Ode to the humble hot dog!

Tonight it was pigs in a blanket. And the ketchup was served like this:



The pigs were crazy easy. Two cups of heartsmart bisquick, 1/2 cup of skim milk. Mix together and roll out into a 12x12" square. Cut into 12 4x3" rectangles and wrap around 12 hotdogs. Bake at 325 for 10 minutes. Tada! Betcha didn't know I was such a culinary genius, huh?

Gimme a break. I'm tired. The party was a smashing success except for all the leftovers. Seriously. RSVP. Répondez s'il vous plaît. Sometimes I feel very old when I feel the need to critique people's manners. But I'm trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they honestly don't know what it means. Maybe they think they only have to call if they are coming. But here's my Miss Manners lesson for the day. Even if you are not coming, it is still expected (and gracious) to rsvp. That way the host/ess knows that they don't have to plan food or whatever for you. In this day and age so many people don't rsvp that you almost *have* to plan for the non-responders. Ask me about the birthday party where I didn't. Well actually I did, but I didn't plan for the sheer number of people who showed up without rsvp'ing. Legendary disaster.

But really. If you are invited to a party, cut the hostess a break. Call or e-mail and tell her you can't make it (or can). It really does make life that much easier for her. That way a poor girl like me doesn't end up with 100 cans of various soda and 50 hot dogs leftover. Yeah, I'm not kidding. Apparently my slime punch was a raging success and that's all people drank. Ok. I'm done ranting. Really.

In knitting news I picked back up my endpaper mitts. They just weren't gonna fit over my gorilla hands with a 56 st cast-on on size 0 needles. (Yes, I have gorilla hands. I'm 5'10", whaddya want?) So I tweaked the pattern slightly for 60 sts and I'm finally to the fair-isle portion. Ribbing is evil, of this I am sure.

The Grudge 35

I've had 35 years of holding grudges. No, seriously. I am the queen of grudge-holders and bridge-burners. There are always flames leaping behind me because I never stop burning bridges. Never.

Sometimes I give people too many chances, sometimes too few. Many times I wonder what the hell is wrong with people who seem to be gluttons for punishment. You know, those people that keep going back and back to allow the same person to hurt them over and over again. I did that once. Well I mean I did that with one person. I guess it was due to the fact that once I had kids I felt like I should do anything to preserve my family. It didn't work of course. He was never my family.

Sometimes I wonder why I am so quick to cut people off. Is it because of the butthead? Not sure. Very few of the people I've cut loose could ever have that much of an impact on my life. Mostly it's just the random, I don't need this crap kind of cut-offs. But I'm damned good at it.

Ah, introspection. A Saturday afternoon nap will do that to you. You'll have odd dreams and heavy thoughts will hang in your head as you search for a strong enough source of caffeine to clear out all the cobwebs. Mostly my head is filled with one thought. If I sucked it up and invited my sister (and my beloved nephew) to our Halloween party would she suck it up enough to come? I mean I'm still incredibly angry at her and I miss him the most, but still.

I think it's time for a Starbucks run.

Cheez o Petes

I have no idea what that means. But it's a good pseudo curse word. Lil dude has been saying "Oh for the love of Uncle Pete". Uncle Pete is my stepbrother. I didn't grow up with him though, and the boys barely have seen him. But he is forever implanted in their brains because he is a rock star. Actually for real. He has a really great band. The boys wanna be rock stars (and spies and firemen) but I don't think their "uncle" would appreciate their High School Musical rock star aspirations.

By the way, those movies are like kiddy crack. Every kid I know, boy, girl, whatever loves those movies. Poor Kim had to sit through one the other night. I think it made her develop a tic.

Why am I awake at midnight when the alarm will ring at 6am? Because I am stupid. That is why. I am re-working Statistics homework so that I can get points that I missed the first time around. I'm trying to convince myself that it's worth it. This whole college thing. The more I hear about public schools the more unsure I become. I'm supposed to do field experience this semester. I've been assigned to an algebra class in what can only be described as an "inner-city" high school. Well as inner-city as Jacksonville gets. But the teacher hasn't called me back yet to arrange times. Sometimes I feel like I should take a step back and just do elementary teaching. Other days I'm convinced I need my master's so I can teach college. I'm nothing if not consistently indecisive.

And while I'm having a midnight whinefest (although sadly without wine or Irish cream) I might as well complain about my spring schedule. I wanted to leave a couple of days a week open to substitute teach. You know... experience, dollars, blah, blah, blah. But my Calc three class is at an odd time and it's impossible for me to schedule around with having to pay to put the boys in morning or after care.

Wait. Did you say you were here for the knitting? Silly me. What am I working on?

1. Juliet in double-stranded sage Cotton Fleece
2. Upstream Architecture Socks in a red/orange/fair isle Meilenweit
3. A simple baby blanket in Muench Big Baby

Things I'm not working on:

1. The Dead Bride. Guess it's not her year.
2. Katherine Hepburn - I screwed it up and haven't started over yet
3. Sandy Cardigan - And it's gonna get slightly chilly soon....
And more other things than I can possibly count. Might be time for WIP control again.

Tilting the duster...

Dusting the tilter... It's such a cute name for a sweater coat, the tilted duster. I feel like I should wear it with a drink in both hands. As you can see my duster is hanging out in the yarnstore (near the malabrigo and the IK) until it gets cool enough to wear it here. All in all, I must say, I *adore* this sweater!



Notes about this project:
If you knit it in malabrigo (or a similiar kettle dyed or hand dyed yarn) do some looking before you start. In hindsight I wish I had purposely chosen which two balls to use for my sleeves. One sleeve has a lot more of the lighter pink in it than the other. But rather than rip, I decided to "embrace" the kettle dyed qualities.

I was afraid I was going to run out of yarn, so I knit the fronts, the back, the sleeves, and then the collar. That way if I ran short I could just shorten the skirt. Turns out I was fine. I used way less than 6 balls of the red mahogany malabrigo on size 10 needles for the 40" size. It came out a bit bigger than 40" because my gauge was off, but I had planned for that.

Regardless of the yarn issue, I think knitting the skirt last was a good idea. The skirt is long and tough to get through, but it's nice to know that you're done at that point.

I had saved my original swatch so I tested out steam iron blocking it. It worked fine and didn't hurt the precious yarn so that's how I got the curl out of the stockinette portions of the skirt.

I must say, this is one of my favorite projects ever!