Happy Spastic Turkey Day!

As planned, I debuted Nothin' but a T-shirt at our Thanksgiving feast today. We were at my brother's house and I decided that his backyard was a good place for a photo shoot. So, without further ado, here's my finished object!

And here's my pathetic attempt at the Rachael:

For all of those who are freezing to death back East, you'll notice the lack of snow. In fact, it was so warm outside that we had to head back inside after the photo shoot.

As we walked into the kitchen we discovered this:

Thinking the smoke was coming from one of the items on the stove top, my brother turned all of the burners off, the smoke kept poring out. Then we realized that we could see flames inside the oven.

There wasn't a fire extingisher in the house, so my brother got out a tub of flour and started throwing it on top of the flames.

Eventually the flames were put out, but the mashed potatoes and fresh cranberries had pretty much turned into charcoal.

You'll notice that while my brother's oven is on fire, his concerned sister was busy taking pictures for her blog (I'm so glad I thought to bring my camera!).

Once the action was over, my dad and I drove over to the grocery store that was still open for another 45 minutes to get pre-made mashed potatoes and cans of cranberry sauce. When we got back we found out that while the flames had been put out by the flour, the fire itself was still trying to kick in because of the gas line. So my brother and hubby had pulled the oven away from the wall and turned off the local gas line, and my brother-in-law showed my brother where the main gas line was in order to turn that off.

Since my hubby had butter or oil or something all over his clothes from crawling around behind the oven, we ran home so he could change clothes and put stain spray on everything. Unfortunately, we realized after getting home that we had thrown out the spray when we moved and hadn't bought any since. So, with only ten minutes to spare before closing, I went back to the grocery store and bought stain spray. Eventually we made it back to my brother's house and had a normal Thanksgiving feast for the remainder of the day. Well, almost normal. My brother and sister-in-law got lucky that their neighbor is out of town and had a key to their house... and as result their oven. Because, you know, their oven is now out of commission. It was pretty funny, though, to watch them running across the street with various pans and trays.

Anyhoo, after stuffing ourselves silly, my mom showed off her knitting to everyone. Remember how she began learning to knit a few weeks ago? Well, she's improved tremendously over such a short time! Here's the first swatch she made...

And here's the first item she's finished.

Amazing, isn't it? I mean, she can't even purl yet, but she's managed ribbing and cables. Simply amazing if you ask me. (By the way, if you happen to shop at Kmart and see a sweater that looks very similar to this one, it's just a coincidence!)

Well, now that Thanksgiving is coming to an end, I can officially begin celebrating the Xmas holiday... by eating Peeps Snowmen!!

Happy Holidays!

E's gotta job for you

I was driving to work today and passed the chicken place where someone was looking for spicy thigs. Apparently, the thigs craving has been satisfied, because the sign has changed to:

E ARE HIRING

I don't know who this E person is, and I don't know what position he/she is hiring for, but I sure hope the job duties include sign updates, because E isn't doing too well at it. (Is it just me, or is that a really long sentence?)

I had a pretty good weekend. My hubby and I met up with Heather and her hubby and Eva and her beau for dinner Saturday night. We managed to keep the fiber discussions to a minimum, although they did slip through from time to time. Sorry guys!

Then, on Sunday, my hubby and I decided to catch a movie. We hadn't yet managed to see the latest Wallace and Gromit movie that came out a while back, but we were able to track down a movie theater that still had it playing. It was at a place I had never heard of before called Farelli's Supper Cinema. I was initially curious about the name, but it wasn't until we got there that we realized it truly is a "supper cinema," similar to a dinner theatre. Instead of rows of chairs where your knees are crammed up around your ears, there are round tables with regular chairs and a full menu. It was really cool! They only play movies that have been around for ages, but since we don't like to deal with crowds at the movies, we don't generally get around to seeing a movie until it's been out for quite a while. So this works out great for us. We'll definitely be going to see movies there again.

Last, but certainly not least, I managed to sew up my Nothin' But a T-shirt sweater. Finally. I had sewn one sleeve on months ago and then put it aside out of frustration (because I lost track of the number of times it took me to sew in the set-in sleeve). Well, after another frustrating round of sewing the second sleeve in on Saturday, I was able to sew up the sides yesterday and discovered... that it fits! I still need to weave in the many ends, but it should be ready for an outing this upcoming weekend (maybe even Thanksgiving Day!) and a photo shoot. Yay!

As good as my weekend was, my Monday started off pretty crappy because I have a cold. I hate colds. Yuck.

Stepping into the confessional

Samantha pointed out that I "lost" another week. Well, I have a confession to make. Let me just take a quick look around to make sure that no one else is around to hear.... Ok, we're alone. I'm a bit ashamed to admit this, but I haven't blogged (I haven't done much of anything, really), because I've been... knitting. And I don't mean 30-minutes-on-the-bus-commuting-knitting. I mean honest-to-goodness sitting-on-the-couch-for-long-periods-of-time-when-I-should-be-doing-laundry-knitting. I know, it's scandalous. It's all my mom's fault, really. She's learning to knit and there's something about a new knitter that motivates a knitter who had forgotten her priorities. To-do list be damed! I'm knittin!

I've been knitting so much, that I've almost got my second Klaralund sleeve done. Woo Hoo! And I've started swatching for my hubby's sweater. Re-swatching is really what I should be calling it, since I had swatched for the sweater months and months ago, but didn't write down any information about needle size or anything. So I'm really just swatching to figure out what I had originally done in, I don't know, May? Of course, this is my second attempt at the sweater, so this might be considered re-re-swatching. My first attempt at this pattern was before we had gotten married, and I discovered that the boyfriend curse works both ways. The relationship worked out, but the sweater had a horrible death (it ended with my cat peeing on the back and discovering, upon "blocking" the piece after washing it, that the silk blend in 2x2 rib stretched out of shape by a good 200%). Anyway, I've got new yarn and my boyfriend is now my hubby, so I'm quite positive that it'll all work out this time.

My recent foray back into constant knitting has also allowed me to reflect on the 3 Day Walk. I told Eva the other day that I understand how people decide to walk the 3 Day more than once. I know now what I should have done for the walk to be more enjoyable (what to eat, when to sweep, etc.). So now I want to apply what I've learned. Thankfully Eva is able to keep her sanity and simply says "no" whenever I bring this up. Instead of walking, I'm just going to donate money to other walkers. And maybe pass on some tips that I picked up. By the way, I never did tell you (or maybe I did?) that there were 1700 walkers that raised 4.7 million dollars. How cool is that! Also, I haven't forgotten about the raffle prizes that I'll be giving away to my sponsors. I wanna do the raffle drawing right (I don't honestly know what I mean by that other than that I want to give it more than 5 seconds of my attention), so I'll probably do the drawing over Thanksgiving weekend.

There was probably more stuff I wanted to tell you, but with my spasticly short attention span I can't think of what it was. Plus, I have ice cream calling my name. Since I've been providing a public service by telling you about Warm Delights and 6 free Krispy Kreme donuts for your birthday, I gotta tell you about my favorite ice cream in the whole wide world! It's Dreyers Light Fudge Tracks. It's vanilla ice cream with fudge swirls and these little mini peanut butter cups. I wish that they would start selling the little mini peanut butter cups on their own, because I would put them on everything! Mmmm...

I think I've misplaced something... like a week

How can it possibly be Sunday again? It's not like even done anything exciting. Just the usual, boring, not-much-to-blog about stuff. I thought I'd be able to show a picture of a finished Klaralund sleeve. But it appears to be the sleeve that won't be done, because I've had to rip it back a dozen times. Ok, ok, it's only been about 3 or 4 times, but it feels like a dozen. With any luck I'll actually finish it this time around. And then I get to do it all over again. sigh...

I also watched my hubby start glider pilot lessons. In case you're not aware, a glider (also known as a sailplane) is a plane without an engine. I only feel slightly better knowing that we recently got life insurance policies. (just kidding dear - you know I support you!). I took some pictures, which I'll post later this week.

Sorry this is such a short post. Hopefully this next week won't disappear, ya know?