So I wasn't intending to have time to blog again before my departure, but then I realized I'd never given a final report on the Tangled Yoke cardigan. I also came across one of the most awesome food products ever. But first the knitting.
The cardigan FINALLY has buttons (it took me a week to get around to sewing them on!) and I've worn it a couple times since then. I love the buttons, especially because they are not the same color as the sweater. They are stark white, with some very small scrollwork cut into their faces. I think it goes well with the cable pattern. I have a close-up of one of the buttons over on Flickr, if you're interested. I adore this pattern, but if I were to knit this again I'd make a few changes. First, the sleeve width. I have rather thin wrists, and my wrists are swimming in the cuffs of these sleeves. You can sorta tell from the photo that there is very little tapering in the sleeve from the elbow to the cuff. Second, I would try to find a slightly less scratchy yarn. I think this sweater will soften up with time and more washings, but right now there's still bits of VM in the there and they are a bit poky. It's definitely warm, but it works best over a long-sleeved shirt rather than a short-sleeved shirt. Considering this was a choose-a-size-and-pray project, the fit is quite good, and I have very little gapping when I button it up over my chest.
Now for the awesome food. I have been trying to clear out our refrigerator of anything that will spoil while I'm away, so this afternoon I found myself with nothing really appropriate for lunch. So, I decided to grab some deli food from the grocery store while I did laundry across the street. After nabbing some fruit and a California roll, I started getting the idea of looking for snack food for the flight, and came across this in the snacks & sweets aisle:
These are "Two by Two artisan biscuits", clearly a product of
The Motherland Great Britain. I am a pretty serious anglophile, and I love tea, so these had to be mine, but the kicker was the characters on the box. Have you guessed it yet? No? Oh c'mon! There's even a freaking five-pound note in the picture!
After a quick poke around the internet at home, I found out that these
cookies biscuits come in three different shapes: Lion/Mouse, Tortoise/Hare, and yes, Owl/Pussycat.
Here's where kismet steps in. When I was in the first grade (or was it kindergarten?) I recited the entire Edward Lear poem for our school's end-of-the-year Talent Show. My mom, in an effort to help me commit the poem to memory, made me a cassette tape of her voice reading the poem out loud a few times in a row, so I could practice along with her. The tape did its job, because as far as I can remember I nailed every line, even though I did not have the foggiest idea of what a five-pound note actually was. Probably a very heavy letter, but to whom? The Pig with a nose piercing? The ecclesiastical Turkey? I had at least a vague grasp that a shilling was some form of currency, since they use it to purchase the Pig's ring (which, upon consideration, is kind of a strange and/or unsanitary). But they had "plenty of money/wrapped up in a five-pound note", so the purpose of the note other than as packaging was unclear. I guess that's why it's a children's poem. The details don't really hold up to logical analysis, and I think poems shouldn't really be held to the same standards of narrative as a Jane Austen novel, the last piece of fiction to cross my brain. Anyway, enough rambling. The tape did its job, and did it so well that, to this day, twenty-odd years later, I can still recite the whole thing. I also love cats and owls (huh, wonder where that got started...) so I had to buy these biscuits.
I just ate one (an owl). They are delicious, and will go perfectly with my airline tea. God Bless the Queen.
