nothing to see here, folks

ha! okay, no, seriously. we made a HUGE mistake.

we bought one of these for the loft:


have you ever nestled into one of these things? oh man. comfy, defined. i am certain that this is our best. purchase. ever. and over the course of two weeks, b bought me both that gorgeous edition of dave egger's the wild things (yes we are going to the movie next weekend yay!) and nick hornby's* latest, juliet, naked. so i've pretty much spent my office-free time like this:


knitting blog? what knitting blog?

... (secret project... still secret.)



*b also got us tickets to see nick hornby at the skirball center last week. boy am i a lucky girl!

much ado about knitting

so. i've finished knitting the minimalist cardi, but it's sitting in my knitting bag partially seamed. i had an altercation with mattress stitch - it just won't look even on both sides of the sleeve cap. did some research and asked the nice folk on ravelry and it all amounts to the inevitable riiippp... looks like i need to seam this sucker up using backstitch. which is a yarn-eater, and i'm currently using the extra skein of cascade 220 for these:


i came aross the pattern via some blogs and gazed longingly at it for a good five minutes. then b told me to cast on for crying out loud. so i listened to his advice. i NEED these mittens. it's going to be cold in ohio over the holidays, right?

because these are only going to work indoors:


they're perfect for my freezing office; i wore them yesterday and my hands were nice and toasty - and i could still type! i've written up the pattern and already emailed it off to a fellow raveler for test knitting (she wanted to knit cabled armwarmers for a niece for christmas), but they need a name. any suggestions?


i'll take some decent photos this weekend (hopefully).

finally, i leave you with the breaking dawn emergency reading kit i gave one of the girls on my team last night. she is the last of us to leave any bit of the twilight series unread, and is powering through the final book this week with the promise to finish before tomorrow night so we can all discuss in line while waiting to see the movie.


tea, hard candy (red of course), a granola bar, and bells on an elastic to wrap around her wrist and wake her, should she fall asleep and drop the book. ;)

yep, i have a problem

book coma

i should have known better; i should have known i'd be in trouble. malarky was the first to suggest it when i visited her over the summer. then my female coworkers all started buzzing around the halls chatting about it. so i had to give it a try. boy, am i really in trouble.


it all started innocently enough: a little breakfast, a little light reading... five hours and five hundred pages later i ran off to the bookstore. i needed more.


i spent most of the day today on the beach reading #2. one thousand pages in all, folks. so far.

good thing i can knit while reading!


the february baby sweater is done, and i think adorable - and the baby shower's in two weeks so i finished early! i can't wait to give this to my friend. it was a really fun and easy knit. love that EZ!


i also finished a second hat for our friends who moved to colorado. i love the marsan watchcap pattern - this is the third i've knit - and the lorna's laces superwash is amazingly squishy and soft for 100% wool. highly recommend.

now i'm off to swatch for a minimalist cardi mini-KAL with malarky. i think i need to hold off on the third massive novel in this series or else i'm going to be restless at work tomorrow when i have to focus on, well, work! do i have the self-control?

this hour brought to you by...

it felt like a nice, long weekend for once - probably because we spent friday night out rather than in the house slow-cooking in front of the tv as usual. so a very happy b-day shout-out to blake who provided our friday night festivities. late-late we checked out the griffin which was incredibly hipster-ish in ambiance and music but not in patronage, which appeared to be the usual hollywood set. and it was loud. maybe on a thursday night i could handle it.

saturday saw knitting, knitting, and more knitting. and also a trip to the local laemmle for lars and the real girl. loved it! it's an absolutely sweet story about a twentysomething struggling to deal with his mom's death in childbirth (his) when his sister-in-law becomes pregnant - and a small town's willingness to help him no matter how bizarre the process might be.

while we were burning some time before the movie started, bryan bought me this book:


it is wonderful! edited by dave eggers and with an introduction by sufjan stevens, all proceeds go to 826. i highly recommend it!

and, so yes, i finally finished valpuri! now, i am a decent seamstress when it comes to knits, but man this was a tough one. the rowan summer tweed had serious self-loathing issues: it kept snagging on itself, often breaking. i had SO MANY joins in the seams it's ridiculous. ah well. she's now wet-blocking on the counter until she's dry enough for the dress form.


no one seems to have told my computer that daylight savings time was pushed back a week. oops.