Christmas Surprise

Earlier this year I fell in love with some dinnerware at Anthropologie. It was way out of my price range and I coveted it from afar. I loved this set but I put it out of my mind once I realized that it was not going to happen. I could not justify the expense.
Never have a loved plates as I did these.

Fast forward to December 25 and Brian is carrying box after enormous box down the stairs on Christmas morning. I was thinking, what could possibly be in these boxes? Nothing I mentioned wanting or needing could be this big....

I knew what it was immediatley when I opened the first box and it revealed many smaller boxes labeled 20,000 leagues. He bought me the whole set. The whole damn set. 8 of the large Octo plates,8 of the salad plates in each variation, and 8 bowls.

They are so beautiful and I will cherish them forever. They were such a huge surprise. He had bought them in May and had been storing them for months.





Now that Christmas is over I am so, so, happy to be finished making presents for people. I gifted 7 knitted items-4 scarves and 3 hats. My fingers are wrists are exhausted.
Brian's mother gave me a $75 gift certificate for my favorite new yarn place in Wheaton and I am currently working on something for myself! I haven't made anything for myself at all.
I can't wait to use my certificate but I have skein after skein of yarn in storage so I really have to use some of the stuff I already have before I redeem it.

Beautiful disaster

I made something beautiful and it fell apart.

It was a project I was rushing because I wanted to wear it on Saturday. I finished it within a couple days, about 5 hours total, but didn't heed the warning of "practice this stitch before you try it on a project"
I got the hang of it but I started it wrong and it's all coming unraveled. Not even worth the effort of blocking it.

The pattern was lovely, I will try it again. One for me and one as a gift.

I am sick to death of scarves. They are so tedious.

Rabble Rabble

Brian and I attended the rally to restore sanity. We only caught the last 10 minutes of it because we really didn't anticipate such congestion on the metro. I'm glad we went because I saw a lot of hilarious signage and I put a lot of effort into making/carrying my own. As the title of this blog may lead you to believe I am a fan of south park. May I present the sign:




It was well received by people who knew what it meant. Some people did and some didn't, but the ones that did would rabble when they saw it, so a lot of my day was accompanied by the sound of rabbling which was highly amusing.

I finally finished staining the deck (yes, the one I started several months ago), voted, and yesterday I turned 27. I had a nice Birthday and am enjoying my new kindle even though I don't have much time to read with the impending holidays.

Puttin' in work

I have been spending every moment of spare time making things for the impending cold. Yesterday I decided to officially give up on craft store yarn. It's just not worth it. I'm spoiled by the local luxury yarns and don't' care that I spend more on each project. I'd rather give something well made with good quality materials than put so much effort into something and have it last only one season. This happened after I bought 9 skeins of two types of yarn and both of them sucked in too many ways to describe here.

So, time for project pictures!

Finished cabled scarf:




Two of 3 hats. Darker/multi colored cabled items do not photograph well. They look better in person.

Black one for Brian:



Multi-Red. Intended for my Mother but it was too small for her big Texas hair. I will try to give it to someone for Christmas? Not sure who yet.




Otto is a nosy little creature

My plants deserve an honorable mention. This giant dendrobium cane came out of nowhere. 2 months ago it was a teeny tiny little cane and now it has dwarfed all of the others and should bloom soon. I didn't expect that.





So, that's pretty much it. I'm leaving out a bunch of stuff going on in life but I really don't feel like acknowledging that my root canal last week failed and I'm on day 9 of being in pain, and that our water heater is leaking all over the basement and has to be replaced ASAP.

I'd rather think about my projects, luxurious fibers with which to create garments, thriving plants, and my adorable sleeping dogs.




The end.

An exciting development

*drum roll*

I have finally tried cables. They were much more simple than I anticipated and I am beaming with pride about this new discovery.

Last week I had to run a work errand to Bethesda and I had a lot of time to spare so I visited Knit+Stich=Bliss on Wisconsin Ave. I really didn't intend to buy anything but I found the most beautiful baby alpaca yarn by Plymouth. I have made a few things with this and I think it has become my favorite fiber. It's thick, but not too bulky, knits up quick, and is oh so soft. The colors really grabbed me. I had to have it. I bought it with a person in mind but not a particular project, and the more I thought about it the more I really wanted to make something different that would show off the hand dyed quality. It's working up very quickly and I memorized the pattern so I have been able to work this scarf without really thinking about it. I may need more yarn, which means it will be the most expensive item I have made thus far...




I wish I had a better picture. I will take one when the project is finished.

As I work through this project I have been thinking about the quality of the things I have made and whether or not they will hold up and how they are received by the people that I give them to. I have only been doing this for a year. I still feel like an amateur and when I give things to people I feel like a little kid giving someone macaroni art. Am I crazy? I guess we all experience doubt when it comes to the things that we make by hand.
I look at this project and I see the things that I have done wrong and where I need to improve and I wonder if I will ever really "get it"

When I started doing this a year ago I really didn't think much would come of it. I just wanted to make something and in all honesty I figured I would get tired of it and give up after a month or so. But I wanted to make something and feel like it had a purpose. The more I did it the more I enjoyed the process of starting something with little knowledge of it, working through it, and finishing it. It is a good feeling.

Home sweet home

Picture post....


I visited family this past weekend and stopped by to check out my Mother's impressive summer garden. It was larger this year than I have ever seen it before. I think now that I'm an adult I can appreciate the slow pace and the simple pleasures of country life.

The house where I spent most of my life has been a work in progress for as long as I can remember. No matter how many improvements are made to it the house still looks and feels a hundred years old.



The Garden!

20 tomato plants, 5 types. Eggplant. Cucumbers. 4 types of squash and zucchini, 4 types of hot peppers. Green bell peppers. Red bell peppers. Pumpkins. Sunflowers.



My mom is not big on pesticides or damage control. She lets the plants do their thing and it usually works for her. This dill plant lost the fight to these parsley worms.



This week I gave my coworker the blanket I made for her baby, who will be here in a few short weeks. Here is the finished blanket.






Finally, my current project. A "wave scarf" with Plymouth Trabajos Del Peru Merino wool. A gift for an old friend.

Deck restoration week 1

Restoring a 20 year old weathered deck is hard work.
This deck had never been sealed, stained, or treated in any way. It has withstood the elements for 20 years completley unprotected. This project is a testament to why things should be maintained rather than restored after years of abuse.

So, here is progress after week one. I haven't stripped the rails yet and hope to do more of that during the week if I have enough daylight and energy.



I hope we can get it done in 3 weekends max, but that timeframe is really dependent on the weather. There is so much surface area to cover and I'm not even trying to do the steps off the deck. Maybe next summer.

Closer!

We finally purchased some pieces of furniture for the living room upstairs and the time has come to accessorize! This is my favorite part.

I've got my eye on a few things. Today I am obsessed with one item in particular. A lamp. I need this lamp to live. It is not in my budget to buy this lamp, though I could buy it with a credit card. I never splurge on anything and I certainly never use my credit card for such things. Oh! I don't know what to do.

This is the lamp. My lamp. I love lamp.



Brian likes the lamp but is adamantly opposed to buying it because it is made by a company owned by Donald Trump. To him, giving money to Trump would be "like buying something from Mel Gibson!"
It is beneath him to buy home accessories from people that he thinks are annoying celebrity whores. However, we're not buying a lamp from a murderous dictator so it is easier for me to ignore the name. *sigh* what to do....

Finished project

Here it is!







He seems to really like the hidey spot in the corner.

The plant will be transferred to a vivarium false rock planter when I get some organic dirt for it. The sand may come later. It's only sold in 50lb bags and I can't commit to that much sand yet. It's hard to tell if he likes it since reptiles aren't expressive, but I think he does, he has been running all over it and is more active than he was before.

Very scary

On Friday afternoon Brian called me to ask if Otto was acting normal that morning. I was immediatley alarmed as I knew he wouldn't be calling unless something was really off. He told me that Otto couldn't stand up, wouldn't walk, and when tempted with peperoni showed interest but couldn't manage to move at all to get to the treat.

He had been fine that morning and crated for 6 hours. We had no idea how he could have injured himself when he was likely sleeping all day.

By the time I got home the truck was gone, and he had taken Otto to the vet. When they came home he carried him in, and stood him on the ground where he promptly crumpled down. My usually vibrant and hyperactive dog seemed paralyzed. It was terrifying for me. All I could do was hug him. The vet couldn't find anything wrong, though she did mention that on the xray two of his vertebrae were oddly close together. She gave him a cortisone shot in his back, and a prescription for pain medication, and told us to come back if he didn't improve.



Friday evening he laid next to me on the couch and wouldn't move. By 6 pm it had been a full 12 hours since he had relieved himself. He couldn't stand enough to do so when Brian came home but I managed to coax him into going. He couldn't lift his leg, and just peed while hunched over on the ground. He slept on the couch next to me for the rest of the evening, and ate dinner on the couch. He couldn't manage to do anything more than pulling himself up with his front legs. If he tried to get up the back legs would shake and he'd fall down within 10 seconds.



The whole time I was thinking about what we would do if this was permanent. Could they fix him? What if they couldn't fix whatever it was and we had to put him down? What if he gets better and it happens again? Is it neurological? Is it just a sprain?

We gave him the pain medicine and set up a bed for him on the floor. In the morning he was gone! He had moved himself to his normal sleeping spot. I heard him shake off and he came running out from under the bed like nothing had happened. The whole thing was so bizarre, and we're really not sure what to make of it. I just hope it doesn't happen again....
He seems perfectly fine today. He was a little slow on Saturday and Sunday, but able to walk, and run, and even jump, though we were not encouraging any of that and had to take all of his toys away. If he ever does that again we'll have to find a better vet...Hopefully one that can identify the problem and treat it

Ugh. What an awful weekend.

Vivarium beautification...

I'm working on a project for an old neglected friend. Ichabod, my bearded dragon, has had a rough life. When I got him in 2004 I wanted to make his life better and have done so in all the ways that I could. This project is something I have wanted to do for a long time but I never had a work space to do it.

I sketched out a design and bought the supplies. I cut the pieces of polystyrene foam and assembled the design with toothpicks, then glued everything, and tried to keep it level.

Then I coated everything with tile grout and sealed it with grout sealant, so it's waterproof.

Here is my current progress...



Tonight I will spray paint it. It will need a few days to air dry before it can go into his tank.

I am really happy with the results so far!

I bought some old rock planters for vivariums at a reptile show a few years ago and will use one for a live plant in his new space. I'm even thinking about changing his substrate to sand, but I'm approaching that decision carefully because I have mixed feelings about using sand for a number of health reasons.

While I've been consumed with this project the dogs have been antsy. My normally lazy and well behaved Osa has turned into a wild frog. Stealing tissues off tables and tearing them up.





Surprisingly Otto just lounges on the couch and sucks his blanket. Yes, I know it's kind of weird. Some dogs do it. He sucks the blanket, makes bread, and occasionally cries into the blanket. It knows all of his secrets.




I should have pictures of the completed project by next week. I'm also nearly finished with my blanket project and looking forward to starting on more gifts for the holidays. I already feel behind on my knitted gifts. Christmas is only 5 months away! Time is short when it takes 2-3 weeks to complete something and I need to get my ass in gear!

Blog fail

I am a failure because I have a blog called "A Million Little Fibers" and I have posted one measly blog with a fiber project. Not to mention that the project I posted months ago is still a work in progress because I ran out of yarn and can't seem to find a retailer that carries it. In the basket it sits. Collecting dust on a shelf. Poor lonely unfinished scarf without a neck to call its own.

Fail!

So, I have a coworker that is expecting a baby girl in September. I took along a baby blanket project for the plane ride to Mexico and by the time I got home I had a good 6 inches of blanket. Soft, cream colored, machine washable, baby blanket. I won't go into the details of the death of my project but it wasn't too pretty. I will not drink red wine and knit ever again! That is for sure.

But my mishap payed off because I found a much more interesting yarn and through some dedicated effort I am a good 8" into my 33" masterpiece.

I will post pictures later. For now, the pattern and the yarn:





Caron simply soft baby brights






I will post my progress later when I can take a picture of it with my good camera. I'm really into this project. It's sitting in my car right now so I can work on it at lunch time and I struggle with not breaking it out while sitting in traffic. It's really, really, hard. But I think that would be worse than texting while driving...When I consider these things I have to stop myself and think about how ridiculous it would be if I crashed my car while making a blanket and my Mother had to tell everyone that her daughter died while knitting at the wheel.

Maiden voyage

This past month has been really busy. We've been preparing for a trip to Mexico since last year and because we don't travel much and have never been out of the country there was a lot of stuff to acquire and ends to tie up.

Passports, snorkeling items, luggage, arrangements for dog boarding and having to change their diet a month before boarding because no one will accommodate raw feeders. Then throw in car issues with an end result of Brian and I both purchasing new vehicles...we were up to our necks in obligations and grudge purchases.

So, this trip became something of a dreaded voyage rather than a trip to be enjoyed and a time to unwind. We were also traveling with friends, who were gracious enough to offer a room in their timeshare condo. We later learned the perils of traveling with friends, but we enjoyed the trip nonetheless. I don't mean to seem like we didn't have a good time. Mexico was really awesome. The condo was beautiful, the weather was beautiful, we did a ton of cool shit, and I really can't complain about anything. Here are some photos!

Condos on the resort...We were staying one hour south of Cancun, in Quintana Roo






The condo balcony was bigger than our living room, and it overlooked the pool



One of my personal favorites....lizards everywhere! They liked to eat bananas.



We went to a neat eco-park called Xcaret (Ish-caret). Most of it was just hiking on paths through jungles, with featured areas, like orchids, butterflies, caves with bats, and marine life exhibits.

Orchid enclosure


This is where the orchid babies live...



Jungle paths..








When we did the river ride we would go through caves. All I could think of was the part in Charlie and the chocolate factory...

Round the world and home again

That's the sailor's way

Faster faster, faster faster

There's no earthly way of knowing

Which direction we are going










Turistas! we're loud and we're proud




The resort had dolphins. Which Brian and I felt really bad for. Espescially after seeing that film "The Cove"
They were sectioned off in a harbor area and weren't confied in cement tanks but it still felt strange. All of the restaurants overlooked the dolphin areas so every morning we ate breakfast and watched people pay $100 to swim with them. I don't think I would choose a resort with a dolphinarium the next time we travel. I have moral objections to it. I don't really care if that sounds pompus, it's how I feel.

There were babies that had been born that week. They looked like little tunas swimming next to their mother.




And that's a summary of our maiden voyage out of the US. Now that we have passports we hope to travel all over the place. I'm looking at Puerto Rico next. I had a lot of fun snorkeling and want to do that again! After seeing the water down there and snorkeling I don't know if I can ever enjoy an East Coast beach ever again.

I am not a food blogger

However, I do frequently make meals and occasionally I bake. I read food blogs but I am personally not dedicated enough to photograph the messes I make in the kitchen and the final meal. Occasionally I may blog about things I make in the kitchen, especially when they are as time consuming and delicious as falafel!



Falafel (pronounced /fəˈlɑːfəl/; is a fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas and/or fava beans.
Falafel is usually served in a pita, which acts as a pocket, or wrapped in a flat bread known as lafa. The falafel balls are topped with salads, pickled vegetables and hot sauce, and drizzled with tahini-based sauces. Falafel balls may also be eaten alone as a snack or served as part of a mezze.

It is easy to make if you posses a food processor and you are a patient person. It is a simple meal but it is not a quick one.
I like to serve my falafel in warm pita bread, with boston butter lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and two kinds of sauce-tahini sauce and tzatziki



Tzatziki recipe here

The tahini was improvised a little, but here is a basic recipe. The base of Tahini is a ground sesame paste that I think is a little too acrid. There are varying degrees of quality when it comes to this stuff.

I prefer the Krinos brand over the Joyva brand. It is a little harder to find but it is much less bitter and I think it makes a huge difference. This is a basic recipe for it

Tahini Sauce Recipe

I halved the ingredients for both sauces because I only cook for 2 people. Both can be adjusted to taste. I usually take the recipes as a guide for measurements but I don't always follow them. It is rare that two of the same meals I make will taste the same.

A photo of my very lazy sous chef, Osa.



Note her loaf-like shape and golden brown hue. She is sometimes referred to as "Loafsa" for this reason.


Lastly, Here is the falafel recipe. I use the same recipe every time. It has never failed me.

Falafel recipe





That mash of stuff on the plates is grilled eggplant. I brush my eggplant with olive oil, honey, balsamic vinegar, and crushed hot peppers before I grill it.

There you have it. A blog dedicated to food. I have a new appreciation for my friends that post pictures of all the ingredients together and pictures of cups pouring sugar into mixing bowls and detail all of the ingredients step by step. I am very loose in my interpretations of recipes so this is as good as it gets!

Less than three

Out with the old

2 years ago I signed my name 100+ times and got the keys to my first house. It was a foreclosure that needed a lot of work, but it was better than apartment living. The house has evolved a lot in the past 2 years. It feels like all of the work has happened at a snails pace but looking at all the pictures gives me a real sense of accomplishment. The first improvement was the bathroom in the front of the house..


The second larger renovation was the wood flooring on the main level of the house.








A few weeks ago the front of the house was completed.







It feels like so much has been done and there is still so much to do. Work is never done!