All we need is love, each other...and gelato

The reason for the hiatus: my partner and I were celebrating eleven years together. We took time off from our respective jobs and spent the last four days running around the city together, exploring, eating, having fun. and delighting in each other's company.

The one thing that we tried to do was to do things for the first time. So we ate at restaurants we'd never tried before - there were hits and there were misses, but the experience was great all the same.

We stopped in at a photography studio and had our portraits taken. It was a simultaneously sad and funny experience: we were imagining what our photographer must feel like shooting all these people that he may or may not meet again; we were feeling our nerves because it was something we had never done before; he was fussing about his hair and I was unhappy with my scarred face.

[Some people even asked me afterwards if it was a pre-nup shoot.

In a word, no. Sorry to disappoint!]

We saw Toy Story 3. As we make a point out of seeing Disney/Pixar movies, no surprises there - except for the part where we splashed out for tickets to an IMAX 3D theater.

[One of the Barbie doll's final outfits made me gasp and point at the screen because I'd had that Barbie doll when I was a kid. Barbie and the Rockers...wow, that was a very long time ago.]

And yesterday's highlight: an eat-all-you-can gelato interlude, at a nice place called Gelatone in Greenbelt 4 [Ayala Center, Makati City]. Five hundred pesos gets two people all the gelato they can eat, provided they show up during all Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays of July, 2-5pm.

Let's let the pictures speak for themselves.

Starting off with my lemon sherbet and his peaches-and-lemon one.

His next two flavors: mint and chocolate, and mixed berries.

I tried the panna cotta-flavored gelato next.

My third scoop was mascarpone with candied figs.

My partner's final flavor was cheesecake.

And mine was dark Toblerone.

It was a great break from normal life. Yes, we only had eyes for each other. It was an occasion that needed to be remembered and commemorated. And that's precisely what we did.

Here's to us, my love.

Ripples in my memory, lead me back to you

Related post: Cross my fingers and hope for the best

And so, here we are with in-progress photos of an afghan - my first afghan, an afghan intended for my grandmother.


Having just started on the project, the first four stripes don't look like much.

The pattern is based on a chevron / ripple stitch that I got from a stitch library book; it begins with a multiple of 10 chain stitches plus 4. In this case, I've pegged the width of this thing at 100 stitches.

The pattern consists of a sequence of 3 dc + dc3tog [forming the "valley"] + 3 dc + 3 dc in the next stitch [forming the "peak"]. So, yeah, it's not so much a pattern as it is variations on the double crochet - child's play for most crocheters. The thing that makes it different is the sheer *scale* of the thing, I guess.


Close-up on one section of the afghan shows the peak-and-valley pattern.

I'm making this afghan for someone who is quite special to me: my maternal grandmother. Since I was a kid all I ever called her was "Mama". I have to say she and I were quite close while I was growing up. Vigorous, intelligent, and always easy to talk to, she was very popular among both friends and family and was pretty much loved by all.

In 1999 or so Mama suffered a stroke. She got back on her feet, but, well, she was no longer the same. I'm glad to report now though that things are looking up for her: her memory is improving, and apparently her skills at playing mahjong were NOT affected by the stroke.

Some people reminisce fondly about their grandmothers making things for them like blankets or well-worn stuffed toys. I have to smile because in this case I have to reverse the pattern - here I am, working on a present for her.

The idea is to finish this afghan before December so that I can give it to her as a Christmas present. I had to give myself a long timeframe because I can only work on this project during the weekends. I'm either going to finish it with some kind of simple edging or something, or follow tradition and put tassels / fringe on the short edges.

All I can do is keep working, and keep hoping I can finish in time. Slow but sure wins the race.

Fandom kicks

When I was in high school I received a pair of vivid maroon tennis shoes as hand-me-downs from my mother. I remember being quite delighted to have such a comfortable and unusual pair of sneakers, and wearing them as frequently as I could.

During my three years at Philippine Science High School I was often found running around the halls wearing the normal blouse and skirt of the uniform, but the maroon shoes on my feet - and best of all, no one was enforcing the uniform rules strictly, so I could wear my sneakers with impunity.

Those shoes carried me all the way to university; they finally gave up the ghost after repeated soakings in flooded streets (much to the ruination of my white socks, I might add). After them I'd gone back to my usual routine of wearing shoes in various shades of black, blue, and occasionally white.

***



When David Tennant became the Tenth Doctor one of the first things everyone noticed was his clothes. The coat was cool, the pinstriped suit was unusual for a decidedly t-shirts-and-jeans age...and the Converse shoes were wanted by all.

In his first season he mostly wore off-white Chucks with a brown suit; he broke out the black Chucks whenever he had to don a tuxedo; and then when he started wearing a blue suit he wore maroon or red Chucks, just for the sake of the color clash.

***

Today I had the opportunity to buy shoes and when I passed a Converse store in the mall, I knew I'd only be picking between the off-white pair and the red one. (No maroon pairs in stock.)


Look, new shoes!

I hope I break this pair in right and that I get as much fun out of wearing them as Tennant did!

Cross my fingers and hope for the best...

In a previous entry I said I'd decided to make my first crocheted afghan out of an assortment of granny squares.

After greedily eyeing some of my pounds of yarn, though, I thought I'd look around for some other options in terms of patterns ad stitches. I figured, hey, two pounds of yarn ought to be plenty from any point of view; if I ate up about three-quarters of each pound and used the rest for edging, then there should be a rather large work completed in the end.

I wound up settling on THIS, or a variation thereof:

[Photo not mine. Wish that yarn was available locally. And I should really save up for those comfort-grip crochet hooks!]

The photo shows just one of the many "chevron" or "ripple" crochet patterns out there. It's a popular stitch for making afghans, hence the many variations on a theme of stitches arranged in a peaks-and-valleys configuration.

When I've made some progress on mine I'll be sure to post pictures. In the meantime, I have to keep working.....

Yarn - gotta have it.

I know I'm supposed to have enough yarn to last me a while, what with the pounds and pounds of the stuff that I recently received....

But my problem is that the yarns I'm going to need for a couple of upcoming projects are in colors that I don't currently have.

If you haven't guessed yet from looking at the colors of this blog itself, I tend towards shades of blue, gray, and black, with a little white and cream thrown in for accent and contrast. I'm not big on bright colors, and there are some that I actually avoid because they make me look weird.

Well, it just means I need to spend some more money on my yarn stash. Hard to believe I'll soon be needing to deal in many more colors than I currently have in my stash. Worse, no one is selling those wonderful printed, tweed-type, heathered, and self-striping yarns locally, at least not in the weight that I prefer to work in....

Ironically, none of the yarns in the photo accompanying this post are multicolored, either. Grr. Goes to show just how rare yarns like this [Vanna's Choice in Wheat], this [Lion Brand Wool in Ocean Blues Print], or this [Red Heart Stripes Yarn] actually are!