Archive for 2016 July

Friday Roundup: Catching Up

Apologies for the lack of a Friday Roundup post last week! I attended a three-day writing conference Thursday-Saturday, and I barely had time to feed myself, let alone throw together a blog post. But now I’m back in the swing of things and ready to fill you in on another week.

Me and writer buddies at the end of the conference—we were all exhausted, but happy!

What I’m Knitting

The lace/cable blanket squares are all done (woohoo!) and blocking commenced this week. Now I need to crochet them together and decide whether another blocking would be advisable. I’m thinking it would be nice to ensure nice straight edges, but that’ll require figuring out where I can block something that big without danger of toddler or cats getting into it.

While the squares were blocking, I also started a new design! It’s a colorwork top for a little girl out of the yummy Swan’s Island yarn I showed off last week. It doesn’t look like much right now, but here’s a shot of my swatch to show you the cute cat silhouettes I came up with:

The knitting is going really fast on this one, so stay tuned for an update next week!

What I’m Cooking

My big new experiment this week was lentil sloppy joes! I used to love sloppy joes back when I ate meat regularly, so I was hopeful that these would turn out okay. They were really good!

What I’m Reading

I met the adorable and lovely Julie Murphy at the conference I attended last week, so I picked up her latest release, Dumplin’! It’s really, really good so far. Highly recommended.

Friday Roundup: Anticipation

What I’m Knitting

I’m still plugging away on the blanket squares! I’m at the tail end of square #8, so there’s just one more to go and then the joining and finishing.

I’ve enjoyed making this blanket, but as with any larger project, I’m impatient to start something else. I’m eyeing up these beauties that have been in my stash for a while with the idea of making a girl’s top of some sort. We aren’t finding out the gender of the baby arriving in about a month, so there’s a 50/50 chance that I’ll get the right variety of model… hey, I like to live on the edge!

What I’m Cooking

My main culinary endeavor this week was a new recipe for veggie burgers! These mostly consist of mashed sweet potato, brown rice, and black beans. They turned out really tasty! Because they were oven baked, they were also just the right consistency—much easier than frying burgers like I’ve done before.

What I’m Reading

On a whim, I grabbed The Face on the Milk Carton off my bookshelf. I hadn’t read the book in probably twenty years, but I devoured it over two days. I forgot how compulsively readable this book is!

Friday Roundup: New Pattern and a Birthday!

What I’m Knitting

More pattern writing than knitting this week, but with a payoff—my Tierney Hat pattern is now released!

It’s knit in beautiful Madelinetosh DK yarn and can be purchased from Ravelry for $5 here.

Now I’m back to work on the blanket squares! #7 is done and #8 is started… the finish line is in sight!

What I’m Cooking

A couple of surprisingly cold days last week gave me a hankering for chili, so I made a huge pot and happily ate leftovers for several days. Perfect with some (lactose-free) cheese and homemade cornbread muffins:

For my son’s second birthday last week, I decided to make him a cake. But since he’s dairy-free and mostly sugar-free (and so were many of the friends/family who came to his little party), I challenged myself to make a vegan, refined-sugar free cake. The cake part was made with coconut sugar, and the icing was mostly pureed dates with cocoa and some flavorings. I was surprised (and so was everyone else, ha!) at how good it was!

Here’s the birthday boy blowing out his candle (with an assist from Daddy):

What I’m Reading

I’m almost done with The Morrigan’s Curse—what a great book!

Friday Roundup: Catching Up

What I’m Knitting

Whew, it was so busy around here last week that I completely missed the last Friday Roundup post, whoops. Oh well, I’m back at it today! I finished all my commissioned design projects, which means for the first time since December(!), I don’t have anything on a deadline! Let me tell you, it’s a good feeling.

That means I get to go back to my Malabrigo lace and cable blanket—and not too soon, either, since I just hit 32 weeks of pregnancy and really don’t have a ton of time to get this thing done before baby arrives.

Although I only have six squares of the planned nine done, I decided to go ahead and try sewing together the four squares that are blocked. After much trial and error, I decided on a slip-stitch crochet seam:

I think that’ll work nicely, and as a bonus, it’s not terribly annoying to work. I’ve cast on for the seventh square, so hopefully I can get at least that done by next Friday!

What I’m Cooking

I’ve been trying to incorporate more dark leafy greens into my diet recently, since they’re so good for baby. My go-to quinoa, lentil, and kale soup was extra delicious this week. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything differently than usual though—maybe I just really needed the nutrition?

For my weekly meal-for-a-crowd, I took another stab at a recipe that didn’t come out perfectly the last time I made it, a vegan lasagna with spaghetti squash in place of the noodles. This time I nailed it. I had several people checking to make sure it didn’t have dairy or gluten, because it was that tasty.

What I’m Reading

I got started on The Morrigan’s Curse… and then realized I’d read the previous book in the series so quickly (and at a time when I had so much going on) that I didn’t remember a lot of what came before! So I’m going back to the previous book and re-reading that one before continuing on.