In which I knit four mittens, but only have a pair.

My friend Paula is a knitter, but we don't make the same kinds of things, so sometimes she pays me to make socks for her, and she buys lovely yarns for me to knit with, and this time she asked me to make a pair of mittens for her to give to a friend. She brought some Donegal yarn in a speckly gray, which is very nice looking, and it's okay to work with, not that great, really, because it's kind of lumpy instead of smooth.

So I made the first mitten, but it was too small. It fit my hand snugly, but it needed to be a size bigger, so I ripped it back and reknit the mitten in a bigger size, but I couldn't find my good mitten needles, so I was using a set of cheap bamboo needles. I finished mitten #1, except for the thumb, because I leave them for last, and then last night I went to the yarn shop for Knit Night with Paula, just to get out of the house because I hate being home right now (the Homeless are still there), and while I was at the yarn shop, I bought a lovely set of carbon needles and cast on for the second mitten. I finished the second mitten at work last night, and when it was done, I put it on, and it wasn't right. It wasn't big enough, even though I had made the bigger size. It was because I wasn't using the same needles! So tonight I ripped that mitten out and I'm reknitting it on the cheap bamboo needles. I'm a little tired of these needles.

What I'm reading tonight:

I'm reading Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie. I love her books, even though they are mostly not mysteries, she writes mostly romance novels, but they are so very entertaining that I don't even care, although usually I avoid romance novels like I avoid musical theater. My favorite book of hers is Maybe This Time, which is based on The Turn of the Screw, and I played the audiobook in the car for Rich and I when we went to Michigan a couple of weeks ago, and then last week I was re-reading Faking It, which is a mystery (!) about art theft (sort of), and then I still wanted to read her books so I'm reading Bet Me. And it's making me want to eat Chicken Marsala.

What I cooked today:

Because I have the Homeless staying with me, I have to make dinner every freaking night, because otherwise they don't know what to eat, so I have been slaving cooking every night. Every. Night. Tonight I made Shepherd's Pie. It was good, I like it, but I am so tired of all the cooking. The night before I made Beef Stroganoff in the crockpot, from a very simple recipe that Sheila gave me, and it was so delicious! Surprisingly, there were leftovers (because the Homeless eat a lot, and don't even get me started on how much milk they drink), so when Rachel came to walk the dog at lunchtime, she ate some of it, and she loved it, too!

And I practiced the piano:

I was down to a half gallon of milk after I made the mashed potatoes for the Shepherd's Pie (see above about how much milk the Homeless drink), and RA is thoughtlessly out of town in Arizona, visiting her Crazy Sister, so I have no one to go shopping with, so I called Rachel to see if she would go to the store with me after Maddy went to bed, and she said she would, and did I want to come to the church and wait for her while she presided over the Young Women? So I packed my piano books in a bag, and went to the church and practiced the piano for about an hour and a half on the beautiful grand piano in the chapel! It was fun!