Step Into My Thimble

Thanks for all the sentiments regarding our family doggie. I’ve been encouraging my parents to donate her leftover food and other things to the local animal shelter. My poor mom took it hardest, but I think we were all pretty ready after spending time with Zooie at Christmas.

Last night I decided to rearrange the living room. Eventually we will be adding a rocking chair, so I wanted to make a little space for it.

I always have fun looking inside other people’s homes online, so I did some before-and-after photos, and I also took pictures of other rooms in our apartment. I do not like flash photos on my digital camera, so I apologize for these being a bit dark and blurry.

First, the before living room photos:

Before No. 1 (The couch is along the right side wall.)
Before No. 2

Now the after photos:

After No. 1 (The couch now goes across the middle of the room.)
After No. 2
After No. 3 (The rocker would be in the far right corner, but you can’t see that here. There’s room though.)

I’m never certain about putting furniture halfway across a room. If nothing else it will make it easier to dust underneath. We just have weird walls in that room–the corners curve, and one part of a wall is taken up by the “other” door to our front hall closet. It’s L-shaped and has a door at each end. Weird.

The rest of the room pictures can be seen by clicking…

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Sadly the family dog was put to sleep today…

Our little Zooie (real name Zuerst, “first” in German since she was our first real pet) was a black Lhasa Apso. She was plagued with all kinds of weird allergies and health problems most of her life. Over this past weekend her back legs stopped working, so my mom and dad took her to the vet today and made the tough decision. She was already almost 15 years old…

I can’t find any pictures of her, but if I do I’ll post one. She and Stanley were always good friends when they got to hang out together.

We’ll miss you, little doggie!

We are off to Michigan for a few days…see you soon!

Today seemed pretty relaxing but again I seem to have gotten a lot done!

The short list:
-Cleaned out the oven and broiler
-Made lemon bars
-Walked all the way to the supermarket and back (with groceries!)
-Did some laundry
-Finished the first glove for my mom and started the second
-Made two very cute little mitten ornaments from this pattern.*

I don’t like flash photography at all (at least my amateur version of it, with every camera except my old Canon Rebel X that got stolen), but it was the only way I could get the diamond design on the back of my mom’s glove to show up. Take a look.

*Regarding the mitten pattern, it is super quick. I actually did mine with Dalegarn Kolibri cotton, on size US3 needles, instead of heavy worsted on 7s. There are a couple minor errors in the pattern, in case you’re thinking of trying it: First of all, it tells you to cast on 20 sts, but when you do the math in the first increase row, you’re only supposed to have 18. I ripped out the first and did it with 18 stitches, and it turned out okay. On the second one I did 20, and everywhere the instructions said to knit 8 stitches (on either side of the thumb gusset increases usually) I just changed it to 9. I think the one with 20 turned out a bit more…mitten-y! The one with 20 is the mostly-green one in the picture.

Also, after you do the row where you skip the thumb-gusset stitches and put them onto waste yarn, you should purl one row across before the K1 row, P1 row for six rows part. (That one was pretty obvious.)

Of course finishing on anything this small isn’t any fun, but since it’s just an ornament I left little square knots inside. I don’t think anyone will notice.

Well, a little bit at least, when preparing your boxes of holiday baked goods.

1. Go to Chinatown (or Chicago’s two-block excuse for one).
2. Buy two dozen fresh fortune cookies for 75 cents/dozen.
3. Melt some semi-sweet baking chocolate.
4. Dip the cookies.
5. Cool on wax paper.

Voila!

I got a lot done today, including the above project*, mopping the kitchen floor, making another big pot of chicken soup (it’s the Amish egg noodles, I tell you), making a tray of our adapted version of “Ranger Bars” AND wrapping all the Christmas presents! Oh and I did a finger on my mom’s glove. I drank a little too much wine with dinner though so I will be waiting to work on that more until tomorrow…

*And by the way the Dim Sum at Three Happiness Restaurant was awful today. Don’t go there. It’s the big pink place right on the corner across from the Chinese gate.