Prints

My new favorite woodblock printer.

Kawase Hasui - Benton Shrine

Doggies

For my birthday, my awesome friend Anna gave me the book "Knit Your Own Dog," because she knows that knitting and dogs are my two favorite things in the whole wide world.

This book is great.  The patterns are really thoughtfully put together, and the end result really does look like the dog you were trying to put together.  But I wouldn't quite call these patterns "easy-to-follow" as the cover states.  It includes pretty advanced techniques and when you're finished with the pattern you have about 12 tiny dog parts that look nothing like a dog, and assembling them is not always the most straight forward thing.  But, if you're an experienced pattern reader you will be able to figure it out; if you're a beginning pattern reader, be sure there is someone near you who is an experienced pattern reader who can explain things.

Anyway.  Anna also loves dogs, especially border collies, so of course I need to make her one:

He lives in the bindery now, his name is Bookie (HA!)

And just because this photo is on my desktop, here's my doggie, when he was a puppy:

I need to knit a version of Quinn next.  

And here are some teeny tiny boxes I made, because this photo was on my desktop too.  

Also, a photo of board-tacketing in progress.  

Television

I don't care what anybody says, I like watching TV. I own a TV, I watch my TV, and a lot of time I just have the news on for company. I love the news, especially local news that is really cheesy and lame.

Things that I enjoy watching

New Girl: At first I thought this show was dumb, and it is kind of dumb, but it's funny and I watch it. And I think that Zooey Deschanel sounds pretty and has a cute name.

Parks and Rec: Wow, this is one of my favorite shows. It will always make me laugh, always.

Castle: Also one of my favorite shows. Love Nathan Fillian. My mom likes crime shows, and honestly most of them and really cheesy and lame, but we both agree on this one.

Rizolli and Isles: Also a crime show, also really good.

Kingdom: This is a British show that I watched on Hulu. It was soooo good!! It's about a lawyer in a small town in England and it's charming and British and it has Stephen Fry. Sadly, there are only 3 seasons and it ends on a bit of a cliff hanger.

Doc Martin: I just finished watching the first 4 seasons of this on Hulu, and although there is a 5^th season since I'm not British I can't watch it yet and it's tearing me apart. It's about an awkward doctor, also in a small town in England (apparently a trend in British shows).   Even though Martin is an ass, I still love him. Why? How did the writers accomplish this? It's brilliant.  

I want to live in a small town in England now.  They're all so cute and charming.  Think any of them need a bookbinder?

Right now I'm watching the news.

For dinner tonight I made chicken and broccoli without the chicken. I also made it with sushi rice, which is delicious but has very little nutritional value. Just like real take out Chinese food.   

Finally!

Last night when I was walking home from yoga at 5:30 it was still daylight, and then this morning when I got up at 6 I could see sunlight peeping through the curtains.  This makes me incredibly happy.

stranded

I don't know why it took me so long to try stranded knitting.  It looked scary but it's not hard at all, in fact it's not anything, it's just knitting, and I know how to do this.  So that sentence didn't make the most sense, but I think if you've tried stranded knitting before you know what I'm talking about.  The only challenge was figuring out how to hold the yarn in my left hand (I'm an English knitter), and once I figured out a good way to do that I didn't have any problems.

And it's going well!

knitting mops

Who thinks that this pattern is a good idea?  I especially like how sophisticated the model is attempting to look in her mop-like mittens and hat.  Poor girl, she did her best with what they gave her...

Food!

Last night I went to a FANTASTIC Peruvian restaurant with some FANTASTIC people for my birthday. It wasn't until well into the night that I realized that I turned 22 in Peru, at Machu Picchu, and I turned 26 in a Peruvian restaurant named Machu Picchu. Oh, funny stuff.  The place was great, and they had all the stuff I remembered eating in Peru: the chancha (or, “inside out popcorn” as a friend described it)

It's kind of like corn nuts.  Kind of....

and mote pelado (or, as I call it, “big corn” because, surprisingly, it's big).

We ate a lot of corn in Peru. Also, they made their rice into weird rice molds just like I remember.

And also they had JUICE. I was so crazy excited about the juice. In Chile and Peru they drink juice all the time, and it's way better than any juice that I've ever encountered here. It's thick and has froth on top (in a delicious way, not in a gross way), and I've been dreaming about it for the past 4 years. I order juice every time I visit a Latin American restaurant and it's always lame regular juice, but this place knows what they're doing. We asked the waiter how he made it, and he said he takes whole fruit and puts it in the blender with some water – how easy! So I guess it's more like a smoothie than juice? Whatever, I need to find a pineapple right now.

They also had things like pisco sours and ceviche, neither of which I like but I had to mention since they're so Peruvian.  

Enjoying great food with great people really made my day. In the past year and a half I have met the most awesome people here, and I love Boston!

PS, yes, apparently this has turned into a food blog.