Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Yes that’s my binary girlfriend on the floor

I have no new knitting content today except to mention that I finished #1 on my Christmas knitting list on Halloween.  YAY!  Except that Hoodie Boogie Rock v1.0 won’t fit my grandmother.  BOO!  My mother tried it on and it fits her perfectly.  Being an enviable size 6 at her perpetual age of 29 (she started counting backwards years ago, but she has just stopped de-aging altogether now that she’s younger than both of her children), we decided that the hoodie just wouldn’t be large enough for my very “hearty” grandmother.  Think Polish build but compacted down into average Chinese height.  I hope I didn’t offend anyone there.  So I get to start over on #1 of my list.  Good news is, my mom actually wanted to keep the vest, so it wasn’t a completely loss.  I’m just not going to block and add the zipper in until after the rest of the Christmas knitting is done.

So I cast on for #3 (light worsted gauge version of Petrol) over the weekend.  Nothing exciting to show… just a few rows of 4x2 ribbing.  BTW, TLC cotton plus is a moderately splitty yarn, but it’s actually reasonably nice to work with.  Feels more like cotton than acrylic.  Definitely nicer than the Patons Shetland Chunky I was working with on Hoodie Boogie Rock.

So I don’t really drink.  You name it, and I don’t drink it.  Water, coffee, tea, wine, beer, and liquor are all on my non-preferred fluids list.  Sugar in liquid format is different though.  DF, on the other hand is a huge fan of just about everything I just listed.  In an effort to better understand him, I’ve been trying to find a wine that I can stomach.  I’ve gotten to a point where smelling wine doesn’t make my nose wrinkle 100% of the time.  It’s more like 95% now, but I consider that progress.

DF and I went to a wine tasting a few weeks ago.  No, it probably didn’t make much sense to bring me along to the tasting where some 30 different wines were available for consumption, but I rationalized it by saying that a designated driver was worth the extra cash.  Anyway, DF handed me glass after glass of wine to smell and asked so what do you think?  My answers varied from “Ick” to “eww”.  Except one: Il Falchetto Brachetto d’Acqui.  Asked to describe: “Good!”

So we decided to branch out and try something else.  We picked out a moscato but were wondering what the difference was between two vineyards’ versions.  So I told DF to ask.  The conversation went something like this:
DF: So what do you think of XXX moscato vs. YYY moscato?
Store owner:  blah blah blah acidic blah blah blah rounder blah floral
Me: *blankstare*
Store owner: How would you describe the *Italian mumbling*
Me: I liked it.
Store owner: What did you think of this other *Italian doohickey name*
Me: I didn’t like it
Store owner:  Well what are you going to serve this moscato with?
Me:  *blink*
Store owner: So what was it that you didn’t like about *Italian doohickey name*
Me: *blink*
Store owner: Well, what do you like?
Me: Does Welch’s grape soda count?
Store owner: C’mon.  You can’t say that you like Welch’s grape soda better than *more Italian mumbo jumbo*.
Me: *ducking behind counter*
Store owner to DF: What’s she doing?
DF: She’s hiding.  Don’t worry, it’s normal for her.  

But I’m working on getting better answers than “Like” and “don’t like”.  Although I definitely think that the binary wine scale is much easier to follow than that absurd 100 point scale that the wine magazines will have you believe in.  I even added a third dimension to my wine descriptions: pear.  Just try Cascina Fonda moscato d’Asti.