Friday, January 13, 2012

The Blocking of Vlad

Last post at home,for tomorrow I will be boarding a plane and flying back to the grind. It has been a nice break, filled with sleep, knitting, fun and stress, although the last isn't exactly 'nice'. Quite a few projects have gotten finished, ripped out, rethought and planned. I have two projects on the needles right now that I will talk about in a little while.





So, about that title. Well, yesterday we blocked one of  mum's recently finished shawls, and we decided that Vlad really should be blocked. So what seemed like a nicely sized shawl is actually rather large. A table that accommodates 8 people was a tad small. Good thing the vinyl tablecloth lent itself well to blocking pins.  

So I have actually worked on some projects, some working out, some not. I started off the week knitting a chair pad for my dorm that got put back into balls after it was way way to big. So I scratched that idea and moved onto something I knew would turn out, a sock. So that was finished, and the other was cast on for. Those are working up nicely and the colors are really cool. When I finish the pair, I will post a pic of them.

So now onto my pride and joy at the moment. Wednesdays at home mean knitting at Mayaluna yarns with some friends, and this time, I got some goodies. For a knitalong I bought the most heavenly shawl yarn for about $23 bucks. It is by Alpaca with a Twist, and it is a blend of baby alpaca and silk in a wintergreen colorway. It is absolutly wonderful to work up and I look forward to working with all 800 and some odd yards of this spun cloud. With this yarn I have begun to work up the Pavonis shawl, a free pattern for Ravelry. It is a beautiful shawl and lots of fun.

This week has been a bit of a roller coaster both knitting wise and sibling relationship wise. The casting on and ripping of projects is always hard, but the siblings have started to make it clear that anytime I want to go back is fine with them. I have been doing a lot of cooking this week, either of my own volition, or because I am the only one home. The one meal I took out of a cookbook the kids made funny faces, and stated that if I made it again, they would eat. Never a good response. Mum licked her bowl clean and there were no leftovers, so I still considered it a success. Next night we made poor man's beef stroganoff,  and only one out of the three of them ate it, Ian had a huge conniption about the large bits of onion (which we made parge so he could pick them out) and the fact that we broke the beef up, making it harder to pick out. But we kinda knew he wasn't going to eat it so no big surprises. The straw that broke the camel's back was last night. I made dinner, so it was already predisposed to failure. I made scalloped potatoes, shake and bake country style ribs and broccoli. I knew Ian and Racheal would eat the broccoli and the ribs would disappear in a flash. But, I would have thought that that creamy baked potatoes would get rave reviews. That's where I was woefully too optimistic. Ian didn't even serve himself a serve, Racheal had to have a forkful shoved down her throat to meet the 'you must at least try it' requirement and thankfully Justin realized that they were good if he avoided the onions. The only highlight was that Justin who said he didn't like broccoli was guilted into eating it.Tonight is homemade spaghetti with sausage, so again it will be the adults reveling in tomato-ie goodness and the kids getting icicles on their upturned noses.

It is now time to pack. Usually I pack earlier than this but this time I have procrastinated to point where I can procrastinate no more. Have a nice weekend and I will see you in Houston!

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