When my gaming and knitting habits collide

As many of you are aware I have a few semi-addictive hobbies and pastimes. There is almost nothing better than when two of them combine into something incredibly cool (at least to me). Since I begin knitting in December, I have been spending alot of time on Ravelry.com which is a great resource and social media site for knitters/crocheters. They have free patterns, forums, groups, a place to document all your yarn... yada, yada, yada ad nausium. Awhile ago I found the group called World of Warcrafters: dual wielding needles since level one and I was totally floored. People who knit and play World of Warcraft?!?!? Bwah?!?!?!

After I got over that, I kept reading it until one day I found a post by IndieDyer who happens to dye yarn in color combinations inspired by World of Warcraft. How sweet is that??? Weird you say? Meh, I choose to agree to disagree. If I can make socks or anything else for that matter with really cool yarn that happens to be called "Not your Average DK," "Totemic," or "For the Horde!" then I WILL! Now I just have to find really cool patterns for them all...

So, my pictures today are of my very first skeins of WoW inspired yarn. Unfortunately since I started writing this post, Indie Dyer, the woman that dyes all these yarns, has decided to stop producing them. Waaaaaahh! So, I have of course now purchased two other skeins in colors that are still available at DiscontinuedBrandNameYarn.com So, if you are interested you better snatch them up now. One colorway I wanted disappeared in a matter of hours tonight. Sadness... it so figures that I just found out about this yarn and it is in it's final days. Well, at least I will have 5 skeins of some very unique yarn to make neat items out of. There will always be cool yarn out there, this stuff just stole the show for me.

Can't Stop the Serenity

This past Saturday three of my friends and I took part in a really interesting event at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline. Can't Stop the Serenity is a yearly event that goes all across the country showing screenings of the movie Serenity, which is based in the wonderful but very short lived Firefly series by Joss Whedon. Whedon is also responsible for such great shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, two of my favorite shows of all time. Can't Stop the Serenity tours benefit Equality Now, which is global non-profit that,

"...works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through the mobilization of public pressure"
-Equality Now Website

In addition to seeing Serenity again on the big screen, this tour was treated to seeing Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, another of Whedon's creations. What's so special about this showing is that Dr. Horrible has never been on the big screen. It is a video blog musical starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. Dr. Horrible as an evil scientist (with a PHD in horribleness) aspiring to join the Evil League of Evil. It is an absolutely hilarious 45 minute musical and on Saturday they turned on the captioning and let all of us Whedon geeks sing along with his creation. It was glorious!

So, if you are interested at all in Firefly, Serenity, Joss Whedon or The New England Browncoats (who sponsored the night) make sure you go to this event next year. It is well worth the late showing time of midnight, plus you can say you stayed out until 3 in the morning! It certainly made me feel like I was back in college rather than being -cough- 30 -cough, cough-.

A rose by any other name....

So, yeah. I can't come up with something witty to say after that title. Deal! This is basically my excuse to post some cool pictures I took of the plants in our side garden.















I swear that the rose bush we planted a few years ago is plotting to take over the world. It started out tiny, and in three years has spread to cover half of this garden.















Now it is just starting the attempt to climb the siding of the building. I think we need to get a trellis soon so the landlord doesn't yell. Although, compared to what this garden used to look like before we moved in, they shouldn't be complaining. The rose bush is so big now that there is no way we could move it if/when we get a house. /cry




















This is a closeup of one of our many lilies which are just starting to come out now. I'll post some pics of them once their blooms deign to make an appearence.

It so chose me!

I swear the pizza came like this. We opened the box and the piece of pizza had in fact chosen to be eaten by me.

I believe I was truly flirting with death by keeping Colette away from this pizza long enough for me to document this momentous occasion. Every few weeks or so we get together on a Friday night, order some kind of obnoxious takeout and complain, exclaim or refrain from talking about our respective weeks.

This was just the beginning of our most recent pizza-filled, movie-laden Friday eve. We started the evening with a movie that was a bit of a dissappointment, Italian for Beginners. It wasn't exactly what we thought it would be... i.e. it was pretty boring. So, after we got fed up enough to press stop we scrolled through the on-demand for other forms of entertainment. We ended up watching The Others with Nicole Kidman. Pretty darn good movie; creepy and weird, but overall very entertaining. I would definately recommend it.

Jo's Knockoff Sweet Corn Lobster Pizzas

I had a version of this pizza at my friend Becca's bachelorette party a couple weeks ago and it was sooo good! While this isn't a perfect replica, I'm very happy with it and it was wicked easy! You have to treat yourself once and a while right?
















Ingredients:

2 tbsp. olive oil
1 bag of pizza dough
1 jar alfredo sauce of your choice
¼ cup parmesan cheese
½ lb of cooked lobster meat
½ cup sweet corn
2 scallions, chopped
salt/pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 or whatever your pizza dough package recommends
2. Put foil on a baking sheet and coat with olive oil
3. Pull dough into 3-4 same sized balls
4. Carefully stretch each ball out, working around the edges to make individual pizzas, place on oiled baking sheet
5. Put salt and pepper on each individual pizza
6. Spread 2-3 heaping tablespoons of the alfredo sauce into each pizza, top with parmesan cheese, corn, lobster and scallions
7. Add more salt/pepper to top of each pizza
8. Put pizzas into oven for about 20 minutes or however long your dough package suggests
   

I like my pizzas very soft, almost like focaccia, so mine ended up that way. But I think this would work very well on thin crust pizza also. I’ve had very good luck with store made pizza dough too; it often is just frozen in the deli area and only takes 24 hours to thaw out in the fridge. So, I hope you guys try it and like it :-)