No Muppets were harmed in the making of this post!

If you know me, you may be thinking, "But you're a vegetarian! How can you post a photo of a Muppet pelt?" But not to worry, this is 100% synthetic. The Muppets are safe from me. This is the back of this pattern for a bunting/all-in-one made from (yarn snobs turn away) Sirdar Snowflake. I myself am something of a yarn snob, and I rarely knit with anything this blatantly unnatural. It's the darn WEBS clearance sales! Some time ago, I bought two balls in each of four colors (baby blue, sparkly white, white with mottled pastel bits, and a color Sirdar calls "peach" that should have been called "My eyes! My eyes! It's just TOO orange!" but perhaps that wouldn't fit on the label). This is the same time that I acquired my stash of KFI Dazzle and Athena (and any ideas about what the heck to do with that would be welcome), but that's a different story. So I thought I'd finally use some of the Snowflake to make a little something for Butterbean. Googling led me to that pattern, and maybe it's the pregnancy hormones, but I couldn't stand how cute it was! It takes four balls, so I'm alternating every couple of rows between the sparkly white and the white with pastel bits. I have convinced myself that it's unnoticeable, and there will be no need to disillusion me :) I'm making the version with legs so it'll fit in a carseat. Snowflake is not all that fun to knit with, and if you drop a stitch, you're never going to find it again. But on the plus side, I accidentally knit half a row instead of purling, and you completely can't tell. So after this, I just have to find a use for the "peach" and the blue. The construction of this pattern is kind of interesting. You knit one leg, move it to a holder, knit the other and then across the first leg stitches, keep going for the back, then cast on the sleeve stitches. Pretty easy. Of course, the ears may be more difficult. We'll have to see.

I'm also getting ready to cast on for a scarf that's a thank-you gift, using Trendsetter Sunshine (again with the polyester!) and possibly carrying along some Dazzle in complementary colors, more or less based on a pattern from Exquisite Little Knits.

Rachel, I had no idea I was only letting blogger people comment! I think I've fixed that now, but let me know if it's still not working right.

My husband says thank you to everyone for your congratulations. He was a bit taken aback (and very pleased) that people who don't even know him are happy about it! We are pretty darn excited, that's for sure.

Reading: Everyone, thank you for children's book suggestions! I actually love children's books, and I'm delighted to have a real excuse to buy a bunch :)

Writing: I've been having an attention span problem this week. I'm hoping it's due to the end of summer (Labor Day Weekend in the US), and that next week will be all Chapter 7 all the time.

Cooking: Besides the monkey shortbread cookies (which everyone loved--primatologists go nuts over that stuff. In fact, people were debating over which species it represented), I made chocolate shortbread wedges and Monkey Bars, a Cooking Light recipe for "snack cake" featuring rum-soaked raisins, walnuts, and bananas. The shortbread recipes were from a Martha Stewart special issue called Holiday Cookies that has 100 recipes in it. I don't normally go for her magazines (though I love her hors d'oeuvres cookbook), but the cover photo on this one was just too good to resist, and it was at Barnes & Noble at just about the same time I'd decided to bake Christmas cookies that year. I've made several recipes from this, some simple like the shortbread, and some insanely complicated, and they've all been wonderful. I'm not sure if you can still find this issue anywhere--it's from 2001, but I would imagine she has the recipes in some book or other by now.

I'm going to make what may be the last ice cream of the season. I'm debating between cookies and cream and something fancier like turtle.