Long time gone....

Well, I thought I would be able to update more often when I had my BlackBerry, and then even more so when I got a little NetBook, but to no avail. I have been a complete slacker when it comes to blogging and almost as much with my knitting.

In regards to my knitting, I am still plugging away at my step-mom's Clapotis. It has made considerable progress in the past few months and I feel that shortly I will be able to move on to the next section, so that I can finally get out of the straight rows section. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

The other project that I have currently been dedicating some serious time to is something that I hope I will use quite a bit next winter. I finally broke down and started the "February Lady Sweater". There was much agonizing over the yarn and color and all that other good crap, but I finally settled on an olive green ComfortDK yarn. I really love the "all purpose" color and the yarn is just so squishy that I think it is going to feel fantastic when it is done. So far, I have gotten the yoke completely done and am just waiting on ordering some more stitch markers from KnitPicks so that I can begin the lace work.

I know I could easily do the Gull Lace work without markers, but I just think it will go much faster and easier with the markers in there to keep the headaches and miscounted stitches at bay.

Anyway, I think that is the current projects in the works. Have a few in the back of my mind for some Noro Silk Garden Sock and Rowan Damask that I have recently purchased in the past few months...but that is just gonna have to wait on the back burner, have bigger things to ponder to day with a hot cup of coffee.

Hope to see you soon.....

Fighting the urge....

Alrighty, it is an average Thursday morning here and I am yet again fighting the early on-set of "startitis"....grrrrr!!!! What is a girl to do? Apparently, I have access to the Internet at work (no telling for how long though), and this causes me the dilemma of being able to get to Ravelry during the day, enabling me to look at patterns I want to try and things I want to knit.

I have been thinking about the "February Lady" Sweater for the past 6 months or so. I really do want to knit this and think that it would be a lot of fun and a real challenge to my skills. The first hurdle though is making sure I have enough yarn, which then presents challenge number two....do I have the money to buy more yarn? I Think I have solved both problems with one easy solution....Caron Simply Soft. I really think that this yarn would work great to try this sweater and it would then be washer friendly and if I either, didn't finish the piece (yeah...this is a side effect of startitis) or simply didn't like it in the end (not a likely thing), I would not feel overly guilty that I spent money on yarn and didn't like it. Especially since Walmart is selling Caron Simply Soft pretty cheap right now, since they are trying to get rid of whatever they have left in inventory. Heck, I managed to get 2 skeins of it the other day for a mere $2.88 per skein. Not a bad deal for the penny-pinching yarn addict that I am.

Anyway, I feel better now that I have confessed my desires for all the world and Internet to see....(not that I think all that many people actually read this thing, but hey...)

Tasty Eats....

OK....so I thought I would share something that I tried tonight, completely unrelated to knitting.

Not sure who actually reads this blog, but for those of you who know me on a personal level, you probably already know that I LOVE to cook, for those of you that don't know me...now you know my true passion.

I guess I should explain where this is coming from. I found out last Friday that the company that I work for is planning some layoffs. Not sure yet of any details, such as who, when or how bad it will be, as soon as I know more I can stop stressing. Soooooo....anyway, after having a nice long heart to heart with my Dad and Stepmom, I took some advice my Stepmom had given me, which was to think about my passion.

Well, I have always had a passion for cooking. I have worked in several food service jobs, ranging from "coffee girl" to waitress and the last time was as a cook and kitchen manager (by far and away my favorite). I love to come up with new ideas, create funky recipes and just cook in general. The prep has always been the most fun, but my favorite part has to be the eating!!! Not sure which I like better, eating my own food or watching others eat my cooking and enjoy it. Either way, it is a gratifying experience for me.

So, I don't know how far the "exploring my passion" thing is gonna go, but for right now, I am having a lot of fun with it and hopefully my friends will get to eat some tasty treats, as long as the wallet can withstand it.

Anyway, tonight...on my way home from work I stopped at Central Market to pick up some beets for roasting. I had seen this nifty recipe in the New York Times online and figured I would give it my own spin and see if it tasted as good as it sounded (I will post my version of the recipe at the bottom of this post). It also didn't hurt that I had seen another recipe for roasted beets over the weekend on the Food Network....figured, apparently this was a sign that I might wanna try some beets tonight...LOL!!!

Along with my beets, I grabbed some turkey thighs from the Meat Department (was much cheaper and I generally like the taste better than chicken). Figured since I was roasting one thing I might as well take advantage of the oven heat and just cook everything at the same time.

I got home, grabbed the carrots and celery out of the fridge that I have come to keep as a staple in the house lately (mainly due to the recent bonding I have done with my crock pot and slow cooker meals). I chopped a few carrots and 2 ribs of celery to put in the bottom of the baking dish I would be using for my turkey thighs, seasoned up the turkey with a good sage-based poultry rub I had grabbed at the last minute for 40 cents while I was at the market (best 40 cents ever spent). Then I that in the oven to start getting brown and started to work on my beets. By the time I was ready to lower the heat on the turkey, the beets were ready to put in the oven (roughly 15 minutes of prep....not too bad for a week night dinner).

About 1 hour later, dinner was done and ready to serve. HOLY MOLY!!!! I have to admit, that was probably one of the best dinners I have made myself in a LOOOOONG time. I highly recommend thought. Only thing I might try different next time is to add some goat cheese on top as a nice salty compliment to the sweetness of the beets.

Now...here is the recipe (more or less)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Roughly 2 pounds of beets (red or golden, if you can find them), peeled and diced in 1/2 to 1/4 inch cubes
2 Tbs olive oil (or just enough to coat the cut up beets)
Kosher salt to taste
2 Tbs Red Wine or Balsamic Vinegar (I used red wine this time, since it was what I had on hand)

Peel and chop the beets, place in a mixing boil. Pour in the olive oil, just enough to coat the beets so that they don't stick to the pan or burn.

After tossing in the bowl, place in a metal roasting dish or pan. Sprinkle with salt liberally and then sprinkle with the vinegar (this is to taste...I like things with a lot of vinegar, so I was pretty heavy handed with it).

Place roasting pan, with beets in preheated oven for about an hour, depending on how small you managed to dice the beets. During the cooking process, check the beets for doneness, stirring at the same time to ensure that they are evenly cooked.

Once they are tender, take out of the oven to cool for a short period before serving. I added another splash of vinegar, but that is discretionary...finally...serve and ENJOY!!!!

Year End Sale....Hurrah!!!

Alrighty then, I have not really spent any real time blogging in the past 6 months and I guess it is about damn time that I get caught up. I will try and review a few of the FO's from the past few months, there aren't too many of them, since I seem to have a pretty severe case of "finish-itis". I still have plenty of UFO's on the needles, but it seems that things are making progress each time I pull something from its current project bag.

Speaking of project bags, I have to say that I am now the proud owner of some of the coolest and (if I do say so myself) prettiest project bags that I have ever seen (other than Lara that is). Got two from Momma for Christmas/Chanukah, four from Carissa for my birthday and a few that I got on the pre-Thanksgiving trip to Momma's. As soon as I can wrangle a camera to borrow or impose on someone to take some pictures, I will post them here for all to see. The good ol' crackberry just doesn't do them justice at all.

So, anyway, back to FO's and UFO's. I have finished a hat or two, one scarf (the Hamburger Scarf), a few pairs of fingerless in varying patterns. I think somewhere along the way, I finished a "toy" bag (which has never been used). Other than that, it seems like everything else is still a WIP and trudging along slowly.

Have a Clapotis in progress, along with a Movie Shawl for my stepmom, midway up the calf on the second Neverending Knee High, a few inches into the Convertible Shawl (from the CEY Make it Modern pattern book). Have made marginal progress on the Pi Shawl, but lordy...that is the never ending project from Hell. I'm sure there are other things that are on the needles at the present time, but do to lack of sleep and exhaustion, I just can't seem to recount what all of them are.

I keep hearing the siren call of a new"er" queen size bed in my newly aquired larger apartment. I may have bitten off more than I can chew, thinking that I could post a coherent blog after only a mere 3 hours of sleep last night. For now, I think I am gonna hit the save button and come back this afternoon after I have taken a much needed nap.

Be back soon.....

Been gone too long....

Ok, it has been way too long since I have last blogged. In my own defense, it has mostly been that I don't have access to this website from work anymore and by the time I get home, I have no desire to do anything all that productive online. LOL

I have just today discovered how to post a blog from my handy, dandy CrackBerry that I so dearly love and cherish.

Anyway, now that I have the means and the knowledge I will do my best to try and post once in a while....so long as I don't wear out my thumbs in the attempt.

I was a bad, bad girl....

I promised myself I wouldn't buy anymore yarn for at least a month or two and especially not until the SnB Swap was over....but I just couldn't resist. I was at the Woolie Ewe yesterday (no shock there), but I was feeling the shopping urge. It was STRONG!!!

There, right on the floor, near the register...my temptation sat. It was a basket of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. I just could not resist the temptation, especially when it was at half off of $7.95. I had originally intended to only purchase one ball of yarn yesterday. It was gonna be the Debbie Bliss wool/cotton that I had found in the clearance section for a mere three dollars and change.

I was weak though, and I did succumb to the siren call of the Silky Wool, two skeins worth. It is a really pretty rust color and I think it will make a lovely fall scarf for me. If all else fails, I could even gift it after the fact. The decision now becomes...what stitch will I knit it up with? I am torn between a Mock Cable and a Simple Woven Stitch. My goal is to find a stitch that will highlight the tweedy-ness (is that even a word) of the yarn and show off the pretty color, yet make sure that the scarf lays flat when I wear it.

Now that I have confessed my yarn shopping sin...I feel much better.

On another note, I am almost done with the baby blanket and only have about 1 ball of yarn left. It has been decided, that the bind off will be a crocheted border resembling a scalloped edge. I am really looking forward to seeing what it will look like in the end. I will say, if I ever do this pattern again, instead of YO's for increases, I will just do a Kfb instead, so that the blanket has no holes, but still has the pretty swirl patter that I like so much. (must make mods)

In other news, the cupcake hat has been bound off, but the swirl-y topping has not been completed yet. I am on a quest for some white or cream colored DK weight yarn so that I can knit several feet of I-Cord and sew it on and be done with this insane idea. Maybe I will find a small amount of this at the Stash Swap this weekend....here's hoping.

Who'da thunk it???

Well, if you had asked me a few months ago, if anyone actually read this drivel that I type here...I would have said. "Are you kidding me? Maybe one or two folks, three...TOPS!!!" Apparently, though, there are more of you than I had realized, and I can't begin to tell you how happy that makes me. For whatever reason you may choose to read this, I thank you.

Anyway...onto more knit-worthy news. The Babyboo sweater has been cast on...I did the 19 rows of 141 sts of seed stitch starting on Friday night, finished it at Sunday's SnB and progressed to moving up the body of the sweater last night at the final Woolie Ewe "Knit Night" (until end of summer...insert sadness here). I am really happy with the progress to this point. I know I have miles to go before it even remotely begins to look like a sweater, but I feel like a champ for even having gotten it cast on and gotten it into the WIP column finally.

The baby blanket is making progress, steadily...I have decided that I want to do a scallop bind-off on the edge of it when I am done. This is assuming that I can figure out how to crochet the edging when Sue shows me how (Lord help that woman for being willing and patient enough to teach me anything...), but here is hoping. If all else fails, I can always fall back on the Picot bind-off I had been originally planning, since both options are gonna take at least half of the last ball of yarn.

I don't think there is too much progress on any other projects to speak of at this point. There are about 5 different project bags in the big bag, so I am sure that I am working on other things. It just seems that everything else is, for the most part, on the back burner right now and percolating just a bit. It is kind of nice to have a variety of things to work on at any given time. \

In other news, since I guess it is a well known fact that I am a complete Stitch Marker "ho", so to speak. The lovely Brenda from Sunday SnB, has given me the most lovely set of Celtic Stitch Markers. I really appreciate the lovely knitting bling, I know I will use them often and as soon as I can get a chance, I will take a picture of them, along with everything else I talked about and get it posted here. Just been a bit frazzled lately with other personal stuff keeping the brain a bit distracted and addled.

I was gonna write about some other stuff today, but being that my brain is not fully functional and I have yet to finish the first cup of coffee for the morning...I think I will get to doing that and starting the dreaded work day, at least it is Hump Day today....on the down hill slide to Friday!!!!