Vanilla Icing

Ice Cream Colored Dishcloths

It's been a dreary start of November with plenty of rain, grey skies, and forlorn trees but it's perfect knitting weather.  I finished off a set of dishcloths for use in my kitchen  and I couldn't be more pleased with how they turned out.  The yarn is Lily's Sugar & Cream cotton yarn in vanilla cream, chocolate brown, and strawberry pink which is one of my favorite color combinations.   I've also found with knitted washcloths it's best to start with bold colored yarn because with all of the use they get the colors eventually will fade.   I purchased three skeins and had enough for five washcloths and possibly a sixth had I not been fussy that one was a tiny bit smaller.  Instead, I knitted a headband with the remaining yarn for my daughter.

I knitted a set a couple years ago and the colors are not as cheery as they once were but other than that they are in perfect condition which is a stark contrast to a set of store bought dishcloths I bought around the same time.  The store bought set have torn, frayed, and grew mysterious holes in the them which is very frustrating.  It's my hope to eventually knit at least another dozen dishcloths and be done with the store bought kind.   

The pattern I prefer is the Waffle Knit Dishcloth because of the texture on the completed cloth.  I like the various bumps that are created that help create just enough of a scrubbing surface to help get dishes clean quickly.    It's a simple pattern that's very easy to memorize and the dishcloths go pretty quick once a rhythm is found even if one decides to change colors a few times.

This week I'm joining in with Ginny's Knit Along despite having finished my current knitting project.  I have a few others that are queued up on my Ravelry page and I'm almost certain I've the yarn for at least one or two of them in my stash to begin in the afternoon.  

The Orchardist is a book I spotted at the bookstore a few weeks ago and promptly went home to request it from my library.  It took an agonizingly long time for it arrive through the library sharing system but at long last it came!   The story so far is a little bit odd but it's beautifully written and I can't put it down.  I'm looking forward to reading how the characters' stories unfold.

What are you knitting and reading?

Knitting & Reading

With the weather turning cool again, I've been picking up my knitting needles again and decided to start off my 'knitting season' with trying mittens for the first time in my self-taught-and-often-wonky knitting career.  

I'm working on minimizing some of my small stash of yarn because it's probably nice to be frugal but mostly because most of it was purchased before I had a clear idea of what I like to knit.  Now that I know, I'd like to use up my old stash so I can...ahem!....replace it with a newer, more useful stash.  This yarn is Crystal Palace's mini mochi rainbow yarn.   It was the soft rainbow colors that tempted me to pick up two balls of it at one of my local yarn shops on a whim.   The yarn is one ply and extremely splitty and I've not had success knitting it into anything until I finally decided to look at their website and see what they suggested to do with it.

Mittens seemed like a good idea for displaying the colors, using up the maximum amount of yarn and also the challenge of trying a new type of project.  I've been wanting to try mittens for a long while now but frankly the thumb always frightened me.    As it turns out, this 'thumb business' as I've so often referred to it in my head was a lot easier than I thought it would be and once I slid the stitches from the holding yarn and back to my needles it knitted up in a snap.   I'm a litle disappointed that that the first ball of yarn had such a large yellow and orange swath in the middle of it because nearly four of the rings on the first mitten are all very similar colors.  The yarn on the wrist of the second mitten is behaving in a much more satisfying way.

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series has been around for quite some time and I've read most of them a few times but I've always borrowed someone else's copy.  When I saw the first one on clearance the other day I just knew I had to pick it up because I enjoy this series a great deal.   I began to reread it the other day and again I am struck by how much I enjoy the strength of the main female character.   The author writes her well, tempering her strengths with weaknesses just like any real person and never portrays her obnoxiously or thoughtlessly headstrong for no reason other than writing a 'strong female' like so many other books and movies often do.

I recently recommended it to a friend and she borrowed a copy from the library and it came with a CD of songs from the musical.   A musical!  I'm not so sure how I feel about the idea of Outlander being a musical.  I love the old Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals but I'm don't think I'm ready to see someone else's interpretation of Jamie & Claire's story.  Plus...historical fiction?  romance?  time travel?  That's an awful lot to pack into a musical!

I've joined with Ginny for her Yarn Along and am looking forward to seeing what everyone else is knitting and reading!

Sewing at Last!

Sharing a sewing machine leaves plenty of time for good conversation and knitting.

Off and on for many years I've attempted to sew with limited success.  Oh, there's been a couple of quilts like this hastily thrown together quilt, this little black and white lap quilt,  and my favorite: Farewell Summer Quilt but sewing has always been a stressful time for me.  I would wrestle and struggle and fight with my old chintzy sewing machine until the frustration would build and I would swear never to sew again because despite my best attempts I just couldn't get any better at sewing. (I did have reasonable success with this cute tote bag from one of Soule Mama's books so it hasn't always been a complete failure!)

A small voice would sometimes whisper in the back of my mind that perhaps, just perhaps, it wasn't me and it was the sewing machine.

Again and again, I would shush that small voice.  The machine worked; it had to be me.  I would give up on sewing after loud frequent declarations to never try again.....and then try again a few months later.   It was an endless cycle that seemed destined to never end.

But end it has!!!

This past Christmas, Maia asked for and received a sewing machine all of her own because she was just as frustrated with mine.   I finally got around to trying it a week ago when my friend Cristy and I decided to attempt to sew dresses to wear the Renaissance Festival this year.  And guess what?  It's not me!  All of this time and it WAS the sewing machine!  I can sew!  (At least much better than I previously thought!)  I'm so excited at this newfound knowledge.

And I can't wait to share the completed dress on the blog!

Sun & Scarves

Yarn Along with Ginny...

I must confess I've not done too much knitting this past week.  I've done a little work on last week's project and I'm about halfway through on my Branching Out Scarf.  The rip-back on the scarf disheartened me slightly and slowed me down but I rallied after a few days and 'caught' back up only to be distracted by a painting project and an outdoor project.  The outdoor project consisted of digging up several, large, heavy rotting rail road ties that edged my front walk and then replacing them.  The work left me sore all over--including my hands!  When I tried to knit, my left hand cramped severely and I've not picked up my needles in two days.  

But, I've had an even better 'distraction.'

'The Tuscan Sun Cookbook' by Frances & Edward Mayes was resting innocently enough on a table at the bookstore.  I passed the table twice without looking down but when I finally did and saw this cookbook I knew it had to be mine.  And it was, just mere minutes later!  I snatched it up so quickly you'd have thought it was the last one of a Christmas' toy fad and all but ran for the register.  Never mind that there was a tidy stack of at least ten more on the table, I must confess I behaved a bit like a lunatic.

Frances Mayes is the author of 'Under the Tuscan Sun', 'Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy,' and a few others.   She is one of my favorite authors and I adore her writing.   Her words on Italy, travel, art, food, and simply life are beatifully written and I reread her books over and over.  They are literary comfort food to me.

I haven't tried any of the recipes from the cookbook yet; I am still very much in the stages of reading the words and savoring the pictures.  Frances Mayes' other books often contain a few recipes and I've tried many of them.  The recipes are simple, requiring only a few ingredients and a willingness to let the food speak for itself.   The Tuscan Sun Cookbook appears to be following suit and I am very much looking forward to trying many-if not all!-of the recipes.

Gaskell & Butt Sweaters

Participating in Ginny's Yarn Along...

Lots of contrasts in this week's Reading & Yarn Along!

I am reading Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Wives & Daughters' on my Kindle because as a classic it is free through Amazon.  Earlier this week, I watched the BBC's mini-series version of the book on Netflix and enjoyed it so much I thought I'd read the book as well.  I've been having a bit of an obsession lately with programs of this sort.  I think what I enjoy most about stories of this nature that even the most 'shocking' part of the story isn't even a 'blink the eye' sort of occurrence in so many of today's stories.  The stories are not focused around CSI type dramas nor bizarre medical condition after bizarre medical condition and there's never any onslaught of graphic detail when a death or illness does occur.  They are simple stories and even the most risque of them would be considered 'wholesome' by today's standards.

I am knitting 'The Butt Sweater' which is a rather ungraceful and unladylike name especially when you are reading Wives & Daughters.  I keep hearing Cynthia reprimanding me for use of the term 'butt!'   However, if you look at the photos that accompany the design you can see that it is actually a simple, but feminine skirt.  See my Butt Sweater progress here: hopefully!

The yarn is from my stash; it's Knit Picks Shine Sport which is a cotton blend that I hope will make the 'butt sweater' comfortable for wearing in late Spring.   This color is rather a bold bright blue--I think of it as 'cookie monster blue'--that I bought a long time ago for another project that I didn't have the skill set (yet!) for and have long lost the instructions.  I'm trying to clear out some of my stash and this will allow me to use up all the skeins of this particular yarn.  

Last week I shared my 'Branching Out' Scarf that I had started for a slightly more challenging beginner lace project.  I am nearly halfway finished with it but I would be nearly three quarters of the way finished if I hadn't had to rip back several inches.  I brought the project with me when we visited family on the other side of Pennsylvania and twice I brought it out to knit on it.  Both times were frustrating and I couldn't concentrate on the work and everyone around me.  Since I didn't come all that way to spend time with my yarn, I set the scarf aside and didn't pick it up until I returned home and noticed that I had knit a good many inches backwards.  All the right side work was on the wrong side!  I ripped back to the mistake and re-knit it yesterday.  I learned the lesson of needing a simpler travel project (the Butt Sweater would make a great one--the majority of it is stockinette stitch 'round and 'round!) especially if I intend to knit while sharing conversation with extended family.

Cheese & Scarf

Participating in Ginny's Yarn Along.....

I promised this week there would be no more zombies, but I'm afraid to some that my current book might seem just as strange.  My "Making Artisan Cheese" by Tim Smith took forever to arrive in the mail but it finally came after nearly ten days of me obsessively tracking the package's progress.  

The descriptions and instructions for making all sorts of cheeses--from fresh cheese that takes one day to make to cheeses that need to be aged for at least one year--are clear and conscise and I'm excited to try a good many of the recipes once I gather a few supplies.   The basic items needed like rennet, cheesecloth, thermometer, and cheese molds are easy to obtain.   It's the convincing Rick that I need a cheese cave (second refrigerator!) to ripen cheeses in that's going to be more difficult.   I think my best route will be starting with the fresh cheeses as I have a little bit of experience--emphasis on little bit!-- already with them and scouring the county for a clean, second hand refrigertor.

Last week's 'lacy' knitted socks turned out to be quite a success and I was inspired to try a bit more lacework this week.  This pattern is called 'Branching Out' by Susan Lawrence and was recommended as a good beginner lace project which is exactly the type of lace projects I need.  You can follow my progress here on Ravelry and hopefully in a few days you'll see the completed project.

The yarn is Australian Alpaca Centre 100% Baby Alpaca yarn brought to me direct from Australia from my friend Cathy.  She spent a half of a year living in Australia not too long ago and brought me a couple of these deliciously smooshy soft skeins of yarn in the exact shade of blue that I love so dearly.   Cathy is a jewelry artist and can appreciate one's dedication to a certain color or material.

It's difficult to see the pattern in the scarf before blocking but it is supposed to be a series of leaves 'branching out' which is a very apt name for a beginner at lace knitting even if it isn't exactly the right time of year for knitting scarves.  I'm a little slow at knitting lace but I've done three pattern repeats already and I'm starting to get the rhythm behind it.

Tristyn wants me to make the cheddar right away but it's one of the cheeses that needs to be aged in a cheese cave.   I want to make Romano.  

And Parmesan.  Guess we are both going to need a little patience.

The Walking Dead......Knit?

Lately, I've been enjoying looking and seeing what everyone is doing in Ginny's Yarn Along and decided that I would try participating this week.   I'm knitting the Rainy Day Socks by Yuliya Sullivan in this soft snuggly yarn in a delicious pink called Strawberry Cream.   My progress has been slow but that's by choice; this pair of socks is my first pair of socks that have any sort of lacework in them and I'm trying very hard not to make any more mistakes.

I am reading The Walking Dead.   Rick is a lover of all things zombie and we've been watching the AMC's The Walking Dead together.  The show is surprisingly good and not at all like the zombie movies that most people are accustomed to seeing.  It has zombies and all the gratutious killing that comes with that but the zombies are not the main plotline.  Instead, they play a prod-the-tale-along-role in this story about people, their relationships and their actions in times of high stress.  

For Rick's birthday I picked him up the first half of the graphic novels (there's 90+ so far!) that have been written and he enjoyed them so much that I decided to give them a try.  It was difficult at first because as an avid reader (of words!) I kept forgetting to look at the pictures and sometimes would have to go back and make a concentrated effort to look at the pictures when I  missed something in between all of the dialogue.  But by the time we finished the first half and picked up the second half of graphic novels, I had gotten the knack of reading graphic novels down.

It's a strange juxtaposition--pink lace knitted socks and gruesome zombie graphic novels--but they have the commonality of being firsts.  Odd though it may be for pink socks and the walking dead to be my first post joinging the Yarn Along, that seems to fit the the theme of firsts too.   

Don't worry, I'm nearly finished with the last graphic novel....and should be back to reading something more expected very soon!

 

Saving the Sock

With less than a week to go to Christmas I decided that I needed to make Tristyn a pair of socks.  I still had my West Coast Socks (the 1st one) on my sock needles so I picked up a new pair of needles from the store, cast on and began to knit furiously.  

Sometime during the approach the heel, I noticed the sock looked a little....smaller than usual....even though I had chosen to make the next size up for Tristyn.  I told myself that it was because the last two pairs of socks I had made were adult socks and I was just used to seeing larger socks.  Around the heel I went and as I got closer and closer to the toe it became more clear that something was wrong.  I ignored that too, bound off the toe and got started on the cuff of the second sock.  I only had two and a half days before Christmas to finish it and as the tasks and errands that needed to be done before the holidays started to demand that it was time they be completed I had to admit that the second sock might not get done.  Looking for a way to justify that the socks would be worth staying up many late hours, I asked Maia to try on the sock so I could admire a child's foot in a hand knit sock and further spurn me on to aching fingers and a finished second sock.

It didn't fit.  She barely got the first two inches of her foot into the sock.  I nearly cried.  In relief!  Yes, relief!  There was a reason to give up on the second sock because there was no way I could frog the first one and reknit it.  I also discovered the reason for my too-small first sock to be wrong sized needles.  I didn't realize I had sized down in needles when I picked up the new set.  It wasn't the stress of the upcoming holidays making me knit tighter after all!

Even though my relief was so great it was nearly palpable, I felt sorry that I didn't have a handmade gift for Tristyn.  I tried to think of what I could do with the single sock and remembered some sock toy making book that I saw some time ago at the bookstore.  There wasn't any time to go to the bookstore and I only had one sock anyhow.  I thought and thought for awhile how to make an animal out of a solitary sock and then finally I came upon an idea.

A penguin!  To be honest, seeing this gift card turn up on every flat surface in every room this past week is what gave me the idea.  The owner of this card picks it up and puts it down a dozen times a day and can never seem to find it.  I figured, heck, if this penguin was orange, mine could be green and blue and white.  And striped.  Who needs a black and white penguin anyhow?

I might not have needed black and white to make a penguin but I did need to look at some pictures of real ones to figure out to place the wings and beak because after all the cookie baking I think my brain was half baked and I couldn't remember how either of those things looked on a penguin!  Then, the more I looked at Scruffy the Salvaged Sock Penguin the more I was sure he looked anything but like a penguin. But an orange penguin in a space suit doesn't really look like a penguin either now, does it?

Lily & Yarn

Lily adores yarn.  It's impossible to keep her out of it!

Where I've Been....

I've been absent from this place for a couple of weeks now but I intend to fix that now.  The last couple weeks have been a roller coaster ride for me.  Physically, I've not been doing too well and even ended up in the emergency room last week for reasons I'll not go into here.  But I received treatment and medicine and I'm on my way to recovering -- albeit a bit slower than I would like.  Another few days and I should be all better. Having great friends and family nearby to help has been a tremendous help that Rick and I have deeply appreciated all that they have done.  Thank you so much!

Time keeps marching...and things have still been happening around here despite of everything.  Things like...

....our first strawberry of the season!  Maia brought a three leaf strawberry plant home from school last year in a dixi-cup and we planted it in the front garden.  It has grown and grown and grown and now there is one big 'mother plant' surrounded by seven or eight 'baby' plants.  After the first berrying, the mama plant and her children are sending out runners to increase their ranks.  This makes us very happy.

Maia really enjoyed having several days of picking strawberries off her plants and eating them.  On the third day she began sharing.  After tasting the sweetness of the one she gave me I'm amazed at her generosity; I'd have wanted to keep them all for myself!

We have been receiving our CSA share for three weeks now.  We switched farms this year and went with Kretschmann's Organic Farm.  Our CSA the past two years was really quite lovely but it was important to me to belong to an organic farm and so this year I carefully watched for the sign-up time and didn't miss it this year.  Kretchmann's also has connected us with a local chicken grower who raises organic, free-range chickens.  We will be receiving two a month for the next five months.  Also, they have promised to put us into contact with a beef supplier in the fall who raises organic grass fed cows. We don't eat a lot of meat--perhaps two times a week--but I have an enormous freezer in my basement and I will be putting all of the overflow into it for the winter months.  

Our first box contained many fresh greens but I was most excited to see long branches of rosemary.  I've been wanting fresh rosemary ever since my rosemary didn't make it through the big snow.  I made a garlic and rosemary marinade and then used the shorn rosemary branches as a skewer on the grill. Mmmm!  The rosemary and garlic penetrated the chicken inside and out and was just perfect with arancini and fruit.

I became a cheap-wad.  Sort of.  Tristyn's birthday was coming up and one of the things that he had been wanting for a long time (besides Legos) was an Ugly Doll.  I couldn't remember seeing them in stores and I didn't want to pay the full price plus shipping for something that is really a simple design. At the local fabric shop I found some remnant fabric and a big bag of stuffing for less than six dollars. Considering I only used about a third of the stuffing and 75% of the fabric that's pretty darn good! Then, I pulled up the website and selected an ugly doll that looked relatively easy.  On a piece of folded newspaper I drew a rough pattern freehanded and cut it out.  From there it was just a matter of cutting out two pieces of the fabric, sewing them wrong sides together, turning them right side out, stuffing and finishing up the face.  It's not perfect--and it's not exactly the same as the real thing--but it IS an ugly doll...and ugly it is.

I've been finding a lot of inspiration from Sara at Happy Janssens.  Sara has a few blogs she writes including one called Happy Foody which I'm enjoying a lot.  Probably if she checks her stats she's wondering who the creepy person who has been reading her blog a LOT the last few days is but I promise I'm not creepy!  I just find her words and pictures so inspiring and I've been in need of inspiration lately--so thank you Sara!

This stack of oatcakes is from a recipe on Happy Foody.  It's a good alternative to traditional pancakes and it tastes like yummy oatmeal.  I added cinnamon and vanilla which I think makes it tastes even more like oatmeal.

Oatcakes

      adapted from Happy Foody

4 cups traditional (not quick) oatmeal — ground to a flour-like consistency in food processor
4 cups almond/soy/rice milk
4 T melted organic butter
4 large farm fresh eggs
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

-Soak oats for 12-24 hours in the milk (store in fridge overnight).
-Mix everything else into that.
-Make pancakes and be happy.

I'm still on the search for the perfect cupcake.  This one is getting closer...but not quite there.  The texture was good, the flavor was above average but not what I think would be ideal.  I topped them with vanilla buttercream and a sprinkling of coconut.  I think for now, this chocolate cupcake recipe will have to do because I've exhausted dozens of recipes in the chocolate cupcake quest.

And finally, I'm jumping on the Green Smoothie boat.  I've been wanting to for some time now--more thanks to Happy Foody--but I've had a hard start of it.  I bought extra fruit in anticipation of last week's CSA box and it's piles and piles of fresh greens but that was the day I ended up at the hospital.  By the time I was feeling better to eat anything all the fruit had been gobbled up and the greens were starting to look funny!

Yesterday was CSA day and again I went out and purchased extra fruit (by which I mean in addition to our normal eating fruit) and picked up my CSA box.  I spent last night reading up more on green smoothies and talking at Rick about them.  He decided he would try one as well but maybe part of that was to get me to stop talking about them?  Anyways, we both had our first green smoothies this morning.  I made them with kale, strawberries, bananas and a few small clementines plus water.  We each drank a 16 ounce serving and you know what?  It was pretty good!  I did feel there was a slight bitter aftertaste but Rick didn't notice it.  I think I have an extra sensitivity to bitter things and can taste bitterness when others cannot.   It took me 43 minutes to drink it all but I did feel empowered to have drank it all down AND to have enjoyed it.  I haven't noticed any immediate benefits but I've promised myself that I will give this at least one solid week before I decide to continue or stop.