Toasty legs!

I just wanted to put these up.  I've been doing a lot of sewing and cooking (with exciting new Christmas presents!), which I should update with soon, but these legwarmers were a long time in coming....

The book they are from is a few years old...they are the "Super-easy Legwarmers" from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, but I got it from the library just so I could make these.  They are so boring to make, but they make a pretty fabulous legwarmer.  I wouldn't make them as a gift though, they took me several months of slogging through k1p1 ribbing.  Kind of brain-melting.

Yes those are my front steps and yes that much moss is standard here.

Fall Favorites, recipes and a new scarf.

Fall begins early in the Pacific Northwest, and may actually last two or more months.  Where I grew up in the Northeast, fall is a quick week-and-a-half-long event right between the hot, humid of summer and the (i n c r e d i b l y) cold and dry winter.  Basically only the third week in October is spared.

But here in Oregon, Fall is a long, slow affair with some sunny days, trending towards mainly rainy ones.  Leaves may turn and slip off the trees slowly.  Sweater weather lasts a long, long time.  Soup is a perfect meal.

I found this book at work, recently. Quick Food (which is shockingly published by Readers' Digest) contains over 300 recipes that you can make in half an hour. Most recipes produce about 4 servings, perfect for two people (with leftovers) or a modern-sized family of 1-2 children.  Since I work in the library, I've come across lots of different recipe books so far, but with so many fast recipes to choose from, this book is a winner.  I've already made two soups from it, it's great!

The first soup I made was the potato leek soup.  So good, and only a few (very affordable) ingredients.  My husband and I had seconds, its fabulous and really does only take 30 minutes.

Tonight I'm making the Thai Sweet Potato soup.  Currently, its still on the stove.

Update:  Sweet Potato soup was good.  Good enough to make me eat the leftovers, which I hate to do.  I might use this recipe and substitute pumpkin chunks for the sweet potato for a good fall Thai soup.  Its much easier than the easy pumpkin soup I've been making for years now, which is already extremely easy.  But cooking with sweet potatoes is easy in its own way, much less cleaning and cutting than when using pumpkin.  I suspect this will still work though!

The book has everything from starters, meat, poultry, vegetable dishes, soups and desserts.  Many of the soups can easily be made vegetarian or vegan simply by swapping chicken broth for vegetable broth.  Its perfect for nearly no-mess, neat-little-package kind of cooking.  Beginning to end (and probably cleaned up) in an hour.

Since soups don't photograph very well, here's something prettier that I've made lately:

Palmiers are easy to make, made with frozen puff pastry and sugar, they are nearly foolproof.  Good instructions can be found here:  Palmiers.

Hot off the needles:  Shizuku Scarf.  Easy, nearly meditative knitting produces a triangular-shaped scarf with fun dangly fringe.  Balloon loves it, naturally.

 Perfect for fall and made with my favorite yarn:  Noro Kureyon.  The pattern is free, make it yourself!  Suitable for advanced beginners.

New hat...and a new cat!

My latest knitting project is Super Cupcake.  Its one of the first non-free patterns I have actually finished.  The price tag for this pattern and two neckwarmer-type scarves is $5 $4.  Honestly, I think that's a little pricey for the simplicity of this pattern, which only consists of 1x1 rib and "shaker rib" which has a bunch of other names, but is also a very simple stitch to do. That being said, I do recommend putting a safety line every inch or so while knitting, because if a stitch is dropped in this pattern, it is nearly impossible to fix. I am pleased with the hat, but if I were doing it over, I would just have tried to find a similar free pattern.

At least I finished it just in time to lose my other hat...

We'd also like to welcome a gorgeous  new member to our family!  Balloon is 2 1/2 year old tortoiseshell domestic shorthair.  She's so much different from our first cat.  All cuddle and no play!  She's from Washington State, so we can forgive her for being a little weird.

No, she's not stuck in a Tron-style video game environment... she's hiding under the bed from Furball!

Balloon is a little bit of a pushover, so she's afraid of Furball, who is still hissing at her every time he passes by.  Luckily for us, she's too laid back and aloof to escalate the drama between the two in any way, so we've had no fighting or caterwauling.  She's been hiding though, which means that if we want to see her, we have to lock Furball up for a few hours so she'll come out from underneath the furniture.  Its going to take some adjustment, but we hope the two will be friends someday.

She may look chunky, but her jowls are pure fur!  

We know she's found the furrlosipher's stone...she's turning half of herself into gold!

A tribute to Finland

According to my flag counter, someone Finnish has been visiting my blog. Whoever is visiting my page from Finland, come back, especially if you're a knitter!

Finnish knitting patterns are by far the best!  Here are some of my favorites:

Aili's Mittens.  A few lucky people might get these as holiday gifts!
Basilika. Somebody finally translated this into English.  If i didn't have a million other sweaters planned I'd love to make it!
Kainuun kukkalapaset.  I'm told Finnish is a hard language to learn.  No kidding. Look at all those double consonants.

Then again, with the title of this blog, maybe the Finnish person was looking for these guys:

I <3 the Bassist.

So to all my Finnish friends, enjoy your saunas, beers, and hockey.  Because I love those things, too.

Addendum:



It was my original desire to have a metal knitting blog.

First Fall...

This month I actually finished a knitting project!  Here are the "I Love You, Chuck Taylor" Legwarmers.  I started them in green before I realized I was going to buy red boots.  But thankfully, at least my rain boots are plaid and should match nicely.  They look easy but the mini cables every four rows were MADDENING by the end.  I might make them again, as soon as I forget how much I hate to cable.  I just have one more sweater to finish (I've been working on it since July!) until X-mas knitting begins.  What does everyone want?

For lack of better things to do, I have started collecting teacups.  My collection has a few criteria:  they must be "bone china", they must be made in either England or Japan (though I have considered ones from the US before) and they must have gilded edges. Each cup with matching saucer is about 5 dollars at the Powell St. Goodwill, but they bring endless joy during tea time.  Here they wait anxiously for a future tea time with friends.  I think I'll look for some fancy little spoons to go with them...they should have something like that at Marshall's...

UGH!

 Recently I've had a bit of "knitters" block.  I got the idea that making headbands, which are both short and very useful projects would be a good use of my time.  I figured they'd be easy to complete even with knitter's block.  Enter Maner.  An easy buttoned headband with unique construction.  Or so I thought. Along my knitting journey I frogged this...twice.  The first time I completed it, despite measuring my head and checking gauge (which is looser than that of the pattern, but i thought some roominess would be good) it DID NOT even come close to fitting around my head.  I have literally no idea what I did wrong.  Second try: I added 20 stitches to the pattern, then finished it.  It just now, after blocking it stretched out on the radiator all night, fits around my head, rather tightly.  It looks nothing like the one in the picture, its much thinner.  The seams end behind my head not near my ears.  The best part though is the button, which came in a bag of assorted craft buttons.  I do still recommend this project though.  I'm sure I'm the only one that had this bad of a time with it. All this begs the question:  What is WRONG with my knitting?  Remember my Cilantro hat had to have 8 stitches added to it?  I'm making gauge but things are still way too tight.

Addendum:  many Ravelers, now that I read through the projects, seem to have found that adding 20 to the pattern was necessary.  I don't feel as totally insane now.

At least cooking is going much better.  Friday I made Alton Brown's Carrot Slaw with raisins and pineapples.  Its GREAT.  I highly recommend this dish, as its pretty healthy and the flavor is unique and delicious.  We had fried shrimp and cocktail sauce with it.

cilantro

cilantro
Originally uploaded by destroysodexho

Spring is almost here, time for a new hat! This is a pattern I discovered after finding a partially unwound skein of Wool-ease Thick and Quick in colorway "cilantro" on sale at Michael's for 1/2 price. I needed something to make with just one skein, and this hat did nicely.

The pattern is "Cordova" by Jen Lacroix. Easily the most fun knit I've had the pleasure of completing in a long time, the lace rows go fast and the resulting hat is light and fun to wear. While knitting it I considered that the pattern, doubled, would work extremely well in a worsted-weight cotton blend (I've got an extra skein of cotton-ease). That would be a fantastic springtime and early summer hat.

Zach has returned from APhA!  I didn't cook the whole time he was gone, except for whipping up a batch of Cilantro Pesto before my bunch of fresh cilantro went bad.  Cilantro pesto has easily been my favorite for years.  As you may guess, its a little bit different from basil pesto.  I think its better, but then I really don't like basil.  It is still good on pasta of all sorts but I'd also consider it tasty enough to use as a dip for veggies, especially carrots.  Its great on top of fish, as cilantro naturally chelates mercury from your body.  The classic "cilantro" flavor disappears in the mix, so this recipe may even be suitable for cilantro haters.  Its also vegan, depending on what you're eating it on top of.

Cilantro Pesto
Pine nuts (raw)
Cold-pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt (I used the Pink stuff)
Fresh Cilantro
Whole Garlic Cloves (start with one, go from there)

I never measure when I'm making this, sorry.  I just put it in my food processor until its chunky and I've used up most or all of my ingredients.  Too Liquid?  Add more nuts?  Too bland?  Add more salt or garlic.  Its really up to you!

I'm halfway through "Fugitives and Refugees".  Great read.

Errant Skeins Afghan

the afghan in all its 15% completed glory

This is my wedding present to my husband-to-be. We are getting married months in the future, but of course I began this now so that I would have no trouble finishing it by the date of our civil ceremony in mid-July.

The original pattern is for a baby blanket made with sock yarn. Instead, I am using up all the old skeins of worsted-weight acrylic yarn that I have, and believe me, there is enough yarn in my stash! I was very surprised at how all the colors look together. While we have quite a few blankets already, I wanted to make something with more modern colors that was brand-new for the big move. The photo here is doing the brightness and vibrancy of the yarn no justice.

Here is the Ravelry link if you care to follow:  Wavy Gravy

Unfortunately because of the Afghan, I have still NOT finished the last Toasty mitt.  I suspect that I will be done by the end of the evening and have pictures posted soon, and the intended recipient who is anxiously awaiting his mitts will have the [slightly itchy] pleasure of wearing them before it gets too warm.

In the pot this week:  Fusilli Alla Caprese from the Food Network, with some added improvements.  Instead of the basil, I used fresh spinach as I am not a dedicated basil fan and neither is Zach.  If I made this recipe again, I would cut the cherry tomatoes in half first, as smashing them with a fork in the pan definitely caused one to shoot its seedy juice into my eye and all over my shirt.  I would also suggest using either a softer cheese than mozzerella, or adding the chunks straight to the pan and melting them for a few seconds because the heat from the pasta was simply not hot enough to do the job.

Nevertheless, a few seconds in the microwave melted the cheese nicely.  Speaking of which, I'm pretty hungry right now, so I'm off to heat up some of these leftovers and chow down.  Peace.

New Sweater!

I finished the Garter Yoke Cardigan! I'm very pleased with the fit and the style of it. Here it is on Ravelry.



I'm actually very happy with the evenness of the stockinette portion, as I knit continental style and sometimes there are tension issues. However I think my knitting has progressed to the point where its not as terribly obvious as it used to be(that means i knit really tightly, hah).



The top is embroidered with a combination of some beautiful thrifted tweed yarn courtesy of Zach and some scraps of Patons Classic Wool Black. I was definitely inspired by the beauty of the winter landscape here in Pennsylvania. I love the way dark branches and dormant stems look against the heavy layers of snow.

What's up next? I'm, at this moment, halfway through these: Toasty

free hat!

free hat!
Originally uploaded by destroysodexho

Finished Object: Seaman's Cap

A new hat for Zachary! Look at him looking so pretty! He immediately loved it as soon as I was done and I let him have it even though its definitely an X-mas present. He's wearing it right now, in fact. I highly recommend this pattern, its easy, straightforward and the resulting hat is super comfortable.

and here's the ravelry page!

Winter break is so very, very fun. Today I cleaned my apartment, made rice pudding, took a bath, biked to Cal's (Cal's apartment definitely wins the adorably romantic tiny apartment prize), watched Happy Gilmore, and spilled cinnamon on my hand(it smells GREAT!), and still fit in time to knit my sweater!

Tomorrow: maybe even a book!