The pattern is Aria Delicato by Anne Hanson of Knitspot. She knit a 48-inch scarf using 275 yd of fine fingering yarn. I have 400 yd of fine fingering yarn (from Neighborhood Fibers, which I think has closed its doors at least as an online retailer), so my scarf is going to be longer. I have a cream colored “twin-set” cardigan (minus the twin), that I think these greens will look fab with. I’ve had this OTN for quite a while, but now it is getting a lot of attention.
Both M and I wanted to be able to plant some veggies in our new yard, but it was really landscaped, so we had to figure out where we could fit some raised beds in. I found a corner, that especially in summer will get enough sun, but I think even in the winter we will be able to grow some cold weather veggies. At least we are going to find out! Here in California, fall and winter are the perfect time to grow salad greens and broccoli and cauliflower, so I bought some seeds:
Those shrubs you see in the middle of the photo–
those shrubs are gone. And now M is very happy to be making sawdust on the back patio (redwood sawdust, no less):
Before he can assemble the beds, M needs to deal with the drip sprinkler system, which I find incredibly mysterious, as there are billions of possible parts to splice in and link together. But I hope soon I can show you some baby greens in the garden and a green scarf round my neck!
I like to eat granola for breakfast. Not the granola you buy in the cereal aisle, but the “gourmet” kind that often comes in bulk food departments. But it’s pretty expensive, so I found a recipe for making my own in the April 2012 issue of Cooks Illustrated magazine. M and I subscribe to America’s Test Kitchen on line, who are the same group who puts out Cooks Illustrated, and I’ve found that their recipes always work, and M and I often like them (sometimes we like a spicier or richer version than the testers like). So when I saw that an issue of the magazine had a home made chunky granola recipe, I had to give it a go.
Following their directions, I didn’t get chunky granola the first time, but I wasn’t very surprised. I have often found living in the arid Central Valley of California, that recipes developed in much more humid climates (New England in this case) need a bit of a liquid boost out here. I ended up increasing the sugars and oil by 50% while holding the dry ingredients constant, and that worked so well, that M now eats this granola every morning for breakfast with some vanilla yogurt. I eat it with almond milk.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Heat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a half-sheet pan with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, combine the brown sugar, salt, honey or maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon (optional), whisking until they well combined. Add the oil and whisk until the oil is stably incorporated (you are making an emulsion). Add the almonds and oats and fold with a large spatula until the oats are uniformly well-coated (don’t skimp on this step). Pour into a parchment-lined half-sheet pan and spread evenly. Use a heavy weight (I use a tool to pound meat) to press the the granola into a tight sheet. Bake at 325 degrees for 40 min, rotating the pan 180 degrees half way through the baking. Cool in pan on wire wrack until completely cool. Break in to chunks and store air tight at room temperature. Note: If you want any dried fruit in your granola, add it after baking when breaking up the cooled granola.
If you get the magazine, you can see their amounts (or do the math and decrease the sugars and oil by 50%) and their many creative variations.
M took some photos of me yesterday making a batch:
Folding the dry into the wet ingredients.
Pressing the mixture together in the baking pan.
Out of the oven!
After cooling, I always find a corner missing. M says it must be a mouse. The one time this did not happen was the day M was not at home while I made the granola. Hmmm….
And here is a glimpse of the sweater I have on the needles. It’s Vodka Lemonade by Thea Coleman. It’s a lovely pattern, and I am not using yarn with the amount of stitch definition she recommends, but I think the difference between the seed stitch and stockinette will work out fine here. The yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Arts BFL Sport in Star Sapphire. I love BFL wool with a deep and abiding passion.
Can you find Harriet, my mannequin head in all the mess?
M has a lawn to mow for the first time that doesn’t belong to his parents or their neighbors. He seems to really like the mower, and today he got an edger.
But some things never change:
Boulevardier cocktail. A negroni made with bourbon instead of gin. Delicious, and it looks so pretty on the hearth.
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Having finished the first Cinco de Mayo sock (note grafted toe!), which was all stockinette, and having started the second Winesap BFL sock, which is 3×1 rib, I was feeling the need for a little more stitch pattern variety. I also want to get some of my multicolored sock yarns knit up. I’ve decided I don’t have to be real fancy and have a new pattern for each sock pair, so I went with two favorites, Monkey and Pablo Deep:
That’s a Monkey cuff, but a stockinette foot, which I decided to do when I saw how nice the Purple Iris (Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock) looked in stockinette. Plus that allowed me to rapidly decrease 8 stitches in the last round of the leg going from 64 to 56, which seems to have worked well (I decreased 2X each repeat in the center, leaning toward each other). Now that the gusset decreases are done, I’m bored with the stockinette, even though it looks pretty, and even though I can knit stockinette and read at the same time.
So, I started another sock in the Pablo Deep pattern.
The yarn is Pagewood Farms St. Elias, a BFL/nylon (80/20) blend, in Crayon. I had seen Crayon in a different base yarn on Ravelry, and it looked much brighter than the BFL I got. At first I was disappointed, but the other day it seemed perfect for another pair of Pablo Deep socks, and I am pleased with how it is knitting up. BFL is my favorite yarn now for socks. Perhaps I just needed to knit a sock in neon colors for the muted palette of Crayon to appeal to me.
I like both of these patterns for multicolored yarns, and I am thinking of knitting a pair of socks that is one of each pattern, as a bit of a scientific experiment to compare the two. Time to rummage in the sock yarn drawer!
The other day, we had dinner at our friend Briana’s house. She has a lovely garden, but she also has a lot on her plate right now, so her roses were in serious need of some deadheading. I offered to deadhead for her (she was very happy about that), and I took some snapshots between snipping. I thought this pink rose was quite lovely.
To close, I want to show you the dessert I made for our Easter dinner. Pineapples were on sale, so I made some pineapple sorbet and served it with strawberries and some mocha shortbread I baked. I even garnished the plates with a sprig of mint! If only I had made some contrastingly colored sauce that I had drizzled all around, then we could call the plating “fancy-schmancy;” instead I think we just have to go with fancy. M liked this!
I also found some ink/navy yarn I had bought years ago when yarn shopping with a friend who thought I should knit lace gloves. Well, I really didn’t want to do that, but we were in a small yarn shop, and I felt the pressure to buy. The shop went out of business years ago, so this has been in stash for ages, and the friend dropped me when I wouldn’t read The Shack for her book group. Oh, well. I also had 2/3 of a skein this semi-solid burgundy, and I thought they would go together well in a chevron scarf. Plus it gave me a project for my cute knitting-sheep project bag.
I am using the simple pattern I made up from a chevron stitch pattern I found on the interwebs. That’s where the first 1/3 of the burgundy skein went. It really looks different when used with Woodland multi-color.
And what Easter Weekend post would be complete without some flowers? My three gerbera daisy plants survived our “winter” and two are blooming. They put up the flowers on four inch stems, like they weren’t real sure this was a good idea with our unseasonably cool spring, but the flowers are gorgeous.
Since, I don’t have much knitting to show (although I do have a couple FOs that need a photoshoot), I thought I’d share a couple of things that I really like using:
At my parents’ Christmas open house, my mom’s friend, Meg, tipped me off about the Working Hands cream from O’Keefe’s. A lot of hand lotions irritate my skin, but Meg assured me this one was different. The formulation attracts water from the air to rehydrate the skin without smothering the skin in any mineral oil or petrolatum, both of which irritate me. It really works well. You use it before bed and it leaves the skin a tiny bit tacky–it doesn’t stop me from reading a book or using my iPad–but by morning your skin is as soft and smooth as a baby’s bottom. I gave some to my mom, and she loves it too. She uses it on her feet also.
The book darts are so handy for marking places in cookbooks and knitting books and the like, where finding a place quickly is good. They are so thin that one would have to use a lot of them to distort the spine, and they are much more subtle than a post-it. I keep the sock toe grafting instructions in Sally Melville’s The Purl Stitch marked, as I can never remember how to get the grafting started.
M and I only own one vehicle, a 2003 Ford Ranger. If we ever have to get a second vehicle, or when we have to replace our Ranger, I would like to get something with this sort of duochrome finish that looks like a soap bubble or oil slick:
When I showed this photo to M, which really doesn’t do the finish justice, he said, “Hmmmmm…” I’m taking that as an enthusiastic yes!
I think once it heals up some, I shall try to knit the second sock of this pair, which I have knit on wooden needles (Harmony dpns from Knitpicks). The wood slows me down a bit compared to my nickel-plated favorites, and my grip must loosen, or I would break them. In any event, I love this sock with its stripyness and its BFL wool (which I can’t find the ball band for at this time, but I will by the time I finish).
I have been doing a lot of reading (very easy on the elbow), and I owe thanks to the people who recommended I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, when I requested good space opera titles to read. If you are a reader and are on Goodreads, look me up there! I know I am already friends on Goodreads with several of you, and I have gotten very good suggestions from your reading. Old Man’s War is great fun; I highly recommend it if you like science fiction (or just like a great adventure story). I still need to write my review for Goodreads, but I am giving it 5 stars.
At this time of year, parking in the tree-shaded parking lots at work is a hazard if you leave after sunset. The crows fly into town every evening to roost in the trees. It’s quite a site (and noisy!). I took this photo parked in the middle of a lane, and I hoped nothing flying over my head felt the need to relieve itself. They start at the top and work their way down (pays to be the early bird), so those trees are just starting to be filled.
Also at this time of year, the narcissus are in bloom!
Finally, M and I continue to try new cocktails. The Diabolo was quite tasty (rum, Cointreau, dry vermouth and Angostura bitters).