Oh, blog, how I neglect you!

Ok, so far my resolution to post more in 2008 might not be going so hot. Luckily there's plenty of time to rectify that!

First of all, thanks to all my Ravelry friends for the birthday messages! My 21st was lots of fun. I celebrated with my family, my boyfriend, & 2 of my closest friends at Xochimilco, a favorite Detroit Mexican restaurant. That picture on the left is of me there, about to take my first legal sips of delicious sangria!

This picture was also taken at Xochimilco:



Back in the day they used to have bulletin boards to display photos of customers' babies. They're still there, and that unbelievably cute one in the center of this, wearing the bonnet? That's yours truly, nearly 21 years ago! My family has been going to that restaurant since long before I was even dreamed of and I don't think we'll stop any time soon.

I have been getting some knitting done, but not much. I worked on Dashing (no, it's still not done, though we're in the home stretch!) in the Secretary of State office last week, waiting to renew my driver's license. I should knit in public more often! Sometimes I feel awkward about it but it's funny how happy it makes the people around you and how much they want to talk to you about it. It made the wait tolerable, anyway, which is saying a lot, as you know if you've ever had to sit on the floor of an unbelievably crowded office for a truly ridiculous amount of time.

The cardigan is slowly coming along, too. With any luck, I'll finish the first sleeve before much longer. Here it is this morning:



I made the seed stitch cuff a little shorter than recommended. I'm in love with the idea of an extra-long sleeve for extra warmth, but also very afraid I'll run out of yarn, so I'm cutting corners where I can. I love this yarn (Ironstone Harmony) and the broken needle has been scotch-taped and is holding together decently. It's not a bad project to work on, but it's a lot of stockinette and therefore a bit boring. I've been trying to work on it while watching TV, but thanks to the writers' strike (or, really, thanks to the networks' greed!) all the TV I've been watching lately is Planet Earth on DVD. If you've ever seen that show, you know that it's not one you can really knit during. It's so spectacular visually that I wind up throwing my needles aside & getting totally absorbed within the first few minutes. I'd highly recommend it, but not if you've got knitting you need to do!

There are a few other reasons for my slow knitting progress of late, and the main one is that I can't seem to stop reading. I've always been a big reader but I go through phases with it, as I do with most things. The last few months saw a brief lull, but in the last few weeks I've just been devouring books. Currently I'm in love with Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, which is about her family's year of eating locally & raising the majority of their own food. I may review it here when I'm done, since this blog is at least sort of about food as well as knitting. If nothing else, I'll be trying some of the recipes! This book has convinced me that I need to try all kinds of crazy things, including cheese-making. :)

On the baking front, no new cookies to report just yet. My step-mom gave me a huge platter of cookies & brownies on my birthday, so I'm waiting for those to disappear before I make any more. I did make banana bread the other night, though, and that was delicious. I'm a big banana bread fan and let me tell you, this recipe cannot be beat! It's really good with both chocolate chips and walnuts, though I haven't made it that way in a while. Next time!

I did get some cool food-related birthday presents, too. A friend's mom put together an awesome gift basket of obscure ingredients + a book called 100 Great Breads, so I have some interesting experiments ahead of me!

That's all for now and hopefully it won't take me another week to post again.