Good News! Spring is Here...wait a second...

So it's now July 10th, and weather-wise, it's a beautiful May day. At least it's not raining.

The last of the strawberries are in the farmer's market, so I made Strawberry Shortcake Cookies, which I made for the 4th and were a huge success. I'm hoping they are just as delicious today as they were last week!

It's Summer! Kind of.

Boston is currently suffering from an acute case of "raining and gray and cloudy and miserable all the time." This has been going on for the last couple of weeks, and I for one long for the return of the Daystar. (Sources say tomorrow may be sunny. Forgive me for holding my breath.)

So that may be why the farmer's market was pretty deserted yesterday at lunch, but it did not prevent the return of my favorite vegetable. That's right, zucchini are in season! I snapped up two, and while I regrettably over-blanched them, I still wound up with a delicious dinner of stuffed zucchini.

My mother had reported the first tiny zucchini on her plants (she's growing fewer plants this year, since her garden tends to grow giant monster mutant zucchini) so I didn't expect to find them at the market yesterday. I was happily surprised.

Tilted Duster

When you've been anticipating something for a long time, it's sometimes hard to believe when it's over. Like my trip to Japan, which I started planning in about March of 2008, over a year before the trip actually happened in April of 2009.

Or my Tilted Duster sweater, which I started knitting in October of 2007, and didn't finish until Sunday night. But now all the ends are woven in and every seam has been finished!



Tilted Duster (Ravelry link to project, and to pattern) by Norah Gaughan.

I knit the 40" size on size 9 needles, out of GGH Bel Air in "Olive" (though I'd call that more an avocado color, myself. Nomnomnom.)

The pattern was easy to follow and clear, which didn't prevent from being dumb, like when I knit a good portion of sleeve only increasing on one side instead of both.

I started knitting this in October of 2007 on size 10s. The next time I came back to it, I realized that what I'd knit was waaaay too big (stupid gauge), so I ripped back and started over. Last September, I was close to finishing it, and had even sewn on the buttons and one of the sleeves when I tried it on and decided the collar looked like crap. It was too long, so it sat funny on my neck, and the buttons/buttonholes looked terrible. Modifications: no buttons! I plan on getting a shawl pin to keep it closed, and if I get really frustrated with that I'll add some toggle buttons and a button loop.



Much thanks to Digikami, who is the awesome photographer who provided these photos.

This is my first sweater, and I'm incredibly excited about it, to the point where I am wearing it today. In June. It's keeping me nice and toasty in my frigid office.

Back from Japan

I have had several things I thought about blogging this past week, but hadn't because I felt I couldn't make a blog post until I blogged about going to Japan. Which is what I did on April 4th. I got back this past Sunday, so I've had a few days to start to digest my trip mentally. (People keep asking me what my favorite thing was...there were so many awesome things I still can't decide.)

I don't speak any Japanese, so my trip would have been pretty difficult, if not impossible, without Digikami, who speaks pretty damn good Japanese (don't let him tell you otherwise). I also got to see my friend from forever Japam (who will be losing her "Ja" in August when she comes back to the States in August).

We were based mainly in Kyoto, where we found an awesome deal through a hostel to rent an apartment for 15 days. This was awesome and way cheaper than staying in regular hostels the whole time, so we were glad to have found it. It was a super nice place right in the center of Kyoto.

I took of pictures, as did Digikami. He took more photos than I did, but posted fewer. They are also much better than mine, but hey, what're you going to do?

Highlights include:

Sakura:


Kiyomizudera:


Himeji-jo:


Toji:


Turtles ("kame" in Japanese):


The World's Largest Indoor Buddha, Nara:


Tame Deer (in both Nara and Miyajima, this was in Miyajima):


Miyajima:


Instructions on How To Use a Western Toilet:


Pachinko Parlor Ads Ripping Off Obama:


Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion:


And the view of Kyoto from Daimonji-yama:


This trip was actually my first journey out of the country, and in a lot of ways a huge jump out of my comfort zone. I don't speak the language, and I can't read any of the alphabets (though I have since learned 5 different kanji). While some of the food was familiar, I was being dumped in a place where I couldn't get the things I was raised on easily (and the Japanese barely eat cheese, which is probably my favorite food). Japanese-style toilets are traumatic.

But the food was delicious. People were friendly and polite despite my mangling their language. I saw beautiful things, and cute things, and funny things, and a couple of disturbing things. It was refreshing to see some of the problems that plague America (terrible public transit, for instance) are things that other countries have down. I had an awesome time, and I really would love to go back. Neither my words nor these pictures can really describe what it was like.

Time to start learning Japanese, so next time I can communicate a little better.

Finished! My So-Called Scarf

Three posts in 2 days? You lucky, lucky faithful readers you!

I just finished the My So Called Scarf I started back in August of 2007. Yes. It did take me a year and a half to knit one measly little scarf. I'm going to claim it's because it's so soft and luscious I didn't want to finish knitting it. Yeah, that's it.



Apparently, I have thus far failed to blog about this scarf. Oops. Ravelry link to my project here.

Details!
Yarn is Malabrigo worsted, in Autumn Forest. I used about a skein and a half, I think. Cast on 30 stitches, as per the pattern, and knit until the scarf hung to my knees when draped around my neck. I'd probably make it wider if I made it again.
Used Knit Picks Options, size 11.



It's an incredibly easy stitch pattern to memorize, what with it being the same two rows repeated ad infinitum. Perfect for the T or watching TV or reading a book, if I remember to use my book stand. But it's not particularly boring. It IS hard to fix mistakes, though.

I'm looking forward to wearing this for the first time tomorrow!

Hope Whatever Just Cracked Wasn't Important...

When I was a freshman in high school, I started taking Tae Kwon Do classes at the same school my little brother was going to. Being 14, however, put me in the adult class (which I was fine with, because I didn't want to go to class with my brother.). I was am a big fantasy geek, so getting to learn hand-to-hand fighting was a big bonus in my eyes, plus I was pretty lazy and needed the exercise. Never really liked playing sports (competitively, anyway, for fun is OK), and have always hated going to the gym or running, so having a reason for my exercise was awesome.

I never quite understood what Mr. D (I almost typed "Sir", as that was what we most often called him, and how my mom still refers to him) was talking about when he'd talk about how the winter and the cold make you stiff and how important it is to stretch more in the winter. I was a teenager, and since I was active (I went to class 2-3 times a week, on average, sometimes more, until I was 18), I was pretty flexible. And I'd get a little stiffer in the cold, but not that much. Now I am 25, and have been mostly inactive since I was 18 (except for brief spurts of activity and fitness). I'm not old yet, but I definitely feel the difference the winter air makes. Especially now that I've started taking yoga classes at the gym (OK, I've gone twice. But that's a start!) and can't do things I used to be able to do, or can't do things I think I would've been able to do. And yes, some of it is just that I've been lazy for the past 7 years. But I can also feel that my muscles and ligaments are a little more set in their ways than they used to be, a little less willing to make that movement. (Or in some cases, a lot.) At least my bum ankle was more flexible yesterday than it was on Friday.

Maybe if I keep it up, I'll feel like I once more deserve to wear the black belt that's sitting around collecting dust in my mom's house.

C'mon, hips, not even a little fib?

Today I brought apple slices with peanut butter for a snack, rather than hitting up the vending machine for chocolatey goodness. I am trying to eat more healthily, partly because I have been slightly infected with the New Year's resolutions-vibe, and partly because, like Shakira, my hips don't lie. They will tell you exactly how many cookies I eat, and what kind. My hips are kind of bastards like that.

So, in an effort to reverse the ever-so-slight expansion of my waist, apple slices with peanut butter. There is first the dilemma of how to transport the apple, whole or already in slices. Already in slices, it naturally starts to oxidize so by 3:30 your apple is kind of brownish, though not too bad. If you bring a whole apple, you either have to bring a knife to slice it, or you have to rely on those available to you at your office. At my office, there is an enormous "cake knife" that looks like it came from the set of Psycho, or plastic butter knives. It is actually possible to cut a Granny Smith apple into slices with a butter knife, but it's not a particularly fun activity, nor one I recommend. (Especially after I nearly sliced my finger. With a plastic butter knife!) Then there is the issue of peanut butter transport. I could have just brought the whole jar of peanut butter, but that seemed like it would be heavy and bulky and just plain excessive. So I found a small tupperware and spooned some in.

The problem here, of course, is the one I always face when I have a limited amount of dipping/spreading foodstuff. I can't ensure that I won't run out of peanut butter before I reach the last apple slice unless I spread it evenly onto all apple slices before I begin eating, and that's pretty lame, and anyway, these slices are not at all even and some of them are actually "chunks." So instead, I find myself skimping on the first few slices, using not-quite-enough-peanut butter, until I reach the last slice. Invariably, I have skimped too much early on and am left with far too much delicious peanut butter, so that I am actually basically eating the peanut butter with the apple slice as a mere conduit for it's sticky, delicious goopiness.