The halo of the alpaca draws you in

I had a joyous time out with friends last night, celebrating the news from my surgeon that all of the basal cell carcinoma is gone. We had beers, we had bar food, we had fun. I realized, as I looked around the table, how lucky I am and how much a person really needs close friends.Family is your family and you need them, but, to sound corny, friends are the family you choose.

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I am incredibly behind on gift knitting, due to apathy at the world and all that was in it for a few months. I'm pulling out the WIPs and really going at them. I still see IOUs in the holiday future but at least it's not for the lack of trying now. This first WIP is a year in the making (should have been LAST Christmas - whoops) but once you see it, you might see why it's taken so long. I've already made 2 of these very large blankets and they turned out so beautiful. I decided to make 2 more: one for my other mother and one for my sister.  Eventually I will make one for me. Although the blankets look light and airy, they are lofty and terrible knitting during any warm season. I choose Knit Picks Suri Dream yarn, which has been discontinued (don't worry, I bought the yarn for my blanket a while ago!). The colorway I chose for Lois is Emerald Isle and it's amazing.

This is 74% Suri Alpaca, 22% wool and 4% nylon yarn. The pattern is not online anymore either but it's size 19 needles and you cast on 144 stitches and just knit. You can do a border but I chose not to with this yarn. So I'm knitting until I get through all the balls of yarn (10 of them) and I'm down to 1.5 balls left. This is definitely TV knitting.

Even though it's large needles and stitches, the lofty halo of the alpaca really makes this a warm blanket!

See the fuzzy? Yep.

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My 2nd WIP is a lace scarf. Which is beautiful but taking up a lot of time, so probably not the best gift idea since I started it so late. More on that tomorrow!

'Taters and 'Maters

In order to save my 'maters and 'taters, I whipped up some tomato soup today. I found a basic recipe in a French cookbook then modified the heck out of it, as I'm wont to do.

Homemade Tomato Soup

You'll need approx. 4 'maters and 4 'taters. I say approximately because I always use more. The 'taters are a thickener so keep that in mind should you decide to add more of them and not the 'maters.

Cut up the 'maters. Throw in big soup pot.

Peel and cut up the 'taters. Throw in same big soup pot.

Add 6 cups of liquid. Now the original recipe calls for water only but I prefer a creamy based tomato soup. So I usually add 2 cups milk/half and half with 4 cups water.

Add some salt and pepper (you'll be tasting this later, and can tweak the amounts)

Bring to a boil, covered. Then simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes. If the 'taters are fork tender, then you're ready. Use a blender or immersion blender to blend it all together. Put back in the soup pot and reheat on the stove. Now's the time to taste test and see what you want to add. I make my soup peppery and add fresh basil if I have any. Today, my basil plant looks sad, so I did not.

Soups are my favorite comfort food. A nice bowl of this and a grilled cheese (or hot ham and cheese if you are feeling frisky) and really, there are no problems with the world anymore.

Color Me Happy!

I have a new hobby:  Design Seeds has so many color combinations that my mind reels at the possibilities of what I can knit in some of these color schemes! It's become THE site for me to wile away hours just looking at colors. What about painting my spare room?

I'm thinking this.... maybe it's a tad dark?

I'm telling you, this site is magnificent!!!

This one just knocks my socks off. So maybe I should make socks in this color scheme?

This really inspires me to start back up with handdyeing my yarn. I did coffee and koolaid dyeing. It's time to expand.

Excuse me....I have more color schemes to look at.

Not Just A Country Song

It's been a rough few months. It's taken since August to finally find out that I have Basal Cell Carcinoma. My awesome dermatologist assured me that this isn't scary cancer, but it is cancer. I've had a lot of near misses with cancer in my life, considering I'm only 35, and now that I didn't dodge one bullet, I got all depressed and distracted. For a few months.

I was even too distracted to even knit. Oh, I did knit stuff, but my heart wasn't in anything. I did read, but got distracted. I tried to cook and didn't want to eat anything. It's amazing what having a diagnosis can do. I mean, I knew deep down that problem was cancer. But finally getting the phone call and getting a PLAN on how to fix it really made a world of difference. Funny how that works.

So, while I'm not running around Living Like I'm Dying (to paraphrase a Tim McGraw song) I feel like I have permission to be me again. And I realize how woefully behind I am on my Christmas knitting. Looks like it's an IOU Christmas!! Ah well.

Two of my co-workers/friends are popping out kids in 2012. I always feel a need to knit something for the tots because it feels important that a newborn have something handmade just for them. This is a cruel and scary world. I can only imagine how much happier we would all be if we all had a handmade blanket or stuffed toy to get us through. Why is it that we abandoned this stuff again??

Oh yes, because we're adults and we don't need kids things anymore. How wrong we turned out to be :)

Where I Pretend I'm An Artist

I've always had some issues with my brain creating wonderful, unique and beautiful things and my hands just messing it all up. Knitting is the exception to that, although I still have a lot of practice in my future to make the brain-to-hand deal work better.

One thing I've always wanted to try was painting. Now, I can draw stick figures and can (mostly) paint walls, so I held no illusions to what I could really do. Finding Wine and Canvas through Groupon.com was a godsend! A place to hang out with friends, have some wine and learn to paint (ie. recreate a painting).  I've been twice with 2 different groups and I had a great time, even if my paintings turned out.... not quite how the original looked. Strangely, I'm not ashamed of my paintings. They are hanging proudly in my house.

I have a gift certificate to W&C to use by the end of the year and am still excited to go back and try another painting. Hopefully with no trees this time. I seem to have problems creating Happy Little Trees.

The first painting was supposed to be looking up at the sky from the middle of woods. I can't find the original to compare to and that's probably a good thing.

It's an impressionist painting, meaning you get the idea of what it is supposed to be but if you go up and look closely it's mainly splotches. I like my leaves in this one and I really like the color of the sky. Trees, meh.

The second one was part of a girls night out with my high school buddies. We had a great time so I'm not upset about the quality of this painting. I do have the original to compare to....

Pretty, isn't it. Ah well. Did I mention how much fun I had that night??

I hung this one in my bedroom above my reading chair. It looks better from far away.

I ended up buying some painting supplies from Wal-Mart with a friend who also caught the bug. The clairvoyant I saw at Camp Chesterfield's Spirit Fest somehow knew I had just taken up painting and assured me that I needed to keep practicing because I would end up quite good. Who knows, but at least it's some form of encouragement, right?

Homemade Pickles AKA What Do I Do With These Cucumbers?

While this isn't a yarny/crafty post, I consider it creative enough to post. Plus, my blog, my rules.

My CSA gave me some cucumbers and green peppers in this batch and I almost gave it all away. I really can't stand cucumbers, can't even stand the smell, can't even stand Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon lotion. My dislike of cucumbers goes that deep. But on the flip side, I really really love pickles. And since I paid for my CSA, I'm not inclined to give more of it away. So I set out to figure out a quick, non-canning approach to making pickles.

Et Voila! I found it.

First, I sliced up all the cucumbers (almost gagging a bit, where did this dislike of cucs come from??) and the green peppers. They got set aside to "rest".

Then I took a cup of white vinegar, salt, and lots of sugar and boiled it until the sugar was dissolved. While that was working, I scrounged up a mason jar ( a bit big, but it worked) and sterilized it in boiling water. I wasn't actually canning, in the traditional sense, seeing as how I intended to eat the pickles within a day or so, but sterilizing the jar seemed like a really good idea.

Once the vinegar mixture was ready, I drowned the cucs and peppers and let it hang there for a few minutes.

The smell was...not unpleasant. Somewhat pickle-y, which suited me.

I dumped everything into the jar and let it cool a bit before I shoved it in the fridge.

Not bad. Too much liquid for the amount of veggies, but eh. This isn't science, just a test.

I just popped open the jar. The veggies are all shriveled and pickle like so I took a sample. Holy crap, I made pretty good pickles. Yay me.

Dog Says Bark

Lately it's been difficult finding things to be thankful or happy about. I notice that it's not just me in this leaky boat, it's almost everyone I meet. So when I got home from work today, and settled into my after-work habit, I realized....this habit makes me happy. And it's especially nice today.

It's a beautiful day out, not the scorching hell-like temperatures we've been having. I turned off my a/c and threw open some windows. A nice breeze comes into my kitchen and dining. A nice mug of PG Tips tea (how very English) with plenty of creamer (learnt from the knee of my Australian grandma) and peace and quiet.

 My astute friends will notice something seriously wrong.

Don't worry, I got up and got a book to read while I drank my tea. I'm not sick or anything.

Whatever happened today was put to bed during this little 15 minute break. Thankfully, the neighborhood yappy dog started in AFTER I finished my tea. Nice try, Yippy.