Nutella


How I will keep warm for the next week.

Oh, Nutella, lovely food product ~ what can't we do with you? I keep discovering new ways to improve ordinary food by adding Nutella to it. Like apples.


Mmm! Don't give me that look; those apples were tasty. Like coffee, red wine, and buttered toast, Nutella is one of my culinary loves, and Nutella and I go long way back. To like 1981, at least. Of all the wonderful things the Italians have given us, and there are many, this ranks up there.

Anyways, so a few months ago I came upon several skeins of beautiful, coffee-brown Aurucania nature wool.


In November, I started turning it into a cardigan, the only non-fugly thing from last fall's Vogue Knitting. But my hear wasn't in it, the cable chart was irritating, and the fabric was coming out way too hole-y. The whole thing made me uneasy, really, so last week I made the courageous decision to rip it all out, and instead use the wool to make the "Wear Anywhere Sweater" from the newest Interveave Knits.

But 2 inches into it...I lost heart. The stitch pattern eclipsed the beautiful shading of the yarn, and besides that, I know a sweater like that is going to look all kinds of wrong on me, because it would be too tight around my boobs and, with that high neck, would make me look like either a frump, or a skank, or both. Sooooo...I frogged again.

I finally just followed my instincts and went with the baggy cashmere sweater out of Weekend Knitting. You know what I realized? I don't own a single big, cozy sweater. I think in general tight clothes work better for those of us who tend to eat too much chocolate hazelnut spread, but in the cold toronto winter, sometimes you really need a big cozy sweater that is the color of coffee nutella.


And ooohhh, the needles are happy, and the color looks phat in simple stockinette, and even though my yarn is nothing at all like the yarn called for in the pattern, I am happy.

This sweater shall henceforth be called the Nutella Sweater, and will be referred to as "it" and not "she". A lot of people refer to their knitting projects in the feminine, which I don't really get and which honestly kind of creeps me out, because...I dunno, I already have lots of other women in my life, and they're complicated enough.

This upcoming week is reading week at U of T, and by all rights I should be sitting on my ass, watching movies. However, in an act of total foolishness, I agreed to spend the week at my supervisor's cottage four hours north of here. When I first said I would go, I thought my entire group was going, and that we'd all be bonding and stuff. But then every single freakin' other person had something better to do, except for the German guy and the Swedish guy (both post-docs), so now it's just me, the bossman, and two Euro-men. In the middle of nowhere. Without indoor plumbing or electricity. For four days. Oh yeah, this has tragic incident written all over it.

I'm trying to focus on the good points, though. Here they are:
1. none of my students can reach me up there, so I can't even feel guilty about not doing any TA work over reading week.
2. this is supervisor-sanctioned time away from my computer, and that is good.
3. i've lived in Canada for almost 4 years now, and it's high freakin time I experienced some Canadian nature.
4. if I can survive this, I can do anything.
5. I can knit like crazy and read and read and read, and school will be far far away.

Alongside my Mother Teresa reading, I'm also trying, for Lent, to get more into meditative prayer - that is, listening in prayer as opposed to talking. The problem is, my life is never quiet, and even when I take off the iPod, I can't quiet my mind. Maybe these 4 days in the snowy north will help me get there.

Posted: Sat - February 12, 2005 at 12:25 PM        

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