52 Reasons I Love You

Some things happened today!

Clue #2 of my MKAL was released today, and I got to look at the cable pattern.  I'm sort of pleased because it's as complex as promised, and sort of unhappy with it.  It's a wave pattern, not a "knot" pattern.  The cables won't spiral so much as wiggle, because the same threads of the pattern are always "on top".  Even more disappointingly (and the wiggling thing makes this twice as bad because it'll be really obvious) the socks are identical rather than mirrored.  That means, basically, that they'll both look like left socks.  I'm trying to decide whether I want to keep knitting them (as I'm already five rows in) or whether I want to frog back to the beginning of this clue and figure out how to mirror the pattern on the second sock (I think perhaps reversing the chart would work, but this requires more thinking).  I'm leaning toward frogging and reknitting, because dammit mirroring is important to me.  Identical socks are annoying.  Symmetrical socks are nice.

I'm a little OCD with my crafting.  Just a bit.

In other news, I finished something!

Tada!  It's that cowl I was working on yesterday!  It's lovely and snuggly, and it also works weirdly well as an earwarmer.  I have blue eyes and red hair, so if I put it where the blue end is around my face and the red end is around my hair, it looks amazing.  I love it a lot and will probably wear it a lot.  It's also completely flat because of the moss stitch (UK: double moss stitch), with no curling at all and plenty of texture.  Moss stitch is my favorite right now.  For some reason the "k1, p1" pattern doesn't bother me in this particular stitch.

My bread from yesterday was delicious, and I did make my soup today.  Aside from the cup of beans, I added two carrots, two sticks of celery, one small onion, one baby zucchini, and half a yellow squash.  After I cooked them in butter and oil for about a minute just to give them a little buttery flavor, I filled up my pot the rest of the way with water (I think it was a 3 quart pot?) and let it simmer a good two hours.  No need for broth, because the vegetables did it for me.  It did need salt at the end, and I should have added some spices when I cooked the veggies initially (but I know for next time).  It was delicious though.  If you don't like smooshy vegetables it would not be for you, but I happen to like them all soft and smooshy, so it was great.  I have a ton left, so I'll be eating it for lunch for the rest of the week.

Okay, time to explain the title.
As I mentioned before, the 12th was my boyfriend's birthday.  I didn't really have a gift planned for him this year because I spent so much time working on his Friendship Star blanket.  Then I found the beginnings of this project, and decided to finish it up for him before he goes home to Austin for the semester.

It's a deck of cards.  Each card has written on it in Sharpie a reason I love him, making 52 in all.  The joker has the title on it.  (There were actually two jokers, and I ruined the other one.  So... yay!)

"52 Reasons I love you"

Some of them are better than others.  I started out with some of the diamonds and hearts (the red suits) so I just wrote across the card.  Then I realized I couldn't do that on the spades and clubs (the black suits) so I'd have to fit the words among the symbols.  Then I realized I should do that for all of them.  Sometimes I ran out of space for a word or put two words too close together -- essentially, it's not even a little bit perfect.

But I suspect it'll still make him cry.

The plan is to hand him the box of cards and watch him look totally bemused until he opens it, at which point he'll first look astonished, and then totally overwhelmed.  That is my guess.

Would you like to see some of my favorite cards?  They started to turn out like poetry, at one point, and it was a lot of fun arranging the words.

"You can (and do) laugh at yourself"

"You're always willing to pick up friends"

"You think good English is sexy"

"You protest my choice of 'salad'
while making it for me"

"You put up with me
calling you
a vegetable"

See what I mean?  These things are awesome.

The original project has you print out the reasons on paper, cut it to the size of the frame on a face card, and glue them to the cards.  Then you punch two holes in each card along the edge (one toward the top; the other toward the bottom) and thread them onto keyring-type-loops.  Then you have a little book.  I wanted it to be less time-intensive, since I only had a few days.  Plus, this way you can still play a game with the cards.  Which is kind of awesome.

This is also in keeping with my theme of crafting things for his birthday, and also a totally new crafting-type-thing.  I'm very inventive with his gifts, honestly.  It's always fun to surprise him.