Yellowstone

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: 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.