More baby cables! And... food

So apparently I have a new addiction. I can tell its something I may be addicted to because I have said many times that I won't knit the same thing more than once. That was before... baby cables! This is my new favorite gift, I'm sure of it. Its adorable, its small, and its CABLES (which I do love). My coworker had his baby (well, his wife did) and he was 11 days early! You don't hear too much of that for a first child! But, he came regardless and I wanted to have something for him when Dad got back to work today. Here's my newest and one of my fastest projects

My real favorite thing about this hat is the decreases at the top, I love how one cable gets tapered all the way down before the other. Looks like there's a cable there, but there's not! I'm sure this is common in cabled hats, but I personally haven't seen that many of them, so this is new and exciting to me. I took a closeup:

In other weekend news, we had dinner with friends Friday night, and their two kids, one of which had a great time feeding Erm about 25 green olives. I think he's set for a bit. Saturday night we also had dinner with friends, a more adult dinner, but we were still home pretty early. We are poops. Yesterday was a very rare occasion... we had NO PLANS. This hasn't happened on a weekend in a very very long time. So, true to form, we filled our morning up with a trip to the mall to pick out more registry stuff, grab a couple of other things and get home to put ribs in. Mmmm I love ribs. Especially Erm's ribs. He smokes them for hours, then finishes them on the grill. It gives them a great smoky flavor, and they fall right off the bone. Complete with my homemade baked beans (which are delicious, I must say) and some broccoli (to be healthy) and its perfect football food! Enjoy!

Baby Cables!

This past weekend I went to the baby shower for my good friend Melissa. I always love seeing the knitting gifts at baby showers! She got some great blankets, I think a sweater or two... and I made her this hat!

Well, I made the hat for the baby

The pattern is Cabled Baby Hats and I made it out of Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, just under one skein. It is SOOOO soft. I can't wait to take a picture of baby in it! I love it so much that I am going to make one for myself for the winter. I highly recommend this for a baby gift!

Vacation? Where did you go?

I feel like it was just two weeks ago that I was getting excited for my vacation. Oh wait, it was.

So in addition to teaching Brady to do "cheers", my vacation was spent dress shopping for my flower girl and my mother (on different days), playing 27 holes of golf with Erm, and spending some time with my aunt. I don't have pictures of anything I did for my whole vacation! Labor Day weekend was spent putting on Kerri's bachelorette party and I don't have any pictures of that either! What was I thinking!?

I DO have pictures of my Blankie. I need to take pictures of my other projects so I don't have to keep putting pictures of Blankie up here. They're quite pathetic. But, they are showing some progress! Ever since I got that package of sock yarn balls, I can't stop! I promise after this, no more blankie pictures! (do I really believe that?)

Sorry about Joey's head... he can't help himself. He, too, is drawn to the Blankie...

I was thinking about that list I started, back in July... and wanted to see how I am doing on it...

1. Gift #1 - I don't even remember what this is. But I know I'm not done with it.

2. Gift # 2 (I can't say what the gifts are, for the same reason that I don't badmouth people, you never know who is reading your blog). - Don't remember what this is either... I need codes for these anonymous gifts.

3. Red Sock #2 - Done!

4. Erm's Sock #2 - Had some of the cuff done on this, then realized it was doing this weird separating thing on one side, so I frogged it. Need to start over.

5. My poor, neglected Rusted Root - Lets be reasonable here. This one is in hibernation.

6. My Sock Yarn Blankie, which needs a new name and definitely won't be done until after my first wedding anniversary. Big big ongoing project. - This will get done little by little... but there's no pressure, which is nice.

7. My mohair shawl - This is no longer a project

Well... I guess I'm not doing too badly. Those anonymous gifts are constantly being worked on, as well as the Blankie (which has no ETA), and Erm's sock. Kind of. I took RR and the shawl out of the mix and finished the Red Sox, so I'd say I'm in pretty good shape!

Cheers!!

Today I went and had lunch with Kelly and Brady! He is my "nephew", by the way. So, like any good Auntie, I decided to teach him something today. He's 12 months old, he can handle it. We were both holding (and eating) breadsticks, and what else do you do when two people are eating breadsticks? Put them together and say "cheers!"

He was doing so well with breastick-cheers that I decided it was time to move on to the real thing. At first I think he was confused that we didn't have the same drink... but as you can see, he caught on!

Luckily, Kelly had her camera and took pictures before we fell over laughing! It was hysterical!

Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me...

Ahoy! I'm back after a busy weekend! There's been lots of progress in my projects, new yarn, and lots of other fun stuff!

First of all, I finished the Red Sox Socks! I was so excited to finish my second full pair of socks! I wove in the ends on Friday night and gave them to my friend on Saturday, she loved them! Here is a pic of the finished pair:

I showed them off at Knit Night and got compliments from Gail, the sock expert, so they must be OK :)

Saturday in addition to giving Dana her socks, we went sailing! Our friends Steve and Kristen have a boat in Salem, and once a year we load up the coolers and spend a day on the high sea. This year we had the best weather out of the past 3 years, its usually overcast and cold!

Here's me and Erm (Erm and I?) on the boat:

And, I helped out and steered the launch (that's nautical speak for the shuttle boat that takes us from our friend's boat to the dock) on the way back. Ahoy!

When we got back from sailing, I ran to my mailbox, since I was waiting for two things. My first Interweave Knits magazine (has anyone else gotten theirs? I haven't gotten my fall one yet and I'm getting nervous) and my shipment for my Sock Yarn Blankie swap...in exchange with those cute little balls I shared with you about 2 months ago. Well... obviously I didn't get my magazine, but look what I DID get!

I was torn between leaving it intact and exciting or diving right in. I was only torn for about 2 seconds. So, thanks to my new sock yarn... this is what I have for my blankie as of today:

I know... not very exciting. But, I can't stop working on it! I also have some other squares that I need to attach soon. But, I have a couple of projects that I'm working on that are time sensitive (surprise!) and I don't have time for the blankie! I didn't believe it, but it really does call to you... so strange.

I also have pics of the Illusion Scarf, but I'll save those for tomorrow!

A canoli a day...

This past Saturday was designated as a day to get things done for the wedding. We had two tasks to accomplish. 1. Taste canolis and figure out which ones we want for our wedding (instead of a wedding cake, we are doing a canoli tree, with some other treats, too). 2. Finish the registering that I needed Erm for. So, we set out Saturday morning with a spring in our step, excited about the day. Then I saw something that was very encouraging:

Then it was off to try canolis... but we didn't have to try much! The first place we went to (which happens to be the only place that will do the canoli 'tree') had FANTASTIC canolis! And they were pretty good size for small ones! Here's the winner:

And... now I'm hungry for a canoli.

So off we went to the Burlington Mall to hit our three registry places. After a near-meltdown about bedding, we were finally done! All in all it was a great day, Erm actually had fun, and registered for things that HE wanted, too. (Mostly grilling stuff. Which is fine, since I reap the benefits of Erm's grilling). Then we stopped at yet another bakery to get more canolis for dessert at the neighbors' that night, went home and got ready and had a nice night!

In knitting news, I have turned the heel on the second Red Sox Sock and just have the gusset, foot, and toe and then I'm done! These have to be done by Saturday, but I have a very light work week, so I am not stressed at all. Yet. Hopefully I'll make great progress and have them done by... Thursday when I go to bed? Not sure if that's reasonable. I always have knit night on Friday in case of an emergency! Here's that sock as of right now:

I hate taking pictures of socks before they're done, they never look like socks until they're completely done and bound off and kitchnered shut! Hopefully tomorrow I will have a picture of... the whole gusset???

I know what you're doooooin... baby...

... except I'm sure nobody knows what I'm doing with that image in my header! I was trying to be cute! But now I can't get rid of it! I already clicked the "remove image" button, and that won't work. I do not want my blog to look like a 4th grade arts and crafts project. Help.

(Note: 4th grade arts and crafts projects are adorable)

So the song "I Know" by Dionne Faris has been running through my head for days. So catchy. I get excited every time I hear it on the radio. I would love to put it on my iPod. Problem is, its not available on iTunes. The video is, but not the song. And its not like you can buy the whole album that its on, because that's not available either. Help.

In other news, Octavious has flown the coop. Not literally, he's walking around here somewhere. But he's gotten... kooky. Kookier than normal. See, Octavious is an ODD cat. I already wrote about when I adopted him, and his brother Joey. Well, they were almost full grown when I brought them home to my condo, and Octavious managed to squeeze his cat body underneath my very-low-to-the-ground bureau and stay there for days. I'm not sure if he came out to eat, or if Joey hunted and gathered and brought him food, or what. But, I didn't see him for about a week. After awhile he came out and I would wake up in the middle of the night to him standing on my bed and staring at me. Creepy, but he's a black cat, so it all fits.

One day I decided I had to paint the bathroom in my condo, and I didn't want the cats there inhaling fumes or mucking it up. So they moved to Erm's house and never moved out. Erm was thrilled. They were much happier here, but Octavious was still acting odd. He wouldn't let us pet him, ran away from everything, very skittish. Then he started hiding out in the open. He would stand in the corner of a room and look like he was hiding... but he clearly wasn't. One night, for some reason the litterbox was somewhere other than the basement, and I noticed that it took him fifteen minutes to squeeze out one little drop of pee. Poor little guy! So, long story a little less long, he was blocked, stayed blocked, needed BIG surgery. It was awful, but after that he became a little more normal. (Emphasis on little.) Now, his whole recovery from surgery was spent in the bathroom, because he was gross and his brother is very aggressive and I didn't need any fighting and ripping of stitches. Here is Octavious in recovery:

Oh, how cute. I caught him cleaning his face. Here's what he really looked like for those few weeks:

So angry. He was shaved on his front "arms" (as you can see) and his whole hind end was shaved. He looked like a poodle in the front and a baboon in the back. Maybe that's why he was so mad.

Anyway, I'm not sure if its because he spent that recovery time in the bathroom that he feels so possessive of it, but lately he's been sleeping in there, standing in the middle of the room when I take a shower, etc. The other night I took a bath and he stood in there yelling at me the whole time. Normally, if he meows once every two days, its a lot. The funny thing is, his surgery was over two years ago. So although I'd like to say he has some strong feelings for il bagno, I'm not sure if that's true. Although, he is very odd, so maybe that's it... I don't know. He's happy and healthy and gorgeous, and that's all that matters!

And that's the story of Tavi.