Crafty Pancakes

Quick flash

There's just enough time this morning for me to flash a few new yarns. Stacy from Tempted came up with another fabulous October club yarn shipment. It's so perfectly name, Hocus Pocus...

Then we have the yarn that I want to put on my nightstand so I can look at it as soon as I wake up wake up every morning. Feast your eyes on the first installment from the Woolly Boully Sock Club, Sea Grass...

 

I'm undecided on my opinion of this month's colorway from the Yarn Pirate Booty Club, Killer Bees...

And finally.. and not with a bit of green in it, as there was a trend going, it's the latest from the Harmony Semi-Solid club, Huron...

If you didn't catch on.. the only yarn that made it into my house this past week has been club yarn. I have been a very good girl! After the MIL visit is over I may feel entitled to a little yarn reward though.

Cough.. cough

It's very hard to look directly at the sun on a cloudless day.. but you can when that cloudless day is filled with smoke...

Being outside is so seriously unhealthy right now... so what's a girl to do other than sit inside and knit...

I'm whipping up the purl-less Monkeys with STR Flower Power. OMG how I love not purling. These are my new favorite socks to knit. I would knit them with every sock yarn I have. Can't tell you why they have grown on me like they have.. but I'm in love. Yarny goodness tomorrow.

Take a moment

I have knitting things to talk about and fun yarn to show you but it all seems so insignificant right now. I'm sure some of you know, Southern California is on fire. It stretches from Santa Barbara to San Diego. It's devastating. Over half a million people have had to evacuate. So many homes lost. So many people scared. I'm am very lucky to be able to say that my family and home are not in danger. We can see and smell the smoke and it just makes us want to do what we can for everyone who needs help right now. It's going to be another hot and very windy day with extremely low humidity. Please take a moment of your day to think about those affected... and keep this area in your thoughts and hope for the best.

Where's the Fall?

When you read the blog title make sure to say it like the "where's the beef?" lady. Apparently my birthday has made me older and wiser lazier. I haven't wanted to even think about blogging. I've been too busy finishing up the cake, taking naps and knitting this...

Yay, a finished Spooky sock! It took me a couple of tries before I got the yarn to do what I wanted it to.. which was stripe. I am so in love with this sock. I've already cast on for the second one. I had never knit with Yarn Pirate before and I have to say that it's as wonderful as I thought it would be. I'm really looking forward to my first shipment from the Booty Club.

Sock clubs, sock clubs, sock clubs. I need to stay away from them! I just joined another one the other day. I'm up to 12. 12! Ridiculous. I am swearing off new sock clubs as of today.  I don't even like some of the yarn I have been getting in the clubs anyway. So no more wasting money on yarn I don't want. I'm not even renewing my STR membership. Nope, not renewing. I would rather buy the same amount of yarn from them in colors I actually want. I feel so free.. like the sock club monkey is off my back. That doesn't mean that I won't keep the clubs I love though. You can't expect me to go cold turkey.

Here is what I mean about great yarn versus yarn I am not even slightly fond of...

On the left is some completely amazing yarn I got for my birthday from the fabulous Gaby. It's Neighborhood Fiber Co. in the Adams Morgan colorway. On the right is scratchy and fairly unattractive club yarn that I got in the mail yesterday. I could maybe get into the color if the yarn base was something that I even remotely wanted to knit with. I have a couple more club shipments that should be here this week and I know I won't be disappointed with those. Hopefully one will show up today and soothe my sock club blues. What I should really do is just give Gaby a wad of money and make her my sock yarn shopper. It could be my own personal club where I know that every yarn I get will be nothing short of a dreamy surprise. Yeah, she knows me well and has impeccable taste. Hmm. I will have to talk to her about that one.

Gaby wasn't the only person who scored points with a fab b-day gift. My sweet J didn't do so shabby either. In fact he surprised me by actually giving me something I had been wanting for a couple of months and hadn't gotten around to buying yet...

It's a Seatbelt Bag from Harvey's. It's the coolest purse ever. I'll buy more of these instead of spending money on bad sock clubs.

As soon as my birthday is over I always start missing cold rainy weather. How in the heck do you do fall in the OC? I still haven't figured it out. I want to smell fireplaces and wear a coat. I want to wear my hand knit socks. I want to cuddle up in a blanket with yarn and needles. I want to have the desire to bake desserts all made with pumpkin. And yes, I CAN bake. I want to see the leaves change color. I want it to not feel like summer! I want the Falls I used to have in Oregon that made me desperately want to live where I live now. Oh the memories of times gone by in the Pacific Northwest. I am such a sucker for nostalgia. Maybe that is the reason I couldn't resist some serious 1982 Fall cereal flashbacks at Albertsons the other day...

My favorite was always the Franken Berry. If I was to actually eat this stuff now I would vomit but it was sure fun to buy.

I'm grasping at Fall straws over here!

Trivia Tuesday

Can you guess who had to spend an extra 30 torturous minutes on the treadmill this morning so she could stuff her face with cake tonight? Don't worry, the only celebratory cooking fire that will be going on here is when the 33 candles on my cake are lit. So join the celebration by eating something sinfully fabulous today and even go buy yourself a gift. Go! Now! Do it! I'm the birthday girl and I make the rules!

Armed and dangerous

I am a realist. I know that I am not a good cook. I will even go as far as saying I'm a bad cook. What I didn't realize is that I am probably one of the worst cooks of all time. I was so excited on Friday. I went to the store armed with a list of things I was going to buy in order to make dinner. A dinner that wasn't partly pre-made somehow. I went home, pulled out my recipe, got everything organized...

For most people this would look like a simple no fuss dinner. For me it was like climbing Mt. Everest.  My son saw all of it sitting on the counter and actually said that he didn't know you could buy green beans that weren't in a can! You can go ahead and feel sorry for him if you would like. I'm sure he deserves some of it. Anyway, I had everything ready to go and popped the chicken in the oven. The house was smelling fabulous. I was so proud. Then I realized that the kitchen and family room were a bit hazy. I ran to the oven and opened it up. The smoke that came pouring out was like nothing I had ever seen. I yelled for my husband and son to start opening up the windows before the smoke alarms went off. After the smoke cleared I tried to diagnose what the hell the problem was.. the chicken was far from being done. Well, I had wine in the bottom of the roasting pan and it had all evaporated.. so the chicken juice and things I had in the bottom of the pan were burning. My solution was to pour the rest of the bottle of wine in the pan and pop the chicken back in. No more problems, right? Remember who is cooking before you answer that. After a few minutes I noticed that the wine was splattering up in the oven.. and then BOOM.. giant oven fireball! No joke. Game over. How many people can put a lovely chicken in the oven and get this result...

I try to take something away from every situation. From this I learned that my only safe bet is the raw food diet.

On a more pleasant note.. this arrived yesterday from the Tvyarn Sock Club...

The chick flick this month was Fried Green Tomatoes. Jana puts together really fun goodies to go with the yarn in her club. I really loved this stitch marker, of course...

So perfect for me. In other knitting news.. I ripped out the Spooky 07 sock from my last post. I wasn't liking the screwy pattern from Sock Wizard 2. I then knit about 3/4 of sock in the Broadripple pattern. Hated it. The ball of yarn is in a time out for a bit. Again, with my try to learn a lesson from everything mumbo jumbo.. me and sport weight yarn are not friends.

I wanted to keep with the Halloween theme for the month though so I switched to Spooky from Yarn Pirate...

I love the stripes in this colorway when it's knit in just plain old stockinette but I might die of boredom. Then again, I seem to have a fit when a pattern messes up the stripes. At least I know that no matter what I do with this yarn.. it won't smoke up my kitchen or cause a fireball.

The unexpected

It's been an interesting few days. There were lots of things that happened that I didn't expect. Like I didn't expect to hear these things being said at dinner on Friday night...

Oh man, I ate to much squid jerky.

You should have some of the jellyfish.

I think that's pork noggin.

We had a fun time with our friends Gaby and Chris that night. They took us to an authentic Chinese restaurant called China Garden where the unexpected things were said. You probably knew it was Chinese and not Italian.. unless they are now serving spaghetti and pork noggin balls somewhere. I will be cracking up about those unexpected things for awhile every time I eat.

I also didn't expect these when I woke up on Monday morning...

 

We had an unexpected raccoon visitor. What cute little muddy footprints, right? Those little bastards aren't so cute when they are running from the scene of the crime...

The demon omnivore dug up my yard so it could sit there and pig out on grubs. What's even worse is that it was digging them up and washing them off in the pool before chowing down...

I wonder how long my new enemy number one was out there thinking my house was The Old Country Buffet?! It better not come back. I would hate to have to run it over with my new unexpectedly purchased raccoon killer yarn hauler...

In my defense.. Chevy was giving $5,000 rebates on the purchase of a new '07 and I had really been wanting an SUV.. and it was the last day of the promotion so I couldn't pass it up. I have an excuse for everything in case you couldn't tell. I did have to promise to keep the Tahoe for at least a couple of years. What's even worse than my sock yarn buying is perhaps my car buying. I've gone through four cars in one year. Needless to say that if I tell my husband that I want a new car anytime soon this will be my new residence.

What was the most unexpected of things though was when I got the Halloween Chewy Spaghetti Holiday Sock Club shipment in the mail...

And within 24 hours I had this going on...

I maybe should have warned you to sit down before I threw that baby at ya. Yes, I got the yarn and immediately cast on.

Expect the unexpected... plus maybe a little raccoon carnage.