Blooming

Polish:

Friday sparkles again! Yes, my lovely flowers are in full bloom!

I'm still not sure what's sprouting in all of the pots, but I'm assuming it's weeds of some sort. They all look the same; it would surprise me greatly if I had the correct mint, lavender, and oregano coming in. I love the colors on all of these! The one little bloom on the climbing plant to the left is totally awesome:

As are my giraffe print pajama pants, you can see them in the window. I hope this one has many, many more blooms! The pink and red ones are probably at their peak. The next question is, do I replace them with new flowers or just let the weeds/herbs take over when they're done?

Snowflake Scarf

Polish:

Today it's Lancome's Vernis Absolu in Mica, a rather translucent polish I was hoping would be enhanced by some of the shiny gold. No such luck, probably due to the dulling from the earlier dark polish. Ah well, I'll try again in the future!

Eff-Oh pictures of the Snowflake Scarf:

Pattern: Snowflake Illusion Scarf (Ravelry)

Yarn: Diakeito Diaepoca, two skeins of white and one each of three blues.

Needles: US5/3.75mm

Timeframe: May 14 - 31

Mods: Some.  Cast on/Bind off to match sides, used instructions from the two-row Noro scarf slipping the first and last stitch of every second row to make a nice edge.  Since it's just a chart, not a full scarf pattern, I suppose making it a scarf is a mod also.

Problems: None, though I should have reversed the pattern at the center so it was more visible from both ends rather than best from one direction. Not a big deal, it's still snowflakes, just crisper from one end.

It's done, blocked, and now it'll be sitting in the closet (in the done-basket) until it's time to ship it home for Christmas. Woo!

May Update

Apparently, if you don't actually click Publish Post, it doesn't publish. Imagine that! Daily Polish:

Yup, gold again! (And a fairly bad job too...) I wanted to see how it looks over the darker color. Since this one is new to me, I don't yet know if it's more opaque, translucent, or if it has awesome color-change properties like some polishes I bought as a set awhile back. It's very much affected by the dark polish underneath, not nearly as bright and shiny this time.

For my next trick, erm, photo, I give you not a photo, but a graph:

Hey! Look! A DOWNWARD slope! For reals! I've got a conference coming up with a LOT of travel time, so I should be able to get another chunk of yarn turned into fabric this month too. Amazing what happens when you don't buy any yarn and actually finish things! Speaking of finishing things, I did in fact finish that scarf, and now have 39.05 miles of yarn, with nearly 3 already knit up in the blanket, and another 2.5/3 to go. Just keep knitting...

Nearly There!

Polish:

Color is Cover Girl's Hue Thrill Me, again. I was hoping it was translucent enough to have the gold shine through, but I should have used the other dark color that I know is less opaque. Tomorrow will probably be the shiny gold again, because I like shiny things!

Today is the last day of May. I have 9 repeats done on a 13 repeat scarf:

I can so do this. I may need to break my rule of only the blanket at home until it's finished, but I will have this sucker washed and blocking tonight, even if I'm laying it out to dry at 11:59. Please, do not let me be struck by lighting on my way home from work* because I have said this!

* I'll forgive the Powers that Be if I get struck on my way to work, because hey, day off of work and probably the rest of the week off if I'm all lightning struck and all.

Wooo!

The (Week-) Daily Polish, since I don't typically bother on the weekends:

Ferme Quick Enamel color 01. This is a Japanese nail polish left by a friend over the clear base coat. I removed the old stuff, since the fingers weren't all that hot anymore. It's always a conundrum, the fingers get chipped but the toes are fine, so I don't need to re-do the toes, but I want them all to match. Do I re-do the fingers to match the toes, remove the toes and re-start, or just leave them non-matching? This time, I removed it all for matchy-ness.

Secondary awesome:

We celebrated the final payment to our ginormous student loans with ginormous burgers. Ridiculous Burgers, to be exact. Along with champagne, a pie each (chocolate pudding for me, lemon meringue for Lee, this crust recipe), homemade onion straws, guacamole, and an assortment of other toppings you can read about here. The burgers were actually dinner for two days, and while not as good the second day, still awesome!

Breakfast

Today's Daily Polish:

Sparkly! Because it's Friday and I can. Wet'n'Wild's 407A, the sparkly one. Yes, my middle finger managed to get messed up somehow. I'll live. My other hand is not so hot along the edges due to some burnt-on lamb-based gravy and steel wool. I generally do my nails over breakfast, reading a few pages from a book as well.

Secondary photo:

As (somewhat facetiously) promised, breakfast! This week breakfast has been a banana and a slice of cake, along with tea of some sort (Earl Grey today). I made a cake (Lady Cake from Joy of Cooking).  It was supposed to be cake truffles for a charity event, but my mind was addled and it never got finished in time. Could not focus to save my life that evening. So, I used it to learn how to make Swiss Meringue Buttercream and decorated it with a Sierpinski square fractal (cool site).  See:

Not the best decorating job, but you get the idea. I need a larger cake and a smaller decorating tip to really get a good design going on. I don't think I particularly like the Swiss Meringue frosting; it's not bad, but I prefer more solid frostings and have always loved decorator's frosting with 1 tsp vanilla and 1 tsp almond flavoring. Good for the repertoire in case it's called for, but I probably won't be using it too often. Maybe for macarons...it might be good there...hmmm....

An Ikebana

Today's Daily Polish:

Color is L'Oreal Creme #254, Spirited Plum, and the bottle is nearly finished! Wooo! One or two more times and it'll be done - and then I have a second bottle of the same one to use. D'oh! Not that big a deal, I like this one, it dries quickly and is a pretty nice color, typically.

Today's secondary picture:

Ikebana, with a poor neglected spinning wheel in the background. And our degrees, if you're wondering what's framed back there.

It's been awhile since an ikebana post. Mostly because I haven't photographed any of my arrangements this year so far. I've had a couple of nice ones, but they have either had bits that I wait for the bloom and something else shrivels up or I wait too long to arrange them at home and they are no longer looking so hot. Or I just forget to photograph them.