I used the handspun I had done up from a merino silk blend I got at MSW last year from the Cloverleaf Farms booth. The warp was a simple two ply and the weft a chain/navajo ply. I had done up two bats and was just experimenting with plying when I did them and thought the minor difference would be neat for weaving when I went to rake the stash for weaving yarns.

I love it. I can decide if I want to make a small project bag/purse out of it or something else, but in the mean time, I’ll just keep petting and admiring it.

You need iceberg lettuce, mango, green seedless grapes, pineapple, and asian sesame/soy/ginger salad dressing, red wine vinegar, and rice vinegar, and chow mien noodles. Optionally, you can add an onion. You’ll need your seasoning of choice as well. Salt/Pepper are probably fine, but I generally use Morton’s Nature’s Seasonings.

Chop up the mango and pineapple. Wash the grapes. If your grapes are huge, you may want to cut them in half. Cut the lettuce (I do it in shreds). Dice up your onion if you are using one. Put it all in a big bowl and toss well. Take the Asian dressing, and put it in a small mixing bowl. Add equal parts rice vinegar and red wine vinegar. Generally the total amount of vinegar should be almost equal to the amount of dressing you started with, but it’s to taste, so play with it. Season to taste. Pour the dressing over the salad, toss until very well mixed. Add the chow mien noodles to the top, and enjoy.

Notes: Every once in a while I’ll make this with some cilantro chopped up in the lettuce. Not a bunch, but enough to give a bit of flavor.

3 cups Fresh Broccoli, chopped
1 1/2 cups water
4tbs flour (mix and dissolved in 1/4 water)
2 cups milk
1-2 tbs butter
1-2 cups Grated Cheddar Cheese
1 tsp Paprika
1 tsp Garlic Powder
Salt and Pepper to taste.

In a big pot…
Combine water and broccoli. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low/medium and cover. Cook for about 15 minutes.

While that’s going, in a small bowl, add flour/water mixture milk and stir.

After the 15 minutes is up, pour the flour/water/milk into the pot along with adding the butter and the grated cheese.
Add the Paprika, Garlic Powder, Salt and Pepper now also. I generally go heavy on the Pepper and very light on the salt.

Cook on low/medlow about 10 minutes til the cheese is all melted and soup thickens.

Continue to simmer until ready to eat, but do not allow to boil.
And that’s pretty much it.

Notes:
The first time I made it, I accidentally did double the amount of cheese that I should have, and it was VERY VERY cheesy, but still quite good. I’ve toned it back a bit since then. I’ve also sauteed onions and added those in, and imagine leeks, small bits of potato, and cauliflower would go just as well. Depends on how fancy you want to get. Speaking of fancy, I’ve subbed half my milk with Half n Half also, and that’s quite good as well. It adds a good bit of richness to the soup overall.

Our favorite cheese to use for this is a smoked cheddar from Sweetvalley Farms in Tennessee, but any good cheddar you love will do. You could always use regular cheddar and add a bit of liquid smoke if you wanted a smokey cheese taste. Generally when I make this I do it in double batches, as it’s a nice comfort food type of meal, and when I had to go to Canada for a week last month, it kept shmoo in meals quite easily. I haven’t tested yet to see how well it freezes, but probably will next time I make it.

I did take some pictures of our container garden on our porch though!

bigpot

cilantroblooms

crappytomatopot

spearmint

squash

thebasils

tjstomatos

tomatos

Fry a piece or two of bacon in your pan. Get it nice and crispy.
Towards the end of the frying, put around half a onion, diced into the pan as well, and let it start to brown.
Remove the bacon when it’s done and set aside to cool and dry.

Turn down to medium heat.
Place halved Brussels Sprouts in the pan cut half down. Scooch the onions out of the way if you need to, and if there isn’t enough bacon fat in the pan, add some butter. When all the halves are face down in the pan, add a bit of stock to the pan, about halfway up the sprouts, and let it cook down until the stock is basically gone and the sprouts have started to brown on the bottom and get a little crispy, but not all moisture is gone from the pan.

Remove from heat.
Crumble the bacon you set aside earlier and add to pan.
Add a bit of coarse pepper, and possibly a bit of salt, to your tastes.
Throw in a handful of dried cranberries and stir.
Now sprinkle on about half a handful of grated Parmesan and serve.

Notes:
If you don’t have stock, don’t use bouillon to make it, it makes it WAY too salty, just use water and throw in a bit of extra butter for flavor.
A coworker highly recommends trying this with shallots and walnuts and more butter instead of with onions and cranberries. I think I’ll be giving it a try next time we do them.

myloom

And here’s my first weaving project.

firstweaving

It’s stalled out however, because I’ve been spending all my crafting efforts on this…..
An Emergency Sweater for young man I did not know was coming into the world. So I’ve had to knit quickly, because as every knitter knows, it’s harder to beat them once they start growing. I knit the 6 months size, but it seems HUGE. Not having a kid, I cannot judge the accuracy of the sweater, or my thoughts on hugeness. I do rather feel that perhaps the yarns aren’t far enough apart in color saturation, though, the colors themselves did a nice contrast, so the colorwork is not crisp and clear, but I still like the finished product just fine.

front

The directions for the sweater call for it to be knit flat, but there was no way I was doing colorwork flat. So I did it in the round and steeked it. This is my first sweater with steeks. It didn’t suck, and cutting the knitting wasn’t that traumatizing or anything. Snip snip snip!

The other modification I made was to make the right shoulder of the sweater be a button closure instead of sewn together. That way it’s easier to get the thing on him. I hear babies can be squirmy, so I figured it would help.

back

I still need to sew the steek bits down and trim them. I’ll take a photo of the innards after I do so for all you freaks who like to look at knitting guts. But in the meantime, here’s one steek done and the other two still needing to be done.

1down2togo

Until then, carry on!

I’ve spun a little.
I’ve knit a little.
I’ve grown seeds into seedlings and then had the birds eat them after I put them in their permanent pots and decided that I wasn’t going to have bird feeders on the porch anymore during spring and summer.

So I’m letting some of the back up seedlings grow a bit more and and I’ll try putting them in the big pots again, and hopefully this time, in a few months I’ll have tomatoes instead in a few days the birds eating them all.

But spring is slowly coming and I’ve been knitting a tiny bit; spinning a bit more than that, and planting seeds like a crazed person. I am exploring container gardening even more this year, and even going to try a little plot in the ground in the back yard as well.

I’ve started everything from seedlings and here is what I have planted:
3 kinds of tomatoes
Parsley
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
Catnip
Spearmint
Lavender
Cilantro
Chives
Green Onions
Poblano Peppers
Mixed Bell Peppers
Yellow Squash
Luffa Gourds
Watermelon

Not everything has sprouted yet, because I planted it all at different times, but the stuff that has sprouted has been great for making me think summer is coming and that I will get to see the sun.

We’ve also cleaned off the deck, and got it ready for the summer and started feeding the birds again. It took them all of 5 minutes to notice I had put food out again.

And we’ve started grilling again, which is both tasty and something shmoo enjoys quite a bit.

But My Favorite Thing about living in Maryland is coming soon!
Kite Festival at the end of this month also, which we are going to try and hit up.

Not much news otherwise.

I did chart up a small Shmoo Group logo to use at some point in the future for a hat for shmoo. The link is in the sidebar.

I’ve also charted up the RL Olympic hat. Actually, I took the chart that is already floating around Ravelry and redid it quite a bit in a spreadsheet.
I didn’t like the height or the way the pattern looked in the decreases and I looked at TONS of photos on the web, not that there are that many good ones….
There appear to be two different types of that hat, and each has two different trees on it. Further, whoever designed the damn thing didn’t make the pattern line up in the blue section! Obviously not designed by a knitter, as that’s something we would have taken into account.

Hoping to cast on today and that it goes quickly, since I’ll basically be knitting the hat twice. With only minor changes between the “clean” and “naughty” sides.

front

Yesterday I knit an entire hat. BAM! My first finished knit of the year. And it only took me two months!

leftside

It turned out a little on the small side but I love the way it looks enough not to rip it. I’ll just gift it and be happy with it just the same.

rightside

Details: Knitty’s Swell, done in handspun on sz 5 needles. The yellow/orangey stuff was spun by me, with a cable? ply. Not sure that’s the right term, but you ply two singles together. Then you ply two plies of plied singles to each other. It creates a very mottled, round yarn. The dark purpley stuff was some of the handspun I got back in the HHHH swap. I held it double.

crown

The only thing I didn’t just love about how it turned out (Besides how it looks on me, which even shmoo admitted was awful!) was the last little bit of the crown. I feel like the decreases were a little to fast. I even readjusted so there was one extra row of them, but I think next time I’ll adjust so there are two or three extra rows.