Davey and I have been out running errands today.  Costco – where we had lunch.  Who has lunch at Costco when there are endless other choices?  Well – Davey jumped into that cheese pizza like nothing I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t gobble often, and he gobbled it up.  So I was glad for lunch at Costco.

We went to buy a zipper.   Time to review the tutorials and videos I have saved up on how to sew in a zipper to a knitted object.  (or any objects as far as my limited knowledge goes.) I am weaving in ends on the sleeve and front of the sweater.  Next, I need to figure out how in the heck to do the collar.

It is really snowing right now.  Earlier, it was a light pretty non-threatening snow.  There was only a 30% of light snow today, but it’s really coming down.  It’s still really pretty, but it’s starting to pile up.

Today we were running around in about 28 degree weather.  Previously, this kind of cold would have frozen my nose off.  Today, it felt positively balmy.  But – I walked the dogs in -13 degrees the other morning.  It’s almost 40 degrees warmer, so I guess it makes sense!  It’s all relative I suppose.

I am watching it snow as I write this.

Seems like it is always Monday!

It’s snowing.  This morning, we woke up to some ice.  I wasn’t sure I’d make it to school, but the roads had been well sanded.  It was a little slow.  It also took me awhile to get all the ice off the windshield.

There is a Blizzard Warning in northeastern Oklahoma where I grew up.  I don’t ever remember ever seeing that in my life.  It makes me think of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Like when Almanzo picks up Laura from her teaching job to bring her back home during a blizzard or almost blizzard.   Or The Long Winter where they have blizzard after blizzard after blizzard.  Almanzo and his friend Cap are heroes here too.  I need to read that series again.  It’s wonderful.

I tried chocolate tea yesterday.  A friend blogged about it and I got curious so I bought some Stash brand Chocolate Hazelnut Tea.  It’s really pretty good.  I can’t say this with 100 percent certainty, because my cold still has my taste buds kind of messed up.  I think it’s good though – especially with some sugar and a little milk.  I am very into milk in my tea.

If you live near a Whole Foods – they make flour tortillas every day.  (I think every day and of course I only have experience with the Lakewood one.  hmm…)  They are very fresh.  We made quesadillas with them last night.  They only had whole wheat ones left when I got there.  I know those are better for us, but I thought I’d rather have white.  These were really good though!

Sleeve number two of The Sweater is almost done.  I may have enough yarn after all.  I need to start really researching the zipper insertion.   I like that:  Zipper Insertion.

Davey just helped me make Double Chocolate Brownies.  We wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. We have our massive Costco bag of chocolate chips, but we had no brown sugar.  So we are trying the brownie recipe from the back of the massive bag.  I wonder if the size of the bag results in room for more recipes than on a 16 ounce bag. They are almost done.  I can kind of smell them.

Davey and David are playing a game called “Bottom Lift”.  There is a two-handed and one-handed version.  Here’s a not very good photo:

They try different techniques.  (Davey’s hair is kinda wild.)

Davey finds this all to be great fun.

That’s Monday.  I need to quickly knit up some balaclavas.  It’s supposed to be 30 below wind chill tonight.  I don’t know that I have ever experienced that.  The dogs will be getting a quick walk.

And finally!  I think I need to make it my mission to make sure that everyone I know owns one pair of handknit wool socks.  I had my socks on under my snowboots today.  My feet were so warm despite the extreme cold.  I am pretty sure that they would have stayed warm had I been at the North Pole.  Pretty sure.

The Sweater update: I redid the part of the left front that needed to be redone.   Whether or not it will fit anyone remains to be seen, but it seems like it will.

I am going full speed ahead on the sleeve.  It required a little cipherin’, but not so much so far.  Maybe I will finish it tonight.  I knit last night through the first episode of Sherlock.  It’s a fairly new British tv series (2010 I think).  It takes place in modern day,  but it included a few elements of the very first Sherlock Holmes story.  (Rache!, and the title of the episode was  “A Study in Pink”.  The original story was entitled – “A Study in Scarlet”.) It’s British, and I got it from Netflix.  I highly recommend it! (I am a Sherlock fan.  Oh!  They cast a great Watson too I thought.)  Anyway, I watched that while I knit.

I’m about to start the heel flap on my tofutsie socks.  I had a little quiet time this afternoon, and so it was a good project to get out.

We’ve had a nice Sunday.  Davey just helped me make a blueberry cobbler.  I’ve mentioned it before, but he’s quite the little stirrer.  We are having leftover chicken and noodle soup for dinner.  It’s actually more just chicken and noodles, but we like it that way.  And Davey eats the noodles.  Even better.

And that’s Sunday.

Cashmere!  I received it in the mail yesterday (from Knit Unto Others), so today I started my second pair of “Treads” fingerless gloves.  These are the gloves where I became fascinated with the lateral braid stitch, and where I also had the pleasure of first knitting with cashmere.

A good friend from Clarksville has requested a pair of these, and I was more than happy to knit them up again.  When I am done, they should look just like these:

And then Costco.  Davey and I joined Costco last weekend.  (I say Davey and I because we had our picture taken together for the Costco card, which I thought was too cute – although the quality of the pictures is such that you can barely recognize the humans on the card.  But still.)

We like to go to Costco.  I’d never been a big Costco or Sam’s shopper, but it’s just a couple miles from us now, and so it’s fun for us to go.  Stuff is cheaper too; it’s just the sheer quantity that we have to buy.  Half the fun is making David laugh when I come home with 90 rolls of toilet paper, a four pound bag of chocolate chips, and enough dishwasher soap to last us until 2012.  And it’s even better trying to find someplace to put that stuff in our little home.

Davey and I have fun though.  I am sure it’s almost cliche Costco humor.  I pretend to put a 25 sack of flour in the buggy.  We laugh over the giant jars of pickles.  I fall victim to the “samples” and now have a 4 pound container of Costco granola.  “We make it right here in the store!”

Next time we need to take David with us.  There’s no telling with what we might leave!  Too bad Costco doesn’t carry yarn.

Lately, Davey likes to call us Mama and Daddo.  We like it.

I made Pioneer Woman Tortilla Soup the other day.  It’s the best tortilla soup I have ever made.  And then I learned something that I think makes it even better.  I’d had some tortilla soup the other day at a Mexican restaurant.  They brought me a little side of pico de gallo. I’d never added that to my soup before.  It was really good!  That and some diced up avocado, and we have been enjoying that soup.

The pico de gallo I make is just chopped up tomatoes, chopped onion and then add cilantro, lime juice and salt to taste.   Very easy.

I also made my own chai the other day.  (It’s becoming clear as to why this is a mish mash post.)  I found this recipe on a blog that I read:  Chai Concentrate.  Davey enjoyed helping me mix in the spices.  Then we added a can of condensed milk.  I am a fan of having a sweet chai latte now and then.  You can adjust the sweetness though by putting as much of the concentrate in as you like.  I’m really enjoying it.  I love all things chai these days.

I am working on the left front of The Sweater.  For the second time.  I hadn’t gotten too far when I realized that the garter edging was not going to work with my colorwork.  And then it occurred to me that David would like the sweater better without that edging anyway.  So I ripped it out and started again.  I am back to the point where I’d ripped back though which was here:

So I really hadn’t gotten all that far.  The Sweater has become a mish mash of its own.  The colorwork I figured out from the Eddie Bauer photo, plus a couple of patterns to give me  basic sweater guidelines.

And that’s the Monday Mish Mash.