Baking

Well, with my man gone for 4 weeks I get bored at times and when I am bored I usually either play games on facebook or bake. This weekend I did both. A lot.
I made some mini blueberry pies for my daddy(no pics), some smarties cookies, cinnamon buns and some chocolate squares. Sorry for the crappy pics-I just used my cellphone for em.
I'm bringing most of these to a baby play date/knit date this afternoon-I had 2 cinnamon buns and a square with coffee for breakfast and if I don't want to gain a million pounds I need to get them out of here! ha ha ha ha ha Good thing I at least subbed Splenda for sugar or these would be deadly to my waistline!

Photos

In the past month I have:

Gone to a baby shower for a wonderful friend

Discovered a really gross looking bottle of cola at the store

Gone on a road trip

Finished a sweater that actually fits really good for once

and gotten a wicked swap package in the mail!

April and May

So I skipped over my April recap post only to stop blogging altogether! I am so bad!
Here's the main points:
April started off with a week or so of crazy anxiety attacks and depression. Got some anti-anxiety meds and ended up having a real bad reaction to the initial side effects and went home to stay with my parents for a week while my hubby was away.
I got used to my meds and am feeling fine as can be. Got a job and am working fairly steadily these days-although not enough to pay my bills completely.
Got accepted into college and paid my confirmation fee but got turned down for my student loan. Not sure how I'll pay for it, but I have a few months to sort that out.
My hubby is gone right now for 4 week doing work for his father's company so I am here on my lonesome with Mr. Zartan, but so far we have been getting along quite splendidly :)
That's the quick and dirty rehash of the last few months. I'll be more diligent with my blogging from here on out, folks!

Baby stuff!

Alright, so I am skipping my April news post for now to quickly post some pics of the baby stuff I have been working on. Some very good friends of mine are going to be having an unkown sex baby in August so I have been trying to find some great colors to work with that aren't too male or female since they insist on it being a secret even to themselves :)
Here's the two sweaters I have done so far-I'm currently working on a third. All from a Sirdar book I picked up, I'm not sure what number- I forget! Both are made with Sirdar Snuggly DK, which I am totally in love with!

I picked out this color first, and then Chad helped me pick out buttons to go with it. I love it! I'm using the left overs from this with a dark teal to make a striped sweater right now.

Then I decided I really wanted to use these apple buttons Kate got me for Christmas so I dragged Chad on a 3 hour walk to the yarn store and some other places and he picked out this lovely green to go with them.

The end of March

I knit a Lucha Libre for my brother in law for his birthday to add to the gift we already had gotten him. It was pretty funny.


I went out for my first jog of the year-I held up better than I had last year. Likely because a lot of it was trail running and had ups and downs rather than just running flat on concrete. I haven't gotten out again but I want to.

I dyed some Cascade superwash with tea. It was nice and easy to do and the color came out really nice. Not sure what I want to knit with it yet but I suspect it will be baby related since I am in baby knit mode for my friends Keith and Krista.

The month of March

Alright, so here's a quick relap of what I can remember from March. After our anniversary party I ended up getting Chad's flu which left me very very sick. i ended up in the ER twice and had to spend the night. Turned out I had contracted pericarditis in my heart because of the flu. So this is how I spent about 2 weeks of the month-on the couch with my kitty and not really chatting to anyone except my man.

Right after I got the all clear from my doctor that I was all healed up, I got a mysterious package in the mail. Inside was a beautiful note from one of my fav Ravelry girls, Shannon(aka Sparkleshan)

And this book, which I had been dying to get for a while now! I cried! It was the sweetest thing EVER!!!!! I can't wait to make stuff from it-I'm a little broke right now, so I am going to save a bit of cash over the summer and hopefully I can start a few of the sweaters closer to September so i can wear them in the fall!!

And when I was better enough to get out and see my friends, my best bud Lisa gave me this heart that she knitted for me when I was sick. It's too cute-I have it displayed in my living room and it makes me smile when I look at it :)

So sorry

I'm so sorry I haven't been around lately-there's been a lot going on(mostly bad) and I haven't been able to get myself to update. I have a tonne of pics and can fill in the blanks so things are up to date-hopefully I can get that all up soon. I'd do it now, but I started a new job yesterday and I have to get my ass to work!
xoxo

Second pair of socks!

Finished the second pair of RPM's and made myself some crappy but workable sock blockers from some coat hangers. They will have to do until I get actual ones! At least I can hang em up now and they will dry faster than flat on a towel!

Anniversary!

Yesterday, March 1st, was our 10 year anniversary. Went out for dinner with friends and family Saturday night but Chad was sick most of the weekend so he didn't enjoy it as much as he should have. Poor darlin :( I have been spoiling him with candy bars and stuff all weekend since he feels so crappy :(
And yes-he always looks unimpressed in photos-he doesn't mean to! ha ha ha ha

Have you ever....

spent a week or two reading blog posts, only to realize that you yourself haven't actually blogged? I do that all the time-and I apologize for it. So if I disappear, that is why. I am so engrossed in reading blogs that I forget I actually haven't posted ANYTHING myself. :p
I just woke up so I don't know what to post about right now. I'll just post a pic and come back later today when my brain is clear! :)

Baby Ramona!

Congratulations Ann and Derrick for welcoming in baby Ramona in the wee hours of Valentine's Day! Ruth must be super excited :)
P.S.-I was very very drunk last night and put my cell right beside my head when I fell asleep so I would get the news when Lesley texted it-it scared the crap outta me an hour later! ha ha ha ha ha ha I drunkenly stumbled to the living room to make a Rav post because I knew everyone was waiting to hear :P
Anyone know what kind of pie Ann likes? And is she a vegetarian or just while preggers? I never think to ask anyone these things :P

Craft Fair!

So I had a table at my first ever craft show on Saturday. It was a small show-with probably.....15 tables or so. Everything I sold except for one pendant at the end was to friends, but really? Half the people who showed up were people I knew :P So not too bad. I just put in an application for one in May that is waaay crazier and busier. I'm crossing my fingers that I get in!
Here's a bunch of pics so you can see the yummy goodness that was our table!

My friend Tacha makes awesome little critters with recycled felted sweaters

Foxes!

Our table of stuff-mine is the stuff off to the right of the pic-earrings, pendants and hair flowers

Here we are-looking way more awake than we felt :P

SOCKS!

So for my birthday a friend took me to a yarn store and got me to pick out what I wanted. And as I wanted to learn socks, I picked out the booklet for Magic Loop knitting. I have to say-I LOVE magic loop! I tried socks before a few times and never finished even 1 single sock because I hate dpns and I found it went soooo slow! Now that I have magic loop, I predict many socks in the future! This is the first pair I did, they are baby socks from the winter issue of Knit.1 magazine. They are for my friends Keith and Krista, who are expecting.

This pair is for Chad's mom. She's awesome and I thought of her when I saw this yarn. These are going in the mail right away! They just finished drying! The pattern is RPM from Knitty.com. I am now on my second pair of RPM-this time for Tiffany, the friend who bought me the magic loop book and also the yarn I am making her socks out of-it's beiges, which is not as fun as stripey yarn, but it's what she wanted and is still pretty-just no dramatic color changes to make me go "Ooooohhhhhooooohhh" ha ha ha ha

My dartmouth knitting group is doing a KAL of Marlena by Cookie A but I don't think I have the skills to conquer that just yet-not to mention I am kinda broke and don't have suitable yarn for it. That will have to wait. It's a gorgeous pattern, though! There's also a wicked pattern by Ysolda in there that I would like to try at some point-asfter I have a few pairs of regular socks under my belt first :P

Vintage Hairstyling

The book I have been long awaiting finally arrived at Pretty Things Boutique this week! It's called Vintage Hairstyling and it is so amazing!!!! Everything you ever wanted to know about curling hair is in this book as well as pages and pages of step by step instructions for specific looks. There's even a small section at the back on make-up! Hurray! Lisa and I tried a few pin curls with our new bottles of setting lotion and set up my super old hair dryer to dry our hair faster. The small bits we tried out worked really well-neither of our hair keeps curls at all but I still had curls when I woke up the next day! It was insane! I can't wait to try doing a whole head of hair!

Chocolatey Oat squares

I did some more baking! Yum!

OPA!

So last night was knit night with the Dartmouth Knitters and Brave Travellers group. This time we bravely traveled to OPA! since it was restaurant night. LEt's just say that while it was indeed awesome, I won't be going back for a looooong time-it was pretty expensive. Of course, I DID get a martini AND dessert with my meal :P Stop judging me! ha ha ha ha

Here's my side of the table of knitters

And here's the other! Lots of lovely ladies abound! And we were easily the loudest people in the restaurant.

Me and Lesley with out Mykonos martinis

Lesley's delish looking dessert

Lex's giant mountain of cake

Kathy's dessert is telling her she should go to OPA. Little did it know we were already there!

I managed to get almost a whole baby sock done while we were there-I am LOVING magic loop. LOVING.

French bread

Alright, so I do quite a bit of baking and cooking around here and I never think to photograph it. I'm going to try and keep up on that.
Also, in the fall, I am hoping to be enrolled in a 1 year course on boulanger and pastry arts. I cheated this time around by using the bread maker to do the harder prep work but I wanted to have it done right this first time so I could see what I was in for when it came to the shaping, rising, glazing and baking. I am really sad that I already ate supper because this looks and smells AMAZING.

Cat in the snow

Last week it snowed and despite my warning him it was cold and snowy outside, Zartan kept insisting he wanted to go outside. So I picked him up and plunked him in the snow :P

Sushi? Don't mind if I do!

Went out for sushi on Saturday night with some friends. Chad decided to come along even though he HATES sushi-and then he proceeded to order some random thing from the menu that he of course ended up disliking-and I don't blame him, it looked sooo gross!!!!!!!
I am allergic to seafood and there didn't seem to be any veggie tempura on the menu so I just got some maki and then a Peanut Buster Parfait when we all walked the 20 feet to Dairy Queen afterwards! The worse thing was that it was soooooo bitterly cold out! We were frozen by the time we got home!!!!!!!!!!

My avocado maki and my tempura yam maki-YUM!

Lisa with her sushi pizza and salad

Joe got a bunch of gross ol fishies!

There's Joe and Lisa

This is the gross thingy Chad got-it was like noodle soup with a big ol tempura shrimp and some chicken, an entire egg floating around and the top of a huge mushroom. SIIIIIIICK

You can tell here how impressed he is with it

Ian got this funny plate of stuff-he pointed out that his shrimp looks like a lady's legs!

Ian being smarmy and charming at the same time

Lisa waiting for us in line at DQ-she looks cranky but she was really just drifting away thinking about chairs, she says :P