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.

Card-Making Endeavors

As I mentioned earlier, my grandfather died this April.  Now that life has settled somewhat, my grandmother decided it was time to start writing thank-you cards for the dozens of people who came out of the woodwork to help and support her.

Something you have to understand about my grandmother:  She took up card-making as a craft several years ago.

The way I am about yarn, she is about cards.  She has diecutters, various types of ink, the hugest collection of stamps I've ever seen (yeah, the rubber ones like kids play with), embossing powder, ribbons, glitter.  She makes these work-of-art cards for every birthday and holiday and we just marvel.  When my aunt moved out, Grandma took her room and converted it into something like a study/craft room.  The closet is like a tiny card workshop.  It's fabulous.

But she has 50 to 100 thank-you cards to send out, so she reluctantly decided she'd save herself the work and just buy them.  So off she went to every store she could think of, looking for simple elegant thank-you cards that suited her taste.  Unfortunately, she couldn't find anything that wasn't tacky or too plain.  She could always find something to improve, and she wasn't willing to send out any less than the best.  Eventually she gave up the hunt and resigned herself to making them.  Still not quite ready to make them all from scratch, however, she found a box of 50 black-and-white patterned plain cards she could embellish, and enlisted my help.

So Thursday afternoon we planned and had a few mild arguments over the designs. (Mostly I just sat around while she tried things, and occasionally gave input on ribbons.)  Friday afternoon we really set to work, and I was smart enough to pull out my camera and take a bunch of pictures of the process to share with you.