What's up Chickenbutts? Friday's This and That.

It's a fairly common greeting in my family. I try to mess around and make it all formal and royal like, "Hello, bottoms of fowl." It hasn't caught on yet. I have hope. Not a lot, but like I say some hope is better than none.

I am still knitting that damn baby sweater. (I love the sweater, but for some reason the stripey sleeves are kind of sucking the knitting life out of me.) The truth is that I often can't focus on knitting until about 11pm and I don't always have all my wits about me at that time. The last 2 nights have been some funky sleep cycles. My face is puffy. I hate that.

But some good things my friends! Because we can't whirly bird down the drain of despair any faster. It's not wrong to be a little skeptical, but it's easy to get lost in what we aren't doing or what we'd like better for ourselves and those we care about.

So I offer you 1. CAKE!!!!!! (this picture is of me and my crazy cake face. I have no shame that I love it. Vain? maybe, but hey I am not puffy!!)







YAAAYYY CAKE!!! I love this cake dearly. It took a couple runs for it to become as fluffy and delicious and moist as it did. It's a coffee cake that tastes a little like actual coffee/espresso. Both inside and in the glaze. Get the recipe here. Do not substitute the cake flour.



Alright I'll ease up on the exclamation points for you with this cake. This is a cheesecake bar with mixed berry topping -- end of season out this way. This went pretty fast at the office and I am making another one for our section's Thanksgiving potluck. I prefer the crust with Nilla wafers and pecans vs. graham crackers.



I finished The Goldfinch and it was crazy good to me. It was definitely crazy. I'm really surprised that I liked it all the way through. It would be a book I would normally take issue with the editor and say, why did you let them ramble on like this? But it worked for me. The story of a child of tragedy that continues to endure a lot of self inflicted pain and conflict grows up with questionable characters also making questionable decisions. There is drug and alcohol abuse. There is art, philosophy and life in parallels to question.

I had friends that seemed to have read it through half covered eyes, wincing at all the crossroads. A few people I discussed it with couldn't back any of the characters and therefore didn't like it.

For me, I liken it to finding myself enjoying some old classic rock? No maybe jam rock? Where it starts off and the first 2 minutes I'm like, this is nice. I think I like this, and then 8 minutes later  I'm pulling my hair out going, "When is this hippie crap going to end?!?"

Essentially some of the drug induced experiences were very lengthy. There's a bit of losing time in certain settings. However for me, I enjoyed the descriptions. I could see and feel and I really had a sense of the pain and the desire to escape. I understood very well that feeling of knowing what you should do, and then not doing it anyways and then beating yourself up about. Rinse and repeat. Empathy, people. I had it.

Well that is all for now. The weather here is getting that fall crispy feeling. Or as I like to say, "smells like knitting weather." To which my entire family replies, "It's always knitting weather."

Love knows.

Wishing you all a good weekend.