Long Time, No Blog

Oops, I went forever without blogging again. It happens. Part of it is that Audrey has taken forever. It's actually quite a quick and easy pattern, but I wasn't knitting much, and then I spent some time after the front and back were finished dithering over whether or not to attempt short sleeves instead of the three-quarter length in the pattern. But I'm pleased with the result.

Also, note the hair. I finally made it to shoulder-length, which means I can stick it up in a clip or a ponytail, so it's not driving me nuts anymore. I've convinced myself it looks breezy rather than messy.

I can get Matt to take decent pictures, but he's not very artistic about it. You get the front:

The back:

The lace edge:

The increase line:


Pattern details:

Pattern: Audrey from Rowan 35, size 36"
Yarn: Rowan Calmer, in Carnation, 5 skeins
Needles: Size 7 and 8
Notes: I really like this pattern. I like the visible increase/decrease shaping. I like the easy ribbing. I love the detail of the lace at the neck. It fits very well and it's comfy, but nice enough to wear with a summery skirt.

Modifications: I decided on short sleeves. I cast on the number of stitches for each sleeve at the point of sleeve cap shaping, worked four rows, then started cap shaping. It worked beautifully, and I’ll use a short-sleeved top much more often. Based on past comments about the neckband being too big, I made the lace edging shorter than the circumference of the neckline. I really had to stretch the lace around to sew it on. It worked perfectly - I love the neckline on this. It stays up well, but isn’t too tight.

Other knitting:

The start of Camisa in Calmer in Garnet:



Oh! The garden has been coming along:


We built two raised beds, each 4 feet square, using this template. One is a salsa garden, with tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, peppers, and cilantro. The other has squash, peas, strawberries, arugula, and carrots. Lilah and I are having a great time with gardening.

Reading: I'm behind on the book blog again. Hope to catch up this week.

Writing: Some. Lilah had her spring break last week, which is the opposite of spring break for me. I'm producing on the murder mystery, and noodling with snippets of other things.

Cooking: Oh, two months of cooking? Geez. Of note are the Natural, Homemade Thin Mints, which are a bit of a pain but absolutely fantastic. I also made Dutch Crunch Vienna Bread from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Lovely, delicious bread. I'll be making it again, along with Reinhart's sourdough and bagel recipes. Love him. I also made pina colada muffins, which I've posted about before. I think those are the highlights. I'll try to remember to blog more so I can remember recipes :)

Still Waiting For Spring

Our groundhog, General Beauregard Lee, predicted an early spring. But that Yankee groundhog was right. It's winter here. Lilah and I have started some plants indoors, and this weekend, we were going to plan our raised beds for our tiny yard, which is covered in snow. We have planted carrots, thyme, basil, fennel (for our Swallowtail caterpillars), parsley, and some flowers Lilah picked out. The herbs and fennel will go in one of our front landscaping beds. The carrots will go in a raised bed out front. I think we're going to do at least one other raised bed, in the back, and plant some sunflowers in the landscaping beds as well. We have a sort of strange looking rose bush that sprawls on the ground. I'd like to move it, but that seems like a production. Once the raised beds are set up, we'll plant broccoli rabe, the carrot seedlings, zucchini, and who knows what else. Lilah is particularly excited about the carrots, and the fennel for the caterpillars. We used a biodegradable egg carton, along with some peat pots we picked up when we bought seeds. Lilah was thrilled to do the entire project. She scooped in the soil, made a space for the seeds, dropped in the seeds, and "tucked them in to be so cozy", then watered. She checks on her seeds every morning after she gets up. The flowers, thyme, and fennel have all germinated, and the carrots are just barely starting. We also did an avocado pit in a jar of water. That's taking forever, of course, but she hasn't lost interest.




Knitting: I sucked it up and ripped back on Hjalte's back (after finishing the front...yay!!!!). Just one more pattern repeat to the neckline. I'm nearly finished with Tomato. Just the sleeve edging and neck edging to do. I love the top-down, in-the-round construction with no seaming! So nice and easy. This has been my purse knitting, and it's been a blast. I love Calmer, and I love the pattern. I expect to have modeled shots of this by the time it's warm enough for modeled shots of the Two-Fisted Tank. Meanwhile, here is some of my knitting out in the snow. My Tesla Scarf:

On my hands are fingerless mitts crocheted by my talented SIL.

And Lilah's hat, mittens and scarf:

She loves wearing them! Most kids avoid bundling up, but Lilah really likes her special things I knit her. That's so awesome.
Lilah's preschool is a co-op, so parents volunteer in the classroom a couple times a month, bringing a healthy snack with them. My dad gave us a cute muffin/cakelette pan with bug shapes, so I decided to use those. Lilah loved helping to make bug muffins! I took an already healthified version of an apple bread recipe and tweaked it. These were the most moist, flavorful healthy muffins I've made. Even Matt liked them. My apple butter was my homemade version simmered with lots of spices. You could substitute drained applesauce, but you'll want to add spices to the batter or it will be bland. Lilah's school is nut-free, so I chose to add granola for a bit of crunch in place of the walnuts I'd normally use.

Reading: Not much of note lately, but I did just receive a review copy of Alan Bradley's second Flavia deLuce mystery, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. The first, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, is well worth picking up if you enjoy mystery and/or precocious heroines.

Writing: Nothing really in the way of page number progress, just more noodling. But that's better than nothing.

Cooking:


Apple Granola Muffins

1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup apple butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
4 cups peeled, chopped apple (Granny Smith makes for a nice, tart muffin)
1 cup granola (I used Back to Nature apple blueberry)

In the bowl of an electric mixer, add oil, apple butter, and sugars. Beat until combined. Add eggs one at a time, then vanilla. Whisk together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add slowly to liquid ingredients. Stir in apple and granola. Pour into muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes (shorter for smaller muffins) or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Makes 16 large muffins. Get your own bug muffin tin here.

More stuff

Details:
Pattern: Everlasting Bagstopper
Yarn: Dzined Hemp Worsted (body), Pakucho Organic Cotton in Chocolate (edge and handle) - 1 skein each
Needle: Size 5 (bottom and edge/handle), 10.5 (body)
Notes: This was easier on the hands than linen! I made some changes. I wasn't excited about having to sew on ribbon handles (and concerned about how long that would last), so I followed the Ilene Bag with 1x1 rib edging in Pakucho (once I ran out of Hemp) and then did a 20-stitch handle in 1x1 rib. I like the effect, which is very 1973-on-the-way-to-macrame-class. It was fairly quick, about a week to finish, and super easy to do while watching television.

More knitting...I've actually made progress on Matt's Hjalte. Partly, I made a rule that I can only do mindless projects until it's done, which means no Shipwreck Shawl or Twist and Shout. Since I really want to start those, I started working on Hjalte, at least a couple rows whenever I knit. I've finished one repeat of the cable pattern on the back, and it looks great. It's starting to get easier for me, too, and I can almost read the cabling the way I can lace.



When I was looking for my size 5 needles for the bag, I found the 24" in the bottom of my stash container, attached to the ill-fated Tussie Mussie (which I decided to do in stockinette instead of reverse stockinette AND decided to eliminate the nosegay pattern, so it's quite boring) and decided to finish it. I have miles to go:


Reading; The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley was an excellent mystery, featuring a precocious eleven-year-old, Flavia deLuce, in 1950s England. She is hilarious and slightly disturbing, with her fixation on poisons, but she's an engaging sleuth and the mystery is excellent. I'm almost done reading The Writing Class by Jincy Willett, which is laugh-out-loud funny, but also really thought-provoking. The protagonist is a writer who hasn't published in years and teaches writing workshops at the university extension. Her current class is excellent, except for one anonymous prankster. When the prankster's activities escalate, the class pulls together (even though the culprit is certainly one of them) to try and unmask him/her. With excerpts from the student writings and the teacher's bitter, cynical blog, it is a fantastic read.

Writing: Nope.

Cooking: I have really been keeping the kitchen going lately. Lilah and I went with friends to pick strawberries at a nearby farm, and it was so much fun. I've made 41 jars of Strawberry Vanilla and Strawberry With Black Pepper and Mint. I made the usual Strawberry Vanilla, and even that was much better with fresh, local berries. I couldn't get over having jars of jar three hours after picking the berries. I also made a big batch using Pomona's Pectin for the first time. Unlike Sure-Jell, you don't need huge quantities of sugar to get the jam to set, so I was able to use a relatively small amount of agave nectar, and it was delicious. More fruity than the traditional, sugar-packed jam. The Strawberry With Black Pepper and Mint is from Mes Confitures, and it took three days. Most of that time, it was just in a bowl in the fridge, but three days! It only produced 4 jars and some extra, but it is amazing. I'm close to a website launch for selling jam, which is exciting. Tim, Web Designer Extraordinaire, is just waiting on some changes to the copy and some photos of the jam and our strawberry picking adventures. Now that I have stock, I'm ready to unload it :)

The garden is really clicking along. We are going to have ridiculous quantities of zucchini this summer:

We have just a few tomato plants (ha!):

I planted lots of peppers to go with the tomatoes for salsa canning this summer:

My mint "patch" has turned into a forest:

And the eggplant are doing well:

I really want to do a lot more next year in the garden!

Uncharacteristically Frequent Posting

It must be the weather or something, but this is the most regularly I've posted in a long time. I could have actually posted this finished object the day after my Bottoms Up! Bag post, but it was a quick little thing.


Details:
Pattern: Super basic, but it's from Design Sponge
Yarn: Handspun from Stefaneener Ha! I actually found her post about the yarn right here!
Needles: Size 6
Buttons: random army green buttons that wouldn't stand out too much

Notes: It's a knit rectangle, so there's not much to say. Super easy. Loved working with the handspun. Not sure about the loop-and-button method of closure, but right now, we're just leaving the cozy on the press all the time, so it's not an issue. I do wish I'd sprung for some vintage buttons when I was at the bead shop, though!

Other knitting: I'm doing the mini-Clapotis for Lilah in the hopes I'll be done for us to wear our matching shawls on Mother's Day :)

Reading: I finally read The Historian! I actually knit the cozy while reading it since it was mindless stockinette mostly. I quite liked The Historian, and it doubles as a doorstop.

Writing: Nothing at all.

Cooking: I made the pasta with beans, greens, and lemon from Cooking Light again. We like that one. More baby squash.

Get ready for zucchini and squash recipes all summer long:

That's just one of the five zucchini or squash mounds. We had a high germination rate, and they're enjoying the rain we've been having. They actually grew so fast I thought they might be weeds, but if you rub your fingers on the leaves, they smell distinctly squash-y.

My peppers and tomatoes are also thriving. In fact, I need to thin them out since not all of the pots were kind enough to germinate only a single seed dead center in the pot:


I planted several varieties of tomatoes, but I didn't have labeling stuff outside with me, so I have no idea what's in which pot. Brandywine, Yellow Pear, Arkansas Traveler, and some kind of cherry tomato. Oops. It'll be a nice surprise when they fruit. Anyway, I need to pick up some buckets to transfer the tomatoes from the small pots. My basil germinated, but hasn't done much else, so I need to get to the garden store and get a few plants. I'm really disappointed in my herb garden out front. I did have germination, and it gets lots of sun, and I've been watering when it hasn't rained, but the growth is just sad. At this rate, I won't have basil to eat until there's frost.