various things

With the end of today, another summer is over.  Classes start tomorrow, and I officially go into seclusion due to the amount of reading and writing that I will be responsible for between now and the beginning of December.


Despite having been a worthless bum for the majority of my summer, I did some fun things here and there: my first trip to Comerica Park,

some time at the beach (which included some pretty intense sunburn),

a random trip to Texas, 

and most recently a completely irresponsible weekend up north with (most of) my college roommates.  It was a fantastic weekend, lots of swimming, lots of boating, some beach volleyball, a healthy amount of Euchre... there should practically be a Kid Rock song written about it. :)

Picturesque, no?

As part of this weekend of fun, Saturday night was a sort of pot luck for dinner, everyone brought a dish to pass.  Now there are approximately 2 things that I can make with any sort of distinction (carrot cake is not one of them).  One of these is lasagna, which I haven't made since I got back to Michigan because my mom lives here and she makes it better.  The other is calzone bread:

We'll call this the before

During

After...aka just prior to speedy consumption

It's magically delicious and so easy to make I'm not going to give you any clues beyond these pictures because then you'd be way less impressed with my skills, and I'm not really interested in things that would result in people being less impressed with me.  It seemed to go over well, the two loaves I took up north were eaten in all kinds of haste.  It relieves my soul-crushing fear that people will spit out the food I make them and throw it at me when there's no more left after 10 minutes.


Aside from my impressive culinary abilities, I also completed a baby blanket for some awesome friends who just had an equally awesome baby girl.

"Little Johnny's Patchwork Plankie" in Patons Shetland Chunky

It stubbornly refused to remain rectangular when not pinned, so this is the picture you get.  I fell in love with these colors, and I hope my friends get lots of use out of it!


And now I must prepare myself to return to the life of endless reading and schoolwork, not to be confused with endless reading for fun, which was pretty much my job this summer.  After an unsettling phone call I placed on Friday in which the financial aid office informed me no financial aid package had been awarded to me yet and I feared I would not actually be able to take classes this semester, I'm happy to report that everything is fixed now, and to ask everyone not to be upset if you don't see or hear from me much for the next three months or so.  It's because of these:

I'm pretty sure I'll be reading all of these in the next 16 weeks

everybody likes pie

I have this sort of love/hate relationship with knitting.  When things are finished and they're pretty, I love it.  When there are 12,000 ends to weave in before that happens, I hate it.  When it helps me relax while I'm watching a movie or reading, I love it.  When it's seaming reverse stockinette in dark purple, it makes me want to stab my eyeballs.

Enter lace, which at various times encompasses most of what I both love and hate about the hand crafts.

I started this shawl (the Pie Shawl from Weekend Knitting) in January of 2007 to take with me on my various plane trips back and forth between Michigan and Massachusetts (so long ago I don't remember what the yarn is or where I got it or anything.  Of course I didn't write it down, why do you ask?).  If you know me and you're thinking to yourself that it's ridiculous for me to make a shawl because I would never ever wear one, you're not wrong.  But if memory serves it was an easy enough pattern that it didn't make me want to pull out my hair (unlike this one).  Anyway, I finished knitting it fairly quickly, completely shut out the fact that it would require weaving ends into LACE (aka disguising ends of yarn in holes), and looked at the pattern to read about the edging, for which I had really pretty ribbon.


It called for a crocheted edging (and this is where reading ahead would have been beneficial).  Here's what I know about crocheting:                (big empty void of nothingness)


So it went into a bag and sat there for almost three years.


This summer I pulled it out and was feeling particularly ambitious (or more likely I was putting off doing something else unpleasant) so I tackled said edging.  It's not pretty, it's probably not actually even real crochet, except that I used a crochet hook and it's not coming off.  So I'll take it.

Luckily the ribbon more or less conceals the fact that I had no idea what I was doing.

When it was all finished and the ends were woven (weaved?) in, I set it down to photograph it, and it looked like this:

I'm Batman!

Yep, basically a giant Rorschach test.  Really attractive.  But then, through the magic of about 200 pins, a big cardboard blocking board and copious amounts of water, now it looks like this:

A pie shawl that actually looks like a pie!  It's a miracle!

Natural light, how I love you

Notice how it lays pretty flat now?  Not bad, eh?

I still have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  At least it's finished and it's pretty and it's inspired me to do more lace, which is nice because I was ready to give up the whole endeavor completely (not really).

On the Road

So, after being a shameless, useless bum all summer, last week I was suddenly called into action to fly to Houston and then drive back to Michigan with my friend and her dog and her cat and a car filled to the brim with belongings.  Since I don't exactly have a lot going on, I was more than happy to step in and help out. :)

Here's my trip breakdown, by state:

TEXAS:

Texas is very big.  The things in Texas are very big.  The highways, the restaurants, the trucks, the portions, the margaritas:

These margaritas are made with everclear.

You don't realize how intense that is until part way through the second one,

and then it's already too late!  The fabulously talented Katie took this picture, which I then appropriated :)

We did what you're supposed to do in Houston (according to the people that live there).  We ate and we shopped.  :)  Sunday night we went to dinner at the Houston Aquarium, where we ate many delicious things, including the mini shark attack:

I'm ashamed to admit I almost wasn't going to order this.

We can all agree that would have been a huge mistake.

So totally magical, and I can in fact verify that this is the mini version - another table ordered the regular version and it was about twice as big!

Ferris wheel outside the Aquarium

I enjoyed my first visit to the Lone Star state!  Monday morning we were on the road bright and early on our way to Michigan, a trip of which I have very few pictures because I was mostly behind the wheel and that's just not safe :)  Did you know that Texas highways have a different speed limit at night than they do during the day?  So weird.

LOUISIANA:

I liked Louisiana, much time was spent driving on a highway elevated from the water (but not so elevated I would call it a 'bridge').  

See what I mean about the elevated road?   I'm not sure why I like this so much

I'm pretty sure this state was the location of scary bridge #1 of 5 (I HATE bridges) and it's definitely where we crossed the Mississippi River for the first time.  I'm also convinced I really, really annoyed Jen as we approached Baton Rouge and I kept saying "Batohn Rouggggeee" as though I were French, but she handled it well (she also accommodated me by taking countless pictures of signs at my request - I love pictures of signs).  After several hours in Louisiana we headed north on US55 and eventually hit

MISSISSIPPI:

Which may be the most boring state to drive through.  The scenery never changes, it's just trees followed by more trees.  I like trees and everything, but some variety would be nice.  I was minimally excited to drive through Jackson, but that's just because I'm a True Blood fan :)  We finished our first day in

TENNESSEE:

I never realized before that Memphis is barely in Tennessee.  If we had not slept there I think we would have spent less than 45 minutes total in the state.  As it was we stayed at the Residence Inn downtown, which was very nice:

The view from our hotel room in Memphis

The cat was extremely vocal about being put in his carrier and unceremoniously hauled into the hotel and I spent a good portion of the night with a golden retriever laying next to me and/or on top of me, she was very sneaky and I was just too tired to do anything about it.  We didn't get too far from the hotel, but we did manage to see a few trolleys and some horse-drawn carriages.  The trip back to the highway was very pretty, along Riverside Drive.  Again, about 5 minutes after getting on the highway, we hit

ARKANSAS:

I'm not a fan.

MISSOURI:

Jen doesn't actually remember going through Missouri because she was sleeping the whole time.  At this point in the trip, there was really very little to distinguish it from every other part of the trip, but nothing stands out as being terrible :)  And we crossed the Mississippi River for the second time, on our way to

ILLINOIS:

Our time in southern Illinois can best be described by a stop at a gas station about halfway through the state.  It was a combined gas station, food mart, clothing store, video game room, restaurant situation.  As I walked in, a customer went up to the counter and asked if the fax he was waiting on had shown up yet.  I walked into the restroom behind a lady having a very loud cell phone conversation which did not let up the entire time she used the bathroom (I have a thing about that.  Phones should not be used in the bathroom.  Especially not a public bathroom.  It's gross.  I've always felt this way).  Already in the bathroom was a possibly younger girl (hard to tell what with the intense bleaching of her hair and the shocking amount of makeup she was wearing so I'm going off what she was wearing) using a hair straightener and constantly checking herself out in the mirror.  Based on the way she was preening I can only guess that her date was picking her up FROM the gas station.  It was a pretty great experience!

After a slight 26 mile detour when I failed to follow the GPS instructions because I had accidentally turned off the volume, we made it to US70 headed toward 

INDIANA:

Of course we hit Indianapolis right at rush hour, which was glorious (except not).  We did drive right by Lucas Oil Stadium, which was ENORMOUS.  Indy has changed since I was there 7 years ago in college for an accounting conference (yes, I am a huge nerd, thanks for asking).  Indiana was a pretty good drive, with the exception of a stretch on 69 right before we hit Michigan in which the highway was down to one lane and 45 mph for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON THAT I CAN TELL.  There was no equipment on the road, no work had been started that I could see, it was like Indiana just wanted to punish me for driving through it on my way to Michigan.  Not cool, Indiana.  Not cool.  But finally we hit

MICHIGAN:

We both perked right back up as soon as we hit the Michigan border, because the end was in sight!  By this point the dog was so upset about the unholy length of this car ride that she sat with her back to us and her face in the seat as her only means of expressing her displeasure.  The cat took it more calmly, only meowing every once in awhile to remind us he didn't love being in the car.

Eventually we made it back home, and today I am completely useless. :)