I love it...and so does the Munch. She even kissed it (everyone together now---awwww!)

I was careful to bind off extremely loosely with this shawl since I wanted to block the heck out of it. The original pattern maintains a lot of the pre-blocked egg carton-y look to the pattern but I wanted it to be fairly flat. Looking at it here in the pictures, I think I could have blocked it even more than I did.

I didn't change the pattern other than to knit a few less repeats. It was a super-easy pattern; just one row repeated over and over with a few increases for shaping. I would say this would be an excellent beginner lace project since there are some very obvious visual clues in the pattern to keep you on track.

As for the stash update...I've been looking into a few ways to use up a lot of the single skeins of wool I have sitting around and i'm thinking about the Pom Pom Rug in Craftivity (link is to a project page in Ravelry). I think it would be perfect for Munchkin's room (or yet to be named new baby). It would require a TON of pom-poms though....

who knows...maybe.

in the meantime, I'm still plowing through a lot of the abandoned wips that have been cluttering up the yarn room. I'm nearly done with a pair of Monkey Socks (in some awesome Chewy Spaghetti yarn) as well as that darn Bobbles bag. I'm on a roll, baby!!

I finished a big project today! Thats 687 yards out of the stash.

I also used up a whole ball of dishcloth cotton-another 100 yards!

The bad (well, not really, I guess):

I got two shipments of yarn but, in my defense, these were things I had bought long ago.

First--the second year of lace kit which included a hefty skein of helen's lace (in a lovely blue color) which added a hefty 1250 yards.

Second--my (very last) shipment of the yarn pirate sock yarn club. I loved being in the club but my sock knitting just hasn't kept up with the influx of sock yarn, so I quit a few months ago. I thought I had received all my shipments but I got one last skein! Another 425 yards in the stash.

So....... 254,470 yards.

I can't believe I'm INCREASING my yardage. dangit!!!

The big project was the dove shawl. It was sitting around almost finished for ages; I finally dug it out, finished the repeat I was working on and bound off. Its a little smaller than the pattern suggested but Its still plenty big. its blocking now but I'll take pictures tomorrow!!

Unfortunately, the yarn just wasn't right for the pattern, so she is no more. The yarn stretched far too much--probably a combination of the silk and the garter stitch. Either way, it was just awful. I guess I should have seen it coming; I know silk sags once its knit but I think I just didn't want to believe it.

I'm still in love with the sweater though and, after a long dive in the stash, I started over again with andean silk (knitpicks) in lettuce.

This is so much bouncier--a totally different experience than the tili tomas silk. I'm only a few increase rows away from starting the lace and I'm really looking forward to it. I know a lot of people just love top-down sweater construction but I'm just not a fan. I get really bogged down in those loooooonnnnggg rows just before you set aside the sleeve stitches. I know it will get faster but, honestly, I really like a sweater knit in pieces; I feel like I'm making progress when I complete a piece as well as the benefit of not having to drag an entire sweater around with me.

Anyway....so what should I do with all my tili tomas? I have two sweater's worth but I just don't think the yarn is right for a sweater (not to mention I don't exactly go a lot of places where I need a fancy silk sweater nor do a toddler and a new baby mix with non-washable silk). I'm considering another clapotis or some kind of triangular shawl so I can do the edging in the beaded yarn I have that matches the solid color silk. What do you think? Any suggestions? Maybe flower basket? Or swallowtail? That might be nice in a heavier weight yarn....

The veggies all looked pretty sad and I knew they had given their all to the water...now a beautiful stock:

I used about half of the stock to make a vegetable-tortellini soup that caught my eye over at williams-sonoma (recipe here). It really couldn't have been easier--sautee some vegetables, add the stock, cook the pasta, add the parsley and tomatoes and youre done. Dinner in about 10 minutes.

It was a really pretty soup--full of awesome veggies and plump cheese tortellini and was really quite good. The fresh vegetable stock did make a remarkable difference. I've usually stayed away from vegetable stock-based soups because I find them a little boring and bland but this was was delicious--and super chunky as well.

There were a few things I would change. The recipe calls for celery sauteed for just a few minutes (five or so) but it really had a pretty raw taste in the soup. Next time, I will either add the celery first and cook it a little longer or find another vegetable to replace that little crunch in the soup's texture. I'd also cut back on the parsley--it was a little much. I'm also thinking about adding garlic....because I like to add garlic to everything, don't you know. Lastly, it needed more salt; I'm so accustomed to working with canned stocks with so much added salt that I didn't compensate nearly enough for my low salt fresh stock.

That seems like a lot of negative stuff but there were some awesome positives: the tomatoes added to the soup at the last minute remained really fresh. It was a nice balance to the cooked vegetables and soft pasta. I also loved the parmesan cheese shaved on top but, really, who wouldn't?

All in all, a really nice summery soup.

Today for lunch, I was left with a few odds and ends from the soup and stock making day and, wouldn't you know it, they were just what I needed to throw together a quick tomato bruschetta for lunch.

This is one of those things for which I don't really have a steadfast recipe. Today's recipe was a little something like this:

2 tomatoes (about medium size), chopped into smallish pieces--almost a dice (I also squeeze the pulp out before but only because I dont really like it--if you do, leave it in!)
1 clove of garlic, minced Mine was absolutely humongous. If they were smaller, I probably would have added 2 or 3.
1/4 cup diced onion. I prefer red onion or scallions but didn't have any, so this is plain old yellow onion.
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
really good parmesan cheese

garlic bread for eating (toast some baguette slices and rub with a clove of garlic while they are warm)

I pretty much just mix everything together and add a splash of olive oil and a touch of vinegar. Oh--and salt and pepper too. Then I shave a bunch of cheese on top with a vegetable peeler (I like big chunks of the cheese--yum!). Spoon on top of the toasted bread and scarf down.

I think it all started with the pickles I made a couple of weeks ago. I let them marinate in the fridge for a while and finally tried them and they were tremendous. I'm usually not a fan of sweet pickles but there is something about home-made pickles that warrants an exception. The recipe is from this months' Everyday Food. (yes, its a Martha magazine but its the best cooking magazine out there. seriously). The recipe doesn't seem to be available online so I won't reprint it here but the issue as a whole is a good one and worth picking up. Making the pickles was about 10 minutes of my day and it made four jars.

My happy return to cooking has left me feeling like I'm up for a challenge and I've been thinking about what to do for a few days and I think I've got it.

For the month of July, I will not order takeout. My family and I will eat all of our food cooked here at home.

There are a few rules here that I think are necessary. On hectic days, I will take advantage of a few convenience foods but I'm going to, at a minimum, prepare some kind of decent side dish to go along with them even if its just steaming some frozen veggies. I'll also make an exception here for the "failed meal" since I'm sure it will happen at least once; if I make something that is terrible, I'm not going to make my family starve to death while I prepare something else from scratch. In that case, I reserve full rights to order something out.

To begin my big challenge, I whipped out my favorite-ever kitchen device this afternoon--my All-Clad 7 quart slow cooker--and chopped up some veggies to make some veggie stock for some soup I'm planning tonight.

If you've never made vegetable stock before you should really give it a try, especially if you own a large slow cooker.

You'll need:
about 10 carrots,
3 onions,
4ish stalks of celery,
a big bunch of parsley,
some whole peppercorns and
some dried thyme.

Rough chop all the big stuff and throw it in the slow cooker with 12 cups of water. Cook on high for four hours or low for 8 hours. If you have other veggies, you can add those as well. (I also add red pepper flakes to mine but thats just me). Strain it when its done (and cooled off a bit) and you'll have enough stock for at least two big batches of soup.

I made mine today while chopping veggies for my lunchtime salad. It added *maybe* 10 minutes time to the process. Super duper, I say. The stock has only been cooking about 30 minutes by now but its already smelling dreamy. I'll let you know how the soup turns out--its this recipe for Tortellini Vegetable Soup from Williams Sonoma. yum!

Then late last week, I had the urge. I don't know if it was flipping through Mason Dixon Knitting again or just getting frustrated with the total craptasticness of every dishrag I have ever purchased. They never seem absorbent or scrubby enough for me.

You know where this is going, right?

I knit one...then another

then another.

Its madness, I tell you. I couldn't stop. I even went deep into the reaches of long forgotten knitting and pulled out two washcloths I never use to repurpose as dishcloths.

This cute little flowered one from Weekend Knitting..

and this other one from Mason Dixon...

I don't know how I never realized it at the time but this last one is totally wonky. I think I somehow managed to knit an extra section so its a little umm...not flat. Oh well though...its just a dishcloth.

The February Lady sweater is still coming along though the rapid dishcloth knitting has gotten in the way a tad.

So..do you knit dishcloths? In my new found passion for these things, I've been doing a lot of looking on Ravelry and found all sorts of householdy type knitting--like a reusable swiffer cloth modeled on the ballband dishcloth--genius, I tell you!!

Typical Day:

Play with Munch during the morning.

Eat lunch with Munchkin (shown here enjoying a tortilla chip (a favorite food recently) at McAlister's Deli)

Nap.

Play the afternoon away.

There has been little time for much else--and what little time I do seem to have is spent lying fairly motionless on the couch trying to not be sick from morning sickness or trying to catch a small nap myself.

However....the morning sickness is beginning to taper off and is really only evident if I do something silly, like overeat (yum...mexican food) or eat something sweet on an empty stomach (darn you chocolate chip cookie temptress!). With that turn of events...I've been hankering for a little hot fiber action.

I knit a bit...but its plain black stockinette in the round. Boring and hardly worth taking pictures since we all know black yarn takes craptastic photos. Thankfully, I've also been spinning again.

Inspired by Abby's How to Make a Tweed Batt, I hauled the drum carder out of its hibernation in the guest room and tried it out myself.

The Prep:

Here we have the inputs. From Left to Right:

Two Shades of Blue BFL for the base color,
Yellow BFL,
Leftover Merino/Tencel Blend in the Aspen colorway from Spunky Eclectic (this stuff was a dream to spin...I can't believe I forgot about this little leftover),
Red BFL,
an 80/20 Merino/Silk blend, also from Spunky Eclectic--unknown colorwary,
Orange BFL,
and some Red and Blue Merino (leftovers from my first ever fiber purchase from hello yarn--ahh..memories.
And, finally, across the top some white Merino.

Also pictured is my sprite zero. I am never without one of those, people.

First trip through the carder:

Still lots of blocks of color. I'm not going for novelty or stripy yarn, so it goes through again...

Still a little stripetastic...another trip through:

Nice. I can still see some of the individual colors but this batt is nice and blended.

The Yarn:

Three Ply (chain plied, my personal favorite--look ma! no leftovers!)
18 WPI
About 84 Yards
1 oz on the button.

I'm pretty happy with the spinning but I wish there had been a little more tweediness to it; its a little more "heathered" than "tweedy" Its all my fault though--it was hard for me to add a lot of the other colors to the blue to get enough pops of color. I really liked the process though and I'm going to try again! The Munchkin is out of town with her Dad visiting the in laws, so I have a whole FOUR DAYS to myself. Woohoo!

I worked most of the leg of the first sock before I realized I had somehow misread the (very clearly written) pattern and missed an increase so my pattern was incredibly wonky.

So...I restarted with a different ball of Regia and, after making the same miss-an-increase mistake, am now a measly 4 rows into the leg of the first sock. I am already starting to live in mild fear of the mailman. I have given up the idea of taking someone out this first round and am now just trying to selvage my sock knitting mojo. I feel like I really need to get a little farther on the sock before I'm killed and have to send it off to the next knitter.

And, of course, the only real oomph I have for knitting is to cast on for a baby item. Nevermind the other dozen projects that are lying around...

Sock Wars 3 is kicking my butt. When I got the pattern last week, I realized the yarn I was going to use (KPPPM) was all wrong so I switched to a new yarn (Regia). I reswatched and finally cast on for the sock.

I worked most of the leg of the first sock before I realized I had somehow misread the (very clearly written) pattern and missed an increase so my pattern was incredibly wonky.

So...I restarted with a different ball of Regia and, after making the same miss-an-increase mistake, am now a measly 4 rows into the leg of the first sock. I am already starting to live in mild fear of the mailman. I have given up the idea of taking someone out this first round and am now just trying to selvage my sock knitting mojo. I feel like I really need to get a little farther on the sock before I'm killed and have to send it off to the next knitter.

And, of course, the only real oomph I have for knitting is to cast on for a baby item. Nevermind the other dozen projects that are lying around...

I hate pictureless posts, so here is a cute one of the Munchkin. The Mr and I use our excellent parenting skills to build bubble headdresses on the munch during every bath. This is one of the more impressive ones of late.

Quite an unexpected and nice Mother's Day surprise, don't you think?