Hiatus for Food

OK, this is primarily a knitting blog, and will remain so, but permit me a small detour to discuss and show pictures of the vegan cooking I've been doing lately. YUM! These recipes are from Vegan With A Vengeance.
The first picture is Spicy Indian Rice and Chickpea/Spinach Curry. Delish!

The second picture is Chipotle and Black Bean Stew with Vegan Cornbread. The cornbread recipe came from the website affiliated with the book: www.theppk.com. These meals rocked! People who know me know that I'm not much of a cook, that I don't usually enjoy it very much and avoid it when possible. But something about these healthy, tasty meals is turning me around. Tonight I'm making an eggplant curry with rice.

Tigger sweater for Claire

Here's the front of a sweater that Claire and I are knitting together. It's the "Camping Out" pattern from the book "The Yarn Girls' Guide to Knits for Older Kids" using the same yarn pictured in the book, which is incidentally named Tigger and not merely "7052" as the book suggests. Isn't Tigger much better? Me thinks it's going to be adorable! My boyfriend Nigel is walking by in the background. Doubtless he is thinking, "Where's my binary scarf, goddammit?!" *blush* I haven't worked on that pesky scarf in months!

Nine months later!

Wow, it's been so long since I've posted, I could have gestated a human during my absence.

But I didn't.

I've just been moving in with my boyfriend (who incidentally is firing blanks, so no baby!) and selling my house and opening my own private practice and raising my daughter and enjoying life.

And doing very little knitting.

But, I will post what projects I've been up to, knitting and otherwise.

Cabled Hat

I had a craving to knit cables the other day, so I found a suitable hat pattern at Knitting Pattern Central and started this hat with some leftover Paton's Merino from all my felted bowl projects. I'm not sure if I'll keep it for me or give it as a gift -- this project is more about process than product.

Binary Scarf in Progress!

I started this Binary Scarf for Nigel. He went gaga over the pattern when he saw it. In fact, he spotted it on boingboing.net before I'd even seen it where it's published (latest issue of knitty, of course!)

It's my first significant intarsia work, so it's slow going and I'm not sure I'll finish it before the cold weather ends this season. The pattern called for Supersaver acrylic, but I just couldn't do that on such a big project (call me a fiber snob, I don't care!) so I'm using 100% wool: Paton's Merino for the black and Cascade 220 for the green.

This project is also my first opportunity to use the interchangeable knitting needle set that Nigel gave me for Christmas (one of many awesome gifts that Nigel gave me, xoxoxo). I'm knitting in the round using two circular needles.

The end of the felted bowl saga

My family seemed to like the felted bowls I gave as Christmas gifts. Here's some of my family members pretending to mistake the bowls for hats: two sisters on the left, two nieces and a nephew.

My sister's hand!

Per my sister Michelle's not-so-subtle hint, I knit her a pair of fingerless gloves in black. She loved them! This is her hand.

Manos hat in a jiffy!

Last night I decided to finally do something with the one skein of multi-colored Manos del Uruguay that I've been hanging onto and admiring for months. Voila! A chunky ribbed hat. I made up the pattern myself as I went along, holding two strands together and using circular size 15 needles. Me likey! But I think it might need a pom-pom!?

MORE felted bowls

I've decided that the Patons yarn felts up better than the Cascade. See how the red bowl at upper left shrunk more, and the stitches aren't visible? That's the only bowl in this picture knit with Patons. The rest are Cascade 220, and I re-felted them trying to get them to shrink and felt more, to no avail. Maybe I should felt them yet again? I like the color selection with Cascade better than Patons, at least what is easily available to me at local shops. The Cascade is felting tolerably -- the bowls hold their shape and all -- but compared to the Patons, it's leaving me frustrated.

At any rate, I have this pattern memorized! It's from one of my favorite books, One Skein: 30 Quick Projects to Knit and Crochet

Crop-tee for Daisy

I knit this crop-tee for my niece Daisy's fifth birthday, but I haven't sent it to her yet. Bad auntie! Get this in the mail! She lives in L.A., so I thought a loosely knit cotton crop top would be appropriate. The yarn is Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille in pink multi. The pattern is loosely based on the ballet tee in the book Loop-d-Loop: More than 40 Novel Designs for Knitters

Sock in progress

This is my first attempt at socks. This project is on hold until my holiday gift knitting is done, plus I got tired of the slooooow progress of knitting on tiny size 2 needles with sock yarn. It's like knitting with toothpicks and dental floss! I like how it's looking, though. It's a pattern from knitty. I can't remember what this yarn is exactly; the colors appealed to me.