Day One

Well, today was my first day at Caribou! It was a lot of fun! There's so much new information to take in, but I think I'll have it under my belt soon. My manager and coworkers are really, really nice, and there's really nothing about this job that I don't like, so far. I have more training next weekend, but nothing tomorrow, so I'm going to be spending some quality time with Esperanza while I get a little much-needed R&R! I'm so glad I managed to get a job in coffee. Also, one of my closest friends, who was my inspiration to work in coffee, may be returning to her true calling soon! All of this is very good news, people. Very good news, indeed. Today was an entirely fabulous day. Spook fell asleep in my arms tonight, relaxed and clearly content. His heart rate was slow and steady, his paws and ears were relaxed, and his eyes closed. This is a huge step for us. He also gave me lots of kisses when he woke up--another recent bit of progress. Things are just getting better and better. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Success!!

I just wanted to drop by briefly and let
you know that, as of today, Operation Barista is a success! I have been hired by Caribou Coffee! I'll be back soon with knitting things--as of right now I just have a slightly longer piece of the same lace scarf--and more news about my new job! Ben and I went out and celebrated our new jobs tonight, and enjoyed our first real cheeseburgers since moving here! They were divine. I have a very good feeling about October, y'all. Things are looking up.

Second Try

Today was a luxurious day of knitting. I worked on the orange scarf I cast on last night for the majority of the day today, while enjoying a Mini Marilyn Marathon. I started knitting at about nine o'clock this morning, while the sun was still streaming through the windows and I had a hot cup of tea nearby:

A couple of hours later, I began the Marilyn-a-Thon:

Ultimately, this was today's progress.

I have decided to name this scarf Clementine, after the character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The name originally was prompted by the color of the yarn, but the more I work on it, the more the feather and fan lace reminds me of the waves of Montauk. I'm really enjoying working on this, and it's giving me much greater satisfaction than the version I was knitting out of the Zauberball--which I'll address in my next post.

Starting this scarf over, and the subsequent success, is fairly indicative of the way things have been in my life, lately. It's been a crazy mess for a while, and things are finally starting to come together. As my friend Aero pointed out tonight, starting over on this scarf is a symbol of our new-found success. Ben has gotten not one, but two jobs in the past week, and Operation Barista has had a major development: I have an interview at Caribou Coffee on Monday! It took some major assertion on my part to get the interview, but I've got it and I'm going to hope and pray that they hire me! It's the perfect job for me for a thousand reasons, so please keep your fingers crossed!! Be back soon with a tale of woe: the Zauberball that Wouldn't.

One Month

Exactly one month ago at this time of night, Ben and I were lying on the wood floor of our apartment, surrounded by boxes and completely exhausted. We had just finished moving the entire U-Haul's worth of boxes up two flights of fire-escape stairs, after which we had to find a place to park a pickup truck with a U-Haul attached. This is hard to do at any time in Chicago, but particularly at night, when everyone is home from work and parked. There was no air-conditioning in the apartment and we had been working our butts off for hours, but we were so tired that we both passed out on the floor and slept all night.

That was our very first night in this apartment, and it seems like much more than a month has passed. The apartment feels homey now, and we have furniture and I have lots and lots of kitchen supplies, and everything is where it should be. The only thing we have left to do is hang the pictures on the walls. I start school on Wednesday, which is comforting and terrifying all at once. I think it will really help to finally get a feel for what my daily schedule will be like--and it's so much lighter than my last semesters of undergrad that it seems like nothing in comparison. Operation Barista is still underway, I plan to fill out several more applications over the weekend, and hopefully someone will get back to me soon.

In other news: I kept my promise to myself yesterday, and knitted all day long--I made dinner in the slow-cooker, so I was free to knit all the way until it was time to eat. I knitted a little after dinner as well, and then I transferred Esperanza onto a larger circular cable so things wouldn't be so crowded. I'm well into Chart Three now, and she's getting to be pretty substantial:

I don't know if you can tell, but she's taking up my entire lap.

I'm feeling pretty confident that I'll be able to complete her in time for VKL. Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to block her! The reason my last few shawls are still unblocked is because I don't have enough blocking mats. There is a place near the apartment that sells the bigger interlocking mats, for use in classrooms, etc. I might pick some up once I have a job, but if not I'll have to improvise. I plan to knit the extension of the pattern that MMario has written, so this shawl is going to be pretty big. I'm not even sure where I'm going to put it while blocking. I was planning on blocking it in the middle of the floor overnight, but "The Rift" is gradually making that impossible.

"The Rift," as I have un-affectionately named it, is a large disturbance in the wood floor of our apartment. It is hard to describe--imagine the way volcanoes are formed on the edges of tectonic plates when they push together. It basically looks like we have a tiny mountain range running through our apartment. When we first arrived it didn't look like much, but in the month we've been here it's grown dramatically. We had repairmen in to look at it the other day, and they had surprised faces. When experienced repairmen have surprised faces, I get nervous. Based on what they said to Ben, they have no idea what's causing The Rift--but it's bad and they're going to have to Work On It. I'm assuming that means ripping up part of the floor in our bedroom/living room/dining room. I'm trying not to think about that too hard right now. I'm going to distract myself by talking about what I originally planned to post about--pizza!

At long last, I made pizza from scratch today!

Mmmmmmmmm. It was so good! Pizza is one of my favorite foods, and I hadn't had any since a while before we moved, which means it had been well over a month! I told Ben that being able to make it from scratch makes me feel like I have superpowers. I decide that I would like pizza for dinner, and I make it come into being using only my skills and basic household ingredients! It is glorious. I can't wait to make more! Conveniently, the recipe I used from Joy the Baker makes enough dough for two pizzas, so there is a cute little ball of dough waiting in my freezer for the next time I want to make pizza! This time, I used chicken that I grilled on the George Foreman, bell peppers, tomatoes, Mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Next time, I'm going for pepperoni and pineapple, because that's my favorite. But, the possibilities are endless, and now we can have pizza on a regular basis, despite our limited budget! Another great thing about it is that I know exactly what's on each pizza, and how much of it, so we can eat pizza without being careless about portions. Each pizza uses a fraction of a bag of flour, less than a half can of sauce and as little as 3/4 cup of shredded cheese, to start with. Flour and all of our desired toppings can be acquired at the Dollar Tree where we buy our basics--which means we can both eat pizza until we pop at a price of about $3 a pizza or less! This is excellent news, people. EXCELLENT news.

Anyways, I'm going to go knock out a few more rows on Esperanza before I hit the hay. Maybe I'll come up with a list of topping combinations while I'm at it...

Real Life

I've spent a lot of time lately on Katie's blog. I've been a reader of her blog for quite some time, but lately I've found that I relate to her more than ever. She's just moved across the country with her husband and her brand-new baby boy, and she's adjusting to a very different environment. But the main reason that I've become more interested in her blog is that she is not only a knitter, but also a baker. I wasn't very interested in baking before I moved to Chicago. The idea interested me, but actually baking something involved trying to use my mother's kitchen, which stressed her out far too much to be worth it. While I knew that I was looking forward to cooking meals, I was surprised by an overwhelming urge to bake when we arrived in Chicago, where I had my own oven. Since then, I've been experimenting with a couple of cookie recipes, and gradually attaining baking supplies on our very tight budget. My collection of baking paraphernalia consisted of two cookie sheets and a mixing bowl.

Until today, that is.

My friend Angela, who has been living in Chicago for a few years now, is moving to New York and getting married. She offered us an air conditioning unit and some furniture a while back, which we gratefully bought from her at an excellent price. However, as I sat in bed last night, looking at recipes and lamenting my general lack of proper baking/kitchen supplies, Angela sent me a Facebook message. Ben and I dropped by her place again today, and by this afternoon, my kitchen table looked like this:

I died. Look at it all. I now have two cake pans, a mini-muffin pan, a whisk, cheese grater, TWO potato mashers (one of which I bet could double as a pastry cutter), that gorgeous old blue pot, and so much more! Plus, she gave me a kettle, which means I can store the coffee maker that I was using to heat water for tea, and we can use that prime spot on top of the fridge for the toaster she gave us! Best of all--I got a hand mixer!!! I spent the afternoon reorganizing my cabinets, and tomorrow I'm going to do some baking with my new supplies, including a batch of cookies to thank Angela for her kindness. I also picked up some essential baking ingredients at the store today, so my cookie/cake repertoire is going to grow.

So, anyway, Katie's blog is full of both knitting AND baking, so it's been a pretty awesome place to read about two of my favorite creative outlets. I found her "recipes" tab last night, and I am really excited about making pretty much all of that deliciousness. Plus, now I have the tools to do so! Yay!

Though her blog, I was led to Joy the Baker, which is an awesome baking blog, with a freaking ton of recipes. I spent a lot of the afternoon on her blog (I got *nothing* accomplished today that didn't have to do with cooking) and wound up finding several amazing things, like this pizza recipe that I'm making as soon as I buy yeast, and this post from yet another amazing blog, Helen Jane.

I think this blog post changed my whole line of thinking about my blog. I was already on the verge of a change, but this really pushed me over the edge. She's totally right--there are so many blogs that are about how people want to be, or how people should be, instead of how people are. I think that's been the big hang-up for me with blogging--I am a person who worries tremendously about how I'm perceived, and that's led to some huge blocks while blogging. I've left out anything that could make "weird" or...whatever. I've struggled to write because I've put so many blocks on what I could write about. I stressed about sticking to the knitting theme, about whether or not people even read this blog--but it doesn't matter. I write it. That's what matters. Real life is what matters. And today, for the first time in a long time, real life is totally satisfactory to me. My favorite blogs are written by people who share who they really are, so that's something I'm going to be trying to do from now on. I gave the blog a little makeover, too, because it was looking a little dreary to me. I also changed my username to my actual name--I used to have things to hide from, but I think that being genuine is the key for me now.

So, after I got my cabinets organized and looked at some cookie recipes for tomorrow, I cooked a very special dinner. Ben and I have two very good friends who moved to Alaska right before we moved to Chicago, and we miss them like crazy. When we used to go hang out at their house, they'd cook a giant batch of Chicken Alfredo. I'm only willing to call it by that title because A) It's what they called it and B) They technically started with an Alfredo sauce base. However, after that, it completely strayed from the path of Alfredo-ness. Josh and Teni like very, very spicy food. So do we, so we let them go hog-wild with the cayenne pepper. Also, they always used bowtie pasta when they made the dish, so you wind up with a big plate of ooey gooey pasta deliciousness in an orange sauce. The uneducated would assume that it began with a tomato base, but one bite makes it clear that it's orange from the sheer amount of cayenne pepper. We're all from New Orleans (except Teni, who's from Alaska,) so we're used to the spices, but it's a little intense even for us, and not for the faint of heart.

Anyway, Ben and I have been missing the two of them a lot lately, so Ben suggested that we make some Chicken Alfredo for dinner. So, using some of my new kitchen supplies, I whipped up a big huge batch of the delightful spicy bowties, and a batch of sweet tea--because we always drank sweet tea with it at home.

Mmmmmmmmmmm. So good. I cooked it to Josh's spice level, just to make us feel totally at home. It was fantastic, and just like at home in New Orleans, it made a ton of food, so we have leftovers for days. WIN.

On the knitting front, I've gotten nothing accomplished on Esperanza in two days--I spent all of last night reading recipes and blogs, so I'm going to skip off now and indulge in a couple hours of knitting before turning in. I'm trying to get myself back to getting up early, because I love it so much and I am most creative early in the morning. Also, since I have so much music learning to do, I can get it done without using the whole day, which leaves lots of time for knitting and baking! Although I didn't get to schedule my classes during orientation due to drama with my undergraduate school, (sigh) I do know what classes I'm going to be taking, and I'm not in class until after noon three days out of the week, and I'm done early, which means that Operation Barista still has a serious chance of success! I'll resume applying once I'm actually registered for classes. I'm hoping to work in the morning, which will give me a couple of hours free in the evenings to cook dinner before rehearsals. I'm very excited.

P.S. Speaking of excited: I haven't had pizza since we moved to Chicago (which is both ironic and very, very sad.) I am making that pizza soon, and it's going to be AMAZING.

Tip of the Iceberg

Well, tomorrow afternoon is my graduate school orientation at DePaul. Unlike in undergrad, where everything was carefully spelled out, and mailed out, and charted out, I know almost nothing about what's going to happen tomorrow. I know that I'll schedule my classes, and I may have to take some placement exams. May. I have no idea. Aaaaah. But, once I get my classes scheduled, I can really get started on Operation Barista--I am absolutely determined to get a job as a barista in my neighborhood. There are at least a dozen coffee shops within walking distance, and I know that it's the right job for me. I love the smell of coffee, I love the atmosphere of coffee shops, and I love the benefits that places like Starbucks offer. I also love that I'd be able to walk there before/after school and from home. So, hopefully that will work out for me, soon, and I can have a yarn budget again! Have I mentioned that there is a yarn shop right by our apartment? I need yarn money!!

*ahem* Anyway, I've been working away at Esperanza. I reached row 80 today--which is technically halfway, since there are 160 rows, but it's actually nowhere near halfway labor-wise because each row is so much larger than the one before. But, I'm enjoying this project so much that I really don't care how long it takes, as long as I get to wear it to Vogue Knitting Live. Here is another sub-par picture of her progress:

I never think to take knitting pictures during the day, lately. I promise I'll get a good one soon. There's so much pretty scenery around here, I really should go out and take some pictures.

Oh, also, I ran a lifeline through my knitting today using the hole in my interchangeable needles for the first time. I can't even express how much time that saved me--or how much time it could have saved me in the past. The best part is, if you're using a spool of thread or dental floss, you can actually leave it attached and just knit the lifeline through, breaking it when you're done--eliminating any guesswork about the proper length of the lifeline. Magic!!

P.S. Also, I just realized today how close I am to Lorna's Laces. Immediately afterward, I began contemplating plans similar to those about Skywalker Ranch in the movie Fanboys. :D Just kidding. Mostly.