Bread, Cookies, and Pi

The air here is absolutely perfumed with the smell of the first of three (!) loaves of bread to be baked this afternoon. Two are the regular whole wheat babies - one for the husband and one for some friends. The third is the whole-grain masterpiece of whole wheat, coarse corn meal, and rye. That one's for me to enjoy with avocado and smoked salmon.......yummmmmm...

There is also a batch of buckwheat chocolate chip cookies waiting its turn in the oven, but right now it's just chillin' in the fridge until the coast is clear. This recipe is making the rounds of many of the foodie sites that I love so well, and I love buckwheat, so this is its week. I don't have the cocoa nibs called for in the recipe, so my semi-sweet chips will have to do.

So, Pi. Whassup?

Yeah, it's been kicking my ass a bit. I move forward a few rows, then discover an error way down below where I can't fix it, so I unknit. The good news is that I've finally cracked the code on doing the lace portion of the Pi shawl! I'm very excited about this. But to be precise, this doesn't mean I'm not making mistakes. But now I understand what they are and how the stitches should have been done.

The biggest lesson? Don't knit late at night when too sleepy to count. Too many times in the past week (already acknowledged as a pig) I have fallen asleep on the couch, needles in hand, still stitching. Funny thing about that - I don't do a good job when I sleep-knit.

But all in all, I'm happy as a clam about my new-found knowledge and have already warned the spouse that I will have to order some nice yarn to make the real shawl with. The stuff I'm using is crapola, and for the effort expended in actually creating this thing, I should at least be using a yarn worth its salt.


Ah, almost forgot. Remember how I went nuts over the patterns in the last issue of Crochet Today? Well, I was really looking forward to the new issue, thinking that maybe they got their act together and decided to make a magazine for people who would like to be seen in what they create. My heart sank at the preview online, but I held out hope anyway, thinking it was just a bad choice of preview items.

Well, guess what? It's gone back to sucking. It has SIX afghan patterns this time. SIX! I mean, WTF? What's going on here? Oh, and there are "scrubbies" (woo-freakin-hoo), and a bunch of other boring crap that's not worth the cheapest yarn going.

Here's my point with this screed: if someone coughed up an afghan, would you really be able to tell whether it was from a pattern from this year or 10 years ago? No, you wouldn't! Because the winds of change don't touch afghans in anywhere near the frequency that it does clothing. So why put so many afghans in one freaking issue? I don't get it? Clothing styles change way more that blankets, for crap's sake, give us more of that! And while you're at it, make a half-hearted effort to harness some of the amazing talent on ravelry or Crochetville and get something worth making in that mag!

Sigh...


Till later...