Things to Do on a Dreary Day

My island was hit by a couple of tropical storms over the the last week with thunder, lighting, rain and more rain, and even a bit of hail. The clouds hid the full moon yesterday morning but I could see it glowing up in the sky. This morning was dark so I cancelled by trip to the mall and hung out at home. So what's a girl to do?

I managed to cook a meal. Yay. The Landcaster is always thrilled to have real food around and spaghetti is his favorite. When we were younger I would make it from scratch. It turns out the boy and his father preferred the bottled stuff. The YellowCheeseDuck (no.1 son) did not eat anything red. As I had no bottled stuff and had nixed going out to brave the world today, I had to make if sort of from scratch. I ran the diced tomatoes through the blender as the Landcaster abhors chunky spaghetti sauce and will pick out visible onions. If he can't see them, he eats them. I'm that way with eggs...can't stand the wiggle yellow stuff, but will scarf a fritatta down just like that.

It was cold here in Paradise where 68 deg is frigid. I broke out my hand knit socks and wore my flannel shirt. When I whined about not having any heat a friend suggested the oven, so I decided to bake. Bread? A delicious dessert? Then the practical me decided to destash some of the things laying around the cupboard...a box of unsweetened chocolate from way before Christmas, a cake mix, and a ton of powdered sugar I had acquired. In a fit of laziness I baked a 13x9 cake when I really wanted cupcakes. The frosting came out a bit weird as I set the microwave for 3.5 min instead of 35 seconds. Lucky me I caught it while it was liquid but still in the bowl. Anyway, the frosting tastes good, how can so much sugar NOT taste good, but the consistency is strange. I cut out the cake with my biscuit cutter and made it into a cupcake.

Cute, but still just a boxed cake.

My best project of the day was this FO.

Pattern: Paris Mill by Corrina Ferguson from PicnicKnits
Yarn: Madelinetosh Pashmina, color Mare. I used one skein plus a few yards of another.
Needle: size 8
Mods: The pattern calls for fingering yarn and size 6 needles. Pashmina is sportweight so I went up on the needle size. I did 6 pattern repeats instead of 5. I weighed the yarn at the halfway point and had 60% left, but still ran out. Strange. Guess my math skills are deteriorating.
Comments: The yarn is beyond scrumptious. I loved knitting this side to side shawl and hardly put it down. It has charts that I didn't use. I did not memorize the pattern, but looked at the text while knitting the pattern. It has a nice purl row to coast in . I so love this in a shawl pattern.

I feel very fortunate to have this day off and not have to go out in the bad weather. I managed a few of those pesky little things that had to be done...a bit of laundry, some credentials faxed, etc, but no spinning and no exercise today.
But of course, tomorrow is another day.