Sometimes the morning just starts off right.

From Salon's War Room:

"CQ Politics has just moved the November outlook for the district once represented by Tom DeLay from "no clear favorite" to "leans Democratic.' "

Tea Cozies

My sister's bridal shower was last weekend. Early on in the planning, she made one request: that it be a Mad Hatter's Tea Party (my sister is a huge Alice in Wonderland fan). All of the bridesmaids took that into account and planned a tea with some Mad Hatter/Alice touches. At some point we all decided that we should have teapots in which to serve the tea. At Ikea, I found the cheapest teapot I have ever seen:


Now, this pot is very functional, but it is also very plain; it looks like a coffee carafe. I immediately suggested that I would use leftover yarn from various projects and make wild cozies for all ten of the pots (yay, using up stash yarn!). This idea was accepted, so I commenced making a basic design using a pi increase for the bottom and then trial and error for the rest. Then one night it occured to me that the pot is kind of shaped like an upside-down top hat. At that point, I realized that it might be fun to make some of the pots characters in a very abstract sort of way. That was also the point at which I totally fell off the stash-using bandwagon.

The cozies were very much a surprise, and my sister reads my blog, so I was not allowed to blog about them before. Here are the best pictures I have of them (some of the pictures are not very clear, and all of the colors are not quite right because I had to use the flash indoors):


The Mad Hatter. The brim ws a bit more ruffled than I had planned, but I thought my other sister's Happy Bunny card was a nice touch.



Alice.



The March Hare. He only has one ear because the handle represents the other ear, and that's his tail on the bottom.




The White Rabbit. He also only has the one ear and a tail on the bottom, and he has a clock on the bottom.




This represents the Red Queen and all of her cards. It was meant to have card-symbol buttons, but I managed to lose them.



The Cheshire Cat. He was the most abstract, and there was much debate as to whether or not I should outline the teeth; I think he came out very well.

The rest actually *were* random, and I *did* use stash yarn for them (albeit occasionally stash yarn that was leftover from the character cozies):





This one is from the Eighties. The stripes are textures using stockinette and reverse stockinette stitch.



This one used up quite a bit of my leftover Fizz and some leftover alpaca sport. The bottom is more purple than that; the flash washed it out.





One of my sisters said this one reminded her of what Neville Longbottom's grandmother might wear; therefore, it is named "Neville Longbottom's Grandmother."


Last, but not least, this one was meant to be forest-y.

Here are all of the cozy teapots on a table before the shower:

Baby blanket

One of my best friends, L., had a baby girl last December. I met the baby (also L.) in January, and I met her again at the beginning of August:




Isn't she cute?

I decided last year when I found out that L. was pregnant that I should make a baby blanket. I also decided that it should not be a normal baby blanket: it would not be pastel, it would be big enough to use for several years, and it would be in some way Star Wars-themed. L. and her husband C. are huge fans, you see. I decided that illusion knitting would be the way to go, in washable cotton because they live in Florida (the machine-washability is why the edges are not quite even in the pictures--no blocking+machine drying=uneven edges). I had never actually done any illusion knitting, and I had to design it myself, since (unsurprisingly) a pattern of this sort did not exist at all. In fact, I entered the Knitting Olympics with this blanket, and I would have finished it if the plumbing in my basement hadn't exploded.

I am quite pleased with the way it turned out. I finished the blanket in February and sent it off without taking pictures because at the time I didn't have a digital camera. When I was in Florida at the beginning of the month I remedied that oversight:





The yarn is Tahki Cotton Classic in red and dark grey.

My favorite Explainer ever.

Slate's explainer is usually interesting. This is my favorite, ever. The actual question is: "What's the proper way to transport a snake on a plane?"

More posts coming--I have been mostly out of town for three weeks.

An Open Letter to All College Students and Recent Grads Contemplating Their First Real Office-Job Experience

When you are first hired, no matter where you went to school or what your grades and internships were like, you will have to do grunt work. Grunt work is how employers weed the bad employees out from the good employees. If you do the grunt work correctly, you will be given more interesting work. If you do not do the grunt work correctly, you will have proven that you are not as smart as you think you are because you cannot even do grunt work correctly.

You should also listen to people when they introduce themselves, and not call the HR director by the wrong name even after you are corrected. This is especially crucial in a small business where you really are expected to learn each person's name.

If you are hired at a 5-week, 4-hour-a-day job to do filing, you will probably file the entire time. This should not be a surprise to you. If you do it well at a small business, you will earn a good references. References and contacts are amazing currency in the adult world.

If you decide that you cannot be bothered to do this low-key, 4-hour-a-day job with free beverages, snacks and unlimited breaks after less than two weeks on the job, you should have the balls to walk into HR and quit. Chances are if you have this sort of attitude problem they will not be overly unhappy to see you go (since it is unlikely that you will have done any of your work correctly--trust me on this one), so it will be an almost pain-free experience, and you will have acted *sort of* like a grown-up by quitting in person. You should *not* quit by email, addressed to the entire business but misspelling the HR director's email address because you still haven't gotten the name right.

Finally, if you do wimp out and act like a child and quit by email, you should try to avoid sounding like a complete jackass when you do so, especially when copying the partners in the business who have far-reaching contacts throughout your chosen field.*


*For example:

Hello [name of business]ans,

Just writing to let you all know that today was my last day in the office.
No need to be reaching for the tissues, all's well.

I originally came aboard just to help get the office caught up on some filing. Not that filing can ever be completely conquered, but I think we're close to being up to date now.

More important to me is the need to make positive contributions to the lives of others when and where I can. Filing is not where I should be. I know it sounds like a load of naive college-aged ideals, but I am fortunate enough to be allowed to live them out. I need to take advantage of the time that I have and focus my energies on what I hold to be important.

Please don't take this as a denigration of [name of business], but rather as a recognition of a hasty decision on my part. It was an interesting and informative experience, albeit a brief one, and I wish you all the best.

Here's to fulfillment, however you choose to find it,

[name of complete jackass who will never get very far in life and who, for all of his "college-aged ideals," is really just a spoiled child who can't be bothered to do anything that might be inconvenient or boring, including making any "positive contributions to the lives of others," and who mostly "focuses his energies" on hiking with his friends and not showering]**

**My personal favorite line: "Filing is not where I should be." Because, you know, for other people filing is a *vocation*. Also, there were 3 weeks of four-hour days left on this job, with one day that he had already taken off. That's 56 hours of boring but easy work and a non-bridge-burning departure. How spoiled is this kid?***

***Also: "I need to take advantage of the time that I have and focus my energies on what I hold to be important." Is he dying of cancer? This kid is, tops, 22.

I do not think this means what they think it means.

From Salon.com's "The Fix":

"Tori Spelling's reportedly pregnant with freshly minted husband Dean McDermott. (Life & Style)"

This is the most unintentionally funny thing I have seen all day.

From this article:

"We just did it to be [male prides], really," Stone said

So, do you think he said "dicks"? Because that is my guess, and substituting "male prides" for "dicks" is hilarious. It sounds like the kind of thing that someone's grandmother would say, like calling jeans "dungarees."

I AM CORNHOLIO!!!!

Today I accidentally had so much caffeine that I am starting to run into things. I wasn't even tired, but I had:

Vanilla frappucino (the kind in the glass bottle from the supermarket)
Pot of Earl Grey tea
4 diet Mountain Dews
Vanilla frappucino.

I realized that I had a problem when I couldn't finish the second frappucino. Why did I have so much caffeine? It seemed like a good idea at the time.


I am going to go run and run and run at the gym now, because I am having trouble sitting still.

Bread!

My parents sent me this as an early Christmas present:



It's a cloche; you make round loaves in it:





This particular loaf is rye. It is almost gone now; Mater-Eater-Lad and I have been eating fresh bread toast with loads of butter for a few days now. I highly recommend getting one for yourself.

Weekly garden update

Overview:


Tomatoes:




Eggplant:



Cucumber:

Super close-up (note that you can actually see the holes in the landscaping fabric):

Bell peppers:





More substantive posts soon!

Weekly veg garden update

This is all for me--I do realize that it is excruciatingly boring:






Oh, and an extreme close-up of the yarn for the shawl knitted:

Happy first day of summer

Building blocks (with yarn pic goodness)

I am designing and knitting a shawl for my sister to wear at her wedding in the fall, and we recently decided on a yarn. It's Alchemy Silken Straw in Winkie's Blue (they appear to have sold out of the color--perhaps because I bought *8* skeins of it and they only had 10 to begin with). I wouldn't normally knit lace with a tape yarn, but this was the yarn that spoke to both of us, so I will be designing a pattern that will work with this specific yarn. Also, how often do I get to play around with this much Alchemy yarn? What a luxury! I have some ideas, and as I swatch I'll post pictures. For now, here is the yarn in its raw state:




Those first two pictures are pretty close, color-wise--maybe just slightly too purple, but maybe not. I am fascinated by what the flash did to the color--it brightened the blue and washed out all of the magenta:





Isn't it lovely?

When do you know whether you have completely lost your mind?

I had some leftover sock yarn. I had an Elmo who really likes socks. I knit socks for Elmo. This may be, when I look back, the point at which I stepped over the edge.




Note that, like Dobby the House Elf's socks, Elmo's socks do not actually match: