Sock Mania

I FINISHED MY FIRST SOCK EVER!!

I'm a little excited. Here it is as the beginning of the weekend, on my foot.

No, it's not a giant freak baby of a sock. Well, it is, but not because I messed up the gauge. It's because it's for Ben, not for me, and he has significantly larger feet than I do.

Here it is at the end of the weekend, on his foot:

Fits perfectly. I was a little amazed, and very excited.

Finally finishing this sock made me feel like a knitting superstar. It made me feel like "hey, I can make a sock. A fucking SOCK. I can do anything!"

I'm still feeling pretty good about things that I can accomplish, and I plan to do lots of plotting and writing this afternoon/evening. I'm also considering resurrecting an old screenplay and polishing it. And by polishing, I mean keeping most of the basic plot and scrapping most of the lines.

In the meantime, I have a new sock on the needles already- also for Ben.

Yes. I am aware that that is not the same colorway as the first one, and therefore, likely not its mate. It's not. I'll get to the other green one, I swear, but you see... there's this long story about how I don't have enough yarn left, and while I did manage to find the yarn label, it was yarn that I bought on sale at Loop because they weren't going to carry it anymore. The actual yarn company is out of Montana, and while they do have a website, they only sell wholesale. Which means that I have to find  a retailer that carries it. I may have to hop a bus to the city to do this. That of course doesn't make me cry, but it does mean that the second sock may take another six months, just like the first one did.

In the meantime, I'll content myself with the sock yarn that I do have.
And I'm sure I'll have more soon. Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is coming up in May, don't you know. Who wants to go? 

Onward to the Toes

I did it.

I turned the heel and shaped the gusset of my very first ever sock.

See?

Now I just have to knit 9 inches of foot and then start decreasing the toes.

Okay, so I left this blog in the middle to go grocery shopping. When I came back, the results were up for The Book Doctors' NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza-

I MADE IT INTO THE TOP 25!!!!!!


Anything else I was going to write about has been forgotten.

PLEASE go to the follow link and vote for me (Elizabeth Browne) to be the fan favorite. The big winner gets an introduction to an agent, but the fan favorite gets a free consult!

http://www.thebookdoctors.com/category/2012-nanowrimo

Why I'm Never Cooking Anything Again

Or, Domesticity Will Kill You.

I tried to be domestic today. We had a bit of leftover baguette that was getting progressively harder by the minute, so I thought I'd make crostini out of it, to go with the hummus and cheese that we have. It didn't sound too hard.

Cut the bread thin, brush some butter on both sides so it doesn't stick, pop it in the oven for a few minutes.

I, however, did not have a way to finesse the butter step, and that was where things began to go terribly wrong. Since I had nothing with which to brush it on, I settled for dipping the pieces in the butter, and then putting them in the oven.

After about 15 minutes, a few of them were good, but most of them were still a bit too greasy. So I took them out of the oven, thinking that I would let them cool off a bit, then stick them in the toaster oven to dry them out the rest of the way.

But, it turns out, when you heat up butter again, it  becomes a liquid. Go figure. And it melts and drips into the all wrong places, and starts a grease fire, making the end result of your domestic attempt at crostini this:

A possibly ruined toaster oven full of baking soda.

Thank you, person that taught me about grease fires and baking soda. I owe you one.

By now, I have cleaned out the toaster oven, and I'm hoping that it will still work, but I'm too scared to turn it on and find out. I'll let the boy do that when he gets home, since it's his toaster oven anyway.

In the meantime, I'll work on something I can manage (sort of) like writing, and eat something that I don't have to cook- cheese and fruit, maybe with the few pieces of crostini that didn't go through the fire.

I will never be domestic.

Heel

Today brings you no finished objects. Except a book.

I'm still on my Artemis Fowl kick, and I just finished the 6th one, called Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox. Given the title, I should have figured out the twist, but really, I just wasn't thinking. It's nice to read something easy and fluffy just for the hell of it sometimes, and that's exactly what I'm doing now. I'm on a run of fluff. I think that's okay.

Again, it would be silly to tell you all about book six, so I won't say much except that it was good. Go read it. Series are hard to review.

In other news, I have a completed sock cuff.

Now it's time to start turning the heel.

I'm not sure that I want to do that tonight. I haven't been feeling well all day, and part of me wants to start something easy and mindless and put on Glee.

For now, I think that's what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll start that vest I keep talking about later.

Or write something. Since Mondays are supposed to be for writing, too. And I found an MFA program that I'm interested in. University of Baltimore, which I know nothing about. It's a combination Creative Writing and Publishing MFA, and I think it would be infinitely more useful than a regular Creative Writing program.

Head sufficiently spinning.

Now, Glee.

Pieces

These pieces are now a sweater. It's an unblocked sweater with no buttons, but it's still a sweater. And cute, I might add.

I'm still pretty in love with this pattern.

It's so quick and easy and cute. I think it will have staying power.
Speaking of staying power... check out this flawless segue...

Artemis Fowl.

I started reading this children's series years ago- after I was already out of the target age range, but when I was considerably younger than I am now.

I'd read the first four, and then, when I went to the library in search of Melville (which they didn't have. Seriously, a library that didn't have Melville) I found the last three in the series.

Seven books, you say. Sounds a bit like Harry Potter. Yeah, but Artemis is cooler. And I'm pretty sure Eoin Colfer didn't plan to have seven books like HP, it just happened.

Artemis Fowl is for slightly younger audiences- this library had it shelved under "teen series" but we've already established the merits of this library. I disagree with the "teen" label. Young teen, PRE-teen, really.

Artemis is a boy genius (I believe he is ten in the first book, which is also a reason I disagree with the teen series label) and a criminal mastermind. He has discovered the existence of fairies and sets about trying to capture them with his superior intellect and never-ending fortune.

Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. And I just read the fifth book, which involves demons. I can't give you the whole back story, that would take too long. About as long as it would take you to just read the first four books for yourself, because they're really quick, fun, and easy reads. So just do that.

Go read Artemis Fowl. Then come back and we'll talk about the demons.

While I wait, I'll work on turning this into a sweater vest. (A cool one, not the kind of sweater vest you're thinking of.)

Mondays are for Blogging

As I mentioned, my blogging has been incredibly sporadic. Sorry about that. It's a problem that I've been having lately. In a way, I sort of miss academia, because I had things that I had to do. Currently, there is nothing that I HAVE to do, except go to work four days per week, so subsequently, I find it hard to get motivated to do anything beyond that.

Okay, if I'm honest, it's hard to get motivated to go to work, too. My job is pretty damn boring right now. But because I have nothing that I have to do, I tend to fall back on the "why should I? I don't HAVE to," excuse.

Thus, new rule: Mondays are for blogging. And writing. Something, anything. Mondays are for hauling my ass to the library if necessary, just to get something accomplished.

I did go to the library today, although not to write, just to pick up some new books. Because, you know, the shelf full of unread books here isn't enough. Nope.

Weeknights will be for crocheting/knitting/reading.

But Mondays are for blogging.

I have a new finished object to show you this Monday, too. Hopefully, I'll have at least progress, if not something totally done, to show you every Monday.

Here it is, Doris Chan's Snow Day Cowl:

I absolutely love the colors of this yarn.

It's called 'Catskill' and while it isn't really the colors of the Catskills at all (not enough green. Actually, not any green, and that's a problem) it's still a really gorgeous colorway. I have a new addiction to Mobius cowls. They're genius. At least, I think they are. I'm still not totally sure how they even work- they just do.

Here's another FO- this might be the cutest thing I've ever made.

I'm not preggers, no worries. I know a ton of people who are. I'm cool with that however, because it means I get to make more sweaters, and boy do I love this pattern. I even made matching booties with the blue, to bring that out in the sweater a little more.


Cute, right? I've already ordered the yarn for the next one.
Next Monday, I shall return. Hopefully with a finished project, and likely a book review. (Whoa, I know, I haven't done that in forever.)
Now- Pitchapolooza time! (NaNo sponsored pitch contest.)

A blog in bullets

- I'm terribly out of the blogging habit.

-Going to take a page out of Steven's book.

            -Mondays are for blogging.

                                -Seriously. Starting this one. New rule.

-Dark(ish) picture sneak peak: