I present Woodland Sage Hitofude!

I had to wait until Thanksgiving morning to get photos of the finished cardigan. Sorry I made you wait for the final unveil. I needed to stack the posts for the end of the month and as mentioned, earlier in the week, when this posts, I'll be at the beach. ;-)

My stitch count may have more. There was that whole figuring out that the pattern didn't match up so tinking and re-doing. Plus there were extra stitches to do the bind off, but I just counted the row stitches because I was tired and didn't want to try to figure out how many there were. I definitely met the goal of 50, 000 stitches! NaKniSweMo target accomplished! There are about 69206 stitches.

My lovely Woodland Sage Hitofude:

My dear husband needs to look behind me and move me. Also full sun in the face isn't good. But was in a hurry to get them done.Maybe better ones at the beach!

I'm going to get a lot of use out of this cardigan! This is going to take me through the end of Fall, through Winter and all the way through Spring. It has also made me want to knit another cardigan, but one out of a heavy weight yarn. I think I might have enough yarn to do the Central Park Hoodie - Michele happens to have a purple one here. I have that purple yarn that is multi-toned:

I think I'm going to over dye it and a bit of purple Cascade 220 so that I have enough yardage. Since the hoodie portion of it is done last, I may opt to forego that part. The temptation is to jump in and strike while the iron is hot, but reality says, I need to get some projects done for the munchkins towards Christmas gifts.

If you hadn't figured it out yet, I was also quietly trying to do NaBloPoMo. I found out about it a couple days too late to get in on the possible prizes but figured why not do it anyway? ;-) Hence why the great unveil was the last post of the month. I have no idea how many of the family look at my blog. It's not hidden from them, but over the month of December I'll try to do better than one post a week or one for the month and continue regular blog posts. There's a Yule event too to share.

(The Hitofude is entered in the NaKniSweMo group's prize category for meeting the goal, if you're a member of Ravelry you can see it here.)
Thank you for visiting!

Ack! Dropped Stitches!!

I finished the Hitofude Cardigan late Wednesday afternoon. Gave it a nice hot soak in some Eucalan with Lavender. Took it out squeezed out the water by hands as much as possible, then put it in a towel, rolled it up and squished it out some more. Then laid it out on my bed to block and dry:

Poor lighting to show the details. I had to stand on the bed and look down to get this shot. You'll have to wait to see it all dry.

 Imagine my horror when I looked down and saw this:

ACK! Somehow a slip, slip knit came undone. I've had this happen a few times and don't full understand how it happens. The stitch gets purled on the next row, but this was clearly undone and two stitches to grab a hold of and fix. This was the upper body above the ribbing band. I can tell where the fix is, but you'd have to be looking for it to see it thankfully. 

Lighting can make things interesting

The sun was hitting the one bloomed Christmas Cactus bloom glow in cool ways. Trying to capture it with the camera was my challenge:

Flash making it glow

Another flash

I think maybe a better camera might have gotten exactly what I was seeing, but these were fun to get.

Hope you're having a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

Almost done pics

This is where I started out this morning. I knit until about 1:30am Tuesday night. This is three-quarters of the way done with the last chart, Chart E:

I had to dip into the seventh ball of Knit Picks Gloss yarn. (Looks like the Woodland Sage must be discontinued, closest is Jade.) My swift gets noisy towards the end, doing it at midnight was a bit noisy, but thankfully didn't wake anyone up.

As you can see from the last shot above, there's definitely spread in the lace patterning. I'll have to see how that shows up with the finished cardigan. 

To Brine or Not to Brine

We're going down to family in Corvallis for Thanksgiving dinner, but as mentioned the other day, the beach for the weekend. We also received a 22# turkey from grocery shopping. I thought I'd bring the bird along with roasting pan to cook up Friday for dinner and nibbles over the weekend.

I'm planning early though for how to cook the darn thing. It's currently a brick in the freezer, but needs to defrost.

How do you defrost your turkey safely?

I did do a brine one year, but honestly don't remember how it came out. Brandon came home last Friday talking about Alton Brown's method of cutting out the back bone and flattening the turkey but also doing a brine.

This recipe looked like it had possibility. Here's Alton's dry brine with 'butterflied' turkey. Since I don't want to have to clean the oven rack, I'm not sure I want to cook it that way. Don't think all those veggies would be popular with all the people either.

Anyone have brine experience that can offer words of wisdom?

Going for the gusto

I'd love to have this cardigan done on Wednesday and be able to wear it to Thanksgiving. Its going to be nice to have, but I'm getting bored. it needs to get done or it won't be done. Know what I mean? ;-)

Night pics of how far I've gotten since last night:

See how the pattern is 'growing'?

Wondering if its going to have enough length. 

The wonderful thing about lace type projects is that they allow for growth through blocking. Of course, its deceptively short right now and making me think that I may want to try to add a 'chart f''. I'm not though.

So as of right now, I'm done with Chart D. Yeah, stayed up late last night and got six rows of Chart C done. Finished the last two rows of it this morning and then started Chart D and worked half of it. Gave myself an hour of LOTRO, then dinner making. Another little bit after dinner and then while catching up on shows we missed last week slogged out the last eight rows of the chart. That's 4008 stitches for the day. 2976 last night. I'm about 81% done according to my math, but it may be off, because I just realized I missed a setup row for the ribbing.

Just twenty-three more rows to go! I'm increasing another thirty-six stitches so each row is 444 stitches, if you want to have some math fun. ;-)

50,678 stitches

This is what it looks like with that many stitches:

Middle of Chart C and I have D and E with an inch or so of ribbing to do. It's still kind of bolero-ish right now, so definitely need those rows!

Spent Sunday afternoon in the kinship. Jenna and Heidi came over as planned. Heidi brought Kathy along too. Brent met us online near the beginning of where we all started together. It was fun spending the afternoon all together in the same room gaming. We're going to try for a few more in person sessions before Heidi makes her final move back east to Pennsylvania.

Jenna's planning to come over after work on Tuesday. She needs to come to the JoAnn's Superstore by us to fabric shop for the weekend.

We're doing another household beach trip over Thanksgiving weekend. William has work and homework that he'll have to do so he'll be home keeping the home fires burning. 

Dinner out

We spent the afternoon and evening with a bunch of friends. In the SCA they are members of the Iron Ring and Havoc households. So just the three of us from the Golden Bee were there. The original plan was to go to a lunch at Nona Emilia's and then go back to the Bear's house for a white elephant gift exchange.

It was discovered that on Saturday Nona's doesn't open until 4pm. So we met beforehand and socialized then headed over. This is apparently their thing for the holidays to get together as a group and go in garb somewhere for a meal and then the exchange.

If was fun seeing the reactions of people and we had a large enough group that they put us in our own separate room.

Before ordering food. It was a nice couple of hours with dinner and then doing the white elephant. I got a big book of the Complete Edgar Allen Poe works. Brandon had just gotten that particular book as a birthday present from Dawn-Marie, so since no one else stole it from me, I gave it to Sara. She's a teenager and the perfect age to be reading the stories. She did recognize the Tell Tale Heart from reading in a class, so I think she'll like reading the rest of the book. I like encouraging readers. ;-)

On the Hitofude front, I'm working on Chart C. I added a buttonhole, in case I do want to close it in the future. Another perfect button to be found! I knit before we went to dinner, while they were getting the table ready for us and after the gift exchange. Still have a bit of knitting to do before C is done. Maybe tomorrow morning.

Sigh...few steps back to go forward

I was working on the cardigan and thought I was about done with Chart B. Was going with the flow and and scratched my head last night but brushed if off and went forward. Yeah. I had followed how the pattern was setup with Chart A, but Chart B increases by two stitches, so some modification has to occur. What does that mean?

I had to tink back 8 rows this afternoon. Sigh.

So with two extra rows shown, here is where I am right now:

I'm snuggled up under my Cascade Lizard Ridge Blanket. Link takes you to when it was finished. It is the right size for one person and couch blanket or I've taken with us camping. I've been alternating using the wool setting and the gentle on the washing machine and purposefully gently felting it. Less snagging issues with dog nails that want to lay on the blanket with me.

Think in January I need to make another blanket for the times I have to wait while this one is in the wash and the dryer. ;-)

Surprise Game Night

Thursday's are LOTRO game night with Heidi, Jenna, Brandon and I. Wednesday they put up the new game and made a lot of changes. To the point that last night we decided that we should just start with all new characters.

So we switched over to Elves and had the introductory quests to do and a little bit online together where we could. Heidi though was having problems with her laptop, so wasn't able to get as far as the rest of us.

She talked with Brandon during the day and it was decided it would just be easier for her to come to our house so he could look at it and since she was here, just game. I thought it wasn't fair not to have Jenna, so we called her and had her come over.

There ladies on the sectional couch and Brandon at his desktop. Lots of laughing and interesting comments abounded. ;-) Heidi's character got a companion bear, so lots of comments about following a fluffy butt by me. They got to hear all the new player comments I was making and Brandon's pithy replies. I have to push Z to talk and sometimes that's hard to do while also pushing all the buttons during combat.

We had so much fun that it was decided that they would all come over again on Sunday for the next game day. Brandon just has to double check that his D&D game isn't on earlier in the day. Heidi lives waaaaaay across town and it was late when she left, so doesn't want to have to worry about that with a Monday morning work day.

I was only able to get 8 rows of the Chart B done today with all my other chores. I'll have a picture of it in the morning. Here's what it looked like this morning:

Little bit left on that fourth ball. I'm on five now.

Close-up of the setup length of the four chart As.

Increasing finally!

There it is with three of the four setup charts done. Finally at the part where the increases in the front sides start to happen. I'll still be doing that basic pattern in the back center, but from now on, there's increasing going on. Yay!

Dawn-Marie was here and we got two naalbinding needles done for her. She managed to take off a bit of skin on her right finger. Belt sanders, they're blood hungry beasts! Nice blog post on 'qualities of a good needle.'

Some laundry progress. Hair re-colored. It's fall so Garnier Nutrisse's Black Cherry. It gives my hair a few days of a purple tint before it settles down to something very close to my own reddish-brown. Okay, there is less of a hard line of color grow out. ;-) I've tried other brands but they are very drying on my hair. Since the two white streaks showed up in the back of my hair at 19, I've chosen to color. You get tired of people asking if you painted over the weekend and haven't washed the paint out of your hair really quickly.

Tried a coffee bread this morning. It uses leftover coffee as the liquid and some spices. Since I only had half a cup, I went with the small loaf. It also used the left out, expired bread yeast, so may not have risen as high. It wasn't dense, but it is short. Then I also have to remember that we have the rectangular loaf pan that is wide not, tall. The outside crisped up, so the crust is crunchy. I'm also learning that it helps to scrape the sides of the pan while its mixing so that all the flour gets wet. I did a bit with this loaf, but it needed a bit more. 

I like the bread. It's a dark, flavorful bread, good with butter and my cup of coffee. Looking forward to having some with tomorrow's coffee. Might lightly toast it to warm it up, but not too much!

If you're interested in the recipe, let me know.

Someone shared this on Facebook and thought I would share a link here. Star Wars snowflake templates. One of the guys at Brandon's work got one done today. Took a sharp exacto knife and patience. I think he was working on the AT-AT but it was going to take a different knife to cut it out. 

Looking more like a cardigan

This is where it was at yesterday morning. I was bad and forgot to take pics this morning of the progress, so you'll have to wait for tomorrow for the big leap that it will show.

I need two more repeats before starting the growth parts of the front panels. I had planned to get them done today, but that time limit on the Gold Cap discount was putting pressure on me. I took my Human Capitan, Baltwiga through level 13 and got my 30 turbine points I needed to be able to spend 316.

Oh my! It took a lot longer than I thought it would! Had to do some quests as well as some deeds to get the points. Did a quest in Bree and then realized that it did nothing for what I was trying to get done. Refreshed my memory of where things are in town and was able to breeze through some areas because I knew right where to go.

So tonight with the group, I was out in an area that I had inadvertently worked alone this weekend. So I was able to relax and just kill the things we needed to while they hunted for the different items. Getting better about using all the different 'extra' or 'bonus' skills and traits that only become active while using some of the others. Still got turned around, fell over a wall and had to be helped back to the main group a couple of times. Reading the map in fighting moments gets jumbled in my brain and then my mouse skills get me screwed up.

Dawn-Marie wants to come and make some naalbinding needles tomorrow so she can learn how to do that. She has yarns that she wants to make things. Laundry, hair color and woodwork along with knitting. Hope to also get to knit night at Whole Foods. I've missed going!

A few of them are getting closer to blooming!

It might be affecting my world view

I mentioned that I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online. The character we started out with is a Hobbit and the Guardian class. So I'm a female tank. ;-) She's been fun to play and it wasn't until the other day playing by myself that I got into a situation where my character actually died. Brandon told me that getting to level 30 before that happened is unusual. Balgilfeda, the Hobbit plays with Brandon, Jenna and Heidi's Hobbits. It's been interesting playing in a larger group. This is my first time doing that.

Oh, yes, on the X-Box when they had those fun Marvel Avenger games where the four of us could all play together I had fun. (I usually played Wolverine, you might sense a theme here.) The camera view of Halo and the coordination I couldn't pull together. So didn't get into the shooter games.

Brandon and I used to play Diablo and Dungeon Siege together on the computers and I missed those days. So it was nice when we were able to get me a laptop that can play LOTRO.

To get more experience we created some elves and we've played with Jenna on those nights that Heidi can't play. It lets the three of us still have fun, but not progress our other characters. She's in the Huntress class and an archer. We had been playing them for a bit that I had to do a mental shift that I was no longer a long range hitter but have to get up close again when playing my Hobbit.

They are bringing out a new area - Helms Deep in the game, so there are some sales on things that you can buy in the store. Some of them are things that you would get if you paid the monthly fee for the game. My budget isn't there right now with the holidays coming up, so will have to wait until after the first of the year to pay for the game. It will also be a test to see if I'm still having fun playing!

My point?  Brandon told me to create ANOTHER character! Just so I could get the turbine points to open up the Gold I can have. I'm really tired of all the messages popping up about it too. So this character might be one that I just play by myself. It's been interesting not playing with others and flying through areas. I have enough experience from the other characters that I know what I'm supposed to do. This one is a Human in the Captain class. It seems kind of similar to the Guardian in that I can take a lot of damage and if I do play in a group, will be the focal point to protect others.

We finally got to see Thor tonight. I'm going what is that Dwarf doing here? This is Volstagg's character. He was awesome looking! I think that the actor they got for Fandral looks like the comic book drawing. Still need to figure out the armoring. I was looking at the partial that Frigga was wearing and trying to decide if she was a leftie or not. It covered her left shoulder and I decided that had to be her shield hand, if she used one. Later she had the sword in her right hand but did do a hit with her left.

We stayed to the very end and saw the little teaser with The Collector.

I'm still working on those 4 repeats of Chart A that are the setup for the skirt of the cardigan. Not as much done today as hoped, maybe tomorrow.

If you want to come play LOTRO with me, or us, let me know!

Good news!

I wasn't messed up with the instructions for the lower body. The front left and right panels don't line up with the previous work. Just the back panel lines up. Sigh. Wish she could have said this explicitly.

Did the setup Lower Body work while hanging out with Jaime, Dawn-Marie and Brandon at Jaime's house. We had a movie day watching Much Ado About Nothing. We like the Kenneth Branagh version, I think that Emma Thompson does an awesome Beatrice. The Joss Whedon version was fun to watch.

We don't recommend that you try to match them on the amount of drinking they do though! We realized that you would quickly be drunk! Of course if you wanted to have a drinking game, the highest repeated word is - Love, loved, or loving.

After the movie we got out grocery shopping done. If you have a Winco, our local one had a deal where if you spend $150 you got a free Jenny-O or Winco turkey, any size. We brought home a 22 pounder, couldn't find one of the 24 pounders. ;-)

Thanksgiving is down in Corvallis with the family there, yes, the family are all Beaver fans.

After unloading all the groceries, we would have played with Jenna and Heidi online with the Lord of the Rings Online game. We're playing the free and they've both paid. Hope to start paying after the first of the year. They have a new module coming online, Helms Deep, on the 18th, so the servers are all down. Knitting time!

No picture of the progress until there's daylight. So I'll leave you with my Christmas Cactus pic I took a couple weeks ago:

A couple of the buds are a bit bigger and there's more of them on the plant. Don't think it will be blooming still at Christmas, but who knows?  I thought mine might be abnormal, but a few other people have posted on Facebook that theirs are blooming or getting ready to bloom too.

Ow

A few weeks ago while doing yard work I dislocated my left shoulder for a few seconds. My brain sent me the picture of where my arm was located and without even thinking made a move that caused it to relocate. Those few seconds seems to have been long enough to cause injury to the deltoid.

I used castor oil on the shoulder that night and for a week afterward and thought things were doing well. I still have problems with weird rotations of the shoulder though. For example, trying to twist my arm up behind my back to unhook a bra. Or what caused it pain yesterday and into today. Sitting in the passenger seat, and trying to toss my sweater onto the back seat. I think it was a combination of the angle and the weight of the sweater. Ow.

Today I tried going forward and get the setup row done and do the lower body work on the Hitofude. Not that many stitches in and I find that all the kfb increases has made it so that I would need to be working a future chart in the pattern. I'm six stitches too many to do the pattern as written. Grrrr

I've tried putting in a help request with the pattern author, who it does turn out, did have it tested for the XL that I'm knitting. I also posted to the pattern page. Japan is 17 hours ahead of us and I still haven't heard anything back, but on her Ravelry page she does have this

 "I’m not good at English. So I can’t reply to complicated questions."

I tinked back but have lost my beginning of the round point because of removing that marker 10 rounds earlier and my brain is discombobulated trying to find the starting point. So no forward progress for today possibly. My shoulder is also hurting and holding the knitting seems to be aggravating the shoulder pain.

Sorry no pics today.

Oh my!

Started out my morning attempting to get the setup done for the lower body of the Hitofude. I re-did the bind off for the neckline three full times. That includes un-doing it twice, but it seems like I did that three times, so it gets confusing. It was definitely too many! The first time was because I just by rote fell into doing a standard bind off when I had read, but not fully read (should have had a cup of coffee before starting!) that the suggested bind off was an Elastic one where she was having you keep in pattern so purl one, knit one, then knit through the back loops those two stitches.

So what amounted to two finished rows took 974 estimated stitches. Doing 71 stitches six times really does add up! Didn't get any further than that because it took me a couple of hours just to get that done. Oh my!

Was asked to be feast steward again for Yule this year. It's a combined one with the Barony of Three Mountains. Cooking meat and helping to organize the potluck foods as they come in. The Baroness of Three Mountains said that its one event that they don't want something special for the high table, so that makes it easy on me.

Came up with the idea of getting the roasted chickens done by Safeway in St. Helens, where the event is going to be held. I talked to the deli manager and she said to come in today to pay for it because they were going to be $5 instead of the regular $6.99. Save $24 by driving there and back? Sure! I can spend it on other things. I have bone-in pork butts and roast beef ordered through Ponderosa Purveyors. There will be pulled porked, chickens, beef and still debating on the turkeys. They are currently in the plan to get a couple, but I may see if I can get a deal on goose or ducks. The plan is to cook the roast on site, it smelled really yummy cooking last year. I did a fresh rosemary, marjoram, garlic, salt and pepper with olive oil thing. Rave reviews by people who usually don't like the meat at events.

Dawn-Marie tagged along with me, so after we were done there we stopped at JoAnn's with my finished Spatterdash mitt. I hoped to find some pretty green, rose and white buttons to finish them. I did find possible ones in white and rose, but might be the wrong season for the spring green. To get the needed 28 buttons, would have cost $9. Thought that was a little spendy, and seems like a reason to take a trip into Portland and visit The Button Emporium.

There was a 50% off coupon burning up in my email, so found a nice lighter weight white linen that I can try making a St Birgitta Cap. Which can then be used under the basis for the more interesting German head coverings. We had also spotted that there were some picture frames that were 60% off and I had recently found the pictures we had done last year that still needed frames. They'll finally find their way into the frames and I can hang them up with all the other family photos. We picked up Brandon from work then took him back to confirm that the approved of the frame style.

Dropped off stuff back at the house and then decided that we would do a sit down dinner since we were early enough instead of picking up fast food. Opted for Izzy's since its a buffet and we'd all find something that we liked. It has been YEARS since we've gone to an Izzy's to eat. Very noisy. The grilled salmon that I had was tasty and so was the salad. The pizzas and desserts were disappointing.

Stopped at the Burgerville for a pumpkin milkshake before they are out of season. I had a Jamba Juice Pumpkin Smash a couple weeks ago. I must say that I preferred the Pumpkin Smash over the Burgerville shake.

Revels was festive with preparations of Yule decorations, new people, Eulalia in garb sharing some smoked pork with a mustard sauce and some rose tea. Conrad dropped by with a couple paper bags of fabric donations. I brought some home and Dawn-Marie did as well. Made sure that Susan took some home for herself and towards dressing bears at Yule, a munchkin event she's helping with. I also got a Dragon's Mist patch to put on my haversack that the Baroness had made me as my 'favor' I posted about.

It's just resting on top of the bag. I still need to stitch it down very carefully! That will be fun to learn how to do. 

Looks like a sweater!

Spent time today on the Hitofude cardigan. There was a crochet chain provisional cast-on. Must have done something wrong because undoing the chain and slipping the stitches on to the needle is the way its supposed to go, that's not how it went. I had to undo each chain by pulling out the strand. For the left sleeve that was 60 stitches and then doing the three needle bind-off before moving the stitches off of the other provisional cast on (192 stitches.)

I was curious why a three needle bind off, but since the pattern author is trying to limit having to attach yarn and doing it as one swack, I guess it makes sense to use this one. It makes it so the seams are nice and neat and have less stress. If you haven't done one before, Jimmy Beans has some nice instructions on how to do it.

From there it was getting all the stitches on one needle and knitting in the round for eight rows to work the neckline and the fitting in the back. I got all those done and now working the skirt of the cardigan. Whew!

My handy spreadsheet says that I have 31,227 stitches towards the 50,000 goal and am 62% complete towards that goal. I don't think I have to worry about meeting the goal and hopefully will exceed it. I know happy to exceed. ;-)

Sleeves!

Showing the ribbing that goes around the neckline and around the back

Three needle bind off, seaming up the sleeves

There's more binding off in the next step, then back to knitting flat. The math will get a little more interesting shortly, but I think I have a couple more days of knitting before it gets to that point. 

Half done things and some more fall pretty

I have one of the fingerless mitts done. Need to weave in a couple of ends and find buttons. I cast on tonight for the second one and have 26 rows done while at the Barony Business Meeting. Having my fingers wrapped up in needles and yarn didn't keep me from active participation, much to the chagrin of some people I'm sure. ;-)

My Spring Green Mitts(you'll get to see what Ravelry is like, if you aren't a member):

Pre-soak and blocking

Blocked out. I did it at an angle and now, looking at this may have to re-do it.

I'm also more than half way towards 50,000 stitches on my Hitofude. I do have pics, but I'll save that for tomorrow I think and another update.

While letting Leeloo outside this afternoon, the sun shining through the remaining leaves caught my eye. Their glow. I don't think the camera fully caught it:

Caught a squirrel in this one ;-)

Give them bread!

Okay, the first of the month budget was such that grocery shopping didn't happen, so we ran out of bread. Looked in the pantry and yup, in the back corner of a shelf was the breadmaker. Collecting dust and neglected.

Pulled out one of those half books on bread machines and found a recipe that I had all the ingredients for, thankfully there was also bread flour in the pantry!

I did the medium loaf of white bread and forgot that it was a 2lb bread machine. It seemed kind of small when done and medium gave it a dark brown crust. The bread was still good!

This morning I decided to try out the oat bread. Went for the large loaf and was happy with how it came out. Tasty too!

Dough in the breadmaker, think its been mixed and rising

Forgot to take a picture before cutting into it!

Inside

The boys like the bread, and I love fresh bread. I might be playing more with this over the next few weeks. I have a few pages marked in the recipe book. The holidays are coming up and those seem like good times to have breadstuffs.

There's nothing like the smell of bread while its cooking, makes you hungry!

Do you have a favorite bread machine recipe or where you get your recipes?

Sometimes a slow learner ;-)

I know that when I'm in a migraine cycle its better if I don't do a lot of activities, but Friday, day two of the migraine cycle I was in, I didn't listen. I decided to defrost some chicken breasts and make a couple dinners. I boiled three small breasts in water with a couple cloves of garlic and a handful of baby carrots. I didn't have any celery on hand and didn't want to include onions. Once they were cooked through, I took everything out so they could either be cut up into bite size bites or shredded.

I've found that shredding chicken really makes a breast go along way. Much more chicken seems to be in what is being served than bite sized bits. Plus I had to us more chicken to make it look like everyone was getting enough chicken. So shredding really helps extend your chicken!

Half of the chicken, the carrots, broth water, and cloves went to this recipe, my South of the Border Chicken.  I think I blogged pics of it last year, if you don't want to go visit the Tasty Kitchen web site. If you don't want to go there, why?! It's a nice place to find some great recipe inspirations.

The other half of the shredded chicken went into a bottle of Vodka Chicken. They sauce this bottle now. Brandon loved getting it at Macaroni Grill when they still existed. So the half a box of linguine noodles and some Chardonnay with the chicken and we had dinner.

The soup went into the refrigerator and has been lunch and dinner since, and a couple in the freezer for lunches. I even had some leftover Vodka Chicken sauce and that went into the freezer. I'm sure I'll have some leftover pasta noodles that it can go with in the near future.

While all that was going on, I had some little tomatoes that I'd gotten from Carla as green ones. They sat on the counter in their plastic bag ripening. Rinsed them off, de-stemmed them and popped them into a pot of boiling water to blanch. Into a pot of cold water to stop the cooking and help slide the skins off and soon I was de-seeding. Once their skins were off, seeds removed it was into a pan to cook down. I only ended up with a pint of tomato sauce, but it can be used for anything.

Still had the headache that night and in fact I think it was a little bit worse, so I stayed home and didn't go to Revels that night. :-( There was a fabric swap I missed too! No one else brought fabric, but she'll bring it another time, and hopefully I can exchange some of mine too.

Jimmy Kimmel slams knitting

I don't usually watch late night television, but happened to catch this. Was a bit shocked to have my hobby slammed. Thanks Jimmy. Won't be watching you again.

I had actually tuned in and watched a bit of that episode. It was interesting seeing the different wheels, ages, the techniques being used. I have spun from the grease and while I don't care for it, I thought it was cool they were trying to break a record.

One frogged, one started - fingerless mittens in November

I tried to make a pair of fingerless mitts for Bailey. Out of some pretty purple alpaca with a little bit of glitter. The pattern was CanCans. I was disappointed with how the stitch definition came out with the yarn. Wasn't happy, so frogged and found another pattern for the yarn.

Can you see the blue sparkle?

I had seen Spatterdash being queued and thought they looked fun and thought they were also in my queue, until I looked. I had in mind at first one of the de-stash Happy Feet yarns from Friday, but then remembered this odd ball skein of Shibui Staccato that I had gotten in the Rose City Yarn Crawl as one of the 20 first people in. 

The green tones and the splash of pink just not colors that I'm normally attracted. The skein flashed into my mind when I looked at someone's finished project. So when the Cancans failed and before finding the pattern for the yarn, I jumped in and started my pair of Spring Green Spatterdash:

I don't normally want to knit something flat that you're going to wear in the round, but this has been interesting to do. There's a bit of shaping with decreases in the stockinette portion. Adding in the thumb gusset was different. Definitely nice tidy little increases without big holes. I'm a fan of those! 

There's five more of the fan patterns to go, they go quickly, so hopefully one will be done soon. 

Who gets these?  Haven't decided yet. Depends how they come out and if they shout out they go to a particular person. ;-) I need a pair of fingerless mitts for the season, but are they these?

Oh! Had to refresh my memory on a stitch - SSP. I am constantly doing a SSK with the Hitofude pattern, so doing a purl version was a nice twist. How to do it isn't as fast as the SSK that I learned from Lucy Neatby at that first Sock Summit back in 2009. I can't find a good explanation of it. I'll see if I can get Brandon to video me doing it tomorrow.