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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: Days of Wine and Chocolate

What I’m Knitting:

I finished the colorwork mitt, but it’s currently blocking and is still damp–not that interesting for pictures. Hopefully I can get a rough pattern written up and get it up for testing in my Ravelry group this week!

What I’m Cooking:

I managed to get a decent amount of cooking in this week! I’m trying to avoid wheat for the next few weeks, so that gave me a little more of a challenge.

My good old standby, quinoa-lentil-kale stew (good for the colder weather we’ve been having lately!):

I’ve never cooked with wine before (we don’t drink much, so we never have any in the house), but I figured it was time to give it a shot and picked up some cooking wine at the grocery store for this mushroom stroganoff recipe. Holy cow–it made a huge difference in the dish’s flavor. I’m a convert!

I also got in some tofu curry and spaghetti squash with veggie marinara:

And saving the best for last, these vegan peanut butter cups. They were dead easy: melt semi-sweet chocolate chips and put a spoonful on the bottom of a muffin cup, chill for 10 min, mix natural peanut butter with a little powdered sugar and vanilla and plop some on, cover with more chocolate and freeze. They maybe aren’t as pretty as Reese’s Cups, but they were delicious.

My mouth is watering at that last picture. I might have to make some more this week…

What I’m Reading:

I picked up The Raven Boys after hearing raves about the series from loads of people. It’s really good so far, but I’m having trouble getting past the fact that one of the main characters, a self-destructive, unpleasant teenager, has the same name (Ronan) as my cheerful baby!

Friday Roundup: Failed Colorwork and Winning Sauce

What I’m Knitting:

I put in some time on a new colorwork design this week. The yarn, Stitch Sprouts Yellowstone, is probably the best yarn I’ve ever used for colorwork–even and smooth, but still a teensy bit grabby, with great stitch definition.

I knit colorwork with one color in each hand, so I decided to take yarn dominance into account and switch the color in each hand halfway through, since this is a yin-yang sort of design. I thought I was being rather clever! But I somehow got it into my head that the yarn in the right hand was the dominant one, not the left…

See how the motifs on each side are kind of sunken rather than popped out? Sigh. Glad I noticed and thought to check before I had the whole dang thing done, but ripping this out is going to be a wrench.

I did get this lovely skein of Malabrigo Chunky in the mail this week, as a prize for winning second place in a best colorwork competition for Malabrigo March:

It’s a little darker than I’d usually go for, but I love it! I think it’ll become a hat, with some texture to break up the inevitable pooling.

What I’m Cooking

Remember how I said last week that I pretty much always follow a recipe when I’m cooking? Well, this week I went completely out on a limb and made my very own vegan tomato cream sauce from scratch. And it came out delicious! I am unreasonably proud of this sauce, which we devoured over gnocchi.

I also made a batch of broccoli “cheddar” vegan soup for our Wednesday big dinner and managed to get a quick snapshot:

I had two non-vegans ask me for the recipe, so I guess it turned out pretty well. :-)

What I’m Reading

I wish I could talk about my friend’s manuscript, because it’s awesome so far. But hopefully I’ll have it done this week, and then I’ll be be back to sharing my reads!

Friday Roundup: Colorwork FO and Plenty of Cooking

Last week was just as busy day-job wise as the week before… but somehow I managed to get plenty of cooking and knitting done. Go figure, right?

What I’m Knitting:

The adult version of my baby/child Transposed Hat is finished! We went out to the field around the corner from our house and spent a cold fifteen minutes getting some pictures with the baby strapped to the back of my husband. I think they turned out rather well, considering those circumstances:

I’ll be releasing the pattern in the next few weeks, so expect more pictures soon!

I’ve also finished that secret hat I was talking about last week, and guess what? The yarn isn’t secret anymore–Knit Picks just announced that their Preciosa merino single-ply is back. I’m knitting away on the matching mitts, so hopefully I’ll have a set to show off next Friday.

What I’m Cooking:

Like I said, plenty of action on the cooking front this week! First was a rare scramble made with actual eggs rather than tofu or some other analogue. Served with fake sausage patties and toast, it made excellent Sunday breakfast:

I only had about ten minutes to throw together this next meal, so I took a can of Amy’s Tom Kha Phak (Thai coconut soup), added veggies and some cornstarch to thicken it up, and served it over rice. It worked surprisingly well. I’m rather proud of this one.

I was cooking for a crowd again on Wednesday (I do this most weeks), so I whipped up the coconut vegetable curry from Budget Bytes (adding chickpeas for additional protein). With some naan on the side to soak up the sauce, it’s soooo good.

And finally, continuing cold temperatures yesterday (boo) called for a large pot of stew with dumplings. I used fresh thyme instead of dried like I usually do. It made such a difference!

What I’m Reading:

I’m a little ways into the second book in THE EIGHTH DAY series, THE INQUISITOR’S MARK. It’s just as good as the first one (which I loved) so far!

Friday Roundup: Vegan Bacon(!)

What I’m Knitting:

I finished the larger Entrechat shrug for my niece and it’s awaiting buttons and blocking like the little one. I got two super-cute flower buttons that I think will look really nice. Hopefully I’ll have pictures of both together by next week (I’d better, because the baby shower is on the 28th and I should have the package sent by then).

Which means, for the first time in a very long time, I have no deadline knitting. Zero. Nada. I can knit whatever I want, which feels impossibly decadent. I’m thinking of doing some playing around with this gorgeous Stitch Sprouts Yellowstone (sport weight, 80% wool, 20% silk) that’s been marinating in my stash:

Maybe some colorwork mittens? Or a slouchy hat?

What I’m Cooking:

Okay, first, I have to tell you that I love the taste of bacon. I don’t love what it does to my waistline or my digestive system, however. So when I found a recipe for shiitake mushroom “bacon”, I thought I’d give it a try! You slice the mushrooms thinly, toss them with spices and liquid smoke, and bake in the oven, tossing a few times.

I was really surprised to find that it actually does taste somewhat like bacon! It’s mostly the liquid smoke, I think, but the chewiness of the mushrooms is almost the right texture, too. I ate it on a baked potato with chili, veggie sour cream, and veggie cheese and it was delicious. Definitely making this again!

I also whipped up some creamy corn-potato chowder, one of my favorite cashew-based soup recipes:

One morning when I woke up, I was craving a junky breakfast sandwich… so I whipped up a vegan version! This is tofu scramble (way more delicious than it sounds) on an english muffin with a meatless sausage patty and a slice of veggie cheese. Not health food by any stretch of the imagination, but it was soooo good.

What I’m Reading:

I’m working on a beta read of an amazingly weird middle-grade manuscript (unpublished as of yet) for a friend of mine, so no published books for me this week.

Friday Roundup: An Actual FO!

What I’m Knitting:

Look, look! I finished the last project for my secret collection and actually knit something I can show you. This is an teeny, adorable shrug for my future niece, who’s due in May:

Pattern: This is the ever-popular Entrechat pattern (Ravelry link) by Lisa Chemery. I can see why it’s so famous! The shrug was fun and interesting to knit, and the pattern is very well-written. I knit the smallest size and it worked up in just a few days,

Yarn: The only yarn store near me that was open when I had the chance to buy yarn was one with a fairly limited selection, so I ended up with the only washable yarn there that would knit to gauge. Fortunately, I like it! It’s Ella Rae Cozy Soft Chunky, a 75/25% acrylic/wool blend. I got perfect stitch gauge on size #8 needles, but I was totally off on row gauge. So it’s a little longer, but still very cute!

Notes: I started another one of these with the same yarn in the largest size for the new arrival’s big sister! I always like to do something for the older sibling when I knit a baby gift to avoid any jealous feelings. I think she’ll love having a matching outfit to her baby sister.

Maybe I should have started with the larger one, though, because it already feels like it’s taking forever. :-P

What I’m Cooking:

It’s been cold here this week, so I’ve been making lots of soup. Didn’t get a picture of the beef-less beef stew or the broccoli cheddar, but I did get a shot of this vegan-tastic quinoa, lentil, and kale soup. It’s so much more delicious than it sounds!

I’m slightly obsessed with creating the perfect dairy-free mac and cheese, so I tried a new recipe this week. Instead of using blended cashews for the creaminess, this one uses unroasted sunflower seeds, miso, carrots, and nutritional yeast. It was really tasty, although I’ll soak the sunflower seeds for longer next time because it was hard to get all of the graininess out.

What I’m Reading:

I finished two middle-grade books I LOVED this week. I devoured both of them!

The first is At Your Service by Jen Malone, which was an adorable tween book about a junior concierge who lives in a fancy NYC hotel. I think this age range gets shortchanged sometimes–there are so many younger chapter books and so many older YA books, but not much in between. This one was perfect!

I also finished Ordinary Magic, which I couldn’t put down. It’s like a reverse Harry Potter–in a world of magical people, the main character discovers that she doesn’t have any magic and is sent to a special school for ords (ordinary people).

So overall, a good week on all fronts!

Friday Roundup: Soup and Marshmallows

What I’m Knitting:

So remember I told you I’d have the bulky vest done this week? I got the whole thing finished a few days ago. It looked a little big around the shoulders and a little small around the armholes, but I talked myself into letting it go. I wove in all my ends… and then those problems nagged at me so much I couldn’t bring myself to block it. After an agonizing couple of evenings spent picking out all the ends, ripping out, and reknitting, it’s almost done. Again.

So instead of a picture of anything I’m working on, please enjoy this stock photo of knitting.

What I’m Cooking:

I was pretty terrible about taking pictures of my food this week. I need to cultivate the habit, because my first instinct when I sit down with a delicious plate of food in front of me is to eat it immediately. But I managed a few soup pics!

This one is a dilly dumpling stew from my favorite cookbook, Isa Does It. It’s the first time I’ve made a soup with dumplings. It was so cool to just plop the dough on top of the stew and have it steam cook through without any interference from me. The soup itself was good, but next time I’ll use less dill.

Here’s what it looked like in the pot–cool, eh?

I also managed to get a pic of this delicious broccoli “cheddar” soup. The cheesy taste comes from a combo of cashew cream and nutritional yeast. It was amazing, and as a bonus, I got to whip out my sadly underused immersion blender.

What I’m Reading:

I got this book a few days ago and devoured it:

This is the second book in the series that continues where the Veronica Mars TV show (and recent movie) left off. It was great, just as good as the first one! I love the way the authors capture the characters’ personalities perfectly. I’m just sad that I’ll have to wait a while for another installment. Marshmallows (fans of V. Mars) unite!