Ahhh ... weekend chez SockKnitters

We have Barachois on the CD player and a whole sackful of produce from the farmers' market to unload (fingerling potatoes, apples, cider, funny little gourds and an eggplant!), we opened all the windows, and we're going to clean.

Thursday was Contract Renewal Day, as my parents used to call it. The Fool and I decided the last three years have been pretty good, so we agreed to extend the contract - grin. Sealed the bargain with our annual fancy dinner at Topolobampo, Rick Bayless' Chicago restaurant. We sat next to a table of four doctors.

Dinner went kind of like this. I ordered the tasting menu, whereas the Fool decided to eat a lot of seafood instead.

ME: Two delicious big shrimp with garlic, chiles, sprouts and little crispy bits of potato
FOOL: assortment of three ceviches
DOCTORS: Discussion of Crohn's disease, intestines, intestinal surgery.

ME: Small bowl of garlicky, creamy chile-spiced soup with chives, cubes of roasted potato and crabmeat.
FOOL: Licking bowls of ceviche and crunching on homemade tortilla chips.
DOCTORS: Discussion of catheters.

ME and FOOL: Langosta al Pasilla Oaxaqueño - pan-roasted Maine lobster with a mezcal-laced sauce of roasted organic Happy Valley tomatoes and smoky-spicy chiles; beet chilaquiles, wild arugula salad and heirloom cherry tomatoes. (Thank God for website; I was forgetting adjectives. I got a half lobster, he got a whole lobster - I'm not a glutton.)
DOCTORS: More discussion of heart catheters, EKGs.

ME: Slices of pork loin in mole, fresh tortillas.
FOOL: Polished off second half lobster, broke legs open to see if there was anything tasty inside, assisted with mole.
DOCTORS: Residencies, something horrible and weird that happened to a guy they knew who wore too-tight boxers one day.

ME: sampler of moist chocolate cake layered with fresh blackberry mermelada, old-fashioned crispy rosette with Mick’s first Gala apples and raspberry swirl ice cream, blueberry-lime ice infused with tequila.
FOOL: Something amazing with crepes, plantains, berries, melon and a really incredible cinnamon sauce.
DOCTORS: Mortgages.

It was a delicious dinner, full of flavors we weren't familiar with at all.

Last night, I cast on for the complicated Japanese twisted stitch sweater. I used the twisted German cast-on. The Fool luuurves this cast-on. He is like a Jehovah's Witness of the Twisted German Cast-On.
For the last year or so, we have been having conversations like this.

ME: I think I'm going to start a new pair of socks.
FOOL: Would you like me to show you the twisted German cast-on?
ME: Nah, I'm kinda tired, I'll just use the long-tail cast on.
FOOL: The twisted German cast-on is easy to learn, and it forms a very elastic edge, which makes it nice for socks!
ME: I'm really kinda tired.

Or this:
FOOL: I see you're holding yarn and needles. Does this mean you want to learn the twisted German cast-on?
ME: No.

Or this:
ME: Hey, have you seen my green sweater?
FOOL: Isn't it on the couch?
ME: Yeah, thanks.
FOOL: Speaking of sweaters, a great way to start a sweater is with the twisted German cast-on. You want me to show you?

Or this:
ME: Don't forget to pick up some milk on the way home.
FOOL: Only if you learn the twisted German cast-on.

OK. Most of those are exaggerating. But the Fool really digs this cast-on. Finally, I asked him to show it to me a couple weekends ago, and it was like the gates to heaven opened in his eyes and there were harps and heavenly hosts singing praises to the twisted German cast-on.

And now I really dig it too. I've been casting everything on with it - but I'm not ready to take it door-to-door.