The Sweatshop of Love Blog

I hate wedding registries. I love the idea of them; I joke all the time that I won’t be able to get my standing mixer until I put it on my wedding registry. I understand them, I get why they exist. Many people can’t shop and are terrible gift givers and you want to avoid getting six gravy boats. And I like looking at the registry when I get the little notice in my wedding invitation. But they are cold and distant, which are two things I try very hard not to be.

So I knit things, because you can’t knit things that are cold and distant.

I get asked all the time for wedding present ideas, and my first suggestion is always pillows. They are simple, they knit up fairly quickly, and you can match them to what you know the couple likes.

I’ve been working on these pillows for a couple weeks on and off. I could have easily punched these out in just a few days, but the pattern PUT ME TO SLEEP. I dreaded starting the second one, just out of boredom.

I love how they turned out, though! Isn’t that pretty? I don’t know Anne, the bride, very well, other than the fact that she loves mini donuts, but she is a knitter, and who wouldn’t like this pillow? PT has been snuggling up to them all day. He will be sad when we have to package them up for the wedding next weekend.

I knew that the knitted section would stretch over the pillow form, so I covered the form in some stretch knit fabric, so when the cable knit is pulled over you can see a little red sneaking through.

Last night I was grumbling and complaining about the last 8 inches of the second pillow, and PT asked if he could help. I set him up with a yarn needle and he seamed that pillow up so well! Sweatshop in action!

I had half a pumpkin sitting in the fridge from last week and wanted to mix it up a little. Pumpkin soup hit a right note, though. It had to be warm and gooey and comforting in this newly chilly weather.

Risotto! I made pumpkin risotto! And it was heavenly. Risotto might be one of my favorite meals.

I made the risotto like usual, but I added the cooked pumpkin chunks the second to last broth addition. Usually you add all of your mix ins during the last broth addition, but I wanted the pumpkin to cook through and mush up a little. During the last broth addition I added about 1/4 a can of corn left over from the Sunday football pizzas.

It was exactly what I wanted. It was pumpkiny and warm and cheesy! I love fall food!

I’ve had the same Dell laptop for 4 1/2 years. It was really slow (I got a lot of knitting done while it was loading pictures, though!), the internet barely worked on it. I couldn’t listen to iTunes and have two windows open at the same time. The CD tray started randomly opening whenever it wanted to, and not opening when I asked it to.

We’ve been through a lot, me and The Old Lady. We went to Prague together. She was my first laptop. I wrote many many many stories on her. But. Her time had come.

I was wheeling and dealing with my mom in the hopes that I could combine my Christmas and birthday presents with her and my grandparents in order to get a new computer in December. But The Old Lady and I had a rough week last week. She almost got thrown out the window.

And PT came to the rescue.

He bought me a new computer. Exclamation points at this point are redundant. Needles to say, I’ll be picking up PT’s 10 cent wing night at Cleo’s tab for the rest of time. It’s amazing. I’m on it right now! Its the big time! It’s a Dell something something. Its got a ridiculously large screen, as you can see. The Old Lady is trying to share it’s files with The New Lady, but The Old Lady is so old it took pretty much the entire weekend.

There is a learning curve to new things (it’s taking me a ridiculously long time to figure out how to resize my pictures, save them where I can find them, and upload them in the blog), but so far so AMAZING. PT is kinda the best.

I don’t know if you were aware that this weekend was NFL KICKOFF WEEKEND Y’ALL! I’m a huge University of Michigan fan, and the Wolverines won a huge game Saturday against Notre Dame! I’m also a huge Lion’s fan.

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There wasn’t a lot of time between football games Saturday or Sunday to cook, but we managed to eat a few delicious veggie sandwiches and I even sacrificed some football time Sunday to whip up some Veggie Pasta.

We also managed to run to Renegade and check out the crafty goodness. And there was a lot of crafty goodness to be had. There were so many booths we didn’t even get a chance to really look at most of them. We did find our friends Jamie, Caitlin, and Kelsey, who were rocking it out (despite how they look).

With football season comes LOTS of knitting time. I like to watch at least two college games on Saturday and three pro games on Sunday. That is like 9 hours of sitting in front of the TV! At least.

I’m being productive, though. I’m not just sitting drinking beer. So I don’t feel bad about it at all. I did this weekend because it was 80 degrees and sunny both days and I was inside screaming at my TV…

But I finished the Christmas stockings! I love how they turned out. I’ve got to knit another pair because my mom caught sight of them and wanted some. They are coming, Mom!

I also got a ton done on some cabled pillows I’m making for an upcoming wedding present. I can’t do much more because I don’t have a pillow form to size it over, but I think I’m pretty close to being done with this first one. I’ll just fold it in almost exactly in half, seam it up, add a button closure flap and call it good!

I’m playing around with the idea of dying or covering the pillow form in a solid cover fabric, so the contrasting color shows through. What do you think?

(Anne, if you are reading this, happy wedding!)