Friday Roundup

Friday Roundup: You’ll Have to Take My Word for It

What I’m Knitting

I made some progress on the sweater sleeve I was talking about last week, but reverse stockinette doesn’t make for very exciting pictures:

Although I guess that line of loose stitches at the place where the DPNs change is exciting (for a certain value of the word). I’ll have to do some major tugging during blocking to get that to even out.

What I’m Cooking

My mom had a birthday last week and we hosted a party for 20 people at our house. My mom’s a strict vegan, so I went all out on my share of the potluck lunch: stuffed mushrooms, coleslaw, and the pièce de résistance: a vegan, gluten-free, refined-sugar-free cheesecake.

And I got exactly zero pictures of any of it. Bummer. But trust me, it was all beautiful and very very tasty.

I made an enchilada casserole later in the week and missed getting pictures of that too… but I did remember after I heated up my leftovers! This is one of those dishes where the leftovers almost taste better than fresh.

Nom. Comfort food at its finest.

What I’m Reading

Still working on The Raven Boys (which is getting really, really good!). Maybe when my son stops teething I can sneak in a little more reading at night before bed, sigh.

Friday Roundup: Long-Forgotten Project

What I’m Knitting

I picked up a sweater WIP that my Ravelry project page tells me I started all the way back in October of 2013. That was just a few days before I found out I was pregnant, and, well… eleven published baby designs later, here I am coming back to it, haha.

This was my original concept sketch for this sweater:

I was looking for a way to incorporate some bobbles into a design. I love them, but they’re so impractical most of the time. Before I abandoned this project, I got all the way up to the armholes in a lovely yarn, Stonehedge Shepherd’s Wool Worsted:

So I started a sleeve a few days ago! I’m abandoning the idea of using the same texture pattern on the sleeves because I think it’ll be too overwhelming. Instead, I’m going with 3/4, reverse stockinette sleeves. It’s a lot of purling, but oh well. I think it’ll look good in the end. Hopefully it doesn’t take me another year and a half to finish it.

What I’m Cooking

A friend of mine is expecting her third child any day now, so I made her a few meals and froze them so she can just defrost when it gets crazy. No pics of the enchilada casserole because it just looks like a big tub of sauce once you assemble it, but I got one of the quiche, which came out rather pretty:

I decided to make my good old standby, quinoa-kale-lentil stew (she’s a health-conscious mama, so I figure she’ll need something for when she’s ordered pizza for the fourth night in a row and is dying for something healthy). The recipe has you put the kale in at the very end and stir it around until it cooks down and gets velvety. Every time, I think I’ve ruined it by putting waaaaay too much kale in:

But through some dark magic, that becomes this in only a few minutes:

Kale is weird.

What I’m Reading

Still working on The Raven Boys, which is really, really good. The prose is a little bit too much on the literary side for me sometimes, but I can see why so many people recommended this book.

Friday Roundup: Yarn Dominance

What I’m Knitting:

I’m working on some swatches for new designs in a truly outstanding yarn that I wish I could show you… but I also made some progress on the Yellowstone mitts re-knit this week.

Remember that yarn dominance issue that caused the rip and re-knit a few weeks ago? Well, I’m really glad I did it. Here’s a shot of the version with the wrong yarn dominance (e.g., the motif color not being held in the correct hand on each side) next to the new one. The current one needs some blocking after its frogging, but I can really see a difference in how well the motif stands out!

What I’m Cooking:

I was on a pasta kick this week… so that meant vegan cream sauce and Pad Thai. At least the Pad Thai was made with rice noodles, right?

My big Wednesday meal was a baked potato bar this week. Pretty basic, but I jazzed it up with homemade vegan queso, broccoli, and chili:

Now THAT’S a baked potato. (With McCormick Bac’N Bits! They just happen to be vegan–who knew, right?)

What I’m Reading:

I finished Devine Intervention (which was a very fun read!) and am between books at the moment. I love that delicious moment when the whole world of books is open to you. I have a To Read list as long as my arm, but most of them are new enough that the library doesn’t have them, so I think a bookstore trip is in order.

Friday Roundup: Winner, Take 2

Since I didn’t hear back from the winner I picked last week for the Golden Morning book, I went back to the random number generator to choose a new winner:

Comment #4 was Sarah, who said “My knitting changes a bit seasonally. I cannot bear to have a pile of alpaca on my lap during the summer. Lace is always a favorite, and laceweight yarn is a staple in my stash. I think I keep my knitting focus on smaller things that will not cover all of me as I knit them, but if they are large, they need to be light.”

Congratulations, Sarah! I’m sending you an email to get your address details and the pattern book will be on its way to you shortly.

Now to your regularly scheduled Friday Roundup post:

What I’m Knitting

A secret accessory design I can’t show you. I know, I know, I said I was done with these for a while, but a call for submissions that I couldn’t refuse came to my attention a few months ago and I got a design proposal accepted. This accessory is small and fun, though, so I should hopefully be back to something blog-able next week.

What I’m Cooking

I forgot to take pictures of the amazing (if I do say so myself) enchilada casserole I made for my usual crowd dinner on Wednesday, but I managed to snap a few pics of other meals.

Basil was on sale at my local grocery, so I snagged a bunch of it to try a vegan pesto dish from my favorite cookbook, Isa Does It. The pesto was tasty, but the real star of this dish is the breaded tofu on top. I’ve never tried to make breaded tofu before–it was much easier than I thought, and soo00 tasty. My 9-month old son loved it too!

I’ve never been the type of person who can whip up sauces without a recipe (kind of funny, since one of the first things I did when I started knitting was to go “off-recipe” and start making up my own things!). But I tried a almond-milk based cream sauce last week that was completely tasteless, so I started adding things to it (like miso and nutritional yeast, my favorite vegan flavor enhancers). The resulting sauce was so good that I tried it again this week, with different proportions of ingredients and a whole bunch of veggies.

It was amazing. I can’t believe how cheesy a sauce can taste with no cheese whatsoever. I think it’s the umami flavor (pleasant savory taste) that the miso brings to the table. I have a new favorite sauce recipe that I can tweak to my heart’s content! My son also loved this one, even though it was loaded with garlic and onions. He’s definitely my son. :-)

What I’m Reading

Not too much to say on this front either–I’m still working on my writer friend’s manuscript. Baby’s sudden sleep regression = major dent in my reading/knitting time, unfortunately.

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.

Friday Roundup: Mmmm, Colorwork

What I’m Knitting:

Remember that Stitch Sprouts Yellowstone I mentioned a few weeks ago? I’m most of the way through the first of a set of mitts in a fun colorwork pattern. I wanted the back to have totally different colorwork for variety’s sake, but I also wanted to keep it simple. I like the way it’s coming out!

I’m not a huge fan of magic loop in general, but I favor it over DPNs for colorwork. Getting the tension right when switching between three needles is that much more annoying than switching between two. The only thing that makes me sad is that I can’t use my beloved ChiaoGoos for magic loop–the cable is too stiff.

And then for good measure, I also started an adult version of the Transposed Hat I showed off in last week’s post. I picked out the most crazy variegated skein of Malabrigo Rios I could find at the yarn shop, and I’m loving the way it’s working up! I hope to have the hat finished by next Friday, so stay tuned.

What I’m Cooking:

Not a ton of stuff to show off (I feel like pasta with pre-made sauce and veggies thrown in is cheating, and we’ve had that several times this week), but here are a few things.

Breakfast, featuring tofu scramble with veggies (told you that one was going in my regular rotation), breakfast potatoes, and meatless sausage patties:

I was cooking vegan for a crowd on Wednesday, so I made a taco bar with all the fixings (including meatless ground beef and vegetarian refried beans), as well as some guacamole. My husband has an outstanding guac recipe with some secret ingredients that make it delicious. Apologies for the bad phone snap, but here’s the result:

What I’m Reading:

I’ve had the Alex Rider series recommended to me several times, so I picked up the first one. It’s like James Bond for teenagers! Hard to believe that this came out sixteen years ago. Yeesh.