fishie’s aquarium

Chris was at his parents’ house from Monday until last night, and I spent the entire time he was gone working on Cherie Amour. I just finished the main body. Have I mentioned this thing is FAST? Anybody who’s doing Cherie Amour for NaKniSweMo is a dirty cheater. I could make five of these in a month.

I love cream pies. I grew up with cream pies being a rare treat, and now that I’m an adult and can eat as much pie as I could want without my mom yelling at me, I do. Much to my dismay, my mom used those instant pudding mixes and put them in graham cracker pie crusts. Tisk tisk. I like making things from scratch.

In comes Mel a while back, with a basic chocolate pudding recipe in one of her many vegan cookbooks. We made it a few times, and I demanded the recipe from her. We made the pudding, we made fudgesickles from them (higly recommended, btw), but never pies.

When I got the recipe I started experimenting with it right away. At first, I’d use chocolate milk instead of plain milk. Then I started adding chocolate chips to the hot pudding. Then I started melting peppermint candies into it and it’s never been the same since. I currently have written three variations of the chocolate pudding recipe (super chocolate, mint chocolate, and peanut butter chocolate), a banana recipe, and a vanilla one that I just tried out today. I have the things to do a coconut pudding, so that should be coming soon.

The Chocolate-Vanilla Swirl Pie caused me to send text messages to people along the lines of “It’s so good I want to make five more so I can have an orgy with them.”

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

INGREDIENTS: 3c chocolate soymilk 6T cornstarch 1t vanilla 2/3c sugar 1/2c cocoa powder 1/3c creamy peanut butter 1 graham cracker pie crust

Combine all ingredients except peanut butter (and… uh… the pie crust) in a medium size saucepan, whisking constantly on medium heat until thickened. This will take around 15-20 minutes. When thick, add peanut butter and stir until evenly distributed. Immediately pour into pie crust and chill for a few hours until cold and set.

Chocolate-Vanilla Swirl Pie

INGREDIENTS:
Chocolate 1 1/2c chocolate soymilk 3T cornstarch 1/2t vanilla 1/3c sugar 1/4c cocoa powder	Vanilla 1 1/2c vanilla or plain soymilk 3T 2T? cornstarch 2t vanilla 1/2c sugar
Combine all ingredients for each pudding in two small saucepans. Whisk each constantly on medium heat until thick. Try your hardest to get them to thicken at the same time, because you can’t keep heating them after they’re thick and you can’t leave them out. If you’re not ambidextrous enough, have a friend help. When both puddings are set, pour all of each pudding into a separate side of the pie crust, then stir to swirl flavors together, but don’t mix completely. Chill until set, eat. Yum.

I’m thinking if I get enough of these, I can write a book. “A million vegan cream pies,” or something like that. Mmmmmmm.

I cast on yesterday on my way to Endfest, spent time between sets knitting, knit a little at an after party at Doc Maynard’s, then went home and fell into a 14-hour coma-like sleep.

I pick it up today, and after getting through half of the bottom lace… Realized that I’d twisted it. Note to self: when Chris ASKS if you’ve twisted stuff in the round, CHECK before saying no.

I had to undo everything, and I cast on in the X-small since the small was looking especially huge. I want it to fit me tight-ish. X-small seems like the way to go.

I’m there. Knit a sweater in a month? EASY*.

* Assuming I’m not employed yet

I really really really really really want to knit Cherie Amour in the new issue of Knitty. SO bad, that I’ve already bought yarn and swatched. The only thing keeping me from taking this pattern by the throat is the watermelon top. I WILL NOT START a sweater before I finish the one I’m working on. Ground rules. Technically I’m not supposed to have more than one WIP in the first place, but I get impatient.

I want to be working on Cherie Amour by the weekend, and since Kate wants me to make her a skirt she can wear to Endfest on Saturday (dammit why did I agree to this before I realized how late in the week it was already?) I need to be knitting my ass off. So I stayed up until 3:30am working on it. Progress: the front is done, minus the finishing touches. All I have left is the back and the finishing.

Can I do it? We’ll see.

No pictures for you though.

As an afterthought a couple days ago, I posted my pictures of the Pink Fuzzy Coat from Hell in Punk Knitters because I figured some of them would get a kick out of it. And some of them did.

However, OH NOES NOT EVERYBODY IN TEH WHOLE WORLD LOVES MY OBNOXIOUS TASTE!!!11

(click it)

The only worthwhile comment is that first one. It’s hilarious how people ASSUME I am hating the process of knitting this. Dude, if I was HATING the process of something I do for fun, why the hell would I be doing it in the first place? And that first comment saying it will be hot? Um… it’s a coat?

People like this are part of the reason why I wear flip flops year round with my fungus showing.

I posted them in my other journal without a lock

But more closely on topic for this journal, I bought lots of yarn while I was there and more importantly, did LOTS of knitting too.

The hot pink fuzzy coat from hell is taking shape. I’ve got the body completely done, and I’m making progress on the sleeves. Problem with the sleeves is, my yarn gets a LOT shorter when it stretches, and it’s hard to measure their length when you’re sitting in a car.

This was my progress when I was in Santa Cruz:

I did get a little bit of the watermelon shirt done, but not enough to take a picture of.

I bought pretty yarns:

The entire haul

Schaefer Laurel (two 400 yd skeins) in Katherine the Great

Blue Heron Egyptian Mercerized Cotton (one 1000 yd skein) in Raspberry

Maggi Knits Maggi’s Linen, 5 120 yd skeins in hot pink, 2 in variegated orange/olive greenish-brownish

And two blue cascade fixations for a CHRIS THONG. Har. He’ll wear it too, I’ll make him.

I opened a shop

Nothing there yet. Be patient.

So I had subtly mentioned in an earlier post, I have been making octopus themed items for a swap. My partner has officially received, and I am officially posting.

I had a hard time not keeping these to myself.

First Crochet Project Ever: Octopus Beanie. I used the Boy Beanie Pattern from the Happy Hooker for the main body of the hat, and did the octopus embellishment free-hand with no idea of what I was doing. Came out pretty well, eh?

Second Beading Project Ever: Octopus Earrings

A little of trial and error was needed to figure out the tentacles, but I figured them out pretty well. I only needed two of the bigger beads for this project, but I could only buy the beads in sets of 14. So I figure I’ll make 6 more pairs of these and try and sell them. Hrm?

First Stenciling Project Ever: Octopus Shirt

Wheeeee!

This was a pain in the ass to get started, but it ended up not that bad! The stencil is in four pieces, with two layers, and was cut into a giant piece of tagboard. I mixed some fabric medium into normal acrylic paint, and HOPEFULLY it will hold. I still have the stencil, so I’m going to make another one for myself :3 Stenciling is cool and all, but the tagboard only seems like it will take so much more paint before it dies. Next stop: silk screening

I got a lot of knitting done on my California Trip, bought a lot of yarn, etc. But as I said, later.

I went on a “weekend” trip to California, and just got back today. I just uploaded a million pictures, many of which involve fishies and knitting. Until I get them all edited and ready to post, I just wanted to give a shout out to Monarch Knitting in Monterey, CA, one of the most awesome yarn stores I have yet to visit.

I highly recommend them, especially if they let you borrow their passes and get into the Monterey Bay Aquarium for free, like they did for me when I ended up spending so much time in their store that it was too late for me to go to the aquarium that day.

More later

Up until recently, I’ve been very adamant on ONE yarn project at a time, ONE fabric project at a time, ONE misc. project at a time. I know that if I start having two of any of them, I’ll go down a slippery slope and end up with a million. They reproduce.

I swear.

I haven’t touched the hot pink coat from hell since last post. I’ve done very little work on the watermelon shirt. I’m almost done with a hat I crocheted, but not quite. So what did I do? I went out, bought a bunch of velvet spun and a size K crochet hook and started making a cat bed.

Reading has moved its way back up to being an everyday activity, and I’ve been cooking and eating real food instead of just instant noodles lately. Plus I bought the Sims. So there hasn’t been a whole lot of free time for me to knit. See, I can make excuses.

I’ve got a swap deadline at the end of this week, coinciding with when I leave for a little trip to California. There are a few SECRET PROJECTS I can’t post until I ship, but they are all octopus themed and I’m more than just a little proud of them.

VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE: I have officially started to crochet. It’s not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, and appears to be much easier to pick up than knitting was for me. This could be because I already knew how things worked from my experience knitting, and was able to expand this somehow, blah blah blah. What I want to say is, no matter how much I crochet, no matter that I’m working on my second crochet project with no pattern: I AM A KNITTER. I am a knitter who crochets. But I AM A KNITTER, not a crocheter. thnx