Turkey Hangover

What a nice Thanksgiving. It's been warm and sunny here (after Wednesday's day-of-rain) all weekend, and that's kept me in a fantastic mood.

Thursday, I cooked my first-ever Thanksgiving feast! I was a little nervous about timing everything to finish at the same time, but I did okay. I made one sin of omission: I forgot the cranberry sauce. Oops! We picked up a can on Friday to go with the leftovers. (We will be eating turkey at least twice a day for two weeks, I think. Good thing it is tasty!)

I brined a turkey breast -- we don't need the whole bird -- and it was delicious. While it was cooking, I made garlic-rosemary rolls -- my first-ever yeasted bread experience. Delicious. We both smelled like garlic for the rest of the day (there was garlic in the gravy too) but SO worth it. Also with the turkey: mashed potatoes, natch, stuffing-from-a-box and green beans with shallots. Not shown: Pumpkin roll and pumpkin bread for dessert.

For the rest of the weekend, it's been delightfully low-key. We raked up the rest of the yard (we're up to 17 bags of leaves!) and did a bunch of organizing and general puttering around the house. I reorganized the kitchen island and went through some cookbooks to plan some wintry feasts. We saw James Bond. I spent some time at the happy place knitting while JT was getting a massage. All in all, no complaints. Especially because there was plenty of lazy knitting time:

Look, a sock! It happened so fast I barely had time to blog about it. This is Mama-E's sock yarn in Veruca, a great blend of tangerine-lilac-tan-rose-slate. Knit Happens got a big batch of this yarn in recently, and this one just HAD to come home with me. I was powerless to resist! It's so soft, too -- I bought some yarn from Mama E earlier in the year, and this is about 1000x softer. She switched her yarn, apparently -- for the better.

Anyway, that's one of the "Friday Harbor" socks from Knitting on the Road. The pattern is kind of tricksy, but once I figured it out it was smooth sailing. Also, I got some totally mindless knitting in:

This is 1/3 of a scarf for my aunt. It should be 2/3 done, but I had to rip out and restart at a narrower stitch count so that the scarf would be long enough. It's Colinette Fandango, which is not my favorite, but it does make a nice scarf. It's 22 stitches across, garter all the way. Not really much more to say about that, except hopefully it will be done soon.

My Life, My Blog

(Courtesy Cara.)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

84 Good Years

Grandpa Bob, 1922-2006

Dad called me this morning to say that Grandpa Bob died. It wasn't totally unexpected; he took a turn for the worse a few days ago. I'm terrifically sad that he's no longer around but so, so thankful for the time I had with him. This is the grandfather I went to visit in August because I didn't know if I would get another chance to make it out to Kansas while he was alive. I'm told he went peacefully in the company of his two daughters.

My memories of Grandpa Bob always involve him smiling. He had a twinkle in his eye almost all the time; when I was little, I thought he looked like Santa Claus. He twinkled when he beat me at dominoes -- he never let me win.

He loved to be outdoors and went on a three- or five-mile walk every single day. My grandmother once told me that the secret to their 61-year marriage is that they took walks every day in separate directions. If he was feeling indulgent, he might stop off for an ice cream cone or a cheeseburger along the way. When we had a family reunion in Estes Park a few years ago, Grandpa was up at dawn and hiking to the top of the hill where our cabin was. He got slower as he got older, but his determination remained the same.

His health was perfect until a year ago. When he was a child in Massachusetts, they thought he had TB and sent him to live in a sanitarium. He wasn't sick. He emerged a year later, still TB-free, and used to joke that being around all those sick people gave him a fantastic immune system. He was healthy as a horse until last year, when he needed a new heart valve.

In retirement, which is pretty much how I knew him, Grandpa gave his time to the Red Cross. He was willing and able to be a part of disaster relief squads, and would be called to help with the bookkeeping at sites where people needed aid. He assisted after Hurricanes Andrew and Hugo. He helped out after countless midwest tornadoes. And after the attacks on Sept. 11, he spent several weeks on Long Island helping the Red Cross relief effort. It was only in the last few years as he got weaker that he had to restrict his travel distances, but he still went down to the chapter headquarters every week to help them out. I'm so proud of how much he gave.

That's who he was -- a giving, loving person who was there for every holiday we celebrated, and every graduation. He welcomed JT into the family with open arms. He maintained contact with me when I moved to the East Coast, and was always happy when I called. He's proof that you don't have to be wealthy to have a rich life.

And I'm sad that he's gone. And sad for my grandmother, who's lost her companion.

Restored

So, after a few weeks that buried me (too busy to blog! too busy to go to late night, which always helps destress me! ack!), I decided that it was time to get out of town.

I hopped a train north and spent some quality time in Princeton and Philadelphia with longtime girlfriends, wandering around and shopping and just generally having conversations that didn't revolve around work or house stuff. Oh, and a few cocktails were thrown in for good measure. By the time I got home last night, I felt like my sane self again. Yay for that.

I had an absolutely delightful time on the train up and back. Even coming back, we were delayed an hour, but that was okay by me for two reasons:

1. The train didn't terminate at Washington, but went to points south, which meant I could stay on an extra 10 minutes (for free!) and get off at the Alexandria station just a few blocks from my house. So much better than a 45-minute Metro trip.

2. I was extremely content to be with my knitting (Jemima's sleeve) and a book on CD: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. I know this has been out for a few years, and I've come thisclose to picking it up before. I only have about 30 minutes left in the recording -- and it helps that the narrator is a British chap with a hot accent. Totally delightful.

So, I made quite a bit of progress on Jemima -- up to the raglan shaping on the second sleeve.

Still doing okay on the yarn quantity, and hoping that I won't have to pick up another ball. Fingers crossed. I looked for some buttons in Philly, but I think I need to get into the button band before I have a good idea about what size to get.

I should also mention at this point that Bayerische and I are barely on speaking terms. It may be time to put the sock to sleep.

And, the weather was crap in Philly on Sunday, so we did a bit of shopping. Ended up going on an unintentional yarn crawl of sorts -- the friend I was staying with is a knitter, so we went to the shop closest to her, Ewe and I in Bryn Mawr, where I bumped into Anmiryam of Gromit Knits! Such a small knitblogging world. And then we went to Chestnut Hill, where the highlight was a visit here:

Penzey's Spices. [The bag is a little worse for the wear from the travel.] I've ordered from their catalog, but had never been to a store. (There isn't one in the DC area, boo.) It was a bit of sensory overload from all the savory and pungent spices, but I kept going back to smell the almond extract when I needed a break. Now I'm all spiced up and ready for some kitchen experimentation.

Then we walked up to The Knit With Yarn shop, but didn't stay long because it smelled of cigarette smoke. So, with a bit of time to kill before my train, we headed down to Rosie's Yarn Cellar. Such a cute little cave of a store -- it always makes me happy. There were people tucked in every corner of the store spinning, knitting, winding yarn, etc.

And, I continued my sock-yarn binge. Maybe I'm buying so much sock yarn because I already have a good-sized sweater stash?

That's Claudia's Handpainted in Donna's Favorite, 2 balls of Trekking XXL in a black/gray ombre and a browns ombre from Ewe and I. Then, a couple skeins of Koigu in a yummy from Rosie's, just for good measure.

Socky Potential

Socktober ended and I don't have a single sock to show for it. And I'm okay with that. Because of the fantastic effort by Lolly to celebrate all things sock, I've spent a good chunk of Socktober thinking about socks -- how I wear them, what patterns I'm drawn to, what techniques I want to try.

And I do feel like I made a little progress on my own socks, though I don't have any photos to show. I've completed half a repeat of Bayerische and feel like I could conquer the world. (I even managed to do the two-stitch cable twists without a cable needle... can I get a woot?!)

And part of all this sock-thinking has me excited about the latest additions to my socky stash.

Top: Lorna's Laces in Natural, Sundara Yarn in Cantaloupe
Bottom: Brooklyn Handspun in Pebbles, Socks that Rock in Pink Graphite, STR in Fairgrounds, STR in Titania, J. Knits in Portland, J. Knits in Salt Lake City.

These are some (but I just realized not quite all--2 skeins of STR are missing) of the additions to my sock stash over the past few months. I really seem to be wavering between the nearly solids and the wildly variegated. I think it's because I am drawn to more complex patterns, which work well in nearly solid yarn, but then for a quick instant-gratification sock set, there's something really fun about working with a new variegated yarn.

In any event, the only problem I have is this: I'm acquiring yarn faster than I'm knitting it. I don't really feel guilty about it -- there's still food on the table -- but I do feel like I'm preventing the sock yarn from reaching its potential.

Final note: I won't be at late night tonight... friend's birthday. I'm bummed I'll miss Steph's surprise!