My two favorite things to sniff.

Hi all, just popping in briefly with some Fiberlicious! action on this fine Sunday morning. I mean, what better time is there to think about all of the best kinds of expresso than a cool, sunny Sunday morning?


Here are my two favorite forms of Expresso. Yum. While I am still working diligently on sweaters, I am getting the urge to knit socks again. Could it be the imminent onset of Socktoberfest? So, I picked up two balls of Rowan 4 Ply Soft for a little I Love Gansey action. That should satisfy my need for a sock on the needles. And those teensy cables should keep me occupied, too.


Speaking of sweaters and diligence, this little stack of buttons is the only thing remaining between me and a finished Central Park Hoodie. So very, very close. And I can't think of a better thing to do while drinking my Sunday morning expresso than putting the final touches on a pre-fall sweater.

Happy weekend, all!

Breakfast of 30 year old champions.

Just so you don't think I had to eat this birthday cake, here's the one I actually got to eat. Turns out that not only is M capable of giving me the perfect birthday present, he can also bake the perfect birthday cake. Of the carrot variety. Yummy. Carrot cake is my absolute favorite. Nova, I hope yours turns/ed out as perfectly as mine!


Thank you, thank you, thank! you! for all of the birthday wishes! And I was especially happy to see some of you came out from 'neath your lurking rocks to leave me new blog fodder such nice comments!

Moral superiority in the pink.

To the guileless eye, that might look like me hard at work mixing up a delicious birthday cake for M, but it is, in fact, me concocting an antidote for hubristic blunders. At least I am aware that I'll need nothing less than a ton of sugar for that. You see, I feel as though I am something of a semi-vegan cake baking master. I have an impeccable record for creating the most amazing semi-vegan birthday cakes ever. The past two years I have amazed M with my delectable 3-layer birthday cakes, though I suppose I should give a teensy bit of credit to the Grit, for having published their superlative semi-vegan cake recipes in the beloved-by-me Grit Cookbook. This year, however, my moral superiority got the best of me. I decided that semi-vegan just wasn't going to cut it. I wanted total vegan. Total vegan, it turns out, means no cream cheese or butter--the two offending ingredients in the Grit's frosting recipe. So I did a few minutes' worth of research and came up with an all new, all vegan birthday cake recipe--one that called for such replacements for cream cheese and butter as agar and arrowroot. Uh, okay. That *seems* like it might be... delicious?



Turns out that while agar is capable of transforming cocoa powder and a select other vegan ingredients into a really interesting gelatinous texture, it is not palatable at all. Especially once it is pureed into a spreadable, frosting-like consistency (I spared you photos of this mess). It doesn't come anywhere CLOSE to successfully imitating frosting. And, so, despite my initial consideration of perhaps moving one step closer to transitioning from vegetarianism to veganism, before I knew what was happening, I had replaced the crap vegan cake with this:



Mmmm... glorious, glorious 3-layer Dark Chocolate (vegan) Cake with Cream Cheese (semi-vegan) Frosting. Cream! Cheese! Butter! Get in my cake! And so, in the end, M had another happy semi-vegan birthday, and I will continue for the time being to be content with being a vegetarian, who, on occasion, consumes animal by-products.



Now, about my continued fascination and attraction to pink... I continue to maintain that it has nothing to do with any holidays that might begin with a "V" and end with "-alintine's Day". I'd rather like to believe, instead, that it has to do with being inspired by--



--the best movie ever.

And, speaking of sugary pink things, did you think I'd make you suffer through another one of my pontifications without including at least a little bit of knitting?



It seems that my happy, sugary-sweet sock has acquired a new, not-so-happy demeanor in the form of a huge, red, angry gash--



--wait, make that TWO angry gashes! Even my "happy on the needles" socks refuse to be cooperatively happy! Despite the pooling, though, I still really love these socks. And, look, I have successfully maneuvered the short-row heel! Now that's what I call sweet success! (or, just a really, REALLY bad pun).

Have a great Sunday, all!

Bizarro Eye Candy: Now, with 100% more agar!

It's M's birthday today (a whole 26! What a baby!), and I am in the kitchen baking up a big ol' fancy birthday cake for the occasion. This year, I've gone all vegan, baby! A big, chocolaty birthday cake with no butter or eggs! (You're thinking: "Wow, um, lucky him...) And the frosting comprises the delectable agar as one of its primary ingredients (again, I hear the collective: "Uh, yeah, that sounds... delicious?). I'm excited. I can't wait to taste this baby.



And, because, really, if I am going to take the time to post a Bizarro Eye Candy shot, shouldn't it be sun-dappled? Come On!

Domesticities and Traditions, part deux.

So here they are, in all of their sweet, sugary glory: Christmas cut-out cookie decoratin' success!



There isn't really anything artistic or creative about my version of Christmas cut-out cookies (though M would defiantly disagree with me on the creativity aspect - he was so good as to include a "blow-up doll"-themed cookie, a "Barbaro"-themed one, and a "Homer Simpson"-style tree in the decorating - see if you can spot these guys! *cough* look down *cough*)...



The instrinsic decorative merit of most of these cookies lies in their "traditional-ness." This is how I decorated cookies when I was little: Rudolphs got red hot noses, Christmas tree shapes got as much stuff dumped on them as possible, gingerbread men got sweet red-hot buttons, etc. Obvious embellishments, perhaps, but the tradition of doing it is what I cherish and ultimately feel compelled to recreate year after year. The experience...and the deliciousness of the end result, of course - especially the cookies that have excessive amounts of decorations on them - they're my favorites!



And our new tradition of including the camel cut-outs among the more traditional shapes. This deserves a bit of clarification. M and I, both being happy heathens (an expression pilfered from Julia; see #16 of her 100 Things for full context of use), chose secular cut-out shapes, ones that had little embedded religious connotations of any kind. Tree. Rudolph. Snowflake. Gingerbread Man.



Then came the addition of the camel. Infused with religious connotations. Magi, for example. For M and I, however, the camel symbolizes our usual departure to the Middle East at Christmas time. Me to the UAE, him to Egypt. (Did I mention that he leaves to excavate in Egypt right after I leave to excavate in the UAE?). And, of course, the cookie shape only works because the camel cookie cutter I found depicts an Arabian camel, otherwise known as the Dromedary, it's single hump clearly distinct from the two-humped Bactrian camel. Bactrian camels are entirely inferior to Arabian camels, by the way. Though I say this as a biased Arabianist. But take my word for it: Arabian camels are far superior. So, the camel cookies symbolize our departure to the Mid-East. That is all. Clarification complete. I also really love indulging others in camel factology.

One of these days I might actually post something substantially related to turning strands of wool into decorative, wearable things by means of two pointed wooden sticks...