Twitch, twitch

In less serious news, I am currently working on the most embarassingly bright set of footwear I have ever seen.

Yes, I noticed the colors were pretty bold when I bought the skein, but I figured they'd spread out a little once I started knitting. And, just in case, I settled on a nice, simple pattern, as the rainbowness of the yarn was probably statement enough. Unfortunately, any efforts I made just resulted in brigher socks. Gah. I may have to go on an anti-convulsive while I work on these.



Will I finish them, though? Yes. Because, so help me, I am no quitter. Will I wear them, though?...okay, yes. Because I probably was fairly uncool to begin with. And, as it turns out, this spastic bundle of craziness actually makes pretty soft socks.

Take THAT, Martha Stewart

On my last of four days off, I spontaneously got productive.

Spent the morning teaching a friend from work how to knit in the round, and while she was getting the hang of it, I started on this baby.

I'm supposed to be finishing the cabled socks I started, I know, but the sinfully soft alpaca I picked up at Alpacapalooza last week finally got the best of me. Someday, it will be a whole "Column of Leaves" lace scarf. Could be a while, though. This pattern goes sloooooooowly....




Anyway, after lunch, I ran to Fred Meyer, initially just to buy supplies for dinner and check out what they had in their garden section, in case I ever got motivated enough to tame the leafy craziness outside my apartment. But then the plants were pretty and fairly inexpensive and it was sunny and relative warm out, so I decided to just tackle the whole mess that day.

A few hours of digging and weeding and hacking away later, and we have a garden. There's some basil in there, some rosemary, begonias, a little lavender and lobelia on the side...we'll see how long it lasts. This is my first attempt at gardening, as I have a previous history of quickly killing plants.

Once I'd finished, it was back to my original dinner-making plan. I usually just buy pre-made stuff from the grocery store during the work week, because I rarely have enough energy during a stretch of 3 12-hour night shifts to prepare meals for myself.

A healthy alternative, of course, would be to make a big pot of something from scratch the day before I go back to work, and then just use that as my lunch for few days, but that requires planning, and I usually kind of suck at that. Except for yesterday, apparently. Not only did I think far enough ahead to pick out a recipe before I left home for the day, but I actually managed to stick to the plan and cook it after my little gardening adventure. Behold, polenta lasagna with portabello mushrooms, chicken sausage and pesto. And also some wine (because, really, what's a good Italian dinner without wine) and a movie (finally saw The Constant Gardener. It was a pretty intense flick, but I liked it).

Phew. After all that, I need a break. Maybe I shouldn't tackle all this stuff the day before my next night shift. We'll work on that whole planning thing.