All posts by Chris

Randonymity

Four score

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Tagged by Lynda. I don’t think I’ve done this one before, but they’re starting to blur…

Four Jobs You’ve Had
1. Motel maid (two days)
2. Medic (91-A), US Army Reserve and Minnesota National Guard
3. Timber marker and fire fighter, US Forest Service
4. Senior systems analyst for a small regional telecommunications company (current)

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over
1. The Matrix (original)
2. Amelie
3. The Fifth Element
4. As Good As It Gets

Four Places You’ve Lived
1. Orlando, Florida
2. Hill City, South Dakota
3. Itasca State Park, Minnesota
4. Minneapolis, Minnesota (current)

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch
Um, I don’t watch any TV shows and haven’t for several years – so this will be TV shows I used to watch.
1. The X-Files
2. Ally McBeal
3. Star Trek Deep Space Nine
4. The Simpsons

I’m adding this one to offset the TV-centric question above – Four of Your Favorite Books
1. To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis (or Bellwether by Connie Willis)
2. Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Four Places You’ve Been On Vacation
1. Seattle/Olympic Peninsula/Vancouver, British Columbia
2. Sante Fe and Taos, New Mexico
3. Hill City, South Dakota (the Black Hills)
4. Glacier National Park, Montana

Four Websites You Visit Daily
1. Bloglines (you can see how out-of-hand this is by looking at the bottom of my sidebar)
2. Google
3+. Well, #1 covers lots more sites…

Four of Your Favorite Foods
1. Chipotle chicken bowl
2. Chiang Mai garlic pepper stirfry
3. My own gluten-free pizza
4. Tum Rup Thai green curry stirfry

Four Places You Would Rather Be Right Now
1. On my bicycle in Spain
2. On a warm, sunny beach in Mexico
3. Taos and Sante Fe
4. At a cozy knitting retreat

Four Bloggers You Are Tagging
1. Jeanne (I keep trying…)
2. Mama_Tulip
3. “me” from Bermuda
4. RheLynn

And for today’s gratuitous cat picture, here’s Chaos with his beloved sparkly red mouse (please leave a comment if you know where sparkly red mouse has gone – things are very sad around here right now) on one of my favorite knitted items ever:

Knitting, Those Cats

Apparently, there can be no blobless pictures

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I finished the not-so-red scarf this morning. I decided to take a few pre-blocking pictures and got out an old black velvet dress for a backdrop. Unfortunately, by the time I had the scarf laid out on the black velvet, I had company. (I intended to do a completely cat-free post today. Really, I did.)

“Hmm, what’s this on the living room floor?”
“Looks like sparkly red mouse’s larger, less red, less mousey relative.”
“Oh, very cushy.”
“You may proceed.”

The picture below is of the scarf after I soaked it in Orvus and water, scrunched it dry in a towel, and stretched it out on my blocking board. The blocking board is 48″ long and I had to curve the scarf to get it on there. Why is the image such a funny shape? Um, because until I was resizing the picture, I didn’t realize how messy my bedroom was… Whoops.

Here’s the scarf after blocking, back on the black velvet. It became amazingly drapey and the colors spiraled appealingly. I’m very happy with it! It’s just too bad the I could never get a good photo of the color, because it goes from scarlet to red to hot pink to fuschia to rusty orange to scarlet…

“Let me tell you what I think of this scarf. Back when I was a kitten…”
Those Cats

A cat’s love of knitting is a terrible force

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No particular focus to this post, so settle in for a ramble…

There have been a few questions about how I manage to do any knitting at all with the Cat Chaotic around. Well, when I’m actually knitting, he’s usually lying calmly on my lap – unless he feels I am jabbing his ass a wee bit too much with my needles. Then things get a bit, um, lively. Or unless he thinks it’s time for him to be fed, at which point he begins to leap back and forth over me, occasionally springing off my stomach. (Ufffffffff…)

But it’s knitting photography that really gets him excited. I’m sure there are lots of reasons he finds it appealing – needles dangling and wiggling, yarn strands hither and thither… And best of all, I’m distracted with the camera so he doesn’t get in as much trouble as he would otherwise.

He also has a weakness for my Chibi. (For the non-knitters, this is a little hard plastic case that holds needles for sewing up yarn.) This is what a cat can do to an unattended Chibi (click to zoom in and get the full effect):

front view
back view

Two years, not terribly long after I brought Chaos home, I made him an eggroll from knitty.com‘s Feline Dim Sum pattern. He loved that catnip-stuffed toy. Played with it all the time. See below for the results:

I swear it didn’t look like that when I knitted it! You might not be able to tell from the picture, but it’s also somewhat felted from all the bunny kicking, biting, and generous application of cat spit to which it was subjected.

Chaos supplements his prescription diet with… tissue paper.

“Mmmmm… tissue paper. Hey, don’t knock until you’ve tried it.”
Knitting, Those Cats

An update and a fickle tangent

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I’ve been making good progress on the Chaotic Black Purl Jaywalkers. Yup, lookie there – it’s the black blob again! I must have a camera setting screwed up or something.

Of course, being as fickle as any other knitter, when I read Norma’s post about knitting red scarves for “’emancipated’ foster children who are in college,” I remembered that one of my knitting resolutions for this year was to do more knitting for the community and immediately scrounged through my stash for suitable yarn. I discovered that I had no red yarn. Hmm. I’m in Stashalong, so romping out to a yarn store wasn’t really an option. I considered dyeing some yarn with Wilton’s cake dye, but I’ve never been able to get the reds to set. Norma gave me a tip on resolving that problem, so I was digging through my stash for yarn to dye when I discovered a lovely skein of Anne in reds and pinks, with some orange and rust bits tossed in for fun.Since using stash yarn “as is” seemed much better than filling my condo with fumes from wet wool and hot vinegar, I found an easy garter lace scarf in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts and got started.

The scarf will be much more lacy and open after it’s blocked. Deadline to drop scarves off for this project is January 31 at any Einstein Brothers Bagels. (For the curious, I’m doing surprisingly well knitting with a color that’s so far off of the Chris acceptable color chart, which includes deep greens, purples, and black.)

“Things are gonna change around here, you betcha. This photography crap is making me very cranky.”
Gluten Free, Recipes, Those Cats

And we had a little party…

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Jeanne came over to my place this evening for some flourless chocolate cake, Rex Goliath 47-Pound Rooster Pinot Noir, and a present to celebrate her birthday.

Strangely, we took no photos during our eating, drinking, and knitting. But I do have a few pictures from earlier today. I was working at my computer when I heard a little tearing sound.

“Chaos, what are you doing to Jeanne’s present?”

 

 

“I don’t know how that happened. Who could’ve done that?”

 

“I’m looking and looking, but I just can’t figure out where the culprit went.”

Hmm. I have my suspicions…

Anyway, to make up for the lack of party pictures, here’s a recipe for the world’s simplest flourless chocolate cake, which is gluten-free and can also be dairy-free:

One Bowl Flourless Chocolate Cake
4 oz bittersweet chocolate
1/2 c butter or margarine
3/4 c sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa

Grease a 7- or 8-inch springform pan or round pan. Line bottom with a circle of wax or parchment paper and grease paper.

Break chocolate into pieces and put with butter or margarine into a microwave-safe bowl that will be big enough to ultimately hold all the ingedients. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and microwave until chocolate and butter are melted, being careful not to burn them!

Remove from microwave. Stir until chocolate and butter are well mixed. Add sugar and mix well. Add eggs and mix well. Sift cocoa onto mix and stir until just mixed.

Pour into greased pan. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes or until top has formed a thin crust. Cool cake for 5 minutes, then invert onto a plate.

Dark Chocolate Glaze
4 oz bittersweet chocolate OR sweet dark chocolate or 1/2 c double chocolate chips
3 T butter or margarine
1 T milk, soymilk, or almond milk
1 T light corn syrup
1/4 t vanilla

In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt broken chocolate with butter. Stir until smooth. Stir in milk, corn syrup, and vanilla. Set aside to cool slightly. When glaze is cool, pour onto center of cooled cake. Use spatula to smooth glaze and coat sides. Chill about 10 minutes to set glaze.

Enjoy!

Those Cats

You again?

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No particular knitting excitement to report – I started my second Black Purl Chaotic Jaywalker last night, but since it’s still a tiny piece of toe, you can just go the start of the first sock from last week and get the same effect.

“You again? Always with the camera. Sheesh. Can’t a cat have a little privacy?”
Randonymity, Reading

I have crushes on fictional characters…

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Yes indeed, I have crushes on some fictional characters. I’m not talking about characters in tv shows or movies, but about characters in books. Characters described by the author, but whose final form exists only in my imagination.

Come on, admit it – if you read, then you do, too.

One of my particular favorites is “Roarke” from the Eve Dallas mysteries by Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb. Roarke’s a way sexy bazillionaire who lives in NYC, circa 2059. Here’s a description from Origin in Death:

His face – the strength, power, and yes, the beauty of a fallen angel with no regrets – was framed by the thick black of his hair. His mouth – full, carved, irresistible – smiled as he came toward her. And those eyes – impossibly, brilliantly blue…

Ok, that reads a little trashier out of context than in… wait, who am I kidding? Sheesh, it leads to several pages of steaminess. *fans self* Trash all the way, baby.

My other particular favorite is “Ranger” from the Stephanie Plum mysteries by Janet Evanovich. (Are you noticing a naming trend here?!) Ranger’s a bounty hunter/man of mystery in Trenton, NJ, described in High Five as follows:

Ranger’s…features are Anglo, his eyes are Latino, his skin is the color of a mocha latte, and his body is as good as a body can get. He had his black hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was wearing a black T-shirt that fit him like a tattoo and black SWAT pants tucked into black high-top boots.

Why, yes, I would be a sucker for the tall, dark, lean, and handsome bad boy type. How’d you guess?

Any fictional favorites you’d care to share? Hmm?

Alongs, Those Cats

If the fox in sox counted his sox, how many sox would the fox rox?

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Lynda is hosting Count Your Socks, which will give us all a chance to simply show off all our socks or win a fabulous prize for having knit the most pairs of socks during the year. Why I am participating? Simply for the fun of it (and to see whose house I need to run a sock raid on, of course). I’m starting with 17 pair – nothing compared to Theresa’s amazing 39 pair!

“Why are there more socks on the floor than usual?! And wow, most of them are clean. Now that’s a change.”
“I wonder how many socks there are?”
“You are growing sleepy. When you wake up, you will remember only that there were more socks than you’ve ever seen in your life.”