Beer Cake, What Else?

A great many things can be resolved with kindness, even more with laughter, but there are some things that just require cake. --Unknown
I do believe I have found the never-ending project. Yes, I know I've said that before, but seriously: when was the last time I actually FINISHED something? I'd check, but I know the answer is AGES ago. Long enough ago to type it out in CAPITAL LETTERS. SO LONG AGO.

This is what comes of knitting a lace project with nearly 1000 yards of silk laceweight yarn on size 4 needles. It's like trying to mow an acre of grass with nail clippers: doable, but why would you do that? Ain't nobody got time for that...

Perhaps one of the reasons that I haven't made much progress is because of all the distractions life keeps throwing at me. Take this cake for instance. No, don't take the cake. That's my cake:


It's a cake shaped as a huge mug of beer. My cake. Mine.


Cake is mine.


I did share it in the end. It came from one of my work friends who wanted to repay me for all the times I saved his neck this season. "I owe you one," he kept saying.

"You owe me a cake or a beer," I kept replying.

And then, he walked in with that cake. It was chocolate. It was tasty. I wonder what I should ask for next?

In truth, I have made great strides in my knitting over the last couple of weeks. My mother-in-law was in town visiting from Belfast, and that forced me to stop whizzing around the house in the evenings doing chores and my stretching exercises to actually sit down and socialize on the couch, knitting in hand. I managed to get through all the yarn that I'd re-wound after ripping out the last project, and by the time she left on Thursday, I felt like I'd reached the point in a top-to-bottom shawl where each repeat would gobble up scads of yarn. I thought I was on the home stretch. Halfway through the last repeat, I weighed the ball of yarn. It was 63 grams. "I'll have used at least 10 grams by the end of this repeat," I said to myself. "Then, I could probably do one more and then start on the border. I'll be done in a few days."

I finished the repeat just now and weighed the ball, slightly worried that I'd worked too many repeats and that I'd be running out of yarn for the border now. I read the scale:

60 grams. Hm. I guess it's not gobbling up yarn so much as it's nibbling the crust. I guess I have a few more weeks to go.

Still, we had a good visit with my mother-in-law. She likes a lot of the same things I do. We went to the theatre to watch a play and we enjoyed it, but I was totally distracted by the pretty shoes that one of the actresses were wearing in the second half. I knew I'd seen them before, and when I got home, I went straight online to find them. They're currently sitting on my wishlist on Amazon. Yes, I'm stalking the shoes. Yes, I believe that is a totally normal thing to do.

My favourite part about her is that she likes shopping, which was a nice excuse for me to go as well (twist my rubber arm, why don't you). And, whenever we're visiting with each other, she sees me knitting, and that gives her the urge to take it back up again as well. I gave her a couple of my knitting books and magazines to look through, and she found a couple of tops she thought she liked, so we copied them for her. She went into town and got herself some skeins of yarn, and I'm hoping that she got a good chunk of knitting done during the nine-hour flight back.

She also left me the copy the new Vogue Knitting. which means that, along with the latest Interweave Knits I got for myself, I've got plenty of reading material to distract me from my never-ending project now:


The next thing I have to look forward to is a week off from work. I'm so looking forward to it. I'm feeling pretty worn out these days... it felt like a long summer this year. Maybe it's because I've been working through this injury, which is still causing me grief, or maybe I'm just so relieved that it's finally sweater-knitting time that my mind is just ready to curl up under a blanket and day dream about sweaters and hats and mittens...

... any project that isn't 1000 yards of laceweight yarn on size 4 needles. Sheesh. Best be knitting now. Later, y'all.

Comments

YarnKettle said…
That cake looks great! I hope you have lots of fun and lots of relaxing knitting time soon.