fun stuff!

Important Coffee-related Update: I'm so excited, because I picked up a stovetop espresso maker at the great inventory sale at Southern Season (plug, plug) for wicked cheap, and am making my first pot right now! Everyone I've talked to about stovetop espresso pots has said something to the effect of: "I'd never make coffee with anything else, now that I've had stovetop style." I've always used a french press and am very attached to it; the ritual of heating the water and washing out the pot is part of my morning routine just as much as washing my face and brushing my hair. We'll see how Mr. Stovetop measures up. I've never used one before, and the pot did not come with instructions, so I'm sort of winging it.



I came home this morning to find two male friends all f**ked up and drinking beer on my porch. I thought they were going to stick around but when I came back outside to say hi they had left and spilled beer all over my car. Thanks, guys! Happy Fourth of July to you, too. Note to my knitting blog readers: If you want to party early in the morning, don't get all mad if I don't wish to join you. Unlike you, I have three jobs and am usually expected to be AT THEM sometime during the day. We can't all do X on a Tuesday.

That having been said, I must write more about my OSW. My last blog post was indeed cut short in order to perform Florence Nightingale activities for the local shut-ins. Gray, I made my OSW to fit "size 15." Gray may remember measuring my shoulder tips and coming up with a 13, so why did I make the 15? Two reasons: because I knew the 13 would be too small, and because I needed my sleeve stitches to be a multiple of 4 so I could use 2x2 ribbing as the edging instead of seed stitch. This is something I neglected to address in my last post: I did not follow the pattern by using seed stitch on the sleeves and ribbing around the neck and back. Why on earth would anyone do such a thing? I guess because that's the way the pattern was written. However, the two different edgings are such an affront to my eyes (as though I have any sort of taste whatsoever!) that I knew I could easily work around the pattern to make something more to my liking. I understand that it is easier to write the pattern with seed stitch, because the number of stitches on the sleeves for all sizes works with the seed stitch multiple, but not with 2x2 ribbing. There simply is no reason why I would follow the pattern just because it was written that way. I would be hard-pressed to think of anything I've made from a written pattern that I knit exactly as the pattern stated. Why do I do these things? Why do I make my life so hard? Because there always seems to be something that I want to change, and dang it! I'm smart enough to change most things. It's only knitting.

On Sunday I spent most of the night not knitting but SEWING! Well, not sewing per se, but doing all those things that lead up to sewing, like cutting, measuring, cussing. Kind, gentle readers, I have never sewn from a pattern before, except the pencil-shaped pillow I made in seventh-grade Home Ec (I was a writing geek even back then!). I don't have any how-to-sew books (because my birthday is coming up, so why should I BUY things for myself?) and so, as with the stovetop espresso, I am winging it. It is my determination to complete this simple sewing project without constantly calling someone up and asking for help. It certainly helps that my number-one sewing-advice lady is out of the country, gallavanting around London with my father and failing to be home to make me my birthday Japanese Sundae. (Thanks, mom!) I'm operating on the advice that I seem to give out to everyone else when they ask a question about what to do next, or how to do something: "Well, what does the pattern say?" Surprisingly, patterns do say a lot, if you quit freaking out and actually read them. I understand that the opposite side of that coin is that patterns also omit a lot of information. So, using common sense and deep-breathing techniques, I was able to get far enough into the sewing project that I thought I saw the end in sight-- then realised I hadn't read the pattern (duh!) and was without the basic supplies that were listed on the pattern packet. Duh! Button! Zipper! Interfacing (whatever that is)! For some reason I thought all you needed was fabric, thread, and a machine. Silly me!

I am going to make a trip up to JoAnn's sometime today (I know, it's a chain store but I have a coupon) to buy the necessary items, and hope to spend the rest of the afternoon sewing, perhaps just in time to go to knitting in CanadaLand.

BTW: this stovetop espresso is THE STUFF! I'll never go back to anything else! :D