On hold

Between a stomach bug and bad sunburn crafting has come to a temporary halt as I lie in bed and frequently 'water' myself to prevent my very red skin from drying out. My stomach should be better within the next day or so, so I'm not too worried about that. The sunburn however...

On a good day, my skin is pale enough to rival a fresh box of printer paper. Then yesterday I unexpectedly found myself outside for 4 or 5 hours (read: completely unprepared and sunscreen-free). While I'm (thankfully) not blistering, I'm still pretty red, and while it doesn't hurt as much as it could (I'm either used to it or fried all my nerve endings long ago) my skin's still pretty sensitive. I can play with yarn a little bit, but can't, for instance, try on sleeves or anything like that. Moreover, the inside of my elbows are burned too and that actually hurts, limiting mobility for other crafts.

I'm debating calling in sick tomorrow, but I'm not the kind of sick where I could stay in bed all day. If I can't sleep but can't do anything else either, I'd be bored out of my mind. Let's see what tomorrow brings...

Chocolate Peanut Butter Love

A few weeks ago I discovered a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Chips at my boyfriend's house. They look just like chocolate chips except they're made with peanut butter. It was love at first bite; they're amazing! As much as I love regular peanut butter from a jar, you can only have so much before your mouth is glued shut. These babies have all the flavor of peanut butter without that inconvenience.

I was eating them by the handful when I saw a picture and recipe on the bag for chocolate peanut butter chip cookies. That's right: chocolate and peanut butter together in a portable cookie. I finally convinced my BF to make them with me this weekend and we were pretty satisfied with the results:


The only downside is that they're a bit too sweet to indulge more than a couple at a time (or maybe that's a good thing?).

It would be more than worth making them again, though, just for the batter:


Ok so it doesn't look like much in the photo, but trust me it tastes fabulous.

If you want to make the batter yourself (or, you know, the finished product too), the recipe is online: REESE'S Chewy Chocolate Cookies

Sprite Love

No, not the drink...

http://www.spritestitch.com/ - a site for video game inspired crafts! *love*
It has everything from crocheted afghans, to needlepoint controller cases, to even pixel cookies!


Makes me want to get started on a couple ideas I've been tossing around, like a tetris scarf or SMB3-themed hats (though now I have to make pixel cookies, too... those are just too awesome to pass up)...

Cherie Amour: First major frogging

True to my intentions, I did work up a lot of Cherie Amour while at the beach (even finished the first ball of yarn!), but I'm caught up in the Harry Potter's again I'm having some doubts so once I got back, I left it in the bag, and didn't break it out again until finishing the 4th, 5th, and 6th books until a week later for an assessment and photos.

Current progress:


[Those purple squiggles are lifelines]
I'm not sure why the photo's so pixelated (it doesn't look that way elsewhere on my computer... maybe because of Blogger's automatic resizing?). A close up of the waist section:


After giving it a week's rest, I'm still not satisfied. I want the lace part longer so the ribbing doesn't end up the same length. As for the ribbing itself... well... as much as I love the cables, each rib is really wide and bulky and unflattering (and that's on size 8 needles). I'm going to try a 1x1 rib instead.

Next up: frog, de-kink the yarn, add a couple more pattern repeats to the lace, then 1x1 rib for the waist section. Then I still need to look into the rest of the sweater, too. I know I don't like the shape of the sleeves as written--I want at least straight sleeves, if not belled--and I'm concerned that 6" of positive ease around the bust is going to be huge. We shall see, we shall see.