7 Quick Takes (Vol 109)

Well hello there. You know what time it is. It is Quick Takes time!

YEAAAAAAAAAAH! And the crowd goes wild!

My weekly blathering about things that I can’t seem to make into an entire post. Although that might not be true about #2. I could definitely write reams and reams about Max and the Nose of Snot. But I won’t because I like all of you.

And now on to the blathering.

1.
Well, the totally home brined corned beef turned out pretty good. HHBL liked it and so I know it wasn’t chuck worthy at least. He takes his corned beef very seriously. I do think that it needs to sit in the brine longer than 4 days and I think that with the next testing I will cook it in the crock pot rather than the oven and for a longer period of time. I didn’t get it into the oven until about 2p yesterday as I was gone all morning taking a friend to her chemo treatment and then having lunch with her. Late cooking start means that the meat wasn’t as tender as I would like to see it. Or eat it for that matter.

I will give the recipe another run through in a couple of weeks and if it turns out even half way good then I will post it.

2.
Max the wonder dog has another cold. For those of you who aren’t Facebook friends or don’t follow me on Twitter (where this appeared earlier in the week) this pretty much sums the whole situation up.

Max=large dog. Large dog=long nose. Add dog head cold. Long nose=much dog snot. What a lovely day.

I will not be taking him to the vet at the moment as the last two times that I have done this the antibiotics that I have had to pay for have done nothing to the length or severity of the snot issue. I do however have him on Benadryl. He knows the word “medicine” means that he gets bread and peanut butter. He is most eager to comply.

3.
I cast on my next sweater on Wednesday. It will, hopefully, be a basic top down raglan cardigan. For those who are not knitters then just google that and you will come up with a picture or thousand that will show you what it is. I am too lazy to explain it.

I have decided that in some ways knitting is all about breaking rules and doing as you choose. So that is what I am doing with this sweater. I am just casting on and going with some basic rules and seeing what I get. I am using the alpaca yarn that I bought the last time that I was in Lima (Peru not Ohio) which will, if all works out, make it an extra special thing that I will take with me the next time I am in Lima (early next year I think).

I did manage to make myself swatch, which is something that I hate but is necessary when doing a sweater. And the choice of a top down raglan was purposeful because I am not sure exactly how much yardage I have. The yarn is up on Ravelry but there are disagreements about the yardage and the skein wrappers are unhelpful. So I figure I can shorten the sleeves if need be. I like them shorter anyways.

And lest you worry that I am using ALPACA on a sweater that might turn out to be a real turd (sorry, I said turd) know this. I didn’t pay all that much for the ten skeins. I believe that I paid approximately 10 dollars.

Total

So I feel like I can experiment a bit. And besides. If it doesn’t work it can go back to the frog pond.

You know…..

Rip it, Rip it, Rip it.

I just love “knit speak”.

4.
It is almost time to put out the humming bird feeders! Yeah!!

I look forward to this time of year. I love those vicious little birdies. I am obsessed for some reason. Perhaps it is because it took so long to lure them here, almost three years of putting out feeders all summer and seeing nothing.

And also the fact that I am just obsessed with them.

5.
Knitting update for the first three months of the year. Because I am running out of things to say this week and because people (and you know who you are) complain about Quick Takes with no pictures. So here is my first quarter knitting output. I think I am missing  pictures of the socks that I knit for LookLeap and the scarf that I finished for TSiL but other than that I think this is about right.

And I will admit that I currently have three pair of socks and a sweater on the needles. So much for the knitting monogamy that I swore I would practice.

And in that last picture? Please ignore my eyebrows that I don’t seem to have plucked in about 5 years.

6.
I have decided that I am going to go without the little “spam filtering” crazy word that you have to type in when you comment. Blogger now has a spam filter and I just think I don’t want that darn word when you comment. I hate those things. We will see how it goes.

7.
Tomorrow is my birthday.

I just thought you should know.

I will be 51 years old.

And you can still have my gray hair when you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.