a big fat turkey

Thanksgiving was without incident this year. Spanky had to be with her family, throwing all our plans into disarray. We originally planned to go to her boss Jen's house. Jen is the mother of Neil and Danny (of the chicken hat--below):


After I made her the chicken hat for Danny, Jen requested a hat for Neil too, to match his winter coat, which is red. She especially wanted one with flaps and ties, because I gather that much of having a toddler means fighting with them over keeping the hat on the head. Anyway, I designed these two hats myself. I think they're the first real garments I've designed, if you don't count a coffee cup sleeve that I made for Spanky a while ago.



The one on the left is the one I made first. I looked at a bunch of kids patterns online, and took an average of those stitches for the circumference, but it ended up looking very shallow. I also tried both picking up stitches for the ear flaps and knitting them first and leaving the top stitches live, and decided that this latter method was more visually pleasing, so that's what I ended up doing. I have no idea if they're placed anywhere near where a real kid's ears are, because i just eyeballed it with the most rudimentary math necessary to place them near the exact sides of the hat. I crocheted a border around the edge to help stop it from curling except in the front which I kind of like. I-cord ties, with pompoms on the ends. Cute!

Anyway, after I finished that one, I thought it looked too small for a two year old (too shallow), so I whipped up the other, more traditional cap with the same yarn. The tan was left over from the cargo pants I made for one of the baby showers, and the red is random acrylic left over from my unfortunate ebay experience, which I'll save for another post. For this second hat, I picked up the stitches for the earflaps and knit them down. Again, I only guessed on the placement for the flaps, but Spanky tells me that Jen reports success, so I'm happy.

They were supposed to be 'thank you' gifts for hosting us for Thanksgiving, but then Spanky ended up going home to her parents', and I couldn't go to Jen's (Spanky's boss) by myslf. Luckily, some friends of ours were planning on making Thanksgiving dinner in their tiny Brooklyn apartment, so I went over there. First, though, I made some macaroni & cheese from this cookbook. Yes, I know it isn't traditional Thanksgiving food, but that's what they asked me to bring. I also baked a pumpkin-ginger loaf cake, the recipe for which I got from Everyday Food, a great magazine that supports a cooking show on PBS of the same name. Anyway, I baked the loaf to make myself feel more like I was going to Thanksgiving, and less like I was attending a cook-out.

Then I spent the weekend cleaning the house. We just got a new filter for our Shark vac, and lo, it works again! It's amazing how fast the hair of two cats will clog a vacuum. I've had to give up many of them over the years because of cat hair.

In closing, I know I've been a lame updater, but I'm taking a cue from Natalie, and am going to try to update every day from now until the end of the year. It's not that I don't have things to write about. It's just a habit I've gotten out of (pretty damn quick, too, really. I have no excuse), but I'm going to try a bit harder to be a more regular poster.