Happy Birthday To Me...

I turned thirty-five today. That number seemed impossibly distant and crazy when I was the age my daughter is now. Now, I just want to know when I get a free pass to start taking naps everyday. I was informed today that I either had to have another baby (which really only trades sleeping during the day for not sleeping ever, never at night) or wait until I was at least another 15 years in before I get a nap time.

That seems very unfair.

Dishcloths!

I finished three dishcloths, all from the kitchen cotton I dyed last year. I had tied the yellow yarn too tightly when I dyed it and it still had little undyed bits here and there. I am feeling particularly lazy these days and I didn't feel like dyeing it all over again, but luckily I discovered the magic of a yellow permanent marker and after a little colouring time you can't even tell. With these small successes under my belt I decided to tackle some of my unfinished projects. First in line is this sock:

You may remember earlier this year when the poor sock had a run in with an evil clothes dryer and wound up with three (three!) holes in it. (Three!) I finally could look at the poor thing without wanting to curse (a lot) so I took out the scissors and hacked away at the toe until I could start unraveling it. Then I carefully picked up the live stitches and got them back onto the needles. The only bright side of this whole situation is that the yarn comes in pretty big skeins, so I actually have enough left in my stash to knit the foot all over again. Lucky me.

(Three!)

ETA: The dishcloth pattern is in Mason Dixon Knitting, and can also be found at the Canadian Living website.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this weekend, stuffed full of lovely food and our first project from the Hello Cupcake! book we bought a few weeks ago.

We went with the Pumpkin Cupcakes, although they were technically a Hallowe'en project. The Turkey cupcakes seemed a little beyond our abilities for a first project, what with the fan shaped cookies for the tail, the mini cupcake heads and the eighty different candies and sprinkles used to decorate the whole thing. There was a very adorable "cupcake wreath" project as well, but even with my unending enthusiasm for cute baked goods I wasn't about to collect and wash 100 maple leaves and then paint them with melted chocolate. That sort of thing falls under the category of Just Not Happening. Not until Miss Teagan can be reliably sent out to gather and wash 100 maple leaves at the very least. I am pretty sure that such insane projects are the reason why children were designed to be easily bribed by the promise of sugar.

The whole thing went really well, considering I decided on this ridiculous project the morning of Thanksgiving, the fact that we had to leave at 1pm to drive for an hour be damned! Other than a fruitless search for green licorice shoelaces that left me cutting green licorice strips into even tinier green licorice strips it all went off without a hitch. We had a nice assembly line going, with my applying the orange icing, and Sweetpea dipping the cupcakes in the orange sprinkles and adding the licorice stems. And eating sprinkles. And licorice stems.

Saturday morning we hosted a Thanksgiving Brunch at our house for my Mom and my stepfather. We would have done dinner, but our evening was going to be filled with singing and dancing at the Backyardigans concert at the NAC. Singing! Dancing! And even more singing! Did I mention the singing? It was a mad crush at the NAC, filled to the brim with excited children clutching their seizure inducing flashing wands at 10 bucks a pop. Through some fluke of the online ticket buying system we ended up with front row center seats, much to Miss Teagan's utter delight. I brought a legwarmer to work on during the performance, and the proximity to the performers gave me pause, but I figured since I can knit while looking attentively at the stage and the poor performers were dressed in giant costumes that allowed very little in the way of visibility, I would go for it and happily knitted for an hour and a half of singing. And dancing!

And singing!

Back To Basics

I am in a knitting funk. Everything keeps getting away from me, pretty much literally. If I'm not running out of yarn, then it is unraveling, or getting covered in shampoo, or needles are snapping or sleeves are just plain pissing me off. The last few months has been very disheartening, and finished projects are all but a distant dream.

So I am knitting dishcloths.

I have knit one already, and it was quite a feeling of accomplishment, that little square of finished knitting. I am using the ball band dishcloth pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting and some dishcloth cotton I used in my first dyeing experiment a while back. I am finding these little things surprisingly satisfying.

I always thought knitting dishcloths was a strange waste of time- to knit something that will get dirty and used up, but I found a couple when we moved and they really are fantastic. Once I started knitting my own, I realized that they are really kind of fun - quick and cheerful.

Just Call me Martha

I just finished my first craft; made in the new, fantastic, super awesome craft room. A whole room dedicated to my insanity. Whee!

I have been wanting to do this little project for ages, and since I finally finished painting Teagan's room last week, it seemed like the time. I took apart a plain bulletin board, painted and varnished the frame, then covered the cork with the fabric. The fabric was a pillowcase I picked up at the Ikea scratch and dent section for a dollar. Now just to hang it in Miss T's room. Speaking of Martha, I picked up this cookbook the other day:

Teagan is dying to make princess cupcakes this weekend. All I need is a fancy apron, and I'll be ready to throw my hat in for mother of the year.

Fall is in the Air...

... which means time for deliciously warm and comforting food. (I know, I know, that was the lamest intro ever.) I made Butter Chicken in the slow cooker tonight, using this recipe. I love her recipes, and this one was delicious. A couple of days ago I made chili and cornbread muffins. I adore these muffins with a passion that is probably somewhat unhealthy, so I thought I would post the recipe. The creamed corn replaces the oil that is usually in cornbread recipes, so they are much lower in fat.

And totally awesome.

Cornbread Muffins:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 can (14 0z) creamed corn
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (I usually use plain yogurt or sour milk)
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat oven to 375. Grease and 12 cup muffin tin. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk together wet ingredients. Add to dry ingredients and mix until just moistened. Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from muffin tin and let cool on a wire rack.

Well, Gee Whiz

Having a small child means that often the words in my head don't match the words that come out of my mouth. There is a lot of self censoring in parenting, at least if you have a tendency towards potty mouthery, which I do. I am pretty good at this Pollyanna doublespeak after half a lifetime of working retail. The funny thing is hearing my child say:"Oh shoot!" with the same weird inflection that I get when I am struggling not to say something else.

This rambling actually had little to do with anything today, except that I am working on a project that is giving me fits, and I want to swear. A lot.

I am working on a pair of legwarmers for a friend's daughter, and they are turning out to be quite the frustrating little project. I've done the pattern before, and it is dead simple, but the yarn is being a giant pain. I had two balls of angora yarn to choose from, and the first colourway was a little muddy and dull looking, and just plain bleh, so I undid it. So then I tried it out with the second colour. Now I have this:

What is this, you ask? It is pooling. All the colours are lining up in orderly rows up the length of the project and it isn't so much supposed to do that. (It is much more noticeable in person and I am not letting my perfectionism totally run amok. Really. I promise.) It might be okay looking now, but if I keep on going it will eventually look pretty awful. So I fiddled with the needle size and number of stitches and I am still getting the same effect, only slightly different. So now I am on to yarn choice number three and a project that should have taken me a day or two has stretched on to over a week now without anything to show for it.

Well, shoot.