It's a slow weekend ...

... but not quite by choice.  Thursday night, I had an unfortunate run-in with some peanuts.  Hubby brought home some Thai take-out from a restaurant on the way home from the office.  He has eaten there several times and we even had lunch there together earlier this week without any problems.  Each time he's been there, Hubby was assured that there were no peanuts in the yellow curry.  They said that it was perfectly safe for me to eat their food!

Well, Thursday night, they apparently switched up their recipe ... and added peanuts, just for fun ... and my face swelled up like Will Smith's in Hitch ... and we had to rush off to the hospital before I stopped breathing all together ... since all my EpiPens were expired ...

We ended up in the creepy, ghetto ER in Sacramento - if you live in the area, you know exactly which one I'm talking about - and four hours later came home with orders to take Prednasone and Benedryl for the next couple of days.  Taking Prednasone is what I can only imagine taking speed is like.  It's a steriod that makes you all dizzy, jittery, and makes it feel like your heart is beating out of your chest.  Taking Benedryl at the same times makes all those symptoms feel like they're happening in slow motion.

So, since I'm too tweaked out to sew, I picked up my crochet hook and made some Trinity Stitch cotton washcloths.  I can't believe how quickly these little guys come together!  I love the Trinity crochet stitch because it goes so quickly - the pattern is really easy to memorize, which means you don't have to pay a ton of attention to what you're doing!  The resulting washcloth has just enough texture to give a nice scrub (without all the bulk of the popcorn stitch) but is soft and gentle at the same time.  And the best part is that with the nice cotton yarn, the more you wash them, the softer they get!

If you're interested in a little weekend crocheting, here's the pattern!  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/trinity-stitch-washcloth

Fall Knits

I don't know what it is about this time of year, but something makes me want to pick up the knitting needles I abandoned the previous January or February.  Hubby and I are headed back east in a couple of weeks, so -- after many hours of searching on Ravelry -- I'm trying to decide which of these patterns I want to work on during the numbers of hours we'll be stuck on a plane and in a car.

First up: European Mezza Socks by Sara Morris

I absolutely adore this colorway!  I ordered some beautiful Peruvian Highland Wool yarn from knitpicks.com in the just about the same colors.  The number of colors in this line is AMAZING!  Even if you're not in the market for yarn right now, go check it out anyways!

I'm hoping these socks will go together fairly quickly --  they're cuff-down socks and the pattern seems to use mostly knit stitches.  I've never tried "Fair Isle" knitting (alternately knitting with two or more colors/strands at the same time, without breaking the yarn), but I've been watching a lot of youtube videos and checking out some blogs, and I'm hoping that it will be a fairly easy technique to pick up.

Next up: Garden Gate Socks by Emily Johnson

I think these socks are super cute (although, I'm not sure that my version will be knee-highs).  What I think I love just as much as these socks, though, is that Emily's ravelry name is Emily Starr, as in my ultimate, all time favorite Lucy Maud Montgomery character, of "white night" fame.  I can't tell you home many hundreds of times I've read these books as a kid ... and now I have a sudden yearning to go home and read them again!  Perhaps this sock pattern and I are meant to be "kindred spirits?"

I do have to admit, I have some reservations about this one.  The pattern calls for toe-up knitting and a split heel, both of which I've never done before.  I get super frustrated very quickly with knitting, so we'll have to see how these go.  I did start the toes last night with some heather-grey bamboo yarn, and they look OK, so maybe there's hope after all.

Choice #3 is a tie between: Tea and Scandal Socks by verybusymonkey (in yellow) and River Rapids Sock by Sock bug (in blue).  I'm not quite sure which pattern will win out, but I like the name of the first.

Are there any other summer sock knitters out there?  What's on your needles right now?