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Friday Roundup: Why You Should Block Colorwork, and Challenge Accepted!

What I’m Knitting

The second colorwork mitt is alllmost done—just the thumb ribbing and weaving in ends to go!

I sometimes get comments about how even my colorwork is on my FOs… to which I always respond, “Nope, it’s just blocking.” Here’s an illustration of what I mean: the unblocked mitt next to the blocked one (they are, of course, the exact same stitch count, needle size, etc.).

I think the difference is even more obvious on the reverse side:

So anyway, there’s my PSA for the day: block your colorwork!

What I’m Cooking

Remember I said I was considering cooking every single recipe in my new Appetite for Reduction cookbook in order? Well, I accepted my own challenge and started in on it this week! I’m aiming for 2-3 recipes a week, since most of them make enough for leftovers for another meal the next day.

I’ve already cooked several things I wouldn’t have otherwise, and they were all delicious! I missed getting a picture of the baked falafel, which was a bit time-consuming, but amazing. I love falafel, but it’s usually fried in oil—not exactly health food. The baked ones came out moist and delicious. Next time I’ll double the recipe.

Here’s what I did manage to photograph. First, a quinoa-chickpea dinner salad with homemade balsamic dressing. We don’t usually eat dinner salads (hence the need for reduction, ahem), but this one was really filling and just enough with a few pieces of crusty bread. This was my first time making my own salad dressing—it was yummy!

Next up is a chickpea piccata, served over spinach and what Isa (the cookbook author) calls “caulipots”: a steamed potatoes/cauliflower mix mashed with a little olive oil. The whole thing was amazing! We gobbled it up and didn’t have any leftovers that day.

And finally, another dinner salad, this one from another cookbook (we had leftover quinoa that I wanted to use up, so I went looking for a recipe). This is a mock Caesar with homemade dressing and tempeh “croutons.” Another winner (especially the croutons! I usually find tempeh pretty bitter, but this method of cooking them was great).

Stay tuned for next week’s challenge recipes!

What I’m Reading

I finished The Wee Free Men and started in on book #2 in the series, A Hat Full of Sky. I love these books so much!

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: Vacation Edition!

What I’m Knitting

I’m on vacation! (A working vacation, but still.) My husband and son and I are out in the Seattle, WA area for the wedding of a family friend. Ordinarily, many hours on a plane means I’d have plenty of knitting progress to show off… but as any parent knows, taking an almost-one-year-old on a 5 hr + flight does not make for a lot of knitting time. He did really well, but there was a lot of wrangling!

I did, however, manage to stop by a really cool yarn store yesterday when we were wandering around the Pike Place Market area. So Much Yarn is cute and friendly, with an excellent selection of yummy stuff and a great view of the Sound. I was with a group of non-knitters, so I kept my browsing short, but I managed to snag this gorgeous skein of Wonderland Yarns March Hare in Curiouser.

I saw this yarn at TNNA last year and have been dying to try it out! I’m hoping I can get a little vest for my son out of it! (Apologies for the crappy phone snap. Trust me. It’s stunning.)

What I’m Cooking

Not much at the moment, as you can imagine… but I am eating some seriously yummy stuff in restaurants around here. I eat mostly vegan, as anyone who regularly reads this blog knows, and it’s so refreshing to see so many vegan options everywhere!

I did manage to bake some very tasty banana blueberry muffins before we left, however:

What I’m Reading:

I didn’t take my current book with me on the trip, because it’s A) a library book and B) huge. Instead, I’m re-reading a book from one of my favorite authors, Jennifer Crusie. It’s like comfort food in book form:

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: Decisions, Decisions

What I’m Knitting

The 3/4 sleeves for the sweater in progress are now done! So that means I’m ready to join and start raglan shaping:

I have to figure out how I want to do the raglan lines. I’m not a huge fan of the simple p2tog/ssp decreases for reverse-stockinette sweaters, so I’ll have to play around a bit and see what I want to do. Stay tuned!

What I’m Cooking:

Vegan, gluten-free stuffed peppers (with quinoa and zucchini and lots of other good stuff). They were very tasty, but next time I’ll cook them longer–the peppers themselves were a little tough.

An easy weekday stir fry over rice, with white asparagus. It was tasty, but honestly, I didn’t notice much of a difference from regular asparagus. But isn’t it pretty?

And faced with a banana tree full of overripe fruit, I made banana muffins. We were out of walnuts, so I went with almonds. They were really good! I might make them this way again next time.

What I’m Reading

I finally finished The Raven Boys (that ending! OMG!) and started the sequel, The Dream Thieves. It’s excellent so far:

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: Busy Mom Edition

The baby started crawling this week! He’s been scooting backward for a month, but a few days ago moving forward just clicked… and now he’s shooting across rooms at top speed, exploring everything he couldn’t reach before. On the one hand, this is great, since he was getting very frustrated at not being able to move. On the other hand… well, let’s just say I didn’t get a lot done this week.

But it’s hard to be mad at this little face.

What I’m Knitting

I ripped out the failed half-mitt from last week and started again. Stupidly, I ripped out the whole thing, including the cuff ribbing that was totally fine… so with the limited time I had to knit this week, I only managed to get the cuff re-knit and a few rows of the colorwork done. Sigh.

If you look closely, you can see the tops of both the cat and the baby’s heads.

What I’m Cooking

Home-cooked meals also took a hit this week, but I managed a few. I forgot to take pics of the Wednesday potato-chickpea-veggie curry (yum!), but I did get one of our tasty weekend breakfast. Although we eat mostly vegan at home, we make an exception for eggs every once in a while, and I love a good veggie scramble on an english muffin. This includes chives from our garden–fun for us because we’re horrible gardeners and they are the only plant that keeps coming back year after year:

You know how sometimes you end up with things in your fridge or pantry that have to be used up right away or they’ll go bad? That happened to us yesterday… so our dinner consisted mostly of guacamole and brussels sprouts. Some days I wonder if I’m really qualified to be an adult.

What I’m Reading

I finished my friend’s manuscript and started DEVINE INTERVENTION. It’s great so far–light and funny, despite the subject matter of dead kids and angelic oversight. The author, Martha Brockenbrough, is teaching a class at the writer’s workshop I’m attending in July, so I thought it would be nice to read a few of her books.

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: More Secrets…

What I’m Knitting:

Okay, I’ve been meaning to stay away from secret projects that I can’t show off (after so many months of them!), but I couldn’t help myself. It’s actually not the project that’s secret in this one, it’s the yarn. But as soon as I get the go-ahead to post about it, I will!

Here’s a teensy little sneak peek:

I finished the adult Transposed Hat and finally have decreases I’m happy with, and it’s going out to test knitters this week. It just needs blocking and a photoshoot–hopefully that will happen this week!

What I’m Cooking:

I’m kinda mad at myself for forgetting to take pictures of the black bean and avocado enchiladas with mole sauce I made this week. You’ll just have to imagine. But here are a few things I did remember to photograph:

Risotto with peas and shiitake “bacon” (just as delicious as the first time I made it!):

And this one is kind of cheating because it was so easy, but… grilled “cheese” with spinach and tomato. Yummy with soup on a cold day.

What I’m Reading:

I finished Greenglass House (so good!) last night and need to go to the library to pick out my next read. My top picks from my to-read list are Masterminds by Gordan Korman, Magic Marks the Spot by Caroline Carlson, and The Young Elites by Marie Lu. But what I end up with will be dependent on what’s checked in, so stay tuned.