Whoa.

This blog is a year old today! The date completely snuck up on me* so unfortunately I don't have any kind of exciting post planned (do I ever?), but...um...yay?

In completely unrelated news, I can tell you that I am officially visiting my friend Linn in Toronto over Thanksgiving!! I bought my bus tickets today so it's definitely time to start planning & getting excited! Mainly I'm looking forward to spending time with Linn and her friends, but if you have any ideas of fun things to do in Toronto I'd love to hear them.

*I realize snuck is not a word but "sneaked" sounds weird. :(

Mmm!

Today I made honey-peanut butter cookies:

The flavor is very different from regular peanut butter cookies, but still good. I think my own reaction was mirrored by my friend Linda, who looked kind of puzzled at the first bite, took another, said "it's pretty good," and then, as she finished the cookie, exclaimed "I LOVE IT!" It takes a moment to get over the fact that they don't taste the way you expect them to, but once you adjust to that you can just appreciate them for their own unique deliciousness. I'll be appreciating them for a long time to come, actually, because those four in the picture are the only ones I made today. The rest of the dough is still in the fridge.

Oddly enough, you can see a scan of the recipe from the cookbook itself here -- hopefully that link will work for everyone. I'm dying to try the almond butter version but it'll probably have to wait a bit. Honey is expensive!

Yes, I did almost forget to post today.

The hat is coming along beautifully so far, thank you for asking! I'm using this pattern (Ravelry link, sorry) and this delicious yarn. There will be photos as soon as it gets a little more interesting to look at.

For today, here are two cool links:

• Free calenders for you to download & print -- I tend to be a bit stingy with my ink & paper but these are so gorgeous that I might just have to do something with them. All of this woman's art is fantastic.


• Multicolr Search Lab -- This allows you to pick up to ten colors and then it searches Flickr for public domain photos featuring those colors. It's about a billion times more fun & interesting than it sounds, I promise -- go play with it!

Anything interesting you've come across lately?

I'm glad I took a photo with breakfast this morning...

...because I am way too tired to think of any actual content!



Doing this every day is proving more of a challenge than I thought it would. I started a new hat today, though, so theoretically that gives me something to post about soon. If any of you have any other tips/thoughts/ideas I'd be happy to hear them!

Feeding ducks cowl.

So this thing is finally done! And it's pretty, but yet again I forgot about that whole "sunset at 5" thing and neglected to photograph it during daylight hours. Here is a kind of lame artificially lit picture instead:



There's a really cute scarf pattern called Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks. I fell in love with it and knew it would look great with this gorgeous blue Malabrigo silky merino, but I wanted a cowl more than a scarf. I couldn't quite figure out how to do star stitch in the round at first, but luckily the matching hat pattern was there to help me make sense of it. So basically I just cast on somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 or so stitches and did star stitch in the round until I could no longer stand it! I'm fairly pleased with the resulting cowl & I do think it'll get some wear in the near future. Next I'd like to hunt down a pretty pin of some nature so I can sort of fold the cowl over & pin it more snugly around my neck, because I think it could look really great that way.


PS: I'm sorry to report that yesterday's apple cupcakes turned out quite bland. They're still ok but I don't think I'll bother using that recipe again. Oh well.

What did I ever do to you, kitchen?

I have finished my first project since AUGUST! Ugh, I never want to go that long again! It is the star stitch cowl, last seen here a zillion years ago, and you will see pictures of it tomorrow. (With this Daylight Savings Time thing the sun is going down far too early for me to get good pictures of anything.)

I can show you a new picture of my Chevalier mittens, though! I never photographed them too well when I first finished them, so I tried to remedy that the other day:


There will probably be even more photos of them in the future, since I am a little obsessed with like them quite a bit.

Right now I have Apple Cake in the oven, in cupcake form. It smells great & I'll let you know how it tastes tomorrow. I have to say that the baking experience wasn't particularly fun. Today just was Not My Day in the kitchen, I guess. Highlights included large quantities of baking soda on the floor, accidentally cutting my thumbnail (thank goodness it was only the nail!), large quantities of flour on the floor, and, best of all, large quantities of flour in my eye. Uncomfortable! I hope these cupcakes are worth it -- from the current smell of things they just might be.

Phoning it in.

When I decided to do this NaBloPoMo thing, I knew Thursdays were going to be really difficult for me. I'm on campus for 12 hours every Thursday, and by the time I come home the last thing I want to do is come up with some kind of blog content. I think, then, that Thursdays will pretty much mean quick photo posts.

I hate to be seasonally inappropriate but here's a pretty picture I took in September and forgot about until I was searching for something to post just now:

Monarchs at Dearborn's Greenfield Village.
Tomorrow there will be knitting &/or food content! Have a great Friday, everyone.

Yess!!

I have a paper I REALLY need to get working on so that I'll be free to enjoy dinner at a friend's house this evening, so I'll keep this brief. Yesterday was undoubtedly one of the happiest days of my whole life. You can bet I was excited & proud to vote in my first presidential election!


(People kept thinking my sticker was a band-aid, haha.)
I celebrated at my aunt's house, which was PACKED with local Obama organizers & volunteers. We were a rowdy bunch, cheering like crazy for each state he picked up and we definitely lost our minds when he hit 270 electoral votes! I found myself shaking, crying, and grinning all at once as I fell into long hugs with both total strangers and people I've known since I was born.

Today I am beyond proud & happy. My face hurts from smiling so much. In class my professor asked for our reactions and all we could do was cheer & clap like crazy.

I really do have to go write that paper now! What was last night like for you? How do you feel today?

PS: Go check out Gala Darling's post Last Night in New York City -- sooo amazing!

Let's do this thing!

I can't believe today is finally here! I'm going to vote in just over an hour and I cannot wait.

Jay Smooth knows what's up:



Please please please go out & vote today!

Tomorrow!

Believe me, I would love to post about knitting or food or yarn or my cats or something right now, but I just can't. There is only one thing I can think about for more than 30 seconds at a time, and you can probably guess what it is. It's happening tomorrow & I feel like I've been counting down to it for years. It is going to end in tears for me either way, but I'm hoping and praying they will be happy tears.

In 2000, at the age of 13, I watched in dismay as the Supreme Court handed the presidency to a man who would use lies to lead us into a disastrous war, who would use a national tragedy as an excuse to limit the liberties we Americans so value, who would ignore and dismiss the supremely important fact of climate change. (Believe me, I could go on.) In 2004 I fought hard against that man's reelection, though I was three months short of being able to cast my own ballot. I knocked on doors, registered voters, and asked them to please be my voice, to support a less-than-ideal candidate because he was so much better than the alternative.*

Now I'm finally old enough to have a say and how lucky am I to be able to work and vote for a candidate who really excites and energizes me? Who could actually bring some real change? Don't get me wrong -- Obama isn't perfect and I know that. We have many values in common, though, and I respect him for the incredibly intelligent, principled man I think he is and the well-organized and respectful campaign I have seen him run. I have been proud to campaign on his behalf, I will be absolutely thrilled to vote for him, and in the likely event of his victory I will be ecstatic. I'll spend a day or two celebrating, then the real work will begin: holding him to his promises and organizing in my community to fight for the issues that matter to me.

No matter who you are or which candidate you support, please go out and vote tomorrow! I know you've heard it a thousand times before but it is important, it does matter, and it's going to affect your life. This ad is from North Carolina but it gets the message across pretty well, I think (and it gets funny after the first few seconds):



Ok, I promise to return to non-political content in the very near future!

* This phase of my political life is probably best summed up by the fact that my favorite election-related website was the now defunct JohnKerryIsADouchebagButImVotingForHimAnyway.com.