Jennifer's 365 Project

It was starting to snow when Chris and I left the apartment in the morning. Any thoughts of trekking through a park or enjoying the unseasonably warm winter were forgotten. Instead we ran some errands and hurried back into a warm apartment.
I spent the afternoon watching the entire first season of Downton Abbey while knitting Chris's scarf off and on. It's as long as his current scarf, which is on the short side, and almost done. Just half a foot more...

Chris has purchased some interesting things on the internet, including another potato chip maker.

I couldn't stop laughing when I saw this at lunch.

Yes, it was a slow day.

As the years have gone by I've watched the book arrangement on shelves at local bookstores change. They've gone from being tightly packed and separated by hardcover and paperback, to a mix of some covers facing outward among a sea of spines, to this; a mix of paperback and hardcover with all the covers facing outward. Granted this is the "new release" section, but a lot of the bookstore is similarly spaced like this.

This makes the little kid in me that dreamed of owning a used bookstore cry.

There is something alluring about this blue shopping bag. Maybe it is the feeling of the fabric against Leki's fur. Maybe it's the color. Whatever it is, he's been obsessed with laying on it. He's even knocked it off of places I try to hide it.

Construction downtown has begun for the season.

I'm going to blame the weather for the obnoxious headache I've had for the last week. Who know's if that's the true culprit. All I know is it's steadily been getting more obnoxious, and today it was too much. I spent a big chunk of the day lying around doing nothing, going from feeling fine as the headache waned to lying around trying to convince myself it's not that bad when it started to wax. I'm happy its Sunday and we didn't have a whole lot going on today.

I did get to enjoy the ferret and the cat playing around a bit.

I also made a modified version of a chicken and dumpling soup recipe I really like. We now have leftovers. Yay!
So yes, I know this isn't a photo of the chicken soup, but it is one of the cat laying on fresh laundry. Way cuter, right?

It's a macaron party at Erin's!

Step one? Planning!

Also, whiteboards are awesome.
With planning out of the way it was time to get started laying out the various ingredients and prepping the area.
Each of the five of us, Amy, Jacqui (slightly hidden), Rachel, Erin and myself, were responsible for a different flavor of macaron cookie. So that meant five different batches in all kinds of flavors. The possibilities were endless!
Amy, the local baking goddess (she's worked in a bakery, people), worked on piping the first batch.
With each of us making a different flavor we ended up with quite a few different colors and texture of macarons. They were sticky little buggers, so it was hard to get them off of the parchment paper.

Erin and Jared were kind enough to feed the group of us, so when the macaron cooking was done, we took a break and ate some tasty dinner. After that we hung out and watched some netflix and enjoyed sitting down. It was so nice sitting down I don't think any of us really wanted to get up and get cracking on the filling portion.

I came home with a few cookies of each of the flavors. My intent is to make the filings and assemble a macaron cookie at home. That is, if I don't eat the cookie halves before I get around to the filling, and there's a strong likelihood that will happen.
Also today is a certain orange terror's 4th birthday! Here he is looking innocent but the bags under my eyes from being awakened at 5am can attest to him being anything but. Happy birthday my little orange monster!

I think half of this stuff was melted the the evening.

Argh! Stupid scarf!

The worst part is I kind of want to make this one too.

We spent a chunk of the night narrowing down and selecting a home owners insurance policy. That would just be a boring photo of papers, so here is a more orange, sausage-y alternative!

Today started out kinda blah. Having a cavity filling done first thing in the morning is always the most fun.
Finishing the first Dalek washcloth, however, is.

I'm pretty sure I have enough yarn left over to make another in off-white, plus I have a whole thing of green.

I'm going to make bunches of these and practice getting more even stitches. I also think I might try blocking this, just to try that. From everything I read it sounds like blocking can help even out stitches, and as you can see, there are some tight and loose areas in that stockinette bit.

This knitted up fast, once I got started, and I had a lot of fun. Maybe because most of the time I just had constant Doctor Who episodes in my mind while knitting.

I'm enjoying these quick easy projects. Poor Chris's scarf gets no love. I'll finish it eventually, I swear! I only have like another foot I need to knit on that thing...