Socks, Ice Cream Cake, and Twilight In Italiano

The black socks are done and just in time for Jared's birthday yesterday! I'd share pics, but our camera is broken. I didn't waste time casting on for a new pair of socks with Knit Picks Stroll in tidepool heather ;-)

For Jared's birthday, my mad scientist ways paid off in the form of a decadent homemade ice cream cake. The layers, from bottom to top: chocolate-covered grahams, raspberry sherbet, hot fudge, Reese Cups, chocolate ice cream, chocolate Coolwhip, and chocolate sprinkles. I wasn't too sure about how the Reese cups would taste in combination with the other ingredients, but I was pleasantly surprised. Jared, aka "Mr. Picky," was certain that I must've followed a recipe and was therefore impressed with my effort. The only part I took from a recipe was the base of chocolate-covered grahams and raspberry sherbet. Success! ...and many days of ice cream cake.

Lately, I've really been having fun reading a few Italian fansites for the Twilight Saga. It's so cool! I'm constantly learn a combination of formal and informal Italian via vocabulary and idioms used for pop culture, music, and movie-related topics. I'd checked out some Italian knitting sites and blogs, but reading the Twilight fansites are more fun to me.

Speaking of Italian and Twilight, I recently noticed the word for werewolf, thanks to the upcoming Twilight movie New Moon: licantropo. When I saw this, I immediately thought of the movie Underworld and the characters called Lycans. Who knew?! I didn't realize that the word Lycan used in that movie wasn't made up. Hmm, it must have Latin origins...

My quest to intuitively learn and not memorize F2L algorithms of the Rubik's Cube is going well. You could really separate the algorithms into two categories: those that immediately make sense, and those that take some deeper processing (specifically the ones that flip up the R-face or the F-face 180 degrees). There are a couple that actually lie somewhere in between because the white part of the corner piece gets flipped a new direction and therefore requires a changed approach compared to those algorithms where the white corner piece remains unchanged in relation to its adjacent edge piece.

The kids have been loving The Muppet Show dvds I've been bringing home from the library. Just while typing this post, my daughter asked me to put The Muppet Show on. She also has fallen in love with the Johnny Depp remake of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I won't tell you how many times she's seen it in the last two days :-)

JSSCO and JSSBO

Well, no new knitting pictures since I'm still working on the same black socks. I still haven't uploaded Ian's birthday pics. But when I do, I'll have to share a couple of them. Gosh, I haven't blogged for a while. I think the rain and change in weather, Marie being in preschool (early mornings), and not having any news about my current knitting project have fueled that.

In knitting news, I finally read about and watched Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off (Knitty link and Cat Bordhi video) and her follow-up video of a complementary cast on, Jeny's Stretchy Slipknot Cast On (her blogpost here). JSSCO and JSSBO are specifically meant for ribbing -- ribbing that really needs superior stretch and can still bounce back. JSSCO and JSSBO not only has great stretch and bounces back, it also creates the hinged edge that you want for ribbing. To me, JSSCO is just like longtail CO except that you're using only one strand of yarn. It's simply a single CO version of longtail! In longtail CO, you're drawing a second strand of yarn (from the index finger) through the thumbloop; whereas on JSSCO, you're drawing the thumbloop yarn itself through the thumbloop: a series of continuous slipknots. Cool! Hey, if Cat Bordhi gushes over something, it must be cool, right?! As a sidenote when speaking of toe-up socks (i.e., closed toe CO, Cat Bordhi says in the article on Knitty: "Judy's Magic Cast-On and Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off are real soulmates."

In non-knitting news, I'm still doing Babbel in italiano, learning how to do the 3x3x3 Rubik's cube faster (see this site, noting that I do the top layer using Steps 4, 5, and 6 of this separate method) and yet still intuitively, and reading (re-reading actually) Twilight. On the last topic, I'm re-reading to differentiate between the book and the movie better. BTW, at a high school marching band contest yesterday afternoon, I heard a band do music from Twilight. It was Bella's Lullaby I believe. Anyway, I'm not looking forward as much to reading New Moon since that's all about Jacob.