Knitters Know Everything

All the best little pleasures in life I've learned from Knitters. In person and online, Knitters know all the good stuff and their recommendations are unfailing. A very abbreviated list includes;

Knitting socks,
Making marshmallows from scratch,
Ace Cider,
Warehouse 13,
malabrigo Twist,
Maker Faire,
Hanabi,


And now from Knitters I've learned about the audio books read by James Marster. That man can read. He has a voice like warm honey and sandpaper, whiskey and chocolate, good leather and musty books. I normally find actors to be pretty but uninteresting, however I believe I'm developing a bit of a crush. My last crush I was a girl and it was running away with MacGyver. So yeah, it's been a long time.

Tour de Fleece

Today is the start of Tour de France. Since there is not much that I like to do more than to watch tv while knitting and then find a group of like minded people on line to chat about the show and, more importantly, the knitting of course I joined Tour de Fleece.

From July 5 until Sunday July 27th the goal is to spin every day. We will watch the race but more importantly we will be talking about spinning and making lots of new yarn. I've knit 8,000 yards since I last bought yarn so I really need some new yarn to coming in.

I can only spin for a minute today to say that I did. Then Joey and I are loading up for a day trip. I have trepidation about taking a 17 year old dog out for the day. Added to that, yesterday my car was hit while parked on the side of the road and the back door is, well, it's not good. I feel like it's a omen not to drive for six hours today. So far we are still going. I'm starting to pack our stuff up now but I will have a good look at that door before we actually go. I haven't had a good chance to review the damage yet.

Fireworks

My friends and I spent a quiet day protecting our dogs from the loud scary fireworks but first we went out to eat lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant.

As part of the meal they served us a huge salad that looked like backyard weeds. We recognized the Spearmint and Italian Parsley and Cilantro and, I think, Chervil. There was a heart shaped leaves that might have been Violet and finally a furry purple plant that I have no idea, except that it tasted like black pepper. As a salad it was too harsh but as garnish to my egg and rice flour crepes stuffed with whole shrimp and spiced pork it was delicious. I pretty much finished off that family sized salad on my own.

Then we spent the afternoon setting off our own kind of fireworks.

Hanabi is a cooperative gave where you see everyone's hand but your own. It's so much fun!

It was recommended to me by a member of my Nerd Wars team and yesterday I wanted something smallish I could buy to support my local game shop for their 20th anniversary. Ever since I started working the 10 hour days in February I've been going there on Thursdays. Yesterday, I looked around and realized I knew at least one person sitting at each of the 17 tables!