Something completely different

The last week of summer break, before the beginning of the new year and the craziness that ensues, I took a day off from work and had a girls' day with Émilie.  Truth be told, I was a bit worried about what we were actually going to DO together.  Around here, Dad is the "fun guy", and Mum is the one who buys the kids new shoes and takes them to get hair cuts.  All well and good when your toes are feeling pinched and your hair is in your eyes, but not exactly fun city, you know?  So what were we going to do for fun?  Sure, there were things on the To Do list that we could tackle, but that really wasn't what I wanted our day to be about.

I made a few suggestions (movie?  pedicure?  crafts?), but nothing seemed to spark her interest.  Finally I just asked her: what would you like to do today, Émilie?  "I want to go to Céramic Café, Maman."

For those of you not in the Montreal area, Céramic Café is a café where you can paint your own ceramics, and they'll take care of the glazing, drying and (baking?  cooking? whatever.  They take your piece and make it all shiny and nice).  Well alright-y then!

Émilie chose a frog figurine (I swear, the house is full of frogs and unicorns!), and I walked in fully expecting to paint a mug or a bowl or something, but... well... that was before I knew they had garden gnomes. 

GNOMES!!!  OhMyGah.  Simply Had. To. Have. One.  Honestly, is he not the cutest gnome EVER?  So cheery and happy-looking.  And puh-lease.  Who could resist that face?

 

So yeah... I had a great day with my daughter, got to get my craft on, and got a gnome too.  I wonder if Maxime would like to join us next time?  After all, Gnomeo here needs a girlfriend :)

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Wondering about this week's muffins?  Here they are!

Peach Butter Muffins, from the Messy Baker.  Absolutely delicious, very light and fluffy, and a good way to use up my homemade vanilla peach butter, which nobody in my family seems to particularly enjoy but me. 

Oh yeah... that's the stuff right there.

Happy Knitting, Everyone!

Going Random

This past Saturday night, I had one of those Bizarro World knitting moments where the knitting was just going super fast and I finished everything.  OK, technically I only had 2 projects in active rotation, but STILL.  These are projects I'd had on the needles for weeks.  Evening after evening, I'd plunge into a thankless knitting abyss and nothing would get done, and then Saturday, *poof!*  Both projects were finished.  On Sunday, just as we were heading out to apple country for the day, Phil suggested I bring something to knit and I had nothing I could bring with me. Chew on that, my friends.

The first thing off the needles was the second of the Eyelet and Flame Chevron socks.  I finished these on September 1st, so technically I was a day late and a dollar short for the Solid Socks KAL, but that doesn't make these babies any less awesome.

Knit with Madelinetosh Tosh Sock in the Candlewick colourway.  The stitch pattern is the Eyelet and Flame Chevron, on page 68 of Vogue Knitting's Ultimate Sock Book, and I sort of fudged the cuff, heel and toe to make a sock, heh.

I mentioned last post that I'd talk about how I came to settle upon this particular pattern for my next sock.  WELL, here's the thing.

It recently came to my attention that I have... drumroll please... 446 sock patterns in my Ravelry library.  That's FOUR HUNDRED FOURTY SIX, sock patterns that I've either bought (paper of electronic) or downloaded since I first joined Ravelry.

I've got 2 words for that: In. Sane.  And the killer is that, when I want to knit a sock, more often than not I'll just download a new pattern rather than try to choose one from my books/PDF library, because honestly... How am I supposed to decide when I've got so many options?  How do I choose?

There's just no way.  The only solution was to bust out the random integer generator.  And that's exactly what I did, and what I'll continue to do for the next little while.  I've allowed myself a few outs (I don't have to knit it if I don't like the pattern; I have to use stash yarn), but this was the first one Mister Random Number Generator selected for me, and it's none too shabby, if I do say so myself.

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In closing, lest you think I wussed out on my weekly muffin commitment, here are the muffins for week 2!

Strawberry Balsamic Jam muffins.  Not as "healthy" as last week's (who are we kidding at this point?), but really, truly delicious.  Ask me how I know.

Happy Knitting, Everyone!