• Christmas Shipping Deadlines
• 0

Ready for the most boring post ever?  I warn you, there’s nothing interesting here at all.  If you want to be totally sure that your book arrives (at a U.S. address) before Christmas, you need to order it on or before December 10.  I know.  It stinks.  If it’s after that and you’re desperate, get in touch with me and we can likely work something out.  But if you’re going for your standard no-stress, no-drama shipping, that’s the deadline.

International folks, I can’t promise anything.  The post office says it can take up to four weeks.  But, the reports I’ve had from people say it’s usually more like a week or less.  So the short version for international folks is you’re very likely safe if you order on or before December 10, but the post office won’t guarantee it, so I can’t either.

Told you this was horribly boring.  I promise to show off the sock in progress next time to make up for this time!

• Under No Circumstances
• 9

One of the guiding rules that govern our household is ‘don’t dress the cats.’  Yes, the kitten overlords are dedicated naturists.  We tried a brief flirtation with collars, but even that ended in failure.  So you may be a bit surprised when I show you this picture.  Levon was certainly surprised that I interrupted his morning nap to do anything so undignified (you can see his shame).

But never fear.  That is absolutely positively not a kitten hat (it doesn’t really suit him anyways, he prefers something a bit more classically shaped).  It is, alas, a toe hat.

For you see, on Tuesday, my mom slipped and fell and broke her ankle.  She’s in a splint for a bit while we wait to hear what happens next.  And apparently, her toes are cold.  Now generally, knitters do this thing where they think ‘hmmm, it’s cold, I should knit a sweater.’  That response isn’t actually terribly practical when a whole sweater is required.  It does, however, work surprisingly well when it’s just some toes that are cold.  I’ve whipped out two little toe hats (I’m unsure of the sizing required so one is bigger and one is smaller).  Somehow I could not convince Levon (or any of the other cats) to model the other one, so I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Also, if you hear I’ve been smothered in my sleep, you’ll know it was Levon and you’ll know he was justified.

• Next
• 6

In between the website upgrades, the movies, and the ice cream making, the weekend saw a bit of time for some actual knitting.  These are the newest sock on the needles and they will be for The Boy (he certainly deserves them after all the computer time he clocked over the last few days).

The yarn is String Theory Merino DK in the color Carina.  The Boy picked it out when we visited String Theory in October.  The color is lovely, and just the tiniest bit odd.  It looks like the yarn itself is yellow and in some spots it’s got blue sitting on top of the yellow.  Now that makes it sound horrible, while in reality it’s actually charming.  But it is awfully hard to photograph or describe.  And yes, it is thick for socks, but that’s what he wants (60 stitches for his big boy feet…makes for a quick sock).  With luck, they’ll be done in a week or two.

Oh, and in case you spent the weekend off the internet, remember that today is the last day of the Thanksgiving sale.  It all ends tonight at 11:59 eastern time, so now’s the time if you’re interested!

• Coffee Ice Cream
• 0

While we did not partake in the traditional Thanksgiving feast, we did still devote some time to cooking and gluttony this weekend.  One of these expressions of culinary frivolity was the  making of coffee ice cream and home made chocolate sauce.  Now alas, getting a really good photo of the ice cream in my dim dining room before the hot chocolate sauce caused too much meltage proved a challenge beyond my skills.  So you’ll have to suffer with a mediocre image of a mighty fine ice cream.  Ice cream so fine I’m compelled to share the directions with you.

I preface this by saying I am not a professional ice cream maker.  I’m pretty confident at this point that if I give you knitting instructions, they’ll be right.  Ice cream, not so much.  But, I can say with certainty, this is what I did, and it came out marvelously well.

Oh, and I’m working on the assumption you’re a clever kid and have followed that bit in your ice cream maker’s instructions that says to chill the bowl well before you want to make ice cream (or, that you’re a fancy kid and have one of the machines with the built in chiller).

Ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 1 egg
• 1.5 tablespoons kahlua
• 1/2 cup of the strongest coffee you can possibly brew, chilled
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

1. Put the cream in a big bowl and whip the ever living hell out of it.  We’re talking more or less whipped cream style.  The more air in here the better.  Don’t let it turn into butter, but anything short of that is fine.
2. Pour in the can of sweetened condensed milk (don’t cut yourself licking the can…use a spatula like a civilized deviant) and continue to beat.
3. Once that’s combined, add in an egg and, surprise surprise, beat it some more.  It really should be thick and frothy and almost mousse like at this point, at least as thick as pudding.
4. Add in the coffee, Kahlua, and salt.  These you’re just mixing to combine.  You won’t get any more air in the mixture (and all this extra liquid will thin it out a bit), so don’t linger over this step any more than you need to.
5. Follow your ice cream maker’s directions for going from ‘delicious frothy paste’ to ‘frozen creamy goodness’ (for me, that’s pour it in the bowl, churn for 15 minutes, freeze).

This makes about 1 quart of ice cream (which easily fits in our home ice cream maker).  You’re welcome. And I apologize if this means you need to break out the stretchy pants.

• Shiny and New
• 7

The Boy, in support of my quest for world domination through wool, graciously spent much of his Thanksgiving day diligently updating the website. I helped (mostly by saying ‘that thing, make it line up with that other thing, no the one over there. Now make it the color of that other thing over on that side. Hmm, maybe not, let me see it the original way again?) and played with felt. He was most gracious. I was doubtless irritating.

I think everything should be pretty self explanatory. Most things are more or less where they were before the shuffle (I’m resistant to change). On a cosmetic level, the site is now more in line with how the books’ websites look. On a functional level, the biggest news is the addition of little pinterest, twitter, and facebook buttons at the top of each post and additional pinterest buttons on the pictures in each post. While I, myself, am rather slow to adopt these new marvels (I’m only just coming to terms with twitter, pinterest and I have only recently introduced, and I’m still staunchly resisting facebook), I’ve been assured that many of you rather like them. These buttons should make it easy for you to pin, tweet, and erm…whatever the verb for facebook is to your heart’s content. Please feel free to share as the urge strikes you!

If you notice anything acting up, feel free to let me know (either by leaving a comment here or sending an email). There are doubtless some weird quirks, and it may take a few days to hunt them all down.

And never fear, we did indeed partake in our traditional Thanksgiving pizza feast. We visited Bar Cento and sampled two of their lovely offerings (and possibly some french fries too, it is the national day of gluttony after all). We even managed to bring home the extras so we could have leftovers today for lunch.