Fall yarn.

Do you feel like I end every other post here with "and then I bought some pretty yarn, which I promise I will show you soon" but then never actually show you any yarn? That's probably because that's pretty much what I do. In an effort to correct this (and because I couldn't think of anything else I really wanted to talk about for today's NaBloPoMo post), I photographed my two most recent yarn purchases. We all know I'm predictable as can be when it comes to most of my color choices (green, green, brown, green, blue, green, green again...), but something about the stunning leaves this autumn made me really want to branch out (no pun intended). I searched in vain for yarn that came even remotely close to capturing the gorgeous oranges, golds, and reds I saw around me. Nothing was really doing it for me until I finally found these at Knit A Round:


That's Claudia's Hand Painted fingering weight yarn in the colorway Copper Pennies. I think it has a bit more orange in it than came through in this photo.
I still can't get over how insanely beautiful this yarn is, and I'm undecided on what to do with it. Claudia's is great for socks, of course, and this would make the most beautiful pair of socks in the whole world, but I might want to use it for something a little more visible. Any ideas?

During that same trip I picked up some lovely worsted weight Malabrigo, which will be a hat of some nature:


It's more reddish in real life but just as deliciously soft as it looks.
Hopefully my neighbors weren't looking out their windows just now, but if they were oh well -- I mean, who doesn't balance yarn on a corn stalk & photograph if from time to time?

National Blog Posting Month.

After waffling about this for weeks, I've decided to bite the bullet & announce that I'm going to spend November doing National Blog Posting Month, better known as NaBloPoMo. It's a pretty simple idea: post one entry every day for the whole month. This may seem laughable coming from someone who has only posted 42 entries in the last 10 months, but it's worth a shot! I figure some days will see long entries and others will just get a photo or a link. Most of the content will be knitting or food related, but I will certainly be branching out more than usual with photo posts, reviews, perhaps a bit of personal stuff, and likely some political posts.

For today I just want to show off my Halloween costume! Most of you are probably sick to death of seeing it, but I love it too much to stop spreading these pictures around. Before this I hadn't dressed up in several years and the costume was completely last-minute, which is why I'm beyond thrilled that it came together so well.

Yep, I was Frida Kahlo!


Here I am on the porch -- doesn't my mom do the best autumn decorations?
More tomorrow!

PS: Today is my Ravelry account's first birthday! What a fantastic site.

Tasty Pumpkin Muffins!

I made the best muffins tonight! I might try to perfect the recipe later but here it is for now (it's basically a variation on the aforementioned pear bread recipe):

Pumpkin Muffins!

• 3 cups flour (I used half whole wheat & half all-purpose)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
• generous pinch of allspice
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 cups pumpkin puree
• splash vanilla extract

Mix together the flour, baking soda & power, salt, and spices in a large bowl. In another bowl combine the butter, eggs, sugar, pumpkin, and vanilla. Stir until well combined, then add to the flour mixture, stirring just until batter is evenly moist. Fold in the nuts.

Pour batter into prepared muffin tins and bake at 350º for about 25-35 minutes, until muffins are brown & crisp on the top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

(For the sugar this time I used a combination of Sucanat, brown, and white sugar because we were running out of white sugar. Then, of course, I discovered a whole new bag of it in the back of the pantry. Still, I'd like to try these with only Sucanat someday, I think it might work well (and be better for you). Also my pumpkin puree didn't come to quite two cups, but it was close. I'd also like to try substituting grated apples &/or pears for part of the pumpkin sometime.)

Go make these now & serve them with some good apple cider. They're the most perfect autumn muffins I've had so far.

Hi internet!

Well, I still have no exciting knitting to show you -- I'm slowly plodding along on the same few projects I feel like I've been working on for years. I did just order a sweater's worth of yarn from KnitPicks, though! I'm hoping that'll help inspire me pick up the pace. I'm going to use this pattern but attempt to do it as a top-down raglan to avoid the hell of seaming. We'll see how that goes.

I have been cooking & baking a bit lately, though! I'm trying really hard to make a big dish or two at the beginning of each week so I can take leftovers to school or my internship as needed. It's a better plan than spending tons on eating out every day, anyway. Here are some of the best things I've made recently:

• Broccoli Crunch Salad: I made this this week & it might be my favorite thing. The dressing is unbelievably delicious! There's really not much else to say about this except that it's awesome & you should make it right now. It's even good for you!


• Orzo salad: I kind of made this up after having something similar at a grad party. I feel like it could be even better (and healthier) with some more veggies or something, but so far it goes like this: make some orzo and when it's finished stir in some butter, olive oil, feta cheese, fresh basil, and toasted sliced almonds. The version I had at the party had cherry tomatoes, which seem like a good idea for those of you who are into that kind of thing (I am not, unfortunately). I think I also added some chopped spinach once & that was pretty good. What I really love about this is that it keeps well and tastes fantastic at any temperature.


• Pear bread: I used walnuts instead of pecans, halved the recipe, and made just under a dozen perfect pear muffins. They were moist and flavorful and very, very autumnal. I wish they hadn't all disappeared so quickly!

I do still have a huge backlog of pictures to show you, so here are some of the cute alpacas I met in Illinois when I was there in August:


This one never fails to crack me up.


Look at those eyelashes!


And this is an alpaca named Acorn eating out of my hand -- can you imagine anything more adorable?!
The alpacas at Kickapoo Creek Alpacas were all extremely friendly and not too shy, which I hear is uncommon. I feel very lucky to have spent some time with them & I am still dreaming of maybe having my own someday. I did buy some alpaca yarn, of course, which I'll show off soon!

Eek!

Hey blog! How've you been in the past, um, month? I've been busy! First I went to Illinois, then my new semester started up, then I got really sick, then my computer died, then I got an internship & a job, then the upcoming election ate the remains of my free time, energy, and attention span (sometimes it tries to get my will to live and faith in humanity as well, but I'm doing my best to cling to those!).

All of that hasn't left much time for knitting, much to my dismay -- I haven't finished a single project since the Ravelympics. :( I'm hoping to turn that around soon. Today I traveled to Lansing to spend a very fun day at Threadbear, where I fondled lots of GORGEOUS yarn, took a bit of it home with me, and generally had an amazing time celebrating Shorty's birthday. It was a very inspiring day and I think it's safe to say I'm back on the knitting bandwagon. I promise to post again soon, and I have all kinds of pictures I need to share with you, too! I hope you're all well.

Final Ravelympics Update!

After doing the first Chevalier mitten, the second one just sorta flew by! I didn't finish the thumb on it until this morning, though, so really I finished up just in time:

I LOVE these mittens! That photo doesn't entirely do them justice, so I will certainly try to take some better ones soon. They are just perfect, though! The cable pattern is beautiful and they fit me just right. I do think some light steam blocking might be a good idea, so I'm going to give that a shot soon, but basically I'm thrilled with them as they are.

You might remember that I did have another Ravelympics project, the Juniper Mitts. Well, I made one. It knit up quickly and the yarn I had looked phenomenal with the stitch pattern...but I really disliked the construction of the mitts themselves. They were basically just knitted tubes with a little hole for your thumb to pop out, which made them fit awkwardly & not look terribly attractive. I'm waffling on whether to make a second one, but at this point I'm strongly leaning toward just frogging the one I did make and using the yarn for something I like better. Oh well.

I'm still so happy I participated in the Ravelympics! It was really fun and motivated me to actually start & finish two great projects that otherwise could've languished in my interminable queue for years.

Now that I'm slightly mittened out my thoughts are turning to socks & sweaters. I still really want to make myself a nice fall sweater and I've been spending truly ridiculous amounts of time on Ravelry looking through basically every sweater pattern in the world, trying to finally make up my mind as to which of them is worthy of my time & effort. My standards are entirely too high but I am starting to narrow it down and with any luck I'll be ordering some yarn & getting started before much longer!

First I need to find something small to cast on for today, though. I have a long bus ride down to Illinois coming up tomorrow and I definitely want to spend it working on some socks (or maybe a hat, or maybe another cowl...). I'll be in Illinois all week, so you may not hear from me for a while, but when I get back I should have plenty of fun things to show you. If all goes well I should be visiting an ALPACA FARM (!!!!!!!) during my stay, which means you can look forward to all kinds of adorable alpaca photos and, if I'm really lucky, some pretty new yarn!

Ravelympics: one project down!

So I've officially finished one of my three mitten projects! Evangeline:



Overall I'm pretty happy with them. There is a subtle error in the cabling on the left glove, though, which drove me nuts when I figured it out last night. Of course I was far past it when I noticed it, and frogging back would've involved unpicking the bind-off for the thumb stitches. After some contemplation I decided it wasn't really worth the trouble. Not that I don't want them to be perfect, of course, but the mistake is barely even noticeable. A few times I've looked down & been unable to find it for a minute or two, and I know exactly where & what it is! So at this point I'll be interested to see if Linn notices it without me saying something...

The yarn, Berocco Comfort, was easily the nicest synthetic yarn I've ever used. It's soft with great stitch definition & nice colors. If you're going to use it, though, be forewarned that it must the splittiest yarn in the entire world, which isn't disastrous but can make it a bit of a pain to use. Still, I think it was a good choice for this project!

Ravelympics: halfway there!

So we're about halfway through the Ravelympics and I'm a little less than halfway through my projects. I did just finish the first Evangeline mitt, though!

I think I like it! It's in between the wrist & elbow length variations and I completely changed the thumb. I wish I'd made the thumb part a bit longer, actually, but considering that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I decided to add a gusset, I think it looks pretty decent! Hopefully Linn (the recipient) will agree. Now that I've figured out how to do the thumb and the length I want, I'm hoping the second mitt will go by quickly.

I've only barely started on the Juniper Mitts. My brilliant plan was to save most of the work on them for my long bus ride to Illinois on the 25th. They're certainly easy enough for that and I'll want something to occupy the time anyway. It only occurred to me today that perhaps I should look into when the Ravelympics end. As I'm sure most of you smarter people were already aware, they're definitely over on the 24th. Damn! So much for my bus knitting -- time to get to work!

Quick Ravelympics Update.

I've almost finished my first Chevalier mitten! Only the thumb is left to be done. Here it is a few days ago:



It's much more impressive-looking now, so new photos will follow before too long. I'm pretty ridiculously proud of it so far -- it's definitely one of the more complicated patterns I've attempted! Not that it's really hard to do, exactly, but you definitely have to pay attention.

Though the actual thumb isn't done yet, the little thumb hole looks good. I was nervous about this because the thumbs on Dashing and Fetching came out looking a little weird. On Chevalier you need to cast on stitches in the middle of a row to bridge the gap above the thumb-hole. I'd only previously attempted casting on in the middle of the row under the sleeves on my Cloud Bolero and, to put it as kindly as I can...it looked like crap. After some Googling, though, I found this marvelous tutorial on how to cast-on in the middle of a project. I followed it and everything looks lovely!

I've also made some progress on Evangeline. Here's the first mitt a few days ago:


It's gotten just a bit longer since then.

No pictures for Juniper yet. I did cast on for it on the 8th, because I liked the idea of starting all of my projects on the first day, but it needs to be restarted. I was doing the medium/44 stitch version because I'm probably going to give the mitts to Brian, but it was coming out looking much too huge. It did look pretty cool, though, so I'm looking forward to restarting! After all of this cabling it'll be nice to do something a little mindless. (Honestly, even the phrase "miles of stockinette" is sounding slightly appealing at the moment...)

Anticipation + a new cowl.

Just a few more days until the Ravelympics!! I'm so so eager to start my projects. I bought the last of the necessary yarn & needles yesterday (or, more accurately, my supremely generous/enabling Aunt Andrea bought them for me during our day of adventures). Here's what I'm making (Ravelry links):

• Chevalier Mittens for me, in a gorgeous dusty blue Cascade 220 Heather.
• Evangeline, elbow length, for my wonderful friend Linn. (Usually I don't blog about in-progress gifts for friends unless I'm fairly certain said friends don't read this. Linn does read this, actually, but I'm making an exception for the Ravelympics & I'm sure she'll understand.) She's allergic to all animal fibers and I'm not too experienced with plant fiber so I picked up some beautiful turquoise-y Berroco Comfort. It's an acrylic/nylon blend and probably the softest synthetic yarn I've ever felt.
• Juniper Mitts using the rest of my Mountain Goat yarn in the Juniper colorway (that's the stuff I used on my cowl). I haven't decided yet about keeping these or giving them away.

So do you think I can manage all of that in 17 days?! It'll be fun to try, anyway!

Last night I started a new cowl, since I loved the last one so much and I'd been dying to cast on for something with the Malabrigo Silky Merino I bought recently. This yarn, you guys! It is beyond perfect. I've gotten carried away and proposed marriage to it a few times. It's soft, it's squishy, it's a dream to work with, and the color is just beautiful:


(That's my lavender plant creeping in at the top of the photo.)
The cowl is just star stitch, inspired by the Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks scarf. I had to practice the stitch a lot before I started this -- it's a little tricky! It's not exactly easy on the hands, either, what with all the p3tog. But isn't it lovely?