FO: Ilene Bag

I finished this awhile ago but waited until I could get some actions shots to post. Inside our entire haul from the first day of our local farmer's market.

Pattern: Ilene Bag by Hannah Ingalls
Yarn Louet Euroflax sport 1 skein
Needles: US5 and US3

I went down a needle size only because my 6s were otherwise occupied and I wanted a slightly tighter knit bag. I got this yarn in Portland Maine last summer and used all but a few inches of the skein. Despite the fact this thing killed my hands to make I'm really pleased with it. It is comfortable to wear and easy to knit. It also stretches like crazy, it held: Cabbage, collard greens, kohlrabi, beets, cucumber, broccoli, and spinach. Then we went off to pick some of these to make the most wonderful honey sweetened preserves (amazing on ice cream):

I love summer :)

A Case of the Mondays

Just as I sat down outside to get some knitting done my husband pulled in and it was time to start dinner. That just fit in with how the rest of the day went. I did have a chance to snap this quick photo of the shrug my sister asked me to make. She wanted Silver and sparkly, Woolworks did not disappoint as I found this Sugar Rush yarn made from sugar cane. It is great so far and more silver than this picture. I took this as an opportunity to come up with my own pattern and stop in to the anniversary sale...I think it looks good so far, hopefully she'll like it.

I meant to post this Friday but time got away from me. And I'm lazy lately. I stopped into a great place, Silver Circle Studio in Putnam on the way home from work Friday. I needed something to cheer me up after a long week so I got this awesome Annie Adams shawl pin, isn't it cool? It is a bit heavy so I guess I'll just have to make a sweater to go with it :) An interesting side note: The owner of the place is the sister in law to the pin creator so I got to learn a bit about how the jewelry is made. I highly recommend stopping in if you are in the area, there is some amazing art there.

New Distractions

My husband and I discovered an amazing place recently, a tropical greenhouse that specializes in container gardening. Logee's is such a fun place to walk around, they have lemons that weigh 5 pounds! We've been there twice already and have picked up a few fun items.


From left to right we have a Rex Jasmine, a pepper plant (the kind that give black pepper corns), Passiflora Possum Purple which will have purple fruit, Euphorbia milii 'Splendens' "Dwarf Crown of Thorns", an Arabica coffee plant, and a tart orange plant that already has the beginnings of tiny oranges. We got sucked in what can I say? The thought of growing edible products in the house was just too appealing. They seem to be doing well so far so I have high hopes. It also gave us an excuse to make a nice table together and spruce up the living room. The legs and wood plank were prefab but we assembled, sanded, and stained it ourselves which I think counts enough. I've become pretty obsessed with these plants, I love checking for growth and I may tell them they are pretty from time to time... Here is a close up of my favorite, the dwarf crown of thorns, aren't the flowers pretty? I love how it is both beautiful and dangerous :) I do highly recommend this place, it is truly amazing inside and we are lucky to be close. Be warned, even though it is a big place that will take awhile to get through it is a little cramped and impossible to leave without something... or several somethings :)


I have started knitting again, for awhile after making a tote bag out of linen I really couldn't do much. Hopefully this will be a calm week and I can show some of my stuff off.

FO: Vintage Pink Cardigan

Pattern: Vintage Pink Cardigan, Norah Gaughan
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light
Needles: US3 and US1

This has been done for quite some time but I just haven't had the time or energy to get some pictures and do a post. These aren't really flattering pictures, they don't do the sweater justice. I really like it. It has a nice classic look to it and some cool cabled detail. I didn't do any waist shaping since I was knitting for zero to negative ease and I think it worked well. Ultra Alpaca is one of the greatest yarns out there and even though it isn't the perfect yarn for this I think it worked ok. I didn't get row gauge so even after adding some length I still had fewer buttons than called for. I had to fudge the armhole shaping but it seemed to work out, the fit in that area is fine. The sleeve length is longer because I was too lazy to do the math but I don't really mind that. This think knit up fast which totally boggles my mind, I swear I've knit things on larger needles that have taken much longer. The only downsides to this are that is shows dog fur like crazy and the buttons keep popping open. I have replaced them once with larger ones but the YO buttonholes are just too loose for my liking, maybe next fall I'll have the energy to fix them up.

A test of Patience

This ball of yarn may not seem like much but it represents a big win for me. This was over 1400 yards of tangled mess after I dyed it with Kool-aid. It has taken many many hours to untangle but I am now glad I resisted the urge to give up. I win! I am so close to finishing the sleeves of my black cardigan that I decided to sit down after work today and finish untangling. Once I got past the last knotty area it was smooth sailing and only took about a half hour. YES! Now to wind it into equal balls and cast on for a new shall. This makes me happy. But now you see why I had no blog material for quite some time.

In other news I've been on somewhat of a health kick (I use this term liberally) lately. You see, sometime last year I went to turn on a burner on our stove and screws fell out. Luckily it didn't turn on, but it never worked again. Shortly there after another one began to randomly shut off. So we bit the bullet and got some new appliances. We now have a fancy (to me) new convection oven. We didn't set out to get a convection oven but it just happened to be a feature of the type of stove we wanted. I love to bake. Well, I love to eat baked goods and will pretty much do anything necessary to do so. This oven can bake several trays of cookies, muffins, etc at once to perfection. I've used it several times a week since we got it. So baking is super easy now which is a problem to my expanding waistline. So in order to indulge and achieve my goal of being able to eat cookies everyday I set out to find healthy recipes. I used this recipe for muffins but used 1c whole wheat flour, 1/2c cake flour, only 1c oat bran, and no oil. I also added cinnamon and nutmeg. I don't think I subbed the eggs with flax seed but I've done it before and it really works. Unfortunately I only had 3/4c of applesauce. They were so good! Had I had the whole cup of applesauce they would have been even more moist. I suggest adding berries for more interest I just didn't have any. I was going to make them again today but forgot to stop for fruit. Bummer.

I also tried this recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies but cut the white sugar out (my husband and I agree they would have been way too sweet with it) used whole wheat flour with a touch of cake flour, and cut the salt by half. Next time I'll try subbing some of the butter and maybe the eggs but these are really good cookies. I'm not too concerned with cholesterol since my husband is a vegetarian so eliminating eggs isn't a major concern. Since I freeze some scoops of each batch of raw dough on a cookie sheet and bag for later use I may pop a few in the oven right now... Man I love cookies. It took me awhile to discover freezing but I am glad, fresh baked cookies after a long day are awesome. Last tip, chill the dough, it really helps the flavor. Ok, that's all. Thanks for letting me blab on about yummy treats :)

Where does the time go?

Well, unfortunately I don't have much to say lately. I didn't finish my knee socks for Easter, in fast I am only now to the heel. They are tedious and make my hands hurt. I really don't want to look at them anymore right now. So come Saturday when I knew there was no way I could knit two sock feet in one night I returned to something I do like knitting, my Vintage Cardigan, put the socks into time out. I now have the back, right front, and ribbing of the left front done. This thing flies off the needles which has me dumbfounded. A US3 knit sweater so fast? Crazy. I'm going to stick with this magic sweater for the time being, hopefully I'll even get one wearing in before it gets too warm. I shall try to dedicate some more blogging time soon, there are tasty treats I want to share :)


Boy does that sweater show dog fur!

New Beginings

I've started two new projects recently. Norah Gaughan's Vintage pink cardigan in some lovely black ultra alpaca. I bought this yarn some time last year to make a Harry Potter themed sweater but decided I didn't want it in black. In my goal to knit through my stash and not buy knitty things through lent I decided to use it for this sweater. I've been wanting to make it for ages, I think I bought the magazine on my first trip to WEBS a couple of years ago. It is coming along nicely despite being knit on US3 and not getting enough attention.


The second, more tedious project is some Clessidra knee socks. I've been wanting to make these for awhile too. I don't know how I feel about them yet. They are a bit tedious but now that I have the cable charts memorized I'm hoping they go faster. I wanted these for Easter but I'm not sure if that is a possibility. My knitting time just seems to be getting shorter and shorter.