science is fun useful!*

so i have this lovely silver tea service that was my grandmother's, which i've been meaning to polish since high school (which, if we're generous, was 10 years ago...)



and i've decided that i'm finally going to get it done, but hate polishing stuff, and it's super yuk to be around, so i took to google to see if there was a way to make my own (non-toxic-y) silver polish, and google did me one better...i can make my own silver DIP! so i don't even have to polish, i can just soak. which is exactly my speed. tested it on a small scale with my bracelet last night, and it seemed to work relatively well, so i'm going to go big tonight...

so, it totally worked, right before my eyes, score! the coffee pot still needs some work, but i think that this is good enough for now. better than a half-assed attempt, but not quite full assed. also, as i was doing some (very slight, let's be honest) buffing, i thought "this would have been the better part of some poor woman's job back in the day" and that made me VERY happy that it wasn't even slightly part of my job description.




*while the watching it un-oxidize before my eyes was kind of fun, this was also work, so more useful than fun. although i do recognize that science is, in fact, fun...just not in this instance.

i feel like a legitimate sewer today!

sewist? sewer? anyhow! this morning, i patched the knee of my favourite jeans. just decided that i really actually needed to finally do it, and that i wanted to wear them, so i bit the bullet and patched them up, bam! look:

exciting

i got this today:

sock theory

SO, i'm sure that we've all heard of the infamous "second sock syndrome" whereby one gets bored after the first sock and then still has to make a second sock to end up with a pair. i was telling a colleague the other day that i'd come up with (during my insane sock knitting for everyone at christmas last year) for circumventing the sss. so here's my theory:

1. knit sock one (pair one).
2. knit sock one (pair two).
3. by the time you get back to pair one to knit the second sock, it's new and interesting again.
4. by the time you get back to pair two, ditto.
5. you end up with two pairs of socks, and aren't bored.

so. it works, in theory. it was working for my co-worker-knitter, until she was sidetracked by another sock that she just couldn't resist. and being the good person i am, i definitely made fun of her.

confession: i'm really no better. i'm most of the way through a pair of socks, and have a work project, the wispy cardigan, and somehow still managed (in a day and a half), to start a knitted tutu, a pair of baby booties, and another pair of socks.

sigh. my name is katrina, and i have a problem. :) my problem is that i have a christmas' worth of sock yarn in the basement. and a short attention span. at least they will get done well in time for christmas...?

buzzzzbuzzbuzz. finally finished some long overdue bee blocks, which means that up next i really need to get my butt in gear to ge my bee quilt blocked and sashed ASAP for our quilt show in 8 weeks. it needs to be finished at least enough to be measured for registration by april 10th...less than a month from now. totally doable, right?

textured block

book shelf block for our (other) bee-brarian :)





and two square blocks round out the set and catch me up to date and even a tiny bit early!




and here is my quilt non-progress. same place it was about 8 months ago:

pintucks, here I come!

our february challenge chez beehive (yes, that would be *last* month's challenge) is to create a textured block. so i'm going to pintuck.

and, because i still needed ravelry pics for some mittens made AGES ago, and my blog is about 80% ridiculous animal photos, i present the animals minding their own business:



and then the one that gets me on the radar of the spca...

successful party, and the cat licking his bum.

it's been a full day. the man's birthday, and thus party, and the cat was so stressed, he hid under the bedsheets the whole time. but now he's leaned up against me cleaning his bum. mister man says that this shows that he's so comfortable with me that he can clean himself, and wants to be near me. i'm not sold on the idea.

anyhow, lovely party. tired, but happy. my friends are awesome, and happy moment: boys in the living room with beer and loud nerd talk, girls in the kitchen getting things ready to eat. and the boys are all capable cooks, and the girls are all modern-y career girl types. but it just made me really happy in that moment to have the house filled with noise and everyone just around, and even to be kind of weirdly traditional through no real design of our own.