Hey Yo, It's Your Birfday

Hi all! Today is my baby's 21 birthday. I cannot believe it!

It seems like only yesterday we were having power struggles about potty training! Oh, how I remember those days... I started a quilt for him when we moved into this house. He was in kindergarten at that time. The quilt top is not even fully pieced yet! Oops.

We are taking him to Sonic for dinner tomorrow. We are so excited to have a Sonic around here--I cannot even tell you. It has been 7 years since I had Sonic food. Oh how I love that stuff! We will have to find reasons to drive the 20 miles in that direction more frequently now. :D

(P.S. Lest you think we are real cheapskates, there's a reason why we picked Sonic for our b-day treat...when he was 18, he was planning a "road trip " with his friends to the nearest Sonic, which, at that time, was the distance from Chicago to St. Louis! You'd better believe we put the kabosh on that idea. A car full of teens driving hundreds of miles...don't think so!)

Anyway, it's kinda the "in" joke now. He's never had Sonic food. Neither has DH for that matter, and I don't think DD has either.... I'm freaking about the birthday thing--seriously, he's going to be of drinking age, YIKES!

Other freak-worthy news: DD told me she is going to be deployed to Iraq next year. I'm really freaked out about that. Mom's biggest fear....

On the knitting front, I am into my 3rd skein of Cascade 220 for the Aran Wrap Cardi. I am not needing the charts, finally. First armhole is done, and a small portion of the back. I'm not really flying through this. How I wish we were made of $$ so I could just stay at home and knit whenever I want!!!

I am busy trying to upload the last of my Maui photos onto Flickr. Two days agoI had a warning that there was not much virtual memory left in my hard drive, so I thought I'd better clean up some space! Unfortunately, before I realized it was likely the photos hogging up the space, I accidentally uninstalled my sound card software. I spent all night yesterday after work trying to upload and reinstall it, to no avail. So my monitor has no sound. Grrrr.

I hope to go to knitting tonight, and work on the Aran Wrap Cardi. I am really enjoying that project, but I need to finish up on the Summer Sampler Lace. It is hard to switch back and forth from worsted weight to lace weight yarn. And this week's sinus infection had me comfort-seeking by knitting with thick and cushy, squishy wool :)

Here's a photo of the yummy Caprese Salad I had for dinner tonight:

The only thing that would have made it better would have been some chewy bread...however, I wasn't all that hungry, and had a hard time eating all that bocconcini!

Caprese Salad:

-fresh mozzarella (bocconcini is best)
-fresh tomatoes
-fresh basil
-olive oil
-red wine vinegar
-sea salt

Toss together. YUMMY! Great with a chunk of chewy bread and a glass of Chianti, for a summer meal! Enjoy :)



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And so it begins....

It must be the sinus infection. I'm getting the cyclic sense of finality and sadness that seems to come with the shortening of days. The longer light in the afternoons, the cool evenings, the lack of birdsong and chatter in the morning--all these indicate to me the end of summer. I know that some of my energy issues are related to my acute illness...but COME ON!!!

It is too early for this sense of "the end." Usually we can go through September with many hot/warm days still. I'm already wearing my Blue Beauty sweater around the house these days!!! Yikes. So, my wool-knitting picks up again in earnest!

I managed to get a shot of my Aran Wrap Cardi outdoors on my front porch yesterday:


among the Clematis Montana. Those blooms smell incredible, wish I could share that with you as well.
(Here you see illustrated my absolute lack of gardening this year. That is a vine you see sprawled across the base of the porch. In normal years I tie it up to the main post throughout the growing season, knowing that when late summer comes the blooms will carry us into a last blast of blooming happiness before the cold sets in. This year, you have to get on the floor to experience it. Ahem.)

Due to illness, lunch meetings, and appointments out of town prior to work, there are not many days I can walk to work. Go figure, all summer I could've done so. Last week it was DS' soccer game at the community college after work (before they yanked his eligibility due to something about insufficient credits from last semester--the kid wasn't even on the team last semester.) I am really glad I went and took some fun action shots, as it looks like that's all he'll get at the college level. Grr.

But other than that, Simple September has definitely curbed my spending. I spent $100 Saturday at the Italian market, and really bought only ingredients--nothing prepared, no frozen dinners. Can't believe it cost that much. Wow. But the challenge of cooking something each night for dinner is inspiring me. I found a couple of really great recipes I'd like to share.

First, this summer roll recipe. I happen to have all the ingredients for this, so it's slated for tonight's dinner. Looks incredible. And look at the grilled flatbread recipe here! YUMMMMMMMMM! Can't wait to try that. Also, I found a recipe for a cute snack cake. I'm gonna hafta share this one with DD, I know she'll appreciate that :D

Hope you all have a wonderful week. Here's to good health, good food, good friends and good knitting :)



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Putting Food By

I like all the colloquial terms for food preservation. "Putting food by", "putting up food", and those kinds of terms. And while I am far from being a canning/freezing kind of girl since I work so much, I was blessed to be gifted many tomatoes and cukes this year by the wonderful gardeners I work with :) Thank you Pam and Bob!!

(In a perfect world, I'd have my own garden, but that dream's on hold while I'm busy in the professional world. Usually August and May are when I'm missing that the most.)

So with masses of fresh tomatoes in hand, I decided it was time to make sauce. This pot of sauce simmered all day, with short ribs and chuck steak pieces flavoring it, whole stalks of fresh basil, onions, and cloves of garlic. Looks kinda gnarly while it cooks down, but don't worry, you strain out all the skin and seeds towards the end:



And you add some of these:


I was at the Italian Market yesterday and splurged a little on some imported fusilli pasta--
--this was a rockin' meal! (I had to continue cooking down the sauce, as it was somewhat thin. You can see that in the photo. But I ate it runny b/c I WAS STARVING by this time!!)

I'd never had fusilli before, nice and tooth-y, m-m-m!

I ran by the farmers market too; summer is about to end, so I thought I'd better buy one last dose of fresh corn. Yum, yum yummy sweet corn!

I bought some flax seed to add to the granola I made:


That turned out so yummy. I used the recipe from here as my base, only I didn't have coconut, so I added 1/2 cup flax seed meal, a couple tablespoons of white poppy seeds and white sesame seeds for crunch, and 1/2 cup of graham cracker crumbs (heh, I had a box of that in the pantry!) I also added a splash of vanilla vodka to the butter while it was melting, so the alcohol would evaporate and leave the flavoring. This stuff rocks!

I also bought some bocconcini; my absolute favorite salad this time of year is a Caprese salad. So that is on the menu this week. Simple foods, remember?

And the best find of all? Fresh fava beans. I wait on the edge of my seat for these every August! Look at that big beautiful pile of favas waiting to be shelled:

Look how huge these beans are!!!


And look at the lovely cushiony package they grow in! That's pretty posh :)


I make these the way that Madhur Jaffrey explains in "World Vegetarian",


you must shuck them,


boil them in salted water for up to 5 minutes, then peel each bean,

(peeled beans are on the left and the empty skins are on the right)

and then you can serve them after saute-ing in a garlic-lemon-thyme sauce made with an olive oil base. It's a finicky business, but well worth the effort! I look forward to this every year =)

Afterwards, I was so wiped! I had spent 5 hours in the kitchen, and didn't get around to making the cucumber pickles/salad I'd wanted to do...maybe today. Or, maybe that's all the cooking I'll do for a little while, heh!



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Mo' Stuff

That's my kind of kitty...

Giggle. Here's a funny link to a Redneck Sheep Song. Make sure you have your sound turned on....

I don't know why, but that really makes me laugh. Simple tastes :)

I missed out on Knit night due to a brewing sinus infection. Oh well, I knew I couldn't escape for too much longer, everyone is coming down with the ickies lately. I had a solid run of a month or so of good health =D

Look at this: this photo from stitchy mcyarnpants is a scream. I love the kitty's face....


Hee hee.

Now for some fun surfing. I saw this non-knitting blog post about beautiful art glass-blowing...I've never seen such beautiful glasswork in my life. I want to go see that exhibit now! OKLAHOMA here I come :) Wow that is some gorgeous art!

I feel all inspired now, by the lovely colors and forms. And, I was just reading this post at the Twist Collective Blog, and now I am in love with Wisteria!!! Look at the cables and shaping! Wowee, that also is some craft. I'm not the biggest fan of turtlenecks, but I would definitely wear one that looked like that :) Cables make me wild for more cables--it's an unending cycle!

These kinds of things really inspire me. I hope they make your day, too!



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Aran Wrap Cardi

Sea star and cucumber(?) at Maui Ocean Center.

My tentative adjustments to the Aran Wrap Cardi are the result of the yarn I picked to use. It's Cascade 220 from my stash, and it's a tweed. If I were to start over, I'd probably use a solid colored yarn. But this has been in my stash in large quantities since I bought it to knit a cabled poncho out of it. (The instructions for that were ridiculous, so I frogged it in frustration.) This yarn is one of my favs when I look at the ball:
But when I see it knit up, I'm having a hard time with it. It reads a very dull gray. It bothers me just like my Hemlock Ring disaster. Dull is NOT my most fav color when it's dull outside, and since I won't be wearing wool any other time but when it's dull and cold, this is most unfortunate!!!
Back to the adjustments. I was going to change the zigzag panels. One side of the cabled zig-zag has reverse stockinette, and the other has seed stitch. In this tweed yarn, you can't even see seed stitch definition, and that texture blends in and dulls the definition of the zigzag on that side. Also, for some reason, I can't get the seed stitch mojo going--I have to keep looking at the charts to see what stitch goes where for that, and it feels like it is slowing my progress down. So I was thinking both sides of the zigzag would be better done in reverse stockinette.

But NO, I am not going to frog it and start again. I decided ultimately to leave it as is. Partly because I caught a glimpse of this in natural light, and it looks way better than I was thinking!!! Yay for natural light :) And I think the change would alter the dimensions also. Apparently I could use some practice with seed stitch too, so I'm leaving it as is....It's just such a distracting yarn. (Gee, wish I was knitting this in a deep rich warm solid color, just like the Rainey Sisters!)

But:

1. I want to use this yarn up.
2. I want to see how this pattern looks knit in tweed.
3. I want to wear something made of Cascade 220! So I will soldier on (it's not that bad-looking in the right light. I love knitting with this yarn! Cushy, squishy wool. One of my go-to favs...)

So that's where I am right now. I just started the third repetition of charts. I had to mark up my chart page with the errata, and change the chart rows numbering. I also ended up putting white-out over the old numbers as I kept looking at those and getting all messed up! Now it's a piece of cake. Here are my notations to myself:


I'm having lots of fun working on this project. Today was great, a rainy and cold precursor to fall, and I cranked on the cables while I watched "The Young & The Restless" on Soapnet...See, there's a reason for soap operas to exist--they are a great excuse to sit for an hour and knit!!!!!



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