Monthly Archives: March 2009

monday.

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After a weekend of warmer weather, today’s forecast is for snow, rain and cold. That, combined with the ever-growing pile o’ library books taking over my apartment, makes me less than enthusiastic about the coming week.

I snapped a few pictures of Boh yesterday that convey this general emotion:

boh1

boh2

More knitting progress soon. I may attempt to coax myself out of my bleary-eyed state with a few rows of Ishbel. I am less than 10 rows from the lace section.

I hope your Monday brings you sunshine! It looks like Boh and I will have to wait until tomorrow.

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ishbel.

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ishbelprog

ishbel-prog-2

The stockinette portion of Ishbel is absolutely flying! Talk about a satisfying knit. No visible progress to report on my 28thirty sleeves, but I am dutifully working on it at home.  It has taken me twice as long to upload photos for this post because I’ve been simultaneously eating half of one of these espresso banana nut muffins:

muffins

Soon I’m going to heat up some cheesy Sweet Potato Spoon Bread leftovers for lunch:

sweetpotato-spoon-bread

Both of these recipes are from Supernatural Cooking, the most recent cookbook from Heidi over at 101cookbooks. My kitchen binder of internet recipes has a healthy selection from her blog, and this cookbook does not disappoint — I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve made from it, and the book itself is gorgeous. Also, one more plug for those muffins — they use white-whole wheat flour, natural cane sugar, less butter than you’d expect, and yogurt. I was expecting the white-whole wheat flour to yield a pretty dense, dry muffin, and I was happily surprised with the result. These are light and moist, and I will certainly be making them again!

Boh is pouting because he can’t have either of these treats. I promise I’ll take him on a longer W-A-L-K today to make up for it.

Have a great weekend!

longer…

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sleeve-is-longer

This sleeve is slowly lengthening. Why is it that the closer I get to completing this sweater, the slower my progress looks to me? This project is no longer appropriate for bringing anywhere except a designated knitterly gathering, both because of its size and because of the way I feel like my arms flail about as I tug on cables and untwist the sleeve along my way towards magic looping to the wrist. Whining aside, I love this and cannot wait to prance about in it. (Yes, I said prance.)

Because I have a serious problem with project monogamy, and because I had a lecture to attend yesterday, I cast on something new.

ishbel

It is true; I’ve caught the Ishbel bug. I’ve been resisting the urge to knit this for some time now: Lace is hard! Another fingering weight project when I still have socks on the needles? And then, after viewing many a lovely Ishbel, I saw this one over at brokeknits. I bought the pattern immediately.

I’m using some gorgeous slightly variegated deep purple Yarn Pirate fingering weight, and I’m hoping to successfully combine the small and large sizes — large st portion, small lace version, to use all the yarn. We’ll see how that goes!

A few more Boh pics that are too sweet and silly not to share:

boh-under-blankets

We may have fallen asleep here together on Monday night…

boheyesclosed

Someone is very pleased with his cookie. Time for me to get back to work!

becoming an armadillo.

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mirror-close-up

dirty-mirror

sleeveinprogress

upclosesleeve

I am loving this sweater. Have I said that yet? LOVING. Now that I’m making progress on the right sleeve, I’m seeing the armadillo comparisons I’ve read mention of on Ravelry and the broader interwebs, but I think this is a good thing. I’m contemplating working the ridges as directed until mid forearm, and then going for straight stockinette until the cuff, but we’ll see how I feel when I get there.

Notes/sleeve mods:

As others have experienced, the sleeves for the non XS and S sizes do seem overly large. I’m knitting size M, and the 59 st sleeves were very blousy on me. I picked up 3 st to close the gap, and then knit as directed to the next purl ridge. I then skipped ahead to the decreases, and worked them every other row (including the purl ridges) until I got down to 44 st (close to the st count for an XS sleeve), which seemed snug over a button-down shirt-sleeve. I’m working the sleeve straight until my repeated trying on/admiring myself in the sweater seems to suggest that I need another decrease row.

I realize you may tire of pictures of this guy (or that it may appear as though I take the same photos of him each day), but I never do. Check out the posing I witnessed this morning:

posingdog

posingdog2

Sigh. I must admit, I did more knitting than reading today, and I really should try to get in another chapter before bed. I’m hoping for more signs of spring this week…

28thirty.

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Boring blog post title, yes. Boring sweater? Nope!

28thirtyprogress

28thirty-closeup1

Other things that are not boring:

flowers

Homeless flowers from my neighbors’ wedding that I get to enjoy because they are honeymooning.

biscuits

Biscuits.

homeandtired

This guy. Also, I’m healthy. Finally. And today I have class and some meetings that I should’ve had last week. It will certainly feel good to cross those things off the ever-looming to-do list.

Happy Friday!

___ skills.

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kitchen skills:

potato-pancakes2

florida-panhandle1

Potato pancakes and a pizza in the shape of Florida (minus the panhandle). Recipes by Deb, of course.

frolicking skills:

mossy-forest-and-boh1

silly-with-dog1

icy-trail2

gnarly-pines1

lounging skills:

maddy-on-ledg1

happy-dog-rock1

amy-boh-lay-on-rock1

catskills:

brown-leaves-through-trees1

catskillview1

amy-and-mad-long-arm1

whale skills?

whale1

Boh, my best friend M, and I met up for a long weekend of mountain air, good food, and bad tv. Crosswords were completed, legs were stretched, brains/selves tired from work and school were rested/restored.

Thanks, M. I love that we continue to make time for frolicking.

improving?

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I am by no means healthy, but progress (in the form of a hacking cough) is occurring. The good news is that my nose no longer begins to drip the second I look down, meaning that yesterday I was able to do some of my wallowing in illness while knitting.

28thirty-close-up

28thirty-to-sleeves

Sickness trumps gift-knitting, so even though there are a few more WIPs to finish in the Christmas pile (Thuja for my uncle, that acrylic scarf for my mom), I decided that I could knit a few rows on my 28thirty yesterday. As you can see, I knit until it was time to separate the sleeve stitches from the body, and then I let my sniffeling self try it on before bedtime. I love how this is coming along, so much so that I think I am going to take it with on my mini-spring break weekend adventure to the Catskills. (Fingers crossed that my health is much improved by the morning.)

boh-and-couscous-soup

Yesterday I made a very simple couscous vegetable soup — saw this post over at everybody like sandwiches and decided that it was just the thing my sick self needed.

silly-dog-on-bed

This guy has been a huge help to me this week. Dogs know when you don’t feel good, I think, because Boh has been extra kind in the cuddling and quiet time department. He has certainly earned some frolicking time in the Catskills!

[miso] sick.

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Yep, hard to believe, but I get even cornier when I’m sick. I’d be willing to categorize this particular sore throat/headcold combination as “sick-as-a-dog” if I didn’t have a perfectly healthy canine snoring peacefully on the couch behind me. I wish he’d stop rubbing it in.

miso

I’ve consumed a couple of quarts of miso today, and I’ve also worked on ingesting as much superfood as possible — which means I even mashed up a few cloves of garlic and threw them into a homemade lemony salad dressing in order to up my allium intake. Hot showers, lots of herbal tea, a pre-bedtime mug of Therma-Flu (which I’m working my way through as we speak) — and some pouting to the boy round out the day’s medicinal treatments. I WILL be better tomorrow. I have to be. I’m so bad at being sick.

I did a very little bit of knitting today — when the full on head cold developed, it became hard to look down without also encouraging the snot to pour out of my nose. I did, however, discover that head colds go nicely with spinning. Standing makes it easier to breathe, and I felt less silly with something to do while standing in order to inhale less laboriously, which prompted me to start the second half of my January Spunky Club fiber:

twilight-part-2

Apologies for the busy and somewhat blurry photo. I didn’t have the heart to wake and move Boh off of the more plainly colored couch.

Alright. Fingers crossed that I wake rested and find my health returned.

monday morning.

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It has been gently raining for the last several hours — maybe even all through the night, and I am sitting here with my first coffee cup of the day, listening to the different sounds of the drips on the driveway, the water hitting the branches of the pear tree by the window, the fat drops falling from the gutters in a different kind of rhythm, and I’m wishing that I didn’t have to go anywhere today.

We had a really nice weekend — a bit crazy busy in that both of our academic schedules had events and dinners and guests well into the weekend, but lovely in that we found time to hike in misty forests, pick our first bag of greens at the farm I joined, and discover a chili-cook off in the grocery store of a nearby town.

I failed to document these events with more than my mind’s eye, and I’ve been too busy to knit this week, so here are some snapshots of Monday morning.

sleepy-boh

egg-cartons

reading

greens-close-uo

cable appreciation time.

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ulsweaterclose

ulsweater2

Nope, I didn’t knit this — but someone did. This slouchy, sheepy cardigan is a find from my new favorite thrift store in town. The sweater has been clearly loved — a few small holes, some evidence of repair, a missing button, but I just could not leave it to languish on the hanger. This sweater is perfect for reading, tea-drinking, and crafting, don’t you think?

servicelge-sweater

And it cost me 9 dollars. Crazy. While wearing this sweater, I made some progress on my toe up socks at a lovely craft night/This American Life radio gathering hosted by a dear friend. Here’s the Monday morning kitchen photo of how sock number 2 is coming along:

sock2

I can’t wait to wear these. Maybe by the end of the week?

Also, we enjoyed more “Deb appreciation time” this weekend, in the form of smitten kitchen recipe preparation. On Friday afternoon, I made her key lime coconut cake. I halved the sugar in the frosting, but otherwise, followed Deb’s instructions. This is a a fantastic dessert — light, citrusy and a little sweet, with the added bonus that it is easy to rationalize eating a slice for breakfast.

coconut-cake-1

coconut-cake-2

We also made a recipe from Deb’s archives for dinner on Friday night: the indian-spiced vegetable fritters. These were absolutely delicious, and the process was just what we needed. Nice to be in the kitchen together chopping, frying, stirring, etc. after a long week. We were too busy eating to take lots of photos, but I do have one of the final batch of fritters in the frying pan:

vegetable-fritters

Again, yum. I ate the last few fritters for dinner on Sunday straight out of the fridge, and they were just as tasty!

How did it become March? As seems to be my blogging/morning routine, it’s time to pour a second cup of coffee and continue reading. Have a great day!