I love getting mail--especially when its fiber related! I got two packages this week: my Hello Yarn Fiber club and my Spunky Eclectic Fiber/Sock Yarn Club.

Spunky Eclectic:

I really love being a member of both the sock club and the Fiber club. I find it absolutely amazing how differently the same colorway looks in a sock yarn and a fiber. This fiber, by the way, is named Aspen after the colors of the region. Its and incredibly soft merino/tencel blend. Lovely!

Hello Yarn:

I couldn't capture all the lovely colors in a single shot, so heres two shots of the fiber. Its a Merino wool and its incredibly soft with rich colors. I can't wait to spin it! I'm almost a little sorry I started new spinning last night!

Speaking of--I'm playing catch up with most of these clubs since I'm only now getting a bit of regular spinning time. Right now, I'm working on the July shipment of the Spunky Club--named Celebration. When I first opened the box, I was, honestly, a little unimpressed. The colors just didnt seem to go and the large amounts of black and white in the roving just didnt appeal to me. But then I saw lots of other people's spun up and just fell in love. A real lesson in how an ugly roving can be a pretty yarn and a pretty roving can make an ugly yarn.

This is a little overspun but I'm ok with it. I'm either going to chain-ply it to keep the colors in tact or just run it through the wheel backwards and keep it as a laceweight yarn with very long color repeats. I wanted to mainted long color repeats either way, so I didnt split the roving at all down the middle. Its my first time doing it successfully and I'm really enjoying seeing the gradual color changes.

After finishing Munch's Hallowig, I realized I only had one real project on the needles--time to cast on for something new!

This is my second try with this yarn. The first attempt was just a poor pattern choice: it had eyelets and a little laceyness to it and the yarn was completely overwhelming. I really love the garter rib (from sensational knitted socks). I think it breaks up the colors just enough to have a nice mottled sock.

I also cooked up a little something last night--an old standby: Pasta Pizza.

And a little something special for dessert: Strawberries with White Chocolate Sauce (try #2):

Yum! Recipes are in the description over at flickr!

Posted by fruitychick at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Two (actually, three since I did one of them twice) things I've done in the last few days have been pretty much absolute failures.

First, the seemingly hilarious project I was working on. Cute? yes. Funny? yes. Do I love it? yes.

Then why, you ask, is it a failure?

I give you Exhibit A:

Hate wouldnt exactly be a strong enough word to describe munch's feelings toward her hallowig. I saw alison over at the blue blog knit one up for her little girl and it was so incredibly adorable and fun I had to knit one up myself. After all--her baby girl loved hers! I used her alterations at first but it came out much too small, so I added 4 stitches to each section. It came out perfectly but it might as well be made out of steel wool as far as Munch is concerned.

I'm still holding out hope that she will come around by the time the weather changes....

Crappiness the second was a quickie desert I tried to whip up one night after a failed dinner attempt (I didnt even get far enough to take a picture...lets just say, it is awfully hard to make baked ziti without pasta sauce and no matter how many times you look in the pantry, it wont magically appear if you didnt actually buy any.) We ended up ordering out and I thought I'd save face by making Frozen Berries with Hot White Chocolate from one of Ina Garten's Cookbooks.

They looked tasty:

I just did everything wrong on this one. Super-cook that I am I thought I didnt have to go actually *look* at the recipe again. After all--the name of the recipe said it all! Berries. check. chocolate. check. heck--it even went so far as to be specific on the white part of the chocolate.

So now, looking back at the recipe, I didnt add the cream to the chocolate and I used strawberries which stayed far, far too frozen to actually be able to eat despite the thawing power of a mound of hot white chocolate. The chocolate topping wasnt bad--but it solidified the second it hit the frozen berries... Mr. Fruitychick tried to humor me by eating a few berries but eventually gave up before he cracked a tooth.

ugh. next time--only slightly frozen smaller berries and make an actual chocolate-cream sauce instead of just melted chocolate. And maybe I'll dig out the cookbook and actually read the recipe....

Posted by fruitychick at 05:30 AM | Permalink