If any of you remember back to this summer (Lord knows I don't), you might recall a post in which I gushed about the fabulous Russian join. Whee, it rocks. Today I discovered that if you forget your chibi at home, you can actually Russian join by hand. I was knitting with Kureyon, so it was very easy to pull apart the strands and weave the yarn through. Unfortunately, I was on the bus so I couldn't follow through with the spit-splice. If I've learned one thing in my decades of riding public transit, it's DO NOT LICK YOUR PALMS ON THE BUS. Because if you do, you'll be the main character in about a dozen "I saw the weirdest person on the bus today" stories all over town. Plus, the bus is a rolling petri dish, and it's better to keep your orifices closed as much as possible. So I dry-spliced for a while, which does not work very well but is better than palm-licking in public. So, to finish the licker theme, I give you a recipe for a new drink we invented over the weekend - the Northwest Cosmopolitan. 5 parts blueberry juice 3 parts citrus vodka 2 parts orange brandy 2 parts lime juice 1 part simple syrup Shake with ice and strain into 'tini glasses. Follow with an espresso chaser. Or don't, but it won't be as Northwest.