Favorite Cookbooks

Because an important part of knitting is eating, I thought I'd share my top five favorite cookbooks.    Or should I say, my top five most used cookbooks.  I have others that have much more sentimental value or that have better food porn photos, but these five are the ones I use over and over and over again.

Make it Fast, Cook it Slow and Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is the answer to a obsessive knitter's busy homeschooler's prayers.  Make it Fast is the only slow cooker cookbook I've ever liked and I've looked at thousands.  Most slow cooker cookbooks only give you recipes for stews & barbecue but this book has everything!  Not to mention, the recipes are easy, contain simple ingredients & taste great.  Artisan Bread shows you how to make a huge amount of dough that gets stored in the fridge to be taken out & baked as needed.  With these two cookbooks, I can toss dinner into the crockpot in the morning, run the kids all over the state to their various homeschooled classes/outings (or sit on my butt watching Netflix & knitting all day,) then toss some dough into the oven in the evening.  By the time the dogs are fed & the table is set, we have a hot meal and fresh bread.  In fact, I like & use Make it Fast so much, I bought several additional crockpots of various sizes so that I can cook multiple things at once.

Dining on a Dime is pretty much what the title says it is.  The recipes are very inexpensive to make and every one I've tried so far has tasted great.  Well, except that time I forgot to add the water in the spanish rice.  Liquid-free baked rice is not great, let me tell you!  But hey, the more money I save on meals, the more money I have to spend on yarn.

1,000 Vegetarian Recipes is just flat out excellent.  I'd bought this book a few years ago when my daughter & I went vegetarian and fell in love with it.  Neither of us are following a vegetarian lifestyle anymore, but I still use this cookbook frequently.  I don't even like vegetables all that much (I'm much more of a meat & potatoes & cake kind of girl) but every recipe I've tried so far has been excellent.

Last but not least on my list is Necessities & Temptations.  I've been using this cookbook for almost 20 years.  You'd think I'd have the recipes memorized by now, but I don't.  Not because they are difficult, but because I seem to be incapable of memorizing anything.  Necessities & Temptations has, for the most part, simple recipes with simple ingredients that end up tasting like I've slaved away in the kitchen for days.  With most cookbooks, I find that I tend to only use one category of it's recipes.  I only use the meat recipes, or the side dishes, or only like the deserts....  But with Necessities & Temptations, I find myself using, and enjoying, recipes from every section.

So, if you are looking for a bit of kitchen inspiration, click on one of those links or simply go to your local library and check out those cookbooks.  I'm sure you'll be glad you did.

For knitting news, I've only knit nine more stripes on the fair isle scarf since my last post.

That brings the total number of stripes so far up to 29.  I probably have another 12 or so to go before it's long enough.  Progress has been extremely slow on this scarf because I've been on a scary movie kick.  Intense, scary movies are not the best knitting option when every row is different.  I either get absorbed into the movie & forget to start a new pattern row or something jumps out at me, I scream like a little girl & drop a bunch of stitches.  It's not helping that I rearranged my desk/knitting/crafting area & now my back is to the room/door.  The family keeps sneaking up on me.  Sneaking up on me when I'm absorbed in a scary movie makes me scream & drop that many more stitches.  I think I have knit every single pattern of this scarf twice, sometimes three times, now.  First, I knit it wrong, then I frog it, then reknit it.  It's a good thing I enjoy the knitting process.

Camera suggestions

I'm in need of your camera suggestions, thoughts & comments.  I am not happy with my tiny little camera at all. Granted, 99% of the problem is probably the human behind the lens, but I'm choosing to ignore that.  I want a new camera.  A real camera.  A camera with multiple lenses.  A camera with manual settings & that can be taken apart during a camera class at the local community college.  But it also needs to take awesome photos automatically because, well, let's face it, I will still be the human behind the lens.  And it's not just me that wants it.  My daughter has been begging for a Nikon 3200 for a few years now.  So, I'm thinking, I could buy one, we could share & one of us could take that photography class & teach the other one.  If it turns out we both like it & actually use it, then maybe we'll buy another one next year.  I'm sure there'll be an updated model.

But the point is, I'm thinking about buying the Nikon 3200.  It's really not in the budget, but I want it.  No, that's not exactly right.  I WANT it!  The want keeps me up at night sometimes. I literally can't sleep some nights because I can't calm the thoughts about how much better my life would be if I had a real camera.  The questions is, will I be able to use it?  Will learning to use it be such a pain in the rear I continue using my current, tiny, little hated camera?

If you have any input for or against the Nikon 3200, please, please, please, for the love of all things photogenic & my poor little bank account, please speak up.  I'm afraid I won't be able to resist the shopping urge much longer and I'm also afraid that breaking down & buying it might rank up there in my top 10 stupid moves.  So please, tell me what you think.  Do you have one?  Does your best friend have one?  Does your ex-boyfriend's sister's best friend's brother have one?  Do you/they like it?  Hate it?  Did it take years to learn to use the settings or is it as user friendly as the ads say?  Please, tell me what you think.

And no, there are no knitting update photos.  My tiny, little hated camera has decided to turn everything a lovely shade of orange.  I have no idea why.  Flash, or no flash.  Macro or normal setting, it doesn't matter.  The picture comes out orange.  It might just be that the battery needs charging but normally it just turns off & refuses to turn back on when that's the case.  Anyway, I didn't bother taking orange photos of my knitting.  Besides, I've only added a few more stripes to the fair isle cowl.  Been to busy dreaming about cameras to knit.

Brussels Sprouts

I can't believe I'm blogging about brussels sprouts.  I hate, Hate, HATE them!  But I've found a way to cook them that I love, Love, LOVE!  I even ate a second helping & wished for a third!

Let me tell you the story...

I lead a homeschool creative writing group, two actually.  One for little kids & one for teens.  Anyway...  the topic of the day was disliked foods.  One of the little kids wrote about brussels Sprouts & I commented how much I hate, Hate, HATE them & a discussion ensued about the merits & disadvantages of having them served to you.  Suddenly, the quiet child, the one who never speaks except to quietly read her piece, piped up and loudly & emphatically stated that she loved the way her mom cooks them.  She uses bacon.

Two things immediately stood out to me.  First, Quiet Child had spoken up!  She must have serious feelings about her mom's brussels sprouts.  And secondly, she uses bacon??  Hmmm.....

That afternoon, I emailed Quiet Child's mom & explained how I hated brussels sprouts but that I'd heard her recipe was to die for & would she share.  She did.

Sorry.  There's no photo.  I ate them all before I even thought about taking a picture.

The recipe is so simple you don't even need a recipe.  Take a bag of fresh brussels sprouts & shred them in the food processor.  (After having cut off the stem ends, I learned from Mark Bittman.  Luckily I thought to look up how to cook brussels sprouts prior to putting them in the food processor because I thought the stems might be a problem.)  I started off shredding them using the shredder attachment but it was making such fine shreds I thought it might liquify when cooked so I changed to the slicing blade.  (In the end, I really liked having the combination of textures (the little shreds didn't liquify) & will probably do that again next time.)  While you are at it, shred or mince a bit of garlic.

While you are shredding your sprouts, start a couple of slices of bacon cooking.  I used 4 slices.  Once the bacon is crispy (mine was almost burnt, but I kind of like it that way) take the bacon out of the pan, keeping the grease, & dump in the shredded brussels sprouts.  Stir.  Cook for a few minutes.  Crumble the bacon into the pan & stir.  Serve.  Eat.  Wish for more.

It's really that simple!  I did add a little more bacon grease to the pan a few minutes into the cooking process because it was looking pretty dry & brussels sprouty.  I wasn't sure how long to cook them but I just let them brown just a tiny bit & they were perfect.  I really did eat seconds and I really did wish for more.  I can not wait to make this dish again.  I have actually dreamed about it!  So, thank you Quiet Child's Mom.  You are my hero!

Fair Isle progress, sort of

I've made progress on the fair isle scarf, sort of.  And I do mean sort of.  Miniscule progress is more like it.

As  you can see, I've only added a few pattern stripes to it over the last few days.

I realized after hitting "publish" on the previous fair isle post that I didn't provide much detail.  The scarf contains 92 stitches.  Size wise, I think it's fine, but I do wish I'd made it slightly bigger because it's barely big enough for my smallest circular needle & the fabric doesn't move around the needle easily.  I'm using a number 4 needle and the stitch patterns are all from Mastering Color Knitting.

I strayed back to the rainbow chevron scarf for a while.  It's been deemed travel knitting, which is why it's crammed into that little bag.

Instead of knitting, I've been painting.  Well, okay, I've been playing with Gesso.

It's a long, rambling story, but while bored during the recent snow, I clicked on a link that popped up on my Facebook page that took me to a whole new world.  "The Documented Life Project" world.  DLP is a Facebook group for art journaling & planner decorating.  And, OMG!  The talent that group has!  I am unbelievably intimidated by them but am also so excited to become a part of that talent pool.  The people there are so welcoming & don't seem to care that my artistic skills are non existent.  And we all know how much I love my planner.

Yes, I'm an old fashioned girl & still use a paper planner.  No matter how much easier it would be, I just can't force myself to use a digital planner.  And yes, I realize there are probably a minimum of three trees worth of paper in that planner, but it works for me.  I included the coffee cup in the photo so you could get an idea of how thick it really is.  And that's a two cup coffee cup!  My entire life is in that thing & I would be devastated if I ever lost it.  And since decorating my planner is an excellent to-do list procrastination technique....

Actually, I'm playing in an art journal much more than I'm decorating my planner.  That baby doesn't need to get any thicker & since I discovered Gesso, everything is getting thicker!

Do you paint?  Do you know about Gesso?  Oh My Gosh!  Gesso is the coolest!  It does everything!  It stops just short of doing the dishes for me!  First, it's a primer & gets the paper ready to accept the paint.  Secondly, if you make a mistake (which I do every time I pick up a brush) you can simply Gesso over the error & have yourself a merry little do-over.  You can also add color to it, add texture to your artwork, rubber stamp with it....  And at least in my case, when I'm done playing with it, I look like I've had a french manicure.  If you don't know the joys of Gesso, go YouTube a few videos.  It is The coolest stuff.

Another cool thing I've been playing with is spray water color paint.  The brand I've been using is Dylusions and I absolutely love it!  Which is a good thing; it's kind of expensive.  At least I considered it expensive when I bought it without having any idea what it was.  I just liked the colors & knew I'd have fun playing with it.

The luminosity of the paint isn't showing up in that photo, but in real life, it sort of glows.  I have no idea what I'll do with those pages but I'll use them on the art journal pages some how.  I now have lots & lots of pages like that to tear & paste over.  I am having so much fun playing with paint & Gesso I may never knit again.  Well, that's a fib but....

TMI Tuesday, Adventures in Breast Feeding

I'm introducing TMI Tuesdays where I'll provide you with way too much information about myself that you probably wish you didn't know.  My kids tell me I'm really good at providing TMI.  They tell me this constantly, so it must be true.  I'm not sure that I'll have TMI Tuesday every Tuesday, but at least once a month.

The idea came about after reading several (thousand, it feels like) books on what/how to blog and/or creatively write about.  One of the suggested topics was "Your Greatest Humiliations."  I think the author of that book thought I might have had two, maybe three, great humiliations over the course of my life.  Obviously, that author does not know me.  I seem to humiliate myself on a daily basis.  I'm a total klutz.  I can't remember names, even my best friend's name most of the time.  That's always awkward!  I was born with my foot in my mouth so I'm constantly saying things I shouldn't.  I lock myself out of the house.  I forget my wallet....  So, okay, you get the picture.  I don't need to babble on about the massive ways I can easily humiliate myself.  Luckily, I'm also capable of laughing at myself.

So, in honor of my son's 19th birthday tomorrow, I thought I'd share one humiliating experience revolving around his birth.  And believe me, there were a LOT of humiliating experiences centered around his introduction into this world.  I could write a book!  But today, let's talk about learning to breast feed.  Always a fun (and potentially embarrassing) topic!

So, there I was, hanging out in the hospital after delivering my first child by c-section.  I was still hooked to IV's & catheters and all kinds of fun stuff.  I was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to breast feed my new bouncing baby boy (who was so big [10.5 lbs] he won the prize for largest newborn in the hospital.)  A male nurse was in the room checking on my beeps & drips and apparently noticed I was struggling.  With absolutely no other warning, he simply said, "Here," grabbed my breast with one hand & the baby's head with the other & smashed the two together.  Luckily, it worked!  But because of the embarrassment of this strange guy grabbing my boob, it took me a few minutes to realize that the squawking baby wasn't squawking anymore & was instead happily chomping & biting sucking away at my breast.

Happy Birthday, Zack.  It's been a fun & exciting 19 years & I look forward to the next 19.

Snow day knitting

I love snow day knitting, don't you?  They were calling for up to 30 inches of snow!  Around these parts, 3 inches is enough to cause panic at the grocery store.  I knew I needed a snow day knitting project but I wasn't feeling the love from the rainbow chevron scarf and my car was having a major hiccup so I couldn't go to the LYS to pre-storm yarn shop.  I decided to cave into the urge to start a Wendy Knits fair isle scarf of my own.

I grabbed needles, made a chart, drug (Or should that be dragged? Neither seems right.) the scrap fingering weight yarn bin over to my "nest" and started knitting.

One snow storm later, I have almost a third of a scarf.  The majority of my sock yarn is dark, subdued colors & I obviously didn't have enough lighter colors to copy Wendy's exactly.  Besides, who wants to be a total copycat anyway, right?  What I did have was a lot of Sweet Potato orange Palette yarn.  The plan is, the foreground will be knit with the orange, the background will be knit with scrap sock yarn & no two backgrounds will be the same, nor will the fair isle patterns repeat.  In other words, it's going to be a wild mess.

As for our snow storm, we did not get 30 inches, but we got some.  When I went to bed Wednesday night, it looked like this,

It was coming down at a rate of slightly over an inch an hour & we already had almost 7 inches.  I woke up Thursday morning to find,

Six inches plus a thick, thick layer of ice on top.  At some point, it had turned to freezing rain which had smashed the snow down. (And no, that's not a hole in our fence, just a hole in the boards.  As is typical, less than a week after installing the fence, a tree fell on it & smashed the boards in that one area.  So now, the wire part is still there, just not the boards.)

The dogs were NOT pleased with the conditions.  They love to play in snow but they definitely did not like breaking through the ice with each step they took.  They ventured out, reluctantly, did their business & came straight back in.

As snow storms go, it was a crazy one!  It started out on Wednesday afternoon snowing hard, changed to freezing rain in the wee early morning hours, then it freezing drizzled most of the day on Thursday.  In the late afternoon, it began to thunder, then it hailed.  Hailed!!  Dime sized hail in the middle of a snow storm!  Then it returned to snow, a few hours later it thundered some more and continued to snow, then at the tail end of the storm, it turned back into freezing rain for an hour or so.  And as is typical in Virginia, on Friday, I'm riding down the interstate (thank you, VDOT, for doing such an excellent plowing job!) with the window almost half way open because the sun was making the inside of the car uncomfortably warm.

Valentine's Cowl

I finished knitting the pink & purple striped Valentine's Day cowl a few days ago.

Good thing I was planning to keep it because it's got a few hiccups.  I passed several hours waiting on my son by knitting & reading in the Barnes & Nobel cafe one evening.  The yarn used for this project (see details here) looks like unspun & apparently, I'm not coordinated enough to knit unspun without looking.  I kept splitting stitches & ended up doing a lot of tinking.  This yarn does not appreciate being tinked.  Once knit, it wants to stay knit.

The cowl is reversible though so there's what the reverse side looks like. One side is textured, the other side not so much.  I'm not sure how much use it will get.  Pink really isn't my color but I caught the Valentine's Day knitting bug when I saw the yarn.

The rainbow chevron scarf is coming along slowly.  I hope I like it better once it's blocked.

So, yeah, that's a silly picture but being unblocked, the edges are curling up horribly & it doesn't look much better when spread out.  I'm about at the half way point on it.  I really hope that blocking it will help me like the colorway better.  It's just a bit too bright, glaring, primary color for my tastes.  Which is why that the yarn has been in my stash so long.  I'm now remembering starting a pair of socks with it & quickly deciding, no.

As for non-knitting news, I wanted to give a shout out to Bee Well Orrganics.  The owner's kids are in a homeschool creative writing group I lead & they gave me an awesome goodie bag for Christmas.  This Honey Lemon Ginger jam is the only thing left & it's still here only because I hid it.  In plain sight.   Instead of putting it on the pantry shelf with all the other jellies & condiments, I put it on the shelf in the dog food closet.  That's the shelf we use for weird things that we only use a few times a year.

My daughter became slightly feral over the cinnamon apple jam.  The minute she tasted it, she claimed it as her own & would growl slightly if anyone else even looked like they might want to taste it.  So, if you are looking for organic giftables, or are simply in the mood for some awesome jam, check out Bee Well Orrganics.

Knitters Drink

Have you ever noticed how much knitter’s tend to like wine?  I’m no exception.  But I’m not exactly adventurous or knowledgeable when it comes to wine.  I decided to change that.  At least the adventurous part.  Hopefully, the increase in knowledge part will tag along for the ride.   How will I become more adventurous you ask?  One of this year's goals is to try a new wine each month.  

January’s wine was Bully Hill Vineyards Barnyard Red.  And it was good!  Normally I’m not a big fan of reds (something I’d very much like to change) nor am I a big fan of overly dry wine.  Yes, I'm embarrassed to admit that I prefer sweet, Kool Aid type wines.  But although the label said this wine was on the dry side of the spectrum, I thought it was delicious.  It wasn’t Kool Aid, but it was good.  I hope I can get my hands on more.  This particular bottle has been sitting on the rack for over a year, maybe even two.  It was originally purchased from Grapes of Taste, a tiny little local wine store, tucked behind our local post office.  Which may explain why our mail service is so screwy.

If you have any suggestions for which wine I should try next, please share in the comments.

As for the knitting, there’s been basically no progress on the rainbow scarf originally shown in this blog post.   The yarn I needed for a custom order arrived & I traded knitting rainbows for maroon & gold stripes.  Now that the custom order is finished & shipped off, I've moved on to another cowl.  

It's knit in a staggered rib pattern that isn't showing up in the photo.  When finished, the cowl will be reversible & the other side will have a much more textured appearance.  I'm using Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable yarn in the Winery colorway.  (I really am into wine these days!)  Normally, when I think of Red Heart, I think of that horrible, scratchy, stiff as cardboard, worsted weight acrylic that probably 90% of us learned to knit on.  Nasty stuff!  And it amazes me that those of us who did learn to knit with it, ever continued knitting after the first project.  But, Red Heart has made a few changes over the last several years.  They have a sock yarn that's fairly decent & I really do like this Boutique yarn.  It's soft & one skien has 280 yards.  There's enough yardage to do a cowl & a hat or a cowl & fingerless gloves.  And it comes in some very pretty colors.

Do you have a Red Heart story?  Please share in the comments & don't forget, I'd also love to hear your wine recommendations.

Motivation

There’s nothing like a summer job to motivate me.  Remember me talking about my summer job    last summer?  Well, I decided to do it again this year.  I received my “processing” date & immediately entered panic mode.  First, let me explain.  “Processing” is another word for  taking a drug test plus the tortuous task of being fitted for my uniform.  Good Lord!  Do you think it’s possible to loose about 50 pounds over the next 8 days?  Facebook does keep showing me ads about how Oprah & Rachel Ray have both lost a ton of weight over a short period of time.  Maybe I need to go take a closer look at those adds.  Do weight loss drugs show up on drug tests?

Although “processing” is next week, I don’t actually start work until March.  So that gives me one full month to do a boat load of stuff.  If this season is anything like last season, I need to catch up on my sleep as well as store up some for the future.  I need to make sure the laundry is all caught up & the house spotless because neither will be touched again until next November.  Any and all custom orders I have on the books definitely need to be completed & shipped.  A summer’s worth of lunches with the girls need to take place.  It would be awfully nice to pack in a few date nights with the spouse too.  Maybe even some spend some quality time with the kids.  A new lunch box set needs to be purchased.  And that’s not as easy as it sounds.  All containers must be clear so that security can see what I’m eating & drinking for lunch that day.  (One of the joys of working in the money vault area.)  I could stand to get some exercise in so that being on my feet for 8+ hour shifts doesn't kill me.  A winter of sitting on my butt watching Netflix while knitting has not exactly helped my leg muscles prepare for that.  And then, there’s those pesky 50 pounds I wouldn’t mind loosing.  Good Lord.  My 8 page to-do list just jumped to about 12 pages.  

It's hard to believe I'm in Prepare for Summer mode when this is going on outside. 

Yep, more snow last night.  This time, they said we'd get up to one inch.  We got closer to four.  It's also a balmy 13 degrees at the moment.  Seems like a good day to stay home and knit.

No ice here

That folks, is how you chemically treat a road to prevent ice.  There will be no ice in Caroline County, VDOT is making sure of it!

I can’t believe VDOT put down that much chemical for last week’s Storm That Wasn’t then took a hit from residents because of icy patches on the back roads.  Just goes to show that you can’t please everyone.  And hey, if you want to see icy patches, come to my neighborhood.  We can’t use chemicals because all of the drainage ditches drain back into our lake.  Here all that can be done is throw a little sand on top of the ice, plow if it’s deep enough & wait for the sun to shine.  

In knitting news, well, there really isn't any.  I've been fiddling with a custom order scarf & haven't made enough progress to make it photo worthy.  Hopefully tomorrow....

I do have some exciting non-knitting news though.  I am SO proud of my son.  He bowls, religiously.  This season, he left the youth league behind & moved into the adult world of bowling.  He could have waited until he turned 21 (a 20 years & 364 days old person is still considered "youth" in the bowling world) but he chose to make the switch when he turned 18 (the youngest you can be in adult bowling.)  Anyway... he bowled in a tournament yesterday and won!  He didn't just win one of the five games, he won the whole tournament!  Over the five games they bowled, he averaged 250.  The most exciting part is the prize money.  After taking out the entrance fees, his winnings were about what he makes in a week at his full time job.  He's pretty excited about that!  And I'm pretty excited about the idea of trying to talk him into buying me a new camera instead of buying more bowling balls.  I swear, that boy buys bowling balls like I buy yarn.

Knitter's Hell

Dammit!  I must be in knitter's Hell.

Don't these socks know how badly I want to be done with them & how badly I do not want to have to un-Kitchner them, frog the toe, get the stitches lined up on the needles properly, reknit the toe & re-kitchner them?

Shades of Gray

My entire world has turned gray.  It snowed on Tuesday.  We were supposed to get eight to ten inches which is huge for this part of the world.   Instead of getting almost a foot of snow, we got less than two inches, which was pretty disappointing as blizzards go but honestly, I can't say I'm upset about it.  What I am upset about is how cold it turned just as the snow was ending.  It's rare for Virginia snow to last more than a day before the sun melts it away.  Not this time!  It's so cold even the sun can't melt it.  So here it is, three days later and our schools are still closed because there's one inch of snow on the roads.

See how gray it all looks?

Okay, well that picture has a lot of red Virginia clay sand in it, but you get the idea.  Everything is gray.  The snow is dirty gray now.  The sky is gray, so gray I'm wondering if it might actually snow again.  The interstates are so gray from the chemicals VDOT put down that you can barely see the lane markers.  And every car that's ventured out of it's driveway over the last three days is gray.

Poor old Blaze is looking rough!  And so are my pants.  I can not get in or out of the car without rubbing against that nasty gray stuff.  I look like I've been on a major powdered sugar donut binge.   But at least Blaze made it home in time for the big snow fall.  Mike had taken her out of town for work (again) & made it home just minutes before it started snowing.

On one of his recent trips, Mike was a bad car daddy!  Blaze celebrated a big mileage milestone & Mike failed to photograph it happening.

Blaze, our youngest Chevrolet, (we have several) hit 300,000 miles!

I just hope Blaze gets to see 400,000.  I had my doubts yesterday.  I took the boy child out to teach him how to drive on ice.  We went to a nearby unplowed church parking lot that had plenty of open space to practice skidding & sliding without having to worry about ditches or other cars.  I gave him the lecture about what to expect & how to handle it.  We traded seats & I told him to carefully, very carefully try to take off a little too fast & feel the car start to slip.  He instantly floored it & began doing donuts all over the parking lot.  Controlled donuts, I have to admit.  When he'd start to get too close to a light pole or curbing, he'd steer out of the spin, move to a better spot & start us spinning around in circles all over again.  I have no idea how he learned to do that but I assume it has something to do with video games.  I'm still not sure how he'll handle driving on ice on a straight road with other cars around, but he can damn sure handle doing donuts!

Meanwhile, in knitting news.... after all, this is a blog about knitting....  I finished a cowl & fingerless mittens to match the hat mentioned in my last post.  I had planned to put them in my Etsy shop but I was cold today & the cowl matched my outfit.  I put it on & decided to never take it back off.  And yes, I'm wearing the mitts too.  Have I mentioned how cold it is outside?  (And inside for that matter, thus the need for the mitts.)  Even the hat looks cute on me & hats Never look cute on my big old head.

That's a close up of the mitts.  They are reversible!  One is turned inside out in the photo.  They are knit in an unevenly numbered rib pattern & on one side, you don't notice the rib hardly at all and on the other, the rib stands out & becomes the pattern.

And looky!  Look how well the KnitPicks Caspian dpns match the yarn!  How cool is that?  The needles arrived on the same day I finished knitting the mitts.  But do you know the coolest thing? Those are #2 dpns.  I meant to order #3.  And you know what that means....  I get to place another order!  Maybe my world isn't so gray after all.

That's the beginning of a chevron scarf I started while I waited for my KnitPicks order to arrive.  It's a simple chevron pattern with alternating double rows of white & an unlabeled rainbow sock yarn from my stash pile.  This scarf will have to wait though.  Now that my yarn order has arrived, I have a custom order scarf to attend to.  Yeah, life is rough when you get paid to do what you absolutely love!

Stripes

I'm on a stripes kick.  It wasn't a conscious decision but the last seven or eight things I've knit have been striped.  I finished the blue & gray striped socks last week but never blogged about them because I wanted to sew up the toes before showing them off.  Apparently the urge to post them is stronger than the urge to Kitchner them because here they are, still hanging out with open toes:

One of these days, I'll find myself in a quiet, well lit corner with my handy-dandy Kitchner cheat-sheet & I'll sew them up.  I hope that day comes soon.  I've recently worn holes in three pairs of my socks.  It's been a sad few weeks!  But hey - those socks have been worn routinely for over 10 years.  Wow!  Ten years.  That's amazing!  And I'm sitting here thinking that that can't possibly be right, except that I distinctly remember wearing two of them in our old house & it's actually been almost 12 years since we lived there.  Wow.  Just wow!

And then there's this striped hat.  It may last 10 or more years as well.  It's knit from Red Heart!  Shhhh, don't tell.  (Yes, I am a yarn snob!)  The yarn is actually Red Heart's Boutique Unforgettable.  I have no idea how it came to live in my house but I'm glad that it did.  Although it's a Red Heart acrylic yarn, it's just as soft as it can be and I absolutely love the color.  The photo doesn't do it justice, mainly because it was taken at night in horrible lighting on my very messy desk.  But in real life, it's emerald green with stripes of purple that vary from almost black to grape.  Besides the softness & the color, I also like the way the hat's appearance changes based on the size of the head (think man vs. woman.)  On a smaller head, the hat is a bit slouchy and has just a hint of a ruffled shape around the face.  On a larger head, the ruffle smoothes out and looks like any other ribbed hat.   Anyway, I liked the hat so much, I'm knitting a matching cowl.  No photos of the cowl as I've only got a few inches of knitting done so far.

So, on a totally different note, how's the weather been treating you?  Here in Virginia, it's been typical.  Not typical as in normal temperatures, but typical as in you never have a clue what to wear and you need to have both your harshest winter clothes as well as your summer clothes available.   Our "average" winter temperatures are are the mid 40's during the day & the upper 20's at night.  Recently, when the big cold wave hit us, the daytime temperature dropped 41 degrees in a matter of hours to give us a balmy high of 6 degrees one day.  We tied a record for cold temps that day.  Three days later, we broke another record.  This one for high temperatures when we hit 68 degrees.  It's no wonder practically everyone in the state is sick & we have a reputation for dressing funny.  The extreme temperature swing brought massive, massive rains and house shaking thunder storms.  It also produced heavy fog to go along with the flooded roads.  Here's a picture of our lake.

You can see the fog rolling across it.  The picture was taken around 3:30 in the afternoon & I don't think I've ever seen fog like that in the middle of the day before.  Being a Stephen King fan, it freaked me out just a teeny tiny bit.

So, what's your weather doing?  Feel free to rant or brag about it in the comments.  Meanwhile, I'm off to knit a few more inches of cowl before bedtime.

2014

Welcome, 2014!  I hope everyone had a safe & happy New Year's.  Mine was obviously not spent blogging!  Actually, New Year's snuck up on me this year.  I kept thinking I had an additional day in there.  And I'm quite certain that if I had of had that extra day, I could have finished accomplishing all those 2013 goals.  Oh well.  That's the fantastic thing about New Years.  It's like having a giant Do-Over button.

I'm thinking that I may have accomplished more in 2013 than I realize though.  Each year, I make my goals list, a list of 101 things I want to accomplish in the coming year.  I used to do 101 goals in 1001 days but that never worked for me.  I work much better under pressure.  Those far away deadlines are just way too easy to ignore.  So, I changed it to 101 things to do this year.  Most of the items are to-do list type of things, not necessarily things like vacuum (although that is a lofty goal for me!) but non-routine type things like power washing the house.  A few of the goals are of the stress inducing variety that will give me a good laugh in December when I review my list & have a good chuckle over thinking I could ever accomplish such a thing in only 365 days.  And of course, there are a few purchases I'd like to make.  But this year, for 2014, I couldn't come up with 101 things.  I only have 96 on my list.  Part of me is patting myself on the back for not having such a bad case of the I wants, part of me is thinking that maybe I'm actually making some headway in having the perfect life where to-do lists don't even exist, and part of me is going flipping insane trying to think of just five more items to complete my list.  For some reason, starting the year off without 101 goals is driving me stark raving mad.

Meanwhile, I'm very, very slowly working on one 2014 goal.

PoorFish is modeling the sock I'm knitting.  It's been a long time since I've knit myself any socks.  I knit so many a few years ago, I swore I'd never knit another one but since I wear my hand knit socks daily & have the tendency to walk down the driveway to the mail box sans shoes, they tend to wear out.

Item #2 on my 2014 goals list is obviously to clean PoorFish's bowl.  Yikes!  That water is looking a little cloudy.  But hey, doesn't PoorFish look good?  Since liberating him for his poor living conditions (& thus his name) at the pet store, his color has improved tremendously.

And since I never blogged about Christmas....  Looky what I got:

Yep!  Yarn salt & pepper shakers!  I'm not really sure why the one has yarn on a thread spool, but who cares!  They are yarn themed salt & pepper shakers!  My daughter gave them to me & she is now the official favorite child.

My son received gifts almost as exciting.

A one pound Reese's Cup and a crystal handled Solo cup.  Red, of course!

And a few other Christmas related photos...  My sister's neighbor:

Minnie pulling down her Christmas stocking:

And Max, who always waits patiently.

Happy New Year!

Fire in the Sky

Last night my daughter & I went driving around looking at Christmas lights.  At one point, we were driving down a dark road & we could see a weird orange glow off in the distance.  We had the conversation about how we hoped someone's house wasn't on fire & kept driving.  A few miles later we entered a neighborhood and what did we find?

It wasn't a fire making the sky glow.  It was a Tacky Lights tour house.  It was impossible to get a good picture because there was a line of cars waiting to see the house & when you made it to the front of the line, you were too close to get a picture of the whole thing.  Here's another picture, very blurred because we were rolling but I like the way the lights squiggle in it.

We made our way across town & entered Windsor Farms which is an old money, extremely well to do neighborhood in Richmond.  Big mistake!  Those old money folks don't waste any of it on street lights or road signs.  We got so lost!  The neighborhood is not laid out in straight, rectangular blocks like most city neighborhoods.  The roads twist & turn and vee off of each other.  And did I mention there was a distinct lack of street lights & road signs?  Anyway, we drove around in there trying to find our way out for almost 30 minutes.  We finally ended up depending on the car's compass & just kept trying to go in one direction.

We finally found our way out of Windsor Farms & headed down to the James Center.

Being a Monday night, we were able to find a parking space so we stopped, got out of the car & walked around in the lights.

Rudolph!  I just love Rudolph!

And a shot of Sarah standing in front of Rudolph.  And yes, the photo is cropped strangely.  I swear, the pile of trash by her feet that I cropped out was not there when we were taking the picture.

After the James Center tour, we warmed up with a stop for ice cream because any Richmonder knows, there's nothing like the cold wind that blows up downtown Cary Street.  In comparison, even ice cream felt warm.

As for knitting news, don't ask & I won't start screaming.