I spent last evening cooking (and eating) a gourmet dinner of salmon wrapped in phyllo, risotto, and grilled vegetables. Now I can count the number of times we've used our good china on two fingers! :) (Both of which I managed to cut while opening the plastic packaging on the new meat thermometer we bought. How was I supposed to check if the salmon flaked easily when it was wrapped in eight layers of phyllo dough? Honestly. Don't recipes get tested before they're published? So I used the thermometer instead, and it came out perfectly.)

No progress on the pillows, though...
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:00 AM -

Busy, as usual

My major deadline at work is over - and we made it - so maybe now I can blog a little more often! We managed to get the furniture exchanged, so it should arrive Friday (fingers crossed). I made my first pillow - I have a new respect for self-cording...thank goodness for zipper feet. Considering I didn't have a pattern (or instructions of any sort) I think it came out pretty good. I need to add some bias tape to the inside seams - the fabric wants to shred more than I'd like. Now just three more pillows and the curtains. It's a good thing I have nothing planned for the wonderful upcoming long weekend!
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:08 AM -

Furniture Woes

No new blue sofa yet. :( There was a mix-up and it didn't get into the system right. The earliest it will be delivered is Wednesday. It may work out for the best, though, since after re-measuring I realized that the way I rearranged the room won't fit with the sofa, chair and ottoman we bought. We're going to try to get them to exchange the chair & ottoman for a loveseat - considering the furniture isn't even on the truck, yet, it shouldn't be a problem. I hope. Otherwise, I'm going to have to totally rearrange the room again, and I'm really starting to like the way it works right now.
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:50 AM -

I'm Really Still Here!

No, I didn't go on vacation like Jenny and Tina. I've just been very busy at work and spending evenings cleaning and buying furniture and fabric. :) I'm getting my new blue sofa tomorrow. Yay! And last night I bought about a million yards (ok, only 14) of pretty new fabric for curtains. Thank goodness for the 50% off coupons Jo-Ann's sends me. How can people afford this stuff otherwise?!? The curtain fabric is very sheer, and I got a more solid version of it to make a few pillows from. I'll post pics of the fabric eventually. It might take a while to figure out how to make curtains, since I was just too cheap to spend $25 on a book that outlined it in detail... Especially considering that was almost half of what I spent on the fabric -- after the 50% discount. But I think I'll still make out better in the end than if I bought good quality curtains at the store - can you buy nice long panels with a valance for $35 per window? I haven't even looked...
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:56 AM -

New Arrival

Lisa & Mike's new baby, Henry, finally made an appearance last night (15 days late!) I can't wait to go meet him tonight! :)

Besides that, I have lots of stuff to blog about, but I have too much actual work to do today...
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:54 AM -

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Which means I don't have to water anything today! (It's the simple things in life that make me happy.) In other, knitting-related, news: I gave in and bought the yarn for my afghan last night. Even though I haven't even started my sweater sleeves. Oops. :) But it was as a reward to myself for doing something I didn't want to do, so does it count as cheating? Besides, I'm completely stuck right now on the sleeves - I can't decide whether to have the flared cuffs like the pattern calls for or not, and I have to decide that before I start the sleeves. I just keep thinking of how annoyed I get when I'm wearing a watch or a bracelet while playing piano or typing, and I don't know if the sleeves would annoy me, too... So I'll think about it for a while before I start them.
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:46 AM -

More Books!

As if I didn't have enough knitting books, I ordered four more from Amazon last night - mostly due to looking up the link for the "Knitting with Dog Hair" book. That "page you made" feature on Amazon is evil - it keeps showing you things you want but would never know existed if they didn't point them out to you...I know, that's the point, but still... Actually, if you look at the books and magazines in my craft room, a very small percentage are knitting - they're mostly crochet, cross-stitch and quilting books. So, it's about time I added to my knitting collection. (Excuses, excuses.) Now I just have to finish the sleeves on my sweater before they arrive so I don't get caught up in a new project!
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:42 AM -

"Better a sweater from a dog you know and love..."

"...than from a sheep you'll never meet"! What a great subtitle! I just had to pick up this book the other day. I'm not sure if I could ever bring myself to knit something out of dog fur, but we sure could collect enough if I wanted to. Plus, Molly has a lovely reddish-gold coat...and I've always wanted to learn how to use my mom's spinning wheel. I'll put it on my list of things to do if I get really bored with the typical craft projects someday.
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:15 AM -

Blocked

I can't decide whether to block my sweater pieces. I'm done with the front and the back, and have been toying with the idea of sewing those together before starting the sleeves, mostly to double-check that it will fit. But seeing as it's chenille yarn, I'm not sure how to go about blocking it. Will it flatten? It's acrylic - will the iron melt it? I suppose I should test it on my swatch first, but that woud require patience...of which I'm in short supply lately. Any knitters out there have any ideas?
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:11 AM -

Unstuck

I finally finished another block in the quilt! I decided to put down my knitting for an evening, since I'm about half-done with the front of the sweater (I promise I'll post some pics soon!) and I was very far behind on my quilt. This block gave me a lot of trouble, both because it's very small, detailed pieces, and because I didn't like some of the fabrics, so I'm very happy it's done! I do like how it eventually came out, though. Which is good, since it's going to be right at eye level (for me, anyway) when the quilt is hanging on the wall, and it would drive me crazy if it came out badly!
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:36 AM -

Hooray!

I got my archives working again. Of course, it probably wasn't worth staying up this late for. Oh, well...
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:14 PM -

Knitting Update

I've never knitted anything so fast in my life! I'm almost to the shoulder shaping on the back of my sweater! I imagine I'll be done with the back and started on the front by the end of the weekend. I guess it's maybe time to pick up the two stalled knitting projects that I hadn't finished because I thought knitting was a very slow process. Of course, I've been knitting to the exclusion of all else - I've only appliqued a couple of small pieces in the quilt, and my house is a bit of a mess... But, I have to take full advantage of the enthusiasm I have at the beginning of a project. If I can get at least 3/4 of the way done before I start to get bored, the momentum just takes it the rest of the way. Otherwise, the project ends up in my half-finished crafts pile. Poor half-finished crafts. There are even a couple in there that I don't like anymore because my tastes have changed, or because I started them when I didn't really know what I was doing and they look awful. What does one do with half-finished crafts that are no longer wanted?
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:07 AM -

Life's Mysteries

Seen in the content list of the bottle of new hand lotion I bought for my desk: "Water (Aqua)" Is that aqua colored water? Were they trying to translate it to Spanish but didn't know how to spell it? Or is there some new "brand" of water out there called "Aqua"? Of course, compared to the rest of the scary-sounding list of things this contains, I'm probably better off not knowing what's in my lotion... At least it smells good - it's black cherry & nutmeg flavored - and makes my hands softer.
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:41 AM -