Vegetables!

All of these are growing on our little porch.


















Tomatoes



















Red Bell Peppers



















Cucumbers

Currently Amusing Me

H-Post

Good Things:

• Coatless weather
• Salami, cheddar and apple sandwiches
• Fat quarter sewing projects
• Easter candy
  

Not-So-Good Things:

• Possibly allergic to my lace project
• Incredibly loud and semi-constant "WHAM-WHAM-WHAM" noise which has plagued my building of residence since January. Let's fix that shit, management company.
  

In Action

I finally got around to making that pie.













Pre-baking















Apple pie!


The bird did help quite a bit with the venting, but I think I left the pie in a liiiittle bit too long, and it did boil over a teensy amount on one side. He hasn't been used in years, so I'm thinking he's just out of practice. He'll have another chance soon, I'm sure.

Travel, a Gadget, and a Little Bit of Knitting

I went to Seattle and I only took one photo.













Then I went to Massachusetts and didn't take any photos at all. I spent time with my grandmother, who was in the mood to get rid of old kitchen stuff. We made a pile to keep, a pile to have a yard sale with, and a little pile of things she was done with but which I wanted to keep.

















This little guy is one such item. He's the only thing I carried home with me on the plane, since he's small and relatively unbreakable, and because I want to use him soon. He's a pie bird, which (as my grandmother explained) is a device placed in the center of a two-crust pie to vent the steam from inside to keep pies from boiling over. Genius! I've always had trouble with apple pies leaking all over the inside of the oven - and then smoking the next time I preheat - but now I think I'll be all set. I'll post again once I've put him to the test.

I've been doing a ton of knitting, but at present I have almost nothing to show for it. Some of it is secret, and some of it is just really dull unfinished sweater, and a little bit of it is nearly finished adorableness which I'll be posting next. But for now, a sock in progress:













This is the cuff of the Through the Loops Socktoberfest Mystery Sock 2009. The yarn is Araucania Ranco Multy, which I picked up at My Sister's Knits last week or the week before. (It was in the 50% off sale bin and I can't resist sale bins.) I went to Kirsten's blog last night (after midnight) to see what the gauge was and the first clue was up, so I cast on and stayed up past two to finish the clue. I think I'd get more knitting done if more patterns were this modular and more people were willing to spoon-feed them to me a little bit at a time.

Knitting an Omelette?

No, it's my La La's Simple Shawl, made in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock (color is Sunshine Stripe, a Purl Soho exclusive color - thanks Jenny!) It just happened to be Tyler's breakfast's twin on Sunday morning. For some reason, yellow and white together always make me think that things look like eggs (including Big Bird's forehead, which has reminded me of scrambled eggs since childhood). I don't even like cooked eggs, really: they're too squeaky.

And speaking of Tyler, I'm almost done with his new* sweater!













*According to Ravelry, this thing has been in progress since 2007. That is a long time to wait for a sweater, but this thing has given me problems. I started with an Elizabeth Zimmermann Seamless Raglan Sweater pattern, but the proportions didn't make sense with the measurements I'd taken, so I tweaked the numbers quite a bit. Then I tweaked them back towards the guidelines to avoid gorilla armpits (mostly successful, if he keeps his arms up).

Then I knit for ages and ages, and the knitting was finished. He tried it on, and it was about 4" too long. So I let it languish for a looong time, and he was very patient and good about not bringing it up. A few days ago I got a very innocent "So, do you think my sweater will be done in time for cold weather this year?" I had promised him it would be done for cold weather LAST year, so I immediately made him try it on again in case it had magically shortened itself. It hadn't, and he hadn't gotten any taller, so I set about to shorten the damn thing.

The sweater is worked in the round from the bottom up, with a knitted-in hem. This meant that I needed to either take the whole thing apart from the neckline down to below the armpits (not gonna happen, dear) or cut it near the bottom, remove length, and reknit the hem in the opposite direction, then sew it in place - not an attractive option, since I really like the finished edge on the original hem. I ended up snipping the yarn 4" into the Stockinette above the hem and picking up the live stitches above the snip (all five million of them), then unraveling down to the row above the hem and picking those stitches up as well. Then I kitchenered the two sets together, which took two days. It was worth it, since the length is now perfect.

Now I just have to teach myself duplicate stitch and apply the crest. Maybe by spring?

All my friends live in Awesometown

This arrived in the mail on Thursday:














It's some of Ann's handspun Weaverknits Awesometown, which is sometimes available here in her Etsy shop. It's also an heirloom bread recipe, Bread for the People, which I am itching to try. Thanks Ann - your very own copy of my heirloom bread recipe (Bollar) will be on its way to you in short order, possibly hand-delivered.

When it Rains it Pours

Recently on the blog I bemoaned the unavailability of Cadbury Mini Eggs (my favorite candy ever) in Hyde Park. I also recently made a deal with the lovely Kate to trade some of my Araucania Nature Cotton for some thrifted/recycled cashmere/silk in a beautiful sky blue.

Today I got a package in the mail containing this assortment:


















Don't you just love those teeny mini-skeins? I think it's funny that I also got some vegetable seeds, presumably to balance out the 40 ounces of milk chocolate. Maybe I should plant one of the eggs and try to grow a Cadbury tree.

Thanks so much Kate, this really made my day. I laughed for a long time.

H-Post

Good Things:

• grapefruit with turbinado sugar
• spending gift cards frivolously

Not-So-Good Things:

• fire alarm going off after midnight
• snow
• no Cadbury mini-eggs at CVS (tragic)

Excellent Things:

• spinach and tomato

Two Favorites

The first homemade iced coffee of spring:

French toast (made with homemade bread) and additional iced coffee.

Bread for Paupers

Today I made these:We are trying to stick to a weekly grocery budget of $X. Since X only buys so much, we are trying to do some of the usual items on the cheap. Last night we figured out that I could bake a loaf of bread for approximately half of what we'd spend on a comparable loaf at the store, so away I went. I didn't have any whole wheat flour in the house, so I used what I had to make this Amish White Bread. It's still cooling, so I don't know how it is yet, but the crumb that had stuck to the pan was tasty. I'll try it with dinner and report back.

UPDATE:
Never buying grocery store bread again.