Knitguy

The sweater yarn is done! All one and a half pounds of it. It ended up being 1087 yards and it knits up to 5 sts per inch on a US7.  I’m going to use it for Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Seamless Saddle Shoulder Pullover for the Ravelympics. Now the real challenge is waiting until the Olympics start so I can start it. Here’s what it looks like close up:

I also ended up finishing the Botanic Hat the Friday before last and it has basically replaced my green Koolhaas for everyday wear.

Or at least I’m still taking pictures of knitting and food (the food will have to wait for the Daring Bakers and Daring Cooks reveal days though. This past week I went to Twisted and got two skeins of DIC Classy, one in Shiny Moss and the other in November Muse, to knit Stephen West’s Botanic Hat.

This is the right side of the hat, so far as knitting is concerned – not super exciting.

And that is technically the wrong side of the hat. That said, it can be either right side out or inside out. I personally think that it looks better inside out because of the slipped purl stitches.

I should be able to finish the hat with in a few days though this whole sick thig isn’t making me want to do much of anything. I think it may just be some random cold i got from the people in my French class. I also have the load of fiber to spin for my sweater. Hopefully I’ll get a bit of that spun up tonight but we’ll see.

…though I don’t think I ever really left. I went to SOAR, got really sick (swine flu possibly) at SOAR, and then fell off the face of the earth with this and my other blog it seems. I had been putting off and putting off updating despite the fact that I get weekly backup emailed to me as a looming reminder.

Currently that is being knit into socks. It’s a bablydoll southdown/silk blend that I blended on my drum carder. I spun up the singles woolen then did a 2×2 cable ply. It ended up being 14 wpi.

This is my big project – above is 1.5 lbs of cvm merino cross/silk batts. My goal is to spin it up for a sweater and knit it during the Olympics for the RavOlympics. I’m going to knit Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Seamless Saddle Shoulder Sweater, though I’ll probably end up putting a 1/4 length zipper in it and possibly add some sort of collar. Right now I’m just barely started with the spinning (though I have sampled) but I’ve set myself a deadline for a month and a half from now (when the Olympics start) to have the yarn spun so, if my motivation says up, I should get it done.

So I’m totally fried right now but I told a few people that I’d post tonight so I figure I should maybe live up to that tonight. I was hoping that this post would be somewhat short, but from the looks of the title I just wrote, it’s gonna be a little lengthier than I want it to be. So, today was the start of Sock Summit! I registered (picked up my badge and such) on Wednesday which was good, I had no real desire to rush (though I wouldn’t have been rushing from the looks of it) and was already out and about at that point. I took Merike Saarniit’s darning class (called Darn It!) this afternoon and will be taking two classes during the summit with Judith Mckenzie McCuin. Tomorrow (Friday) I have Sock Exotica and then saturday I have Put Spinning on Your Feet.

As was alluded to in the title, I have a new cooking blog! Cooking Through Bouchon is my new blog devoted to cooking my way through Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook. It was, in part, inspired by the French Laundry at Home blog (the same woman now is cooking through Alinea because she’s just that amazing) and will, more than likely, be updated more than this one. Granted part of that is because I’ll probably be making at least two recipes out of the book a week and I prefer to update soon after cooking (something that doesn’t really happy with Daring Bakers). That being said, all of my Daring Bakers/Cooks stuff will stay on this blog. There is also a possibility that I will do a bit of a weekly summery of the Bouchon blog on this blog but that isn’t set in stone. That blog will also more than likely be chock full of pictures of food int he making.

So yesterday was the last day of the Tour de France (congrats Alberto Contador) and thus the last day of the Tour de Fleece. Of course, as could have easily been predicted from last year, I didn’t spin nearly as much as I thought I would. I ended up spinning one skein of sock yarn and one skein of lace weight singles. That being said, those lace weight singles – 1,123 yards all spun in one day!

Now, on to the food. The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network. (For my non DB readers, we’re required to copy and paste that line, that’s why you’ll always see a version of it in my DB posts) I didn’t do the milan (think Milano) cookies because really, mallowmar cookies and milanos – that’s a joke in this house. With that said, on to the pictures.

Despite the fact that we don’t do massive amounts of sugar in this household – I added caramel

Then piped on the marshmallow (which kept trying to slide off of the caramel as it set up)

After the setting of the marshmallow came dunking in chocolate

And then eating

This is the latest addition to my fiber turned into yarn stash about 370 yards of fingering 3-ply merino that I spun from fiber that I bought from Lavender Sheep when was at Black Sheep. I don’t have anything on the wheel as of now (I know, how could I let my wheel be vacant of fiber for such a long time?) but there’s some merino Allspunup that’s in the wings.

I also got some lovely chopsticks and chopstick rests as a prize from Michelle of PDXKnitterati for correctly identifying a picture she took while she was in Vietnam (one of many places I need to go sometime).

I had a bit of a late start on Tour de Fleece (think Tour de France but for spinning) as I just wans’t feeling it spinning wise on the 4th (though I did play the Sims 3…a lot) so I don’t have any pictures from that up yet (my first skein should be done by tomorrow) but I did do some pre Tour de Fleece bobbin clearing out last week.

I was origionally going to make this a 3 ply but then just decided to do a 2 ply. It’s fingering weight BFL from AllSpunUp that I bought earlier this year.

And a teaser for later this week:

Apparently my petpeve for being late doesn’t transfer over to bloging Daring Bakers chalanges but here goes…

The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800’s in England.

The origional recipe tells you to bake it in a tart pan, but knowing that there was no way I’d be able to easily eat an entire tart over a week I figured they’d be a little more manable in tartlet form (that way I could take them places as a very sweet snack). I was a little worried about how they’d come out of the muffin pan but clearly my buttering and flouring wasn’t in vain – they came out very easly.

That being said some of the bottoms weren’t thick enough and at times the lingonberry jam filling wanted to ooze through them. Either way, they were amazing, a bit too sweet (I could have used less jam) but very very good.

This is my newest toy that I got today at Black Sheep. A Strauch Petite drum carder that I bought from Carolina Homespun this afternoon. I made a bee line over to her booth when I got out for my lunch break during the my first of two Nancy Finn workshops this weekend. Today’s workshop was Lanaset Color Wheel Workshop. Basially we dyed a bunch (63) of samples (silk fabric, they didn’t need setting and they dry super quick) from combinations of red, blue, and yellow along with black. Tomorrow’s workshop is Rainbow Dyeing with Lanaset Dyes which broken up between tomorrow afternoon and Sunday morning. We’ll be dyeing silk blends tomorrow and then we can bring in our own stuff on Sunday.

This month’s Daring Cooks challange was brought to us by Jen over at Use Real Butter. The challenge was, as you can see, potstickers. Now, as much as I love most filled dumplings (as long as they don’t have cheese in them) and despite the fact that I can totally do the pretty little turns that seal the edges of empanadas, I can’t for the life of me crip a a posticker.

Despite their sad appearance they turned out fine though, very tasty with nicely browned bottoms. The dough on all of them has a bit of a orange ting from something that I added (may have been the 5 spice powder).

On the fiber front, I’m spinning up some of the merino cross I got earlier this year for a possible cardigan. I have about a third or possibly half of the singles spun up. Also, next weekend is Black Sheep Gathering down in Eugene. I’ll be takng two dyeing classes with Nancy Finn (of Chasing Rainbow Dyeworks and will try to blog while I’m down there (“try” being the oprative word there).