basil and heat thoroughly. Reduce heat to low and stir periodically.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs then add the ricotta and mozzarella (and cottage cheese if you’re using it) and mix well. I like to add generous amounts of basil, parsley, and oregano to my cheese mixture but it’s not vital.
Spray the slow cooker dish with non-stick cooking spray. Spread a layer of sauce in the bottom of the dish, then cover the sauce with uncooked lasagna noodles. My slow cooker is oval shaped so I had to do a lot of noodle breaking to make the layer even. Spoon a thin layer of the cheese mixture on top of the noodles, then cover with another layer of noodles. Keep layering like this, sauce-noodles-cheese-noodles, until you run out of one of them (or if you’re super awesome like I am you will end after a sauce layer with no noodles or cheese mixture leftover, but not everyone can be as awesome as I am, I guess ^_^). Sprinkle the top with parmesan cheese. Cook on low setting for 3 and a half to 4 hours.
Next up on my to-cook list: slow cooker enchiladas.
Posted in Uncategorized
it's peanut butter yelley time. . . 