holi-yay!

Whoops! More time has passed than anticipated.
In the past 19 days, Monkey turned 23, i tested negative for coeliac's, i finished another pair of frilly socks, my flutter sleeve cardigan, my handspun scarf, my green diamond socks and school for the term. This is a great relief and I am celebrating by 'acting weird' (according to Monkey) and running about doing all sorts of things.(spring also arrived at chez spidey)
firstly the coeliac's thing. It is highly likely that i have either coeliac's or Non-Coeliac Gluten Intolerance (try saying that three times fast) but as it is so likely... i stopped eating gluten ages ago. Well before i took the blood test. so (i now know but didnt at the time) i would test negative no matter what because the little doovies wouldn't be active. Anyway, we're just making like I do have it because when i eat it by accident I feel wretched for days and I'm not inclined to munch on pasta for a week just to get a piece of paper that says: "you shouldn't eat pasta because it will make you feel like shite".
knitting!
these are more frilly cuff socks in my own sock yarn, colourway Kelp Forest. I LUB them. so fun! My mods on the pattern were to up the needle size a bit and decrease the stitch number to 64 and they fit really well.
I also finished my flutter sleeve cardi in time to wear on the last day of term. I like it a lot, but it's not much like anything else I own. I've never really understood the whole short-sleeved-cardigan thing, so I think it might take me a little while to get used to wearing it. If I were to make it again I would make horizontal button-holes, as the vertical ones were far too saggy in cotton and i had to reinforce them.

Also, pretty handspun scarf. Single spun from EGMTK merino/silk in Alchemy. Purdy.

Yesterday we went to Floriade. I took my camera but it was damn near impossible to get a pic of flowers without 40,000 other people and... well. we took a little break under a willow tree and took self-photos instead.Check out monkey's owl socks!Hee hee hee hee hee!Self-snap fun (the only one where monkey was not scowling or pretending to eat my face) I also caved in (for the third time) at Belissa and purchased another skein of their hand-dyed cashmere laceweight. It's 25 grams and I got my little forest canopy shawl out of a skein of this a couple of years ago. It gets more expensive every time i buy it - three years ago it was $28, 2 years ago $35 and yesterday $38. but it is such lovely yarn... i guess i forgive them. and it's still a pretty good price for hand-dyed pure cashmere that wears like a dream (it just keeps blooming!)


RANT
On saturday evening, Monkey and I went out to dinner and a movie with Monkey sister and her boy. we had dinner at Cream in civic. Now, I have an allergy to chilli. It won't kill me (as far as I know) but I am very sensitive to it, it makes my lips puff up, my entire mouth/nose/face hurt and burn and gives me tummy aches. I was already limited in choice because of the whole damn gluten free thing but they had a risotto that sounded nice. Except: it had chilli in it.
I have dealt with this forever and have no faith in restaurants, so i started looking at the salads (used to be fairly safe to choose a salad, but watch out! every amateur or trendy chef in the world throws chilli in instead of learning anything about flavours, herbs and spices). Everyone at our table got indignant that i should be forced to eat something green (heh heh) and hailed over a waiter.
"Can we order the risotto without chilli?" "Yes, of course you can" "it's not an issue of how hot it is, we have someone with an allergy." "Yes sir, that's fine" "You understand, she can't have any chilli" "yes sir."

So i order the risotto. And before I had even swallowed my first mouthful my reactions kick in.
we hail over a waitress with too much makeup on.
"excuse me, we ordered this risotto without chilli." "Yes sir" "well it has chilli in it" "I did tell the chef" "well it has chilli in it, could you ask?"
waitress with too much makeup on goes and talks to the chef for a while, while i mutter under my breath, mortified about being that person at our table.
ditzy waitress returns.
"chef left the chilli out of the risotto but he used the Master Stock which has chilli in it. But it's not hot" Smiles and drifts off.

So i ate Monkey's caeser salad and he ate a bit of my risotto. When it came to paying, Monkey's very brave sister went and had a go at them and we got the risotto for free... but it really got to me.

I was so embarrassed. nobody ever takes the chilli thing seriously, they make me feel like some pathetic loser who can't cope with a little heat. If i said I had a peanut allergy would anyone have the nerve to suggest "it's not very peanut-t, i doubt you'll even notice". It's not like I'm just some fussy person - it makes me very uncomfortable and if i'm paying for a nice dinner i kinda expect not to have an avoidable allergic reaction while eating it, especially when they are pre-warned.
Anyway, the long and short of it is: i won't be back and they're bloody lucky I'm not anaphylactic.

Anywho, I have things to knit, things to spin and bunnies to wrangle so i shall leave you all to it.

Peace out,
Ms Spider xo

PS. i dont usually rely on other people to talk for me, but i get so embarrassed about the food stuff that monkey just sort of takes over.