housekeeping

This is probably going to be a boring post because it’s about the boring every day things that I’ve been up to. So… strap in!

I realized that I haven’t made like some big announcement or anything and some people don’t know (because it’s no big deal) but at the beginning of the year I officially went vegetarian. I didn’t say a whole lot about it because usually when I announce things, I don’t do them. Well I’ve already had a couple of set backs, so I figure it’s no big deal to talk about it now. Mostly I’ve had problems with not eating seafood. Which brings me to being (un)officially pescetarian. (If only shrimp weren’t engineered in a lab somewhere to be so damn delicious.)

This has led to me making a lot more food at home.

What’s kind of odd is that I’ve always been kind of anti-vegetarianism. Just because most of the people I had known who were vegetarians were smug ass jerks about it. (Also because my favorite food was bacon… and filet mignon.) So why would I start this randomly?

Well I’d heard a couple of interesting arguments for laying off meat but none of it resonated with me. I love my cats and everything but I feel like if it were down to me and them, they’d get eaten. That is, if they didn’t eat me first- none of us have any loyalty to each other.

Then I read a book and while some of it missed home with me, other parts actually made really good points. It tied a lot of the disjointed information I’ve heard about the food industry together and asked the most basic question of- what are you really eating? So I’ve been spending this year trying to pay attention to that. I’ve found that it’s a lot harder than ‘just paying attention’ would seem. Shooting for vegetarianism was the goal but the overall journey is trying to notice what I’m doing everyday with the very basic/tedious parts of my life.

That probably sounds dopey but if you’re not doing it already- try it. Like notice how many times a week you just need to grab something to eat on the go. If you have a schedule and sit down to dinner at the same time every night does that work out for you or even how often you sleep all the way through the night. I’ve found it hard to be thoughtful of the tedious mundane crap that I’ve come to take for granted. Eating is a big one but so is just general life maintenance.

Before I decided to try this veg. deal, I kept a food journal and noticed that pretty much every meal I was eating had meat happening somewhere. Some of my snacks even had meat (or meat byproducts) in them. (Damn you pepperidge farms!) However, while giving up meat at first seemed daunting, it’s not nearly as hard as me giving up sweets would be. I mean seriously, sweets are too delicious.

Together with a friend, we made pumpkin whoopie pies with cream cheese icing for the filling.

They came out pretty delicious. I was impressed anyways. It was that same friends’ idea to make stuffed pretzels the next week. Which were incredibly amazing.

Although all of these pictures show a bunch of cheese in them… for some reason I haven’t been taking picture of the stir frys that we’ve made or the random fruit bowls that I’ve been putting together on the table. I really have been eating a lot more vegetables and I’m surprised at how much I like it. Mostly I’m excited for when it gets warm and more stuff will be in season. Plus I’m excited to use my blender for more smoothies… although I should probably make a soup in it before it gets warm!

Anyways, this isn’t like a new years resolution or anything- I started back around the holidays but knew I wouldn’t be able to get out of family dinners, so I was still eating some meat. Mostly I’m just trying to notice what I eat and why I eat it. I’m also trying to make more food myself. Because it turns out that I don’t suck at cooking, like I originally thought. It’s not super hard or anything. It’s just a pain to clean the stupid dishes every night.

In other news, I had to frog some monkeys this past weekend because they were HUGE.

So that was a bummer and set me back on my timeline. I’ve also been searching all over for some sock yarn that I thought I had to make argyle socks for the SF one-sock-a-month-group and have come to the conclusion that I must have taken it back to the store and not noted it in ravelry. Pretty lame on my part.

I really like these socks but I think it’s just my love for Veronica Mars that is blinding me.

Also! I really want to start a knitting podcast but need a podcast mate. Anyone interested? I’ve been drawing pictures from thinking about different topics I want to talk about. Ooookay, this is long and pointless now. I’m sorry.

Oh! P.S. Ask me anything you want to here.

This felting nonsense

I love doing stuff the hobo way!

I know you’re supposed to felt stuff in like a washer… However, that takes forever and I wouldn’t have been able to use those freakishly huge spatula things. Seriously, what are those things even used for anyways? I figured, kitchen sink is good enough for dishes, which I eat off of, it should be good enough for a pumpkin I won’t be eating.

I’m a machine!

Also, sorry about the random dishes there. Yikes! Maybe I should actually do the dishes and quit the knitting. Nonsense, I say. So the pumpkin is close to being totally dry, it takes forever for wool to dry out. I’m going to stuff it tonight and I’ll hopefully have some completed pictures up for you later.

I was making good progress on the cat sweater, I decided to knit both sleeves at once. Since I don’t have two skeins though I was knitting out of both ends of the different colors and it became a giant knot. So, I’ve been slightly deterred from that. I think I’m also kind of in a weird place because I’m leaving next week and it seems like I have a lot of projects to do but I can’t think of any of them. Not good.

(My stem is a little long. The man of the house suggested pipe cleaners to hold it upright. Apparently duck tape and pipes cleaners are the staples in my husbands MacGuyver catalog.)

The internet is for-

YARN!

So I’m going to preface all of this by saying that I do love my dad. Very much. That being said, he is absolutely infuriating sometimes! Especially when it comes to knitting.

Not in the sense that he hates knitting and thinks it’s worthless. My dad is actually one of the most supportive people about me doing crafts and he used to take me to bead shops all the time and stand around awkwardly and and nod yes or no when I asked him if stuff matched. He’s got a good eye for colors.

He’s infuriating in the sense that he’s a contradiction. He’ll go with me to yarn stores now and look around at stuff and talk about how nice knit hats are and point to patterns that have the ear flap and say, oh man this sure is nice, *nudge* look at how cool this stuff is Linds and I’m like, yeah Dad, subtle. My dad is the warmest person on Earth. He can walk around in the middle of winter with just a hoodie, if that. Sometimes he’ll go short sleeves and be like, it’s a little bit chilly, eh?

Yet the man wants the warmest hat on the planet. A hat that he will never wear because he will probably never be that cold. Ever. He had a whole collection of “tukes” that he got rid of because they were too warm, yet I’m pretty sure he wants me to knit him one.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I went into the yarn store. I mean, I have projects:

I’m just seaming this and soon I’ll try and felt it… I don’t know where yet. Probably not at our apartment’s laundry area. Oh yeah, and that sweater for that contest, which I’m starting to think it won’t be so bad, Sax seems to already like her sweater:

She’s laying on the back and one of the front panels. Don’t let her fool you though, she’s been a real pill lately.

Oh yeah, tomorrow I finish up my sewing class, and I’ll hopefully have completed my skirt. So far I’m the one farthest along, I’m the only one to put in my zipper- my first zipper!

Oh what the heck, here’s another picture:

I get so excited about this sewing stuff because it’s so much faster than knitting. I wish both were a little less expensive though. But honestly, I’ve never felt more accomplished than when I finish things I’ve made by myself… well maybe with some (a lot) of help.

So yeah, I went into this new yarn shop that’s pretty close to where I live. (Not good, it’s the nicest yarn shop I’ve probably ever been in.) I’m not looking for yarn. Then I think, I should think about making my dad something. That poor unsuspecting woman. I guess she was the owner, she reminded me of my high school senior english teacher.

“It looks like there’s something I can help you with!”

“Yeah, well maybe. I’m thinking about knitting a hat for my dad. Although he’s got kind of a huge head, and I mean, it’s pretty big. He heats up pretty quickly so it probably shouldn’t be wool or else he’ll never wear it. Even though he heats up he really likes those hats with the ear flaps, so I want to incorporate those. Oh yeah and if we could somehow add like a moose motif or something, that would be really great…”

It was a really nice store and everything, I just don’t think she wants to see me back anytime soon.