Chai Tea Posted at 03 Feb 2011 06:45:35 PM

You know you're a terrible blogger when you can't think what you last posted.

So! We've been more or less snowed in this week (my car more, D's less) and my back is getting sore from sitting nearly 10 - 12 hours per day in my computer chair. This is one of the hazards of working from home, and then diving straight into WoW once the laptop hibernates. Note to self: purchase vehicle with 4WD before next winter.

The last two weeks have been unbelievably hectic at work, and consequently I chose to do two long and fairly work-intensive projects at home, just to keep things lively. Project #1 was the Great Coaster Project.



I was captivated by the Fabric Coasters group on Flickr, and wanted to make my own. What a great way to use up the fabric stash! The lady at the local quilting shop was a great help in choosing interfacing, too. We chose something which was thick enough to absorb moisture from cups but thin enough that it would lie flat.

I paired them with pretty dark cerulean mugs and a few different types of tea, as presents at the family Christmas party last weekend. I'm pleased that everyone seemed to think they were a neat idea.



Bonus: I have leftover Pomegranate, Chai and Wild Sweet Orange teas! Now, to make some coasters for ourselves...

Also for last weekend I decided to tackle Candied Oranges. I've never made them before, but the picture in this recipe was irresistible and I knew I had to give them a try for the next party.



It's a two week process wherein you soak the thin-sliced oranges in supersaturated sugar syrup, then set them to dry, coat them in sugar and 60% dark chocolate, and inflict them upon the unsuspecting public.



The unsuspecting public didn't seem to mind; I came home with an empty bowl and many compliments.

Next year, I think I'll give blood oranges and grapefruit a try - the former will be pretty, and the latter could be an intriguing sweet and sour combination. Some liked the chocolate, and some would have preferred it without... I'll do both next time.

I have a couple of shawls and a pair of gloves OTN. Every time I go outside in my new winter coat I am reminded that I really ought to get cracking on those gloves; unfortunately they are a construction which has you doing the fingers early on in the process, so I am procrastinating.

I can show you the shawls, though.

This one is lovely to knit, and awful to look at. It's Alpaca with a Twist Fino in the "Blue Jeans" colorway, and it is one of those colorways which looks lovely in the skein and like llama barf when knitted up. I swear there's a pattern in here somewhere!



This is being knit in a very interesting yarn which I acquired from the lovely QuantumTea a few weeks ago at Knit Morning. It's 70% Milk protein, 30% Silk, feels like a dream, knits up nicely but sort of oddly, and I have no idea of how it will block.

(Did somebody say "block your swatch"? Swatch? What swatch?)

It is totally unlike wool when being knit. It doesn't "scrunch in" at all - it's much more like silk in that it mostly just stays where you put it. It definitely has some stretch, so we'll see what it grows up to be!



The pattern is from Heirloom Knitting - right now it's all Cats' Paws. I'm planning on doing a full-on Shetland shawl, with this being the center and later I will bind it off, pick up the sts, do a border which is still in the Excel charting stage, and then knit on an edging.

And now, I need to get out of this desk chair for awhile.

Posted in: icons, knitting, life the universe and everything

19 comments

	Catching up Posted at 11 Dec 2008 10:50:02 AM

Soooooooo tired. Ya. Not like I didn't sleep last night - got to bed around 2, which is par for the course. Did my first SM run with Bronwyn, though, which was nice (and got a seriously nice BoE drop or two, as well as a couple of BoPs. Mount shouldn't be a problem with this char!) Our party leader had to bail halfway through (not because of problems, he was one of the best people I've ever grouped with - my opinion of Ruby keeps getting better and better) and we'd already gotten rid of a damn ninja (stole a not half-bad 2h staff from me, the bastard, as well as some halfway decent cloth BoP shoulders from the Archmage. At least nothing _truly_ good dropped, or I'd have been truly pissed. He's a hunter, too...wth is he going to do with BoP cloth and 2h staves? O.o Rolling once, I can chalk up to stupidity...twice, not so much [esp. as the "This will soulbind..are you sure?" dialog comes up for things like that now]...f*cking bastard ninja), so Chris came by and ran the rest of us through Herod and the Cath. Definitely a good run!

This weekend was great - Chris and I went up to Schenectady to see Phantom of the Opera! at Proctor's :D Had lunch with Dad beforehand, which was also wonderful, and went to the planetarium for a while. And then basically hung out at the hotel as it was entirely too frigid to really wander around much. We stopped at the pharmacy and visited with Mom and Gene for awhile before coming back to Bing, which was really nice as well :) [I got to have a french toast bagel at the bagel store there! It really tasted like french toast!! Yes, I am obsessed with that bagel :P]

There's a couple of perfectly wonderful Firefly stories which I'm completely absorbed in lately (KL comes first, then Treasure). This guy is an amazingly talented writer, and I'm enjoying these so much. It's good for my Firefly obsession :) Go read them!

And ugh, the code I have to review just arrived, so yeah. Back to work.

(Oh yeah, training last week - went well, I enjoyed myself down there as always, still don't want the job. Nothing new.)

(One last thing - I won first place! The original image is here, if you're curious about how much work went into that. It was quite a bit!

Posted in: life the universe and everything, WoW, mushy stuff, fanfics, icons

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	I am running on caffeine Posted at 11 Dec 2008 11:01:00 AM

I made a discovery this morning. It's one which I should have made a few months ago, but clearly the message didn't sink in:

Hot peppers do not mix with contact lenses.

That's it. I didn't use gloves while making dinner last night, so all of the capsaisin apparently sunk into my fingers and therefore into my contacts when I took them out. For anyone who's never experienced the active burning of your eyes, let me just sum the experience up for you: OWWW!!!!!!

I eventually used latex gloves to put on a new pair (hooray for disposables) and that seems to have covered it. However, wtih all the gloves I'm going through lately, what with the hair dying and hot peppers, I really ought to just invest in a box rather than the little 5-pair bags they have at CVS.

My shoulders and upper arms are aching lately, as well....that's only because of scraping so much thin ice off of my car in the mornings - I'm using muscles I didn't know I had. Heh...'tis the season for tylenol, apparently.

Ridiculously tired, mostly through my own stupid fault. Hoping to do ZF, Saving Sharpbeak and the ST tonight with the guild..that'd be nice :-) And not only b/c then that'd be a lot of quests done, but because that leaves the rest of the weekend fairly free to do things such as go to Syracuse or shop for a new video card. Which reminds me, must check tigerdirect today...

I'm loving my iPod shuffle more and more, I really am. It's perfectly what I need, since I don't have the time nor patience to load podcasts and all that onto it every day (I'm not even sure that I could, although if they're just .mp3s I guess there wouldn't be a problem, once I got them downloaded. No iTunes on the iPod-connecting computer, remember?)

Oh yeah, 'nother batch of Firefly icons are up at _winter_icons_. Not that ya'll who read this care, but I might want the link someday.

Posted in: icons, life the universe and everything

3 comments