red velvet, finished objects, and other thanksgiving tales from austin, tx

Bad girls eat cake. Or, at least girls who fancy themselves bad 'cause they're out of town and it's a holiday and they can take a break from the goody two shoes world of sin-free eating at home. Fitting that this cake is red. Lord knows it's the devil. I'd say how good it was, but that would be bad of me.

Now, I didn't go looking for this cake. I'd done pretty well on Thanksgiving day. The Husband Known As The Bubba and I were visiting Annie, my mother-in-law (who HATES being called Annie, but she doesn't read this blog, in which almost everybody gets a cutesie sobriquet so ha ha). For the holiday, Annie and her roommate, MC, took us to eat at their friend Debra's house. Debra has a lovely home in Round Rock, a place I so far do not love (this matters because I'll be moving to Austin on the first thing smoking), and does her own home renovations. Yep. She built herself a pond in her backyard and is in the process of remodeling her master bathroom after having turned her guest bath into a temple almost too good for poo. Anyway, Debra's also handy in the kitchen (sorry to follow poo with food but the two are connected) and made a scrumptious dinner. I stayed away from dessert because I'd had two helpings of everything else.

Of course Friday meant TG leftovers, but it also meant a visit to where Mister Stevens was staying. As luck would have it, Mister Stevens had come to town to give a paper at UT Austin and to hang out with the friends who arranged for him to speak there. We were terribly excited that our visits would coincide, that he'd get to see Annie and The Bubba and I'd get to see his friends J. and Phillip for the first time since years ago in New York. I was also excited because I'd get to see his friend (and now mine) Marvin, who lives in San Francisco and came to join the fun.

Marvin is the reason I'm back on the sauce (just kidding, I'll wean myself the second I hit the runway at LAX). From scratch, no less, he made carrot cake, pies, and the red velvet cake above. He's so good that he made the cakes at home, brought them as carry-on, and frosted them in Austin. To me, that sounds like some kind of wizardry.

I was happy I'd done my part to show Marvin how wonderful he is. I'd made him this (modeled by the giving-you-some-cool Bubba):

I'd been working on it for the last couple months. In addition to my gazillion other projects, I'd pick up this one and 'round and 'round and 'round I'd go, only the interest of the stripes keeping me from drowning in a pool of Wool of the Andes stockinette. When I arrived in Austin, I still had to put the fringe on. Me no likey doing fringe. It's tedious. But for Marvin, anything. He's the only person I've ever seen literally give away the clothes on his back. The first time we met him, he was wearing the jacket The Bubba's got on. The Bubba admired it and before we parted company Marvin took it off and gave it to him. I'm not the stingiest person I know, but such generosity blew me away. For a long time, I wanted to do something to commemorate Marvin's kindness. The scarf, in the same colors as the jacket, is the result. It's not perfect -- I tried every which way I know to get truly jogless stripes, which made for some visually fascinating joins (and I don't mean that in a good way). Still, it's a pretty dashing piece of knitting, I humbly submit.

Marvin's in the middle, probably thinking, "These two freaks are smothering me."

I'm wearing another little something I completed while in Austin:

It's a pattern, "Sherry's Easy Shrug," from Unwind in Burbank. This made my third time around with this one. I made it in Lamb's Pride Bulky about a year ago. Anyone hear that? Lamb's Pride Bulky? I live in Southern California. Why no one had the decency to stop me from knitting what amounted to a radiator for the upper regions is beyond me. I even did it twice because I didn't like the length of the sleeves the first time I wore it. Knowing nothing of the benefit of picking up stitches, I ripped the whole thing and made it again. I wore that version a couple times before finally figuring out why I tended to faint from heat exhaustion every time I went near it -- B-U-L-K-Y W-O-O-L. But I couldn't stay away from the pattern. I wanted myself a bolero. A chill chaser. Some vintage-inspired shoulder chic. So I went back at it, this time with Karaoke. I knit it on size 10s, so it went pretty quickly. But, once again, I didn't dig the sleeves on the finished product. This time I picked up and knit bands that, for some reason, remind me of buttercups. That took a couple of tries because I had to bust out the DPNs and figuring out how to avoid ladders in ribbing was a merciless process. I wound up ripping and re-knitting the left band. But it's a comfortable and handy knit. I can't say how the Karaoke will wear, what with the soy content and all, but I can say that working with it was a yumfest.

Next post: Men in tiny yellow shorts and a contest which yours truly got to judge. Gotta love Austin.