Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Tamales!

I had a three day weekend because of Veteran's Day, and it was pretty awesome. I didn't really get out that much though. I kind of did one tiny thing each day and then just sat around reading and doing fiber stuff. *I'm kind of not sure how to differentiate what I post on this blog versus what I post on jill & jill. It's not like I have a big following on this site. It's really just Jason that reads it I think! I haven't made a decision but I guess for a while there's going to be some overlap. And then eventually this one will probably become obsolete*


Friday I finally blocked my Three-cornered shawl.


*I apparently also need to figure out how to upload my pictures into Flickr with a higher resolution, hmmm*
I also finished some yarn that I spun. I watched Gaslight (1944) with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.
Saturday I went to the GLASG meeting. I showed off the shawl for show and tell. I also worked on spinning some silk and kind of figured out how to Navajo ply. Mariko took a few of us out to a tasty Japanese lunch at Yabu after the meeting. I love love love Japanese food. I made Spanikopita for dinner that night, using puff pastry instead of philo dough, making it extra fatty and buttery. Then watched Lolita (Kubrick version) and worked on my knitting.
Sunday I went to Jazzercise in the morning and then Adrienne and I met up with Brian G at the Los Angeles Tamale Festival! It was held at MacArthur Park in downtown Los Angeles. There were about two blocks reserved for the festival. There were maybe a dozen different tamale booths, plus other vendors and stuff. I had a really good green chile and cheese tamale at one booth (maybe Nini's Tamales?). It said they were New Mexico chiles, but they were very mild which is perfect for me. I got a humongus cup of horchata. I got a chicken tamale from Me Gusta, but it seemed like they had just run out of their homemade tamales and were using back-up ones from boxes. I also got a pretty good cheese papusa, my first ever! The lines got super long at some point and it would have been too difficult to go back to the first booth to get more of the amazing tamales. We tried to see the Tamale Eating Contest, but when we got to the stage it was just the tail-end of the veteran's presentation and a band was setting up. It was kind of disappointing, none of us have seen a real live eating contest. We also went into the 99 Cents Store, which I've never been into. I bought a box of Moon Pies and some lingerie wash bags for washing my fiber.
Monday was my day off, so I stayed in bed late reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I managed to read over the weekend. It was pretty good. A quick read. It kind of reminded me of Memoirs of a Geisha. A girl going through numerous ordeals with a pay-off at the end, kind of book. I spun some more silk and watched The Office (American) Season 2. I went out to Century City and saw The Darjeeling Limited, finally. I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. A similar feel to his other films with a little less humor. I then sat in traffic for 30-40 minutes to go 4 miles home then made me way to SnB at The Spot. I worked on my Cedar Dancing sock and discussed dirty internet memes and Tyra's fear of dolphins with the other ladies.
I didn't do much work yesterday so spent a lot of time on Ravelry putting new projects on my queue and reading blogs. I also managed to finish my socks. Now the only thing on the needles, besides things I kind of gave up on, is the Vintage Velvet scarf for my sister. I need to move some of those things off my queue and into real life! I'm gearing up to start a big project. There's a sweater coat in the Rowan magazine 38 that I have the yarn for and could start on. Or there's a cabled sweater in the same magazine. Or I could find something good in the latest Vogue Winter issue to start on. I better start knitting big sweaters since the brief cold season will likely pass by quickly.

Monday, November 5, 2007

New accounts

I had a pretty eventful weekend. Saturday was my birthday so I decided to celebrate it by cleaning my first fleece! I went over to Jill's and we started scouring my Pygora fleece from OFFF. We tried a few different cleansers, but went with the Orvus paste. It seemed to work better than Dawn. At the end of the day I had a bag of slightly damp, mostly clean Pygora fiber. Pretty exciting. I then went out for dinner with a few friends (at Mishima my favorite!). Sunday I went to Santa Anita for Oak Tree horse racing. It was my first time. It was pretty cool, but I didn't win any bets and there was a lot of downtime. But the people I went with wouldn't have appreciated me knitting there. It just seems so anti-social sometimes.

Jill and I also started a new joint blog! It's over here. I've got big plans for it blowing up all crazy and then we'll get famous and get a book deal. For now we'll aim at posting semi-regularly. I guess I'll still keep this one, because I like it, and see how it goes from there.

I also just got my invitation to Ravelry last week. My ravelry name is: nodice. I've been pretty lazy so far about uploading pictures and everything, but I'll try to do it soon.

I've been working pretty hard on the Cedar Dancing socks from the Cat Bordhi book, and should finish the first one tonight. Then maybe onto some holiday knitting. I also almost finished plying some superwash wool 3-ply yarn. I didn't plan ahead, so now have 1/2 oz of singles. I guess I'll have to try Navajo plying, but I don't feel confident about it!

That's it for now, more later!