The List

Last night I had the symptoms of startitis. I know that I caught it when I realized that I was going to be at the museum all Tuesday and had no plain socks on the needles and needed one.

I went stash diving and grabbed a ball of Seaweed with the intent to make myself some plain toe up socks. Well I finished the toe and realized that this yarn did not want to be plain toe up socks! It wanted to be some 2 stranded argyles instead!

Its want to be these socks caused me to rip out my perfectly worked toe and hunt down a yarn that would not mind being plain socks but as I hunted down the yarn I got to thinking...

I should cast on both the argyle's and plain socks because this year is all about mastering 2 handed knitting and I need a plain sock!

Before I knew it I had my printed copy for the argyle socks in one hands and a needle gauge in the other while trying to hunt down a black ball of Cascade 220 Fingering (I don't know how they can still get away with calling it "220").

Then it hit me while I was looking for a set of size 2 needles that THE LIST that lives on my computer was not getting any shorter and that maybe I needed to finish something on it before I went and dove into 2 new projects.

The List is a list of all my projects, on the needles and need to start, and hours estimated to complete them. Currently I'm at 190 hours estimated and 19 projects.

Some of them only need things like a second fingerless mitten because I whipped up the first then acted like a floozy on caffeine when another pattern or yarn caught my eye. Some of it is epic projects like a shawl that I think needs 60 hours to complete as I only have one border done. But the shameful thing is that some of it is so simple that if I just sat down for a couple hours I could have a finished project. Like the afterthought heels on a pair of socks.

So I sucked up the startitis last night and put a heel on a sock while having a glass of wine (the wine helps me forget about the other projects).

The Perfect Gift: A Shawl

Every year there are a few people I have no idea what to make or get for them so they tend to linger at the bottom of my knitting list till I realize on the big day that I have nothing for them.

I usually panic, feel sick, think about not attending important family functions to avoid them, and then stash dive till I find a yarn that they might like and print a pattern that has some kind of meaning.

This year it was Ben's mom. She is the woman with everything and wants only more time with her family, but i feel she is knit worthy and therefor needs to be gifted with wool.

Last year I knitted her and her husband the Hemlock Ring Blanket in Ultra Alpca

Now my own rules state that because she got a masterpiece last year this year I get to tone it down a little. So a couple days before Christmas when I had no idea what to do for her, and was thinking about not attending Christmas morning with Ben, I was winding the balls for the last of the Christmas knitting and saw a skein of Hushed Purple. I also had a pattern that Caren wrote, and being that they knew one another I knew I had a perfect gift. I mean really, who can say no to a shawl?

Leftovers

We all have them.

Leftover food
Leftover knitting
Leftover cleaning

And we're all expected to deal with these things along with out normal lives.

Today I nearly have the house back to rights. There are still piles of boxes, the table needs to go back in place, my recumbent bike needs to come back in, and there are dishes to dry. Yesterday there was not a single clean fork or plate in the house because we used all of them Christmas Eve, so I set up one of the folding tables in the kitchen, put a towel on it and proceeded to wash nearly all the dishes in the house. Took well over an hour but it got me to start going through the  kitchen and get rid of things we don't use.

Once I have the house back to rights I'll get back to the leftover Christmas knitting. There is 2 pairs of slippers, a shawl and a pair of socks to be done. Normally I try to get it all done before the New Year, but this year it might not happen.

Lastly there is a ton of leftover food, so today I am taking the cranberry sauce I made and making it into fruit jerky.

Here is my cranberry sauce recipe:

* 1 12-ounce bag fresh or frozen cranberries
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup frozen cranberry juice cocktail, thawed
* 1/4 cup water

Stir all ingredients in a heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat; boil 3 minutes. Press mixture through sieve set over large bowl, pressing firmly on solids.(Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and keep chilled.)

Then to make jerky pull the cranberry sauce out of the fridge and allow to come to room temperature. 

Preheat your oven to 170°F.

Line rimmed baking sheets with heavy Saran Wrap (its the same stuff I dye with), leaving extra to go over the edges of the pan (but not too much it touches the oven racks or the side of the oven).

Pour cranberry sauce into lined baking sheets till it is spread evenly and about 1/4" thick. 

Bake in preheated oven for 8-12 hours till it is dry and the top is not sticky.

Let cool, remove from pans and cut into strips using a pizza cutter.

Enjoy!

Recovery

If your like me then the last 72 hours have been intense.

Christmas eve I had only had 3 hours of sleep and was expected to make dinner for 7.

Over all things went well but here are the highlights and left me giggling like a mad woman while my mom tried to make sure I had not lost my mind:

1. When there was not enough drippings from the roast beef to make yorkshire pudding so I used my grandmother's trick of using butter, but the butter dripped in the oven and filled the entire downstairs with smoke. I just stood there giggling figuring that if that's the worse that happened I was okay.

2. The roast beef could have been rarer. I tend to like it with a lot of pink in the middle but it came out with only a little.

3. I forgot to serve my cranberry sauce, so we'll have a lot of cranberry jerky and now I have the task of drying it all.

4. The vegetarian gravy was very peppery. To the point it was spicy.


On the upside there was enough food. Actually there might have been too much. There was mutterings and guesses about how maybe I had a second family coming.

The kitchen is also a disaster today as after eating dinner Christmas eve I sat back with a glass of wine, my nook, and played suduku till I was ready to sleep.

Yesterday we went to Ben's parent's house and then his family party so only a load of dishes in the dish washer have been washed and we used every single dish in the house. I was very lucky my parents gave me a 17 piece French corningware set because I was worried how I was pack the leftovers. I ended up using all but 3 pieces of the set and all of my storage containers. There is zero room in the fridge.

The next few days I'll just be making things out of the leftovers and getting the late Christmas gifts knitted up.

Look forward to split pea soup, corn chowder, shepherd's pie and a line up of the knitting related gifts I'm loving.

Harry Potter Update: I'm halfway through Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I have 2 pairs of slippers, a single skein shawl and fingers on a glove to knit. Feel free to put in new guesses for the date I'll be done!

Happy Holidays!

From Radioactive Rabbit

What it has come down to

I had to dye a single skein of yarn because I decided that the orange I bought was not orange enough for Giants and dyed it yesterday only to use my oven to dry it today:

I'm refusing to go to the store to get groceries till the knitting is done so we had pasta again for dinner last night and lunch was waffles today:

Tonight I'm serving soup and fresh bread. The only thing I have to say in my defense is that knitting is getting done, our cupboards are getting organized and that I'm proving I can cook from scratch!

At the Speed of Light!

Today I was so fast at getting some yarn spun up that before I remember to take a picture the yarn looked like this:

What were you expecting? A picture of yarn!

Yep. Another sucker down!

Currently I have to turn this into three pairs of slippers, fingerless mittens, a shawl, a scarf, finish a cowl and maybe a sweater.

I'm guessing that I have 60 hours of knitting left and 78 hours till Christmas.

Lets see if I can do it!