Books

Friday Roundup: A Friend’s Book!

What I’m Knitting

There’s been a whole lot more secret knitting this week—but my secret projects are getting closer to completion, so hopefully I’ll be back to things I can show you next week! I did manage to take this pic of my two WIPs at the moment, which explains why my fingers are so confused right now (that’s light fingering on US #2s and super-bulky on US #15s!):

Oh, and I wanted to mention two other knitting-related things. First, I finally took the plunge and started an Instagram account! I’m @trionadesigns if you want to connect with me there. I’m posting fun pics of what goes on behind the scenes around here (which often involves a lot of toddler wrangling), as well as sneak peeks of upcoming designs and things I find inspiring.

Secondly, I’m planning to raise prices on my patterns slightly on Ravelry next week (after the 15th of the month). Most of my garment and accessory patterns are currently priced below the average, and I’ve been meaning to raise them a little higher for a while now to bring them more in line with current costs of production (which include editing, photography, and so on). I’m proud of the work that goes into my patterns and want the price to reflect that!

So if you’ve been meaning to purchase any patterns from my Ravelry store, you can take advantage of the advance warning and save a few bucks this week. :-)

What I’m Cooking

Well, this is embarrassing… I didn’t cook anything worthy of photographing this week (meaning, nothing entirely from scratch). Thanks to a few late work nights for me and the hubby, we did more than our usual share of picking up food or cobbling together quick dinners from frozen or convenience-type ingredients. I’ll try to be better about it next week!

What I’m Reading

Okay, definitely saved the best for last. One of my very good friends had her debut novel come out this week, The BFF Bucket List! I preordered it, so it arrived a day before the release date and I’ve been happily reading it ever since. It’s so good! She has a knack for writing books for tweens that make me really remember what it was like to be that age. You can pick up this book for yourself or your tween friends/family members from your local big bookstore or Amazon.com. You won’t be disappointed!

Friday Roundup: Mitts and More

What I’m Knitting

The Indie Design Gift-A-Long kicked off yesterday evening with a week of 25% off selected patterns from over 300 designers. (Check out all the details here in the Gift-A-Long Ravelry group.) After perusing the designer offerings, I settled on this cute cabled fingerless mitt pattern as my first knit-someone-else’s-pattern outing:

(Cascada Mitts by Karen Troyer Ladman)

Aren’t those adorable? I cast on last night and managed to get up to the point where I start the thumb increases on the first mitt:

It’s so fun not to have to worry about stitch counts or thumb placement or anything. I’ve already got two or three more projects on deck.

What I’m Cooking

I made two savory soups this week, but only managed to get a picture of one:

This tortilla soup definitely makes my top five recipes list from the Appetite for Reduction cookbook. It’s awesome.

What I’m Reading

I devoured the most recent Cameron Strike book in just a few days, in spite of my limited reading time. It was even better than the last two! This one ended on something of a cliffhanger, so I’m going to be waiting impatiently for the next one.

Friday Roundup: On the Road Edition

What I’m Knitting

By the time this gets posted, I’ll be on the road (yay for post scheduling!). We’re going on a weekend trip to the Washington, DC area—we’re planning to go to the National Zoo, spend some quality time with family, and lots of other fun stuff. And the 9+ hour drive means lots and lots of uninterrupted knitting time, hooray!

This is the current project on my needles:

This pic shows the strong wavy lines better—love!

It’s a hat (hopefully that’s obvious) that features a heavily modified version of a cable and lace pattern I found in one of my stitch dictionaries. I’m having fun knitting it, but it should only take me a few more hours to work out and knit the crown decreases… which means I need much more knitting for the trip!

I’m in mini-panic mode already, trying to figure out what to take with me. I might end up defaulting to a whole bunch of trial swatches… but then I have to take a whole load of stitch dictionaries. Hrm. Maybe I’ll figure out a quick toddler hat. My son’s hats from last year are all too small now, so he needs some new accessories before the serious cold weather hits. (Side note: am I the only one who would be completely mortified to let my son wander around in store-bought winter accessories? I mean, little hats only take like two hours!)

What I’m Cooking

This is actually from last week, but it turned out really well and I forgot to post a picture. Baked falafel in a pita with hummus and grain-free tabbouleh on the side. The tabbouleh recipe I found used bits of cauliflower instead of the traditional bulgur wheat, which I thought was pretty clever!

This red Thai tofu and pineapple rice was my lone entry for my cookbook challenge this week:

And for my meal-for-a-crowd yesterday, I made a Mexican lasagna (also known as an enchilada casserole) with homemade guacamole on the side. I used my husband’s killer guac recipe—people were very impressed!

What I’m Reading

I’m still working on The Shepherd’s Crown. I’m dragging my feet a bit on finishing this one, to be honest. The author, Terry Pratchett, passed away earlier this year. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that this will be the last new book I’ll ever read from him, sniff.

Friday Roundup: New Recipes and Half a Mitt

What I’m Knitting

The colorwork mitt is chugging along! Gone are the days when I could have finished something like this in a few days of knitting, sigh, but at least I’m nearly done with the thumb gusset now:

I’m using my Knit Picks Harmony interchangeables to work the Magic Loop technique for these mitts. Normally I prefer DPNs for hand stuff, but getting the colorwork floats the right tension at the edges of all those needles is a nightmare. The cord on these needles is so flexible that they’re really nice for Magic Loop.

What I’m Cooking

Lots of stuff from the new cookbook I got (Appetite for Reduction). I love this cookbook so much that I’m actually contemplating working my way through the entire thing, Julia & Julia style. My husband’s on board—it’ll mean we try a bunch of new-to-us ingredients and tastes, so it should be fun!

This is a low-fat wine sauce over pasta, with (delicious) vegan eggplant “bacon” on top:

And these are sweet potato biscuits, a clever recipe that replaces nearly all of the butter/shortening usually found in biscuits with mashed sweet potato:

They were perfect with this kale, quinoa, potato, and white bean stew:

And last but not least, this AMAZING tortilla soup. Holy cow, was this yummy.

I did have a little mishap with this one. It called for a couple of jalapeños, which I’ve cooked with before without any problems. But somehow I got some of the juice underneath a couple of my fingernails… and they were on FIRE for the whole rest of the day. I cut the nails short, scrubbed them with an old toothbrush, soaked them in soapy water, used rubbing alcohol—nothing helped. It finally wore off on its own overnight, but yikes. Think I’ll wear some gloves next time I cut hot peppers.

What I’m Reading

I just finished a re-read of one of my favorite books, by my favorite author: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. The last book in the series is coming out in a few months (very bittersweet for me, because the author passed away a few months ago and this is the last new book of his I’ll ever read). I decided to re-read the previous four books before the new one.

Friday Roundup: Chugging Along

What I’m Knitting:

Despite a terrible lack of knitting time, I managed to start the second colorwork fingerless mitt of the yarn dominance experiment. This Stitch Sprouts Yellowstone (wool/silk blend) is just luscious.

It doesn’t look like much yet, but I have some longer car trips coming up, so hopefully I’ll have some major progress by next week!

What I’m Cooking:

A trip to a semi-local farmers’ market yielded a bunch of kale and carrots, so I whipped up a potato-kale-quinoa stew:

And I got a new vegan cookbook from the library (Appetite for Reduction)! I’m excited to try lots of recipes, but the first one had to be creamed corn, which I love but haven’t had since I stopped eating nearly all dairy more than fifteen years ago. It came out delicious!

My mom just got back from a business trip to Louisiana and brought me some local brown rice, so I made black-eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread to go with it. My first time cooking with black-eyed peas (and ever eating collard greens, I think), but it came out really good! The recipe uses liquid smoke in place of the usual pork, so it had a bacon-y flavor.

What I’m Reading:

I’m beta-reading an excellent young adult manuscript for a friend of mine before she sends it to her literary agent! Fun stuff. Hopefully you can find this one on the shelves before too long. :-)

Friday Roundup: Baby Hat Edition

What I’m Knitting

I know I said I’d be working on the green textured sweater design this week, but I had to put that on hold for some emergency baby knitting (we’ve all been there, right?). A good friend of mine just had a baby boy a few days ago, so I cast on this mini-sized Koolhaas Hat for her little guy:

The yarn is buttery-soft Knit Picks Comfy in a lovely heathered gray colorway. This is my first time using Comfy, and I really like it! It’s 75% cotton, 25% acrylic, which is just about the perfect blend for my taste. It isn’t as heavy or unyielding as 100% cotton, and the touch of acrylic makes it really easy to wash.

Just when I was at the decreases of that hat, I decided I wanted to work up a little hat for a baby shower I’m attending tomorrow. This decision may or may not have been influenced by the fact that the guest of honor had another baby shower in a different town last week, and every. single. thing was purchased off their registry when I looked a few days ago. Oh well–one of a kind presents are good too, right?

So I cast on a super-quick baby bonnet this morning and have been knitting furiously in the car on the way to run errands (when I wasn’t the one driving, of course!). This one is also in Knit Picks cotton, some Simply Cotton Worsted left over from my Kari Baby Blanket. I’m ready for the decreases and on track to get it finished tonight:

What I’m Cooking

Another round of the delicious, wine-infused mushroom stroganoff (this time with added broccoli to up the veggies) over quinoa pasta:

I had a head of cauliflower to use up a few days later and was planning to roast it… but that took about 45 minutes and the husband and son were hungry now. So I steamed it and mashed it with garlic, Earth Balance spread, and chives from the garden, then served it with veggie burgers. Delicious! The baby LOVED it. He ate a whole plate by himself.

What I’m Reading

I’m still working on The Dream Thieves–but I do have some other writing/reading related news! One of my manuscripts is in a really cool online contest called The Writer’s Voice (modeled after the show The Voice, apparently, but I’ve never seen it so that doesn’t mean much to me!). The contest entries went live today, and in a few days, literary agents are going to request to see manuscripts they find interesting. Wish me luck! If you’d like to check out my entry, it’s here.

Friday Roundup: Scraps

What I’m Knitting:

After 10+ years of knitting, I have a huge drawer full of partial skeins of yarn that are at least 1/3 skein each. Most of them are worsted-ish weight, and there’s a distinct weighting toward the green-blue-purple color families. I had the idea to start a scrap lap blanket last month. First I organized my yarn into a rough color progression:

And then I pulled out some size 7 needles and cast on! I love it so far:

I figure it’s going to take me a while to get through this one, but it’s nice to have an easy project for road trips and nights when I don’t have any deadline knitting.

What I’m Cooking:

I’ve been wanting to make this cold noodle salad with peanut sauce for a while, and it finally got warm enough so that a cold salad sounded appetizing. It was really good–a little spicy, which is just how we like it.

I was in the mood for a little spice later in the week too, so I tried out a new curry recipe. This one has potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and chickpeas. It was really yummy and made a ton–leftovers FTW!

What I’m Reading:

After finishing THE INQUISITOR’S MARK (so good!), I started another book that I didn’t like much after the first few chapters. So I’m giving that one up and starting a beta read of a writer friend’s YA manuscript instead. Much better!

I have a cardigan pattern in the brand-new Knit Picks pattern collection, and you know what that means–a pattern book giveaway! Look for the post later in the week for your chance to win.

WIP Wednesday: Outside-In Baby Blanket

Remember how I said I was obsessed with baby knits these days?

I knew I wanted to design some kind of baby blanket for my kiddo, so I delved into my inspiration folder and came up with these two blanket-like ideas.

After a bunch of swatching, I found a stitch pattern I liked that was reminiscent of the swirls from the first pattern. I figured a “start at the middle and increase on four lines to the edges” construction would work well for the pattern, but there was just one problem.

I hate projects that start with very few stitches and increase out to a zillion at the edges.

I would so much rather slog through the loooong part at the beginning and then be rewarded with ever-increasing speed and progress as I go on. That way the initial burst of enthusiasm sustains me through the beginning, and the visible progress sustains me through the rest of the project. So I decided to design this blanket to be worked outside-in instead of the more traditional inside-out.

I swatched a corner, took a picture, put it in Photoshop, and played around a little:

That’s the general idea, anyway.

I’ve been working on the blanket steadily for about a week now, and here’s what I have to show for it:

Not very impressive, is it? But when you consider that the CO had 664 sts…

I could possibly use a longer circular needle.

WIP Wednesday: A Sleeve and a Group

The yellow fall pullover now has the body and one sleeve finished:

I’m about 1/3 of the way through the other sleeve, and then it’s on to the yoke! I was planning on a raglan sleeve, but I’m starting to wonder if I wouldn’t like a saddle shoulder better. I’m going to contemplate this as I knit tonight.

In other news, I’ve finally started a Ravelry group for my designs! I’ll be posting test knits (like the cozy gray sweater, which went up for test knitting yesterday and is almost full already, yay!), promotions, new designs, and lots of other stuff there. Come check it out here if you’re interested: Triona Designs Ravelry Group.

WIP Wednesday: New Fall Sweater

I started a new sweater this week!

I adore it so far (to the point where I’m having to restrain myself from dropping everything else and just working on it 24/7). The yarn, Imperial Columbia, is so luscious that I’m already contemplating buying another sweater’s worth. It’s rustic-looking, but incredibly light and soft. And at a gauge of 4 sts/in, this is working up really quickly.