Once in a while, I’ll bake chocolate chip cookies from scratch and bring them to work. It makes for good relationships with my co-workers who carry the badges and batons. Plus, it increases my chances that they’ll come running to my aid if I ever need to hit my Personal Alarm Device in an emergency.
So I made these tonight.
Anyway, I thought you would enjoy a change from the boring old sock-in-progress photos.
I would share with you if I could.
I started a new sock. Aren’t the colors of the needles and the yarn pretty? The needles are from KnitPicks, and the yarn is hand-dyed 100% merino wool from Claudia Hand Painted Yarns. The colorway is called Cabin Fever and makes me think of autumn leaves.
I completed my fourth and last round of allergy testing this morning, and then Sean and I drove back up to Morro Bay. I finished knitting the second Red Hots sock on the drive back. Traffic wasn’t so bad today, but OMG, I am so sick of being in the car.
Excuse me while I go to sleep for the next ten hours.
I have my fourth and last appointment for allergy testing tomorrow in Oxnard, so Sean and I decided to make the drive down to Ventura this morning. We left Morro Bay at around 11:30 AM. We didn’t reach Ventura until after 4 PM, when normally it takes about two and a half hours to make the 150-mile trip. It was a good thing I had my knitting with me in the car. We hit a lot of traffic on the 101 between Gaviota to Refugio Beach. By the time we got to Santa Barbara, we’d been in the car for about three hours already, and we were both sick of it. Luckily, our favorite independent bookstore was a few exits away, so we took a break from the road and got some food to eat and a couple of new books to read.
Now we’re back at the Ventura homestead, and Sean has fallen asleep on the couch. We’d talked about going out to eat dinner later, but it looks like getting back in the car and driving anywhere is definitely not going to be an option.
A few months ago, I bought this Japanese printed cotton at my favorite local independent fabric shop in Ventura. I thought it would be perfect for luncheon napkins.
Last Saturday, I finally got around to making those napkins.
After washing, drying, and pressing the fabric, I used my rotary blade to cut squares.
I pressed the edges to make neat hemlines, and then I marked off the corners to miter them.
Right after I took the above photo, I realized that I made a mistake. I would have to rip out a few stitches so that I could fold the hems under.
Other than that, I didn’t have any more problems.
The napkins turned out pretty cute, I think.
I almost hate to get them dirty… even though that is kind of the point of having napkins, right?
I made a lot of progress on the second sock. That’s because I had to sit through several hours of Powerpoint presentations over the last two days, and the only way I could stay awake and actually pay attention was by knitting.
Remember this sock? I posted photos of its progress back in May. Then I got sidetracked by other projects in June.
Now that it’s July (halfway through the year!) and The Pumpkin Socks are done, I wanted to go back to my unfinished projects. So this week’s plan is to complete the second Red Hots sock.
Remember the orange socks that I’d been knitting for my cousin?
These are the same socks that posed with the pumpkin plants in a couple of earlier blog posts, so now I think of these socks as The Pumpkin Socks.
I finished them a few days ago and kept meaning to take better photos so that they could have their own blog entry.
I finally got around to taking those photos today.
They’ve been down to L.A. for a Los Angeles Galaxy game…
…and back to Ventura and then Morro Bay.
For a pair of socks that have yet to be worn, they’ve certainly covered a lot of mileage.
I got home from work–10 hours of what is my Monday after a 3-day weekend–and I was fully prepared to camp out on the couch for the rest of the evening. But, nooooo. Sean said, “We have to run today.”
“Can’t today be a rest day?” I asked.
“No,” Sean said, “because tomorrow is supposed to be the rest day.”
Drat. He was going to be disciplined and stick to the half marathon training plan that I’d printed out and stuck to the refrigerator door.
So I changed into my running clothes and put on my running shoes, and we went out for a forty-minute run, according to schedule. I spent the first half hour alternating between being mad at my husband and trying to distract myself from the various aches and pains that were developing along my hamstrings and shins and the arches of my feet. I spent the last ten minutes focused on just getting home and putting this run behind me.
Just as it is with every long run that I complete, by the time I got home, I felt pretty good about what I’d accomplished, and I was back to liking my husband again. Especially since he’d made puttanesca while I was at work, and we would be able to sit down to eat in a matter of minutes.
I didn’t take any photos of our dinner, but here is one from our 4th of July breakfast that Sean made. My contribution was the handmade quilted placemats and handmade napkins.
Even though he won’t let me slack off the training schedule, he does make the best breakfast.
Sean is a huge soccer fan and right now we are waiting for the 2015 Women’s World Cup game between the USA and Japan to start.
Earlier for lunch, I made sushi rice and we ate fresh vegetarian hand rolls.
Both Sean and I love sushi and Japanese food, but today Sean is a USA fan, through and through.
P.S. The table runner is the reverse side of this table runner from this post, and the quilted placemat is this one.
365 Days Handmade 