Spinning Through the Week

May I present roughly 800 yards of Berrilicious Merino. Dyed as roving by Dave and spun by your favorite Mama Squid.Berrilicious is a sport weight, 3 ply done in my favorite Navajo method. I just love the rhythm of Navajo plying. Plans? I want to find a nice fair isle cardigan or vest pattern. No steeks pleases. Right now I am debating the Spools pattern from Handpaint Country, modified to avoid cutting. I am not afraid of steeking, per se, just of my habit of making things too big and having to go back and reknit -- which is not a possibility if half the yarn is in tiny pieces. Not with my precious hand spun, please. I'll take suggestions ...

Next on the wheel was the rest of the plummy wool.
I predrafted it all, after first dividing the roving into 16 roughly equal parts, and spun it up over 2 days. Pictures of the finished skeins in a day or two when I need room in the bathroom again.
Papa Squid was amazed at the pile of roving and decided to have some fun.

Now both my wheels are empty and next up is the matching orangy roving. I spun the last of the plummy stuff using a modified long draw and it spun up so quickly that I may be deluding myself as to how fast the orangy stuff will spin up.

Meanwhile, I have not been the only creative Squid this week. Look at what Papa made!

(The kids' monsters will debute, probably, tomorrow. They have some text to write up in order to properly describe their creations. But first and foremost, we have snow to play in!)

More Granola and Some Stitch Markers

My stitch markers are starting to arrive. Only one package is outstanding and it is making its way across the border from Canada.
This should give you an idea ... 4 each of the ducks, 5 of the teapots, 4 sheep (one black), four gold fish and the other sea creatures.

Today also saw the arrival of a miss-shipment of more granola. It was supposed to be a different flavor. They said we could keep it and are sending out the correct order.
With the granola, came a complimentary T-shirt. Now we can show our true feelings about this granola.
To answer your questions ...

The reason that we ordered 26 pounds of granola (the Maple Almond flavor) is because we both eat it as part of our breakfast and Mike uses it for lunch as well. I add it to plain yogurt with a bit of honey. Mike adds it to his morning oatmeal and to his lunchtime yogurt. Our usual purveyor of it tends to go through dry spells and neither of us has found a comparable substitute. Mike has a back up granola but I am a girl of habit and like to have my breakfast taste "just right" to quote a certain golden haired porridge stealer. So, after the last two trips to Fairway failed to yield our favorite flavor, we finally caved and ordered it on line.

I'll let you know when it is time to order again.

A Little Granola Anyone?

26 pounds.

Nah, we're not choosy. Nope. Not us.

Creative Cooking

We are now firmly in winter mode here at Chez Squid and Mike broke out the crock pot to stew a batch of chili for dinner. Instead of serving it over rice, as is our custom, he decided to make bread bowls.
Yes, he made the bread from scratch.


Yes, my son attempted to eat it as a sandwich. (We stopped him before he could burn his mouth.)

And yes, it was delicious!

***

And no, I have not finished Little Squid's sweater. Squidette was kind enough to give me her cold so I have spent most of my at home time this weekend just lying around and reading.

Off-Line

Woke up yesterday to find Mike doing his weights with the t.v. off. Not unusual in itself but the timing was a bit off -- he usually does weights after the aerobic part of his workout, not before -- and the t.v. is ALWAYS on when he works out. As I headed for my computer with my morning cuppa, he said "don't bother." Huh? He had to repeat himself and explain before my sleep befuddled brain comprehended that we had not cable service. This meant no t.v., no internet and no phone.

I grabbed a book and settled in for a nice quiet morning.

The t.v. stayed off all day, even after service was returned -- sometime shortly after I really lit into the customer service agent who kept insisting that it was only an "assumed" outage and not a verified outage. (The difference? Not enough people had complained yet. Really! At least that's what she told me.) After 15 minutes on hold for a supervisor, my agent came back and said that now it was a verified outage. Um ... we reported this at 5:30 a.m. and it was 6 hours later ... even if it was not widespread, it was verified as far as we were concerned. I never did get to speak to the supervisor and I actually accused the agent of sitting and twiddling her thumbs for 15 minutes while I was on hold.

One of Mike's cousins was in town for the day, so we had a lovely time visiting. Lunch at a favorite, local, Indian restaurant, a wander through our favorite Indian market and lots of lovely knitting/schmoozing while we caught each other up on the families.

During the visit I finished cute scarves for my youngest niece and nephew (no pictures, their parents read the blog) and made major headway on Little Squid's new sweater. (Also no picture, imagine 10 inches of ribbing and stockiette in teal wool.)

Lovely, relaxing day.

Sweet Home Indiana

I love Indianapolis. I truly think that it is my second favorite city. Where else can you get great biking and a State Fair that you can pedal to? (And get $1 off admission for doing so!)(Let me know if you know of anywhere else like this, we might have to go there.)We started our time in Indy by eating dinner with my wonderful "kid" brother and his equally wonderful bride. They introduced us to L'Enorme Frittes at Brugge. Mmmm ...
The following morning, however, we were distressed to see that our activities of the previous evening had aroused the suspicions of the local secret service -- look at them surrounding our poor minivan. We are unsure what we did to offend them as they never actually spoke to us but it was kind of freaky. (Yes, we know that the secret service does not really use that kind of car but having 5 of all of the same car surrounding us was still kind of weird.)
We then did a spot of geocaching before heading out for a ride and a visit to the Indiana State Fair.
At the fair we found lots of fried food. Mmm ...and really large things.

Like this chicken
and this bunny (which we think ate a snake, it was sooo large and kind of snake shaped)
and the world's second largest boar ...
right next to the world's largest boar!
There were very large wheels for those who needed to roll ...
and very large shoes for those who chose to walk.
Of course there was the extra large shoe lace to go with the extra large shoe ...which might belong to this guy.
Of course such a large guy needs his vegetables equally large.
For some reason, the sheep were normal size but seemed to be embarrassed about it, hiding their shame behind these masks so we should not know their true, puny identities.These horses were also normal sized though they seemed huge to us. My brother was bothered by the fact that he was the only one applauding for the ribbon winners.


There were of course rides for the small ones.
Yes, they are wearing John Deere hats.
And Papa Squid joined Squidette on the flume. No pictures of Mama Squid braving (or cursing) on the roller coaster with the thrill seeking pre-teen. (Actually there are photos but they are still on Papa Squid's camera -- you 'll see them in a day or two.)

Finally we pedaled back to lil' bro's place for a relaxing meal of pizza and some jigsaw puzzling.

Saturday dawned cloudy but your intrepid Squid prevailed and grabbed my fearless brother for a bike ride. Poor Josh is not a cyclist (though a fantastic athlete otherwise) and was a bit saddle sore for this second ride. He pushed and persevered and did manage to keep up with us for 20 miles of Indiana goodness. I love a nice flat state!

Lunch was burgers at Bub's ...
and then back to bro's to find a feeling better sis-in-law and a yummy dinner of lamb, orzo and Indiana corn. Yes, I am feeling somewhat fat today.

Tonight we are in West Virginia and tomorrow, if all goes well, we will be back in our beloved NYC. Yes, there is much knitting to talk about but see if you can wait until we get settled back in. There is also a couple of really neat photo series still to come once Papa down loads his photos.

Soft Food

We are brainstorming here at the House of Squid. Mama will need soft food for a few days this week. Papa is getting ready to make rice and chocolate puddings but I'm thinking that something savory might be a good idea. I am, however, stumped. Oh, and the rest of the family also has to eat and for some reason we are stumped on that front as well. Skillet Lasagna has been requested and will fill both "soft food" and "family food" categories. Any other suggestions? (Yes, we do usually manage to feed the family without too much trouble. It's just this week ...)

Yes, it seems that my little accident did more to my face then originally assumed and my dentist made the catch -- hence his insistence that I see his friend the plastic (and facial) surgeon. A little bit of "wait and see" and a lot of experience on the part of the latter seemed to prove the point. So, repairs are being made Tuesday morning.

The lace I was working on last week? A way of distracting myself. You see, I've known about this repair work since last Thursday but only just told Squidette this morning. Now I can go public. I wrapped the lace up all pretty last night and it will be delivered by my folks when they visit the happy couple next week.

Springtime in January

We took advantage of the unseasonable weather and went for the first ride of the year.Mounting our trusty steeds we rode down, around and back up the tip of Manhattan exiting the waterside paths at 10th street to obtain some baked goods. (Read: cookies!) Having heard about a bakery which gives 50% off all purchases to those who arrive on bike, I figured if four of us arrived then they should be paying us to take their goods. My opinion, however, was disregarded as we stocked up on cookies, muffins and oh so yummy pastry. (We really did not get all that much.)Walking for a bit, as the kids refueled, we showed them our old High School which was a bit confusing since it had the same name as the school where Papa Squid earns his salary.O.k., it is the same school, just a different building.

Stuyvesant High School is an august institution in New York City and as such earned itself a new building in 1992. The building pictured above once housed Stuyvesant and is where Papa and Mama Squid met many, many years ago. It is not, alas, where they fell in love. That happened on the Brooklyn Bridge, a few years later. But you've seen pictures of the Bridge of Love so I do not have to show it again right now.
Continuing west, still on foot, we passed the Friends Meeting House, circa 1860. I have always admired this building and had it permanently ingrained on my brain during my years in high school. It speaks plainly and simply and gives a feeling of solidness and stability. It is still used by the Friends (Quakers) as a meeting house.

We finished our ride with a quick stop at the Union Square Greenmarket for locally grown apples and then headed back home. Total milage: 11.1 -- see the new list in the side bar.




Yes, I have switched to the new Blogger and am working on tweaking my new template. In the process I lost some stuff including a button or two but I will try to get those back soon. I also lost last years ride stats. Oh well. I guess I can mostly reconstruct them from the archives but it is probably not worth the effort.