Say I'm the Only Bee in Your Bonnet

I've got a few little things to share, so rather than a bunch of tiny posts I'm just dividing this post up into chapters. I'm a model of efficiency this morning!

Djevellue: Done

I-cord ties applied! I'm not really great with the i-cord, but these will do. Now the only question is whether or not it will fit the intended baby, although there are plenty of other baby candidates if it doesn't. The pattern is Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap / Djevellue and the yarn is Dale Baby Ull. This was a very quick knit, I really like the stripes and the colors.

Has this vaction started yet?

I'm still working on my other pre-trip prep. The backpack / tote is close to being finished, but it might not be big enough to work as a carry-on for this trip. That pattern is really great, though--the directions are super clear without being overly wordy. I've had zero issues so far that were not directly related to my half-assed sewing skills. I haven't decided about the Paris yarn, but I'm thinking Monkey or Jaywalker. I like my first Monkeys, but I hated the Jaywalkers I started last year. Hmmm . . . maybe Monkeys.

More Lunch Photos

In other housekeeping, here are last week's lunches--there are only three, due to a couple of work-related lunches:



My favorite thing this week was probably the tomato-cucumber-goat cheese salad in the second row. I threw some balsamic & a little oil, and marinated overnight. Delicious! Otherwise, you can see a pattern forming: tiny bagel for breakfast, salad of some sort, entree of some sort, fruit. Even though there's a lot of same-ness, there's enough variety to keep me from getting bored with lunch. It would be pretty easy to liven things up with bad foods (tub full of BBQ pork, anyone?), but it's not that hard to keep it reasonably healthy.

I'm even thinking about packing a little bento for the trip, although I'm not hauling Mr. Bento on the plane. And I'm not sure how much liquid makes a food a liquid for TSA purposes--if I put the salad dressing on before I go through security, am I o.k.? Maybe I'm better off just buying food once I'm through security, but it would be nice to have a snack that I know is fresh, healthy, and of reasonable size.



6 Weird Things About Me

Liberty tagged me for the 6 Weird Things About Me meme, here are the rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2.Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six weird things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. Tag six others. And let them know they’ve been tagged!

Here are my six weird things--but are they really that weird?
1. I have only ever owned German cars, I love German dogs (dachshunds, of course), and I took German language courses for fun when I lived in Boston, but with the exception of the Frankfurt airport I've never been to Germany. I have been to seven other European countries, however.
2. I can't stop listening to the Vampire Weekend record. It's in my car, on my iPod at work, and on the iPod I take to the gym. I've probably listened to the whole thing maybe 50 times in the last six weeks. I suspect that within the next couple of months I'll put it away and never listen to it again, but I'm not there yet.
3. I have four iPods. And I want more.
4. I may have been the only person at Wellesley whose tuition was partially paid for with a bowling scholarship. I won $1000 in a tournament when I was in 9th grade.
5. My first job was at a Dairy Queen, where I selected a brown polyester uniform rather than a more comfortable / flattering cotton uniform. I think that this is why I only recently started wearing brown again (it's been 23 years since I worked there).
6. The day that I arrived in Vienna, I ate a chicken dish at a Chinese Restaurant. For the next seven months, I probably ate at that restaurant every one-two weeks, and I ate the same thing almost every time. Seriously, I can only remember ordering one other dish, and that's because the restaurant owner was telling my friend S__ that I should try other things and I was embarassed. When I get to Vienna in two weeks, I am going to eat that same dish--after seven years, I still remember that it was "Nummer 41". I can't wait!

I'm short on time (must really start packing today), so I'm opening up the tagging for volunteers--have at it!

Lunch, Week of April 21

Although I still don't really like to make my own lunch, I really enjoy having a variety of things to eat at lunch. Bringing lunch saves a lot of time and energy during the day, and is definitely healthier than going out every day. My favorite lunch this week was Friday (top), I had pork loin with mashed potato and asparagus in a mustard sauce, leftover from Mom's delicious birthday dinner. Yum. (edited for spelling!)

Lunch, This Week

Another week, another set of Mr. Bento lunch photos. On Monday, I learned that tomato soup will stain and discolor the plastic if I microwave it for too long. It gets too hot! That tomato soup is the greatest, though--it's from a local schmancy grocery store, and if I could figure out what they put in it, I could save a lot of money on the fancy stuff I can't resist when I go there for soup.


My favorite salad of the week is the one with cucumbers and strawberries. Delicious with Newman's Own lite honey mustard dressing. That's my current favorite dressing--usually I prefer homemade, but this stuff is really good (if you like a sweet, mustardy dressing).

I'm going out to lunch today, for L___'s birthday, so only four bentos this week--which works out well with the photo mosaic, it will only take four photos.

Lunch, Last Week

Part of my 2008 plan involves eating better, and toward that end I've been trying to take lunch to work most days rather than eating out. The lunch options near my office either take a lot of time or are fast food, and it feels really wasteful to spend $30-$50 a week on food that I don't particularly enjoy. This past week, I started carrying a "Mr. Bento" lunch jar, and four of the five lunches (plus either an english muffin or a mini-bagel for breakfast) I took to work are above. I like that I can take a wide variety of foods, and as long as I think a little bit about what I'm including (like use the smallest bowl for the fatty pasta salad, and the largest bowl for a green salad), it's neither too much food nor too many calories. I doubt that I'll take lunch every day (let alone photograph it every day), but I think that 3 - 4 days a week is reasonable.

Knitting content coming soon--it's really nice out today so I may be able to get some natural light photos. Or maybe I'll just get out into the natural light . . .

Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm

My biggest yarn splurge of 2008, two skeins of Wollmeise Lace-Garn, arrived last week. The photos above show the top and bottom of each gigantic, 300 gram hank. After many, many attempts to order Wollmeise (both from Claudia and from the Loopy Ewe), I was finally able to get some and I couldn't be happier with it. The lace yarn is the same unique texture as the Wollmeise sock yarn that I've seen, but finer. My original plan was to keep the color I liked best out of these two, and trade or sell the other one (at cost--I'm not into scalping), but I'm not sure if I can part with either one of them. The blue and black is Mitternacht, and it's a slight favorite over the brown Spice Market. In general, I'm not one of those yarn-sniffers, but Wollmeise has the most delicious, clean smell, and I love the brown-paper packaging.

So what about those guilty feet? It's not related to the Wollmeise, which was (and really still is) on my very short list of buy-whatever-you-want yarns for 2008. It's another yarn purchase, eagerly anticipated but not yet delivered, for this gorgeous kit, that I feel a little guilty about. I ordered the Arabian Nights colorway, and I can't wait to see it in person, even though it I probably won't start working on it for awhile--I do want to start up the hibernating Bee Fields shawl now that it's spring again, and the Vickie Cardigan is in heavy rotation right now. Basically, it wasn't a purchase that I planned to make, but I am looking forward to knitting the shawl and both the yarn and pattern are something special. I'll probably omit the beaded fringe and possibly the beads on the edges, because I can totally see myself hitting myself in the face with them. In any case, I'm not asking for absolution or encouragement, I'm just noting that I spent more on yarn this month this month, and when I'm drinking coffee at the Floridsdorf Anker instead of Demel's, I'll look back and remember why.

p.s. I still don't feel guilty about the Wollmeise.

p.p.s. My official time for the St. Pat's Dash was 42:37, better than I expected!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

What was the best part of running the St. Pat's Dash? The delicious, delicious beer that I drank afterwards at Elysian Fields. What was the worst part? Standing in line for the bus for pretty much as long as it took to finish the course. It's too early to get my official time, but the clock was at about 44:45 when I crossed the finish line, and I crossed the start line about two minutes after the official start. I wasn't expecting to run the whole thing (and I didn't), but I'm pretty happy with how I did and that halfway through March I'm still sticking to one of my TCB resolutions. And my Dash Hat held up very well--I was really glad to have it, especially while standing in line for the bus.

The route is about 3.5 miles, and according to my iPod & Nike + I went 3.89 miles. I'm not sure how much of this is a calibration error, but I didn't start and end the workout at the start and end lines. At the beginning, it was too early to think about, and at the end I wandered around for a couple of minutes before thinking about it. The most interesting thing to me about looking at the Nike+ graph is that there isn't a huge speed difference between my walking and running, but it sure feels different!

Frieda and Gretel have no respect for my photographs, by the way:

Moments after I took that photo, Gretel peed within INCHES of my shirt. Yes, it's perfectly normal for her to pee in the backyard, and she didn't pee on the shirt, but it was still a little close for comfort.

Monkey Two Toe New Year 2008 - a post in three chapters

Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey

The Heart Monkey hats were delivered today, and they were a big hit. And by "a big hit", I mean that they fit J_____ and Heart Monkey, respectively, and that both seemed happy to pose for photos wearing the hats. J____'s hat looks a little small in this photo, but I think she might be wearing pigtails underneath--it didn't seem like it would pop off of her head or anything. Heart Monkey's hat fits just fine, thanks to his squishy head.

Two Toe Tuesday: New Year's Day edition

In other news, I recently finished the Poppy Socks, but I've been holding off on posting them because I just delivered them to E__ (mother of the monkeys above) today. I love this yarn (it's from the Sundara Petals Collection), and am planning to use the ample leftovers for new socks that will be cast on today. I really like this pattern, although the toe is not one that I've used before and I'm not 100% sure that I love it. E__--keep me posted on whether it's comfortable! This is only the third finished pair logged into Ravelry, which feels like a low number to me. Maybe a lot of other people also fell behind in their sock club knitting??

Happy New Year, 2008!

I've been reading a lot about resolutions that people are making and goals that they are setting for 2008, both on blogs and on Ravelry. There are definitely some things that I'm planning to work on this year, but I hate to spell them out because they're soooooooo subject to change, and they aren't that different from anyone elses' resolutions. I've been trying to think of a way to categorize, prioritize, and plan realisically, and while I feel like I'm making progress I don't have an actionable plan ready today, January 1. Also, much of this type of planning feels like what I am responsible for at work, which makes it a less attractive home activity.

So at the risk of sounding totally unoriginal and unrealistic, here are some 2008 goals / things to work towards:

• TCB: Stop falling behind on routine, no-big-deal things that could turn into big problems with neglect. Stop turning things that are fun (like Holiday Cards?) into a chore. Stop turning small chores (putting away one load of laundry) into giant chores (putting away months worth of laundry).
• Cut Back on Spending: I'm starting to plan a big trip in May that will be a lot more fun if I save up plenty of $$ in advance. I'm not talking about deprivation, just not spending on unnecessary things (like one more sock club) or things that add up but that I don't enjoy (like crappy take out lunches).
• Get into a Healthy Exercise Routine: Three or four years ago, I was exercising regularly and weighed a fair amount less. I fell out of this habit during a period of job (or rather no job) related stress, and never quite got back into the habit. Again, my big trip in May will be a lot more fun if I am in better shape, and looking better than I do now won't hurt, either. Because there will be photographs.

Now the tricky part starts--the real planning and execution phase. I'm not sure how much I'll report on these goals in the general course of blogging, but I did want to put them "on paper" so that I have a checkpoint / reminder for myself going forward.