Cruise: Day 8: Bored at sea and ready to go home

Cruise: Day 7: Long (homeward) day at sea

Cruise: Day 6: Tortola stopover

Cruise: Day 5: St. Thomas, USVI

Cruise: Day 4: Y.A.T.D.A.S.*

Cruise: Day 3: Wednesday, clear sailing!

Cruise: Day 2: Turbulence Tuesday

Cruise: Day 1: Embarkation

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Cruise to the Caribbean!

As of tomorrow afternoon, Adam and I will be on our way southward. I'm very excited about it. I've never gone on a cruise before! It's a Carnival cruise, and should be loads of fun. I'll take pics and keep a little journal so I can report back on how it went. Wish us luck and fun!
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Knitting Update

This is ostensibly a knitting/fiber blog, after all, and lately I've posted about everything BUT fiber and knitting. But I have been DOING knitting, which is what counts, I think, and now have some photos to prove it.

I have two main projects in the works - the Cascading Leaves Throw and the Botticelli sweater from the latest Rowan magazine.

The Botticelli sweater takes me back into the realm of intarsia, which isn't my most favorite type of knitting to do, but the pattern took hold of me and compelled me to do it. It's quite beautiful. I don't think I'm allowed to reprint photos from the Rowan magazine, and the Rowan site is down/being rebuilt, and I can't find it on Ravelry! So I can't show you how it's supposed to look. But I can show you my work in progress. (Sorry it's a little blurry.)



The sweater as designed had as its main color a kind of wheatish tan, which is not a great color on me, so I decided to go with (surprise!) a dark brown as the base. This necessitated changing one of the greens in the flower, because it was about the same darkness as the brown and wouldn't have been visible; I changed to a lighter green.

The Cascading Leaves throw requires 48 squares, of which I've now done 17.



I started doing them on the bus a couple weeks ago. I can do about a half a square in one bus ride, so I went from only having done six or eight in front of the TV, to quite a few more now.



I got 15.5 squares from one skein of the Luscious Single Silk. I bought three skeins of this yarn in Valkyrie, and I don't think that's going to be quite enough for 48 squares; so I bought one more skein in red, so if I need one or two squares more I can make them in that and dot them randomly into the mix, and use it as well for the border.
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Most accurate pie chart ever

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I got a 7

There's a color test I was sent, where you drag and drop blocks of color on a continuum between shades and you have to arrange them in the correct order from one side to the other. Zero is the best score, so I was pretty psyched to get a 7. Here's the test:

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

How well can you do? Let me know in the comments!
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One of the Sweetest, Saddest, Most Hopeful, Best Things I've Ever Seen.

9 Nine Shane Acker Short Animation
by FrFKmeron

Scones!

My British coworker Ray likes to correct my pronunciation of the word "scones" - I say "skoans" and he says it should be "skahns." Well, since it's a very British edible I'll go along with him, certainly whenever he's around, for sure. I've heard this pronunciation in the past and have found that Americans don't know what the hell to which you refer when you use the proper pronunciation. Oh well. Cain't win fer losin'.

So, the day's production:



This is from a great recipe from a great site, joyofbaking.com. The first time I made them I did the streusel topping, but this time I just sprinkled Demerara sugar on them, which I think was just as satisfying without the effort of making the streusel. And they are SO DELICIOUS! I'll take the leftovers to work tomorrow.
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Front Yard, New and Improved

We had our front yard redone (finally). It looks a million times better. It only took us a year to get our thoughts organized on what we wanted to do, get some estimates, and commit to the project. Words cannot express it; here instead are before and after pictures.

This is before. Look how fugly:



This is now. Look how BEAUTIFUL! Click to see it close-up.



The bushes across the front are viburnum, which are flowering and fruit-bearing plants, and the berries are edible. :)



The yard looks bigger, you can actually see the house, and there's even a lot more light because the weed trees along the side were shading it out. The neighbors are all delighted, as you can well imagine. The property values of all four houses in our row just went up considerably.



As you can see, we ripped out the holly bushes, the ivy, the weed trees along the side, and all the weeds, and put in little bushes that will fill in over time.

For more befores, check this old post: August 12 2007
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Pickles, part deux

We actually made them (as you can tell if you look close) on 8/16/08, but I didn't get them labeled until today. We made 8 jars, of which only one failed to form a vacuum seal (so we refrigerated it). We grew so many cucumbers (again) that we made a big container of refrigerator pickles as well and still couldn't use them all up. Cukes are highly fruitful plants!
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