Restless Knitter

Do you ever get tired of cooking the same old boring things all the time? I thought I’d share some of the recipes I’ve recently tried, and liked. Feel free to share any of your favorites.
Chicken with Tomatoes & Artichokes

Cheese Stuffed Meat Loaf w/ Parsely Potatoes

Grilled Fish Tacos and Rice

Stuffed Tomatoes, Stuffed Zucchini, Stuffed Apples (I cut the tomatoes in half instead of stuffing them whole. Haven’t tried the apples yet.)

Chicken Marsala Florentine

Two of these recipes involve artichokes, a food I’m not particularly fond of. However, I like them in these recipes. The point being, even if you think you don’t like something, try it anyway. (Unless it’s a black olive, then you can flick those little bad boys right off your plate.)

I’ve obviously had too much time on my hands the last couple of days because I’m posting about anything and everything. Poor Beth has been subjected to my Chatty Cathy-ness in email and because I want to spare her for once I’m so generous, I decided to share with not just one victim person, but all of you. You might want to avoid the blog until after the 26th, at which point I will be very busy, and most likely without internet.

I ordered my fridge yesterday. Same company, different location, $300 cheaper. The guy I dealt with at this place went even farther by calling and finding out just how long it would take my precious food keeper to arrive and it’s 7-10 days instead of 21. Hooray!

I have become somewhat of a germaphobe. I’m not positive what brought it on but I think it was the staph infection incident. Out of nowhere, the thought of touching the rail at the escalators grossed me out. Especially at the airport. Eww. Naturally, I don’t want to live alone in my fear of germs so I shared it with my husband the other night at dinner. He thanks me for it, I’m sure. Seriously, think about this. When you are at a restaurant, you handle a menu. Then you eat your french fries or your nachos with your fingers. How many people have sneezed on that menu? When you go to the store and you push a cart/buggy/basket, you’re touching the same handle that someone else touched. Was it the guy who shook it more than once and didn’t wash his hands afterwards? Was it the girl who coughed into her hands earlier? You don’t know. On the flip side, how many years have I gone without putting sanitizer on my hands after pushing a cart, handling a menu, or holding a stair rail and I’m still here to tell about it. What’s your phobia?
Here’s a strange (to me) thing. The highways here are called by their number/name, but prefaced with the word The. It’s “The 101″ or “The 5″ or “The PCH”. I call The 405- The Road That Should Be Erased Off The Map. Also known as The Road I Will Never Drive On. In GA, we didn’t call 75 - The 75, or 400 - The 400. It was just “you go down 75″ or “hop on 400 south” or “I will drive twice as long to avoid 85″. Even stranger… it doesn’t bother me to drive on any of these roads (except The 405 omg I hate that strip of concrete). It seems like the highways around Atlanta were practice roads for the race driver wannabes. Zip zoom weave. And I hated 285 because I always felt like the lanes were too narrow for some odd reason. But here… nice wide lanes. For the most part, people seem to drive decently. There are a few of the zip zoom weavers but I don’t see near as many of them on The 101 as I did on 400. Maybe it’s all just new to me and I’ll hate it just as much in a few years.

So how many magazines did I buy? 112. Yes, that’s one hundred twelve. I’m finding that number includes 5 or so duplicates. I’m not done going through them yet.

Bella stuff: I had to take Bella to the vet again yesterday. I had to take her for a foot problem when we first got here. Of course, it had to be on a holiday where you have to go to the emergency clinic and pay the equivalent of a house payment. She had some type of thorns in her foot. Big black ugly ones, making her foot a lovely shade of maroon. She got meds, the foot started looking better, and we went on. I noticed it’s starting to turn maroon again. It’s red between the toes and it looks like her nail bed is infected. I did a little internet searching and found a vet someone was happy with. This guy was super nice as was his staff. He looked her foot over real well, gave her a shot, 7 days of antibiotics, and trimmed her nails. All for $56! If I were still taking her to her regular vet in GA, that would have cost way more than that. I probably wouldn’t have walked out for less than $150. Hell, they charged $12.50 for a nail trim alone, $2 for sticking a thermometer up her rear, $49 for walking in the door, $1 for listening to her heart (Do you want us to listen to her heart? - Huh? - That will be extra. - WTF? (and then you feel like a heartless beotch if you don’t want to pay a measly dollar to have her heart listened to)), and so on and so forth. Even after we move an extra 25-30 miles away, I’m thinking we’ll drive the extra miles for this guy. He cared more about her than sticking a dollar in his pocket.

House stuff: I know, I know. Click away now.
It’s hard to believe that we’ll have house keys next week. I’m so ready to be in the house, and also not ready. We’ve been shopping this weekend. The only thing we have to show for it is something to sleep on. We still need something to sit on and a refrigerator. I found that you really can’t just look at Consumer Reports and take their word for it. I found that a fridge they rate as a good one is getting crap reviews from real world users. I did figure out which one I want (I couldn’t find a single complaint on it) but it’s taller than the space available. That means we’ll be taking out the cabinets over the current fridge. It’s sad because it’s not like we can afford to lose any cabinet space, especially since one is being used to house the sprinkler system controls (wtf) but I really like this fridge. And it could take up to 3 weeks to get it. Must I do everything the hard way? I guess that makes life a little less boring.

I wonder how long it will take to find all my knitting things.

I hope you have a lot of time because this ended up being way longer than I was planning. This post actually has knitting related words! House stuff at the end, with a link to pictures, if you are so inclined to skip past the yarny things.

I want some of these circulars. I don’t need them, I just want them because they are in color. I haven’t found them in the stores yet but rest assured, when I do I will own at least one of them. I did, however, find a yarn shop 5 miles from the apartment. It’s going out of business and everything is 50% off. I bought yarn, pattern books, shawl patterns, and magazines. All of which I Do Not Need. The pattern books were mostly Katia kids/baby patterns. I got the Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton book number 2 for $6, which has the Klaralund that went around awhile back. I have a strong dislike for Noro but there are patterns in the book I like that I could use different yarn for. Because, you know, I will knit every pattern in my I-like-it list in this lifetime.

I bought 2 skeins of Douceur et Soie in black, 7 GGH Mystik in green, and 13 Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran in blue. I have no clue what I’m going to do with any of it, though the Douceur et Soie will mostly likely be used for something from Victorian Lace Today.

See that box of magazines? These were all store copies, costing a whopping 5 cents each. Want to guess how many I came out of there with? Go ahead, guess. I’ll tell you tomorrow, just in case you want to play the guessing game. Each stack is 8.5 in (21.5cm) tall. I’d make this a prize winning contest but I can’t even get my ass in gear enough to mail a package that is LOOOONG overdue so if you did guess and I were to send something, there’s no telling when you’d get the actual prize. So the guessing is just for fun. Or maybe someday in the future I’ll get my ass in gear and send something. Yes, guess for an undetermined prize with no clue when it would ever arrive. (And if you already know how many there are, shhh don’t tell!) You have until I get my ass in gear and post again.

I seem to recall saying that I would take a picture of the bag I was making the day after I posted about it.

I seem to be a big fat liar as I just took this picture today. I don’t like it. I tried to put things in it and they didn’t want to go in. They wanted to get stuck in the holes. The only things that like this bags are round things, or soft things, but not things with any kind of corners or edges. That includes yarn balls with labels. So when I made this washcloth

I had a thought. What if I make a bag that doesn’t have holes? I like this stitch and just maybe things with edges and corners will cooperate and not fight the bag. (The other side of the cloth is smooth.) That’s what I’m working on at the moment, when I’m actually working on something besides house stuff. A bag, in this stitch, in the round, without a pointy bottom.

Speaking of house stuff, we officially have one. Well, almost. We’ll be closing on the 26th (WOOHOO!) but because we don’t have a refrigerator or a bed to sleep on, we’ll have to get those first. Though sleeping on the floor would probably be an improvement over the mattress in this apartment. If you want to see pictures, you know what to do. (psst, click on Pictures) We might paint before we move our stuff in too. Let me just say in advance, if this is your mom and dad’s house or the house you grew up in, I am sorry. I know it’s what worked for them but it wouldn’t be my first house of choice. However, I think I’ll like it better after putting walls back where they belong and taking out walls that were added. Walls that were added to create a bedroom where no bedroom should be. It’s a smaller house than I’m used to, especially the kitchen, though it’s most likely plenty of space for just the two of us. It’s just going to take some time to adjust to not having all the extra room. Even though it doesn’t sound like it, I am happy to have the house.