My Valentines Day present arrived!

Patience is a virtue!  I adore this bowl!  It is a yarn bowl from Blue Room Pottery.  It is bigger than I expected.  I love the slot to put in and take out your yarn and the holes that you can stick needles into.  Color me happy!

Another Valentines Day Present.

These are for my Dad's girlfriend, who I adore. from She is by far the coolest of my "parents."  They are Susie's Reading Mitts again.  I like mine but I thought that they would look even better in a pale solid. The funny thing is that the yarn is kiddo's.  She has raided my yarn stash many times.  It was neat to be able to use hers.

Oh, Oreo and Moon Pie say "Hi!"

Happy Valentines Day!

The Kid made our Valentines this year.  Wow.   She did a great job.

Each card had a unique drawing inside.  I like the heart fish best.

 

 

 

 The outsides:

I swear I did not influence her.  I was knitting and she found the foam stickers and went to town.  I think the contrast between the little kid drawings in the inside and simple designs of the outside is really interesting.   I know I am completely besotted with her and very biased, but I really think that her covers show real talent.

Do not be afraid of socks

Many knitters are freaked out by knitting socks.  Maybe it is the itty bitty, double pointed needles; where it looks like at any moment all the stitches are going to go sliding off.  Maybe it is the skinny yarn that means it is going to take a million stitches to get anywhere.  I think mostly though, it is the dreaded heel turn.  For many knitters, turning a heel is almost as scary as steeking.  Having never steeked, I cannot tell you if this is true.  I can tell you that for the first few pairs of socks I knit, I would cheer every time a heel was successfully turned.  The Farmer cheers when the Steelers or Yankees do something good.  I cheer when needles and string produce something that will cup around my foot...

Like I said yesterday, love to me is warm hands and feet.  Especially when the outside world still looks like this:

I decided to make the farmer a pair of red socks for Valentines Day.  Two yarn shops later, I still cannot find a tweedy red that I like.  I kmake the mistake of telling him my plan and he picks out a tweedy, forest green.  In chunky weight.  Pause.  Okay, I can work with this.  I hit Ravelry and narrowed down the pattern search to: socks, knitting, free, unisex, and chunky weight yarn.  Amazingly, I still had several patterns to choose from. 

I chose Chunky Socks by Arlene Williams.  I modified the rib to a 2x2 rib ('cause that is what I wanted) and there may be a mistake in the heel decreases.  After the first heel decrease I knit three rounds. But after that, every other round was a decrease and that worked well.  Despite that, I think this would be a great pattern to jump into making socks.  They have all the parts of a real sock.  You get to use really big needles.  I knit on 6's.  They were done in less than a week.  They look like thick socks, not some kind of clunky, knit slippers that one of my grandmas used to make.  

Best of all, the Farmer has warm feet.  That's love.

Love to me is warm feet and hands

Here is kiddo's Valentine's Day present.  She saw me making Susie's Reading Mitts and pointed out that she has hands too.  Kiddo's are Angelina's Cable Mitts.  They were done in a day!  I'm really happy with the cables.  The scale is really nice for a little girl's hands. 

 

I modified the pattern by casting on 36 stitches and knitting 6 rows of 2x2 ribbing at the beginning and the end.  Once I was done with the ribbing, I decreased down to the 35 stitches called for in the pattern.   The yarn is Debbie Stoller's Bamboo Ewe.  I thought it would be both warm and washable. 

Kiddo loves them!  She is sitting next to me on the couch wearing them with her pajamas.  That's love.

Kiddo's Quilt: Week 4

 

She did not want to sew last week.  We played with the demented Rabbits each night instead.  This week, she asked twice and finished two blocks.  I love them and so does she.  There are four more blocks in progress.  

The basket of fabrics waiting to be cut is slowly emptying out.  The pile of cut fabrics in the chair is getting bigger.  At this point it is almost a charm quilt.  Each fabric is only appearing once.  

I think I will need to cut more but it's hard to gauge amounts.  I started cutting the strips wider because her seam allowances were so bug, but those are getting smaller, so now the strips look huge.  

It's okay. It will all work out.

Skid Row Stroganoff

This was my favorite dinner growing up.  I always used to request it for my birthday dinner.  It came from the I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken.  I make it from memory, so the amounts and ingredients may have migrated over the years

Skid Row Stroganoff 

1 garlic clove, minced

1 medium chopped onion

cooking oil

1 lb. ground beef

2 little cans of sliced mushrooms

1 can condensed cream of muchroom soup, undiluted

Saute garlic, onion, and ground beef in a little bit of cooking oil.  Add the mushrooms, stir, and "....let it all cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink."  Add the soup and simmer for ten minutes. Now, stir in the sour cream, keeping the heat low, so it won't curdle, and let it all heat through. 

Serve on egg noodles with a sprinkle of paprika so that it does not look so pasty gray.  It also will need some salt.
 
It might look like the dogs dinner, but it tastes great.

Hoppy New Year!

Yeterday was Chinese New year.  It is the Year of the Rabbit.  Supposedly, this will be a calmer, more creative year than last year's Year of the Tiger.  The rabbit is a happy, energetic sign that likes comforts.  Signs compatable with the rabbit: Dog, Sheep, and Pig are supposed to have a good year.  It's also supposed to be good for sex... 

I think the Raving Rabbid approves!  Have a good year!