What. WHAT.

I have gone off the deep end. I am going to go completely insane. This is now absolutely certain.

I have signed up for NaNoWriMo. Every year I think about it, like "oh, wouldn't that be crazy/great if I could do that" but every year I talk myself out of it. No more! I am going to try to write 50,000 words of awful unorganized nonsense in a month, and I will do my level best to turn off my inner perfectionist that normally keeps me from writing anything longer than three pages.

....This is going to be really, really difficult. Oh god, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Drop-Stitch Scarf Pattern

While I'm busting my stash, I decided to try my hand at making-it-up-as-I-go-along knitting and see if I could get a pattern out of it. And lo! something easy, fast, and really pretty, and I've found a great use for this random bargain bin yarn. It alternates large and small drop rows with large and small garter bands to produce a nice drapey, stretchy fabric with just the right amount of sparkle for an evening accessory. :)

Yarn: 1 ball Crystal Palace Yarns "Shimmer" 85% acrylic 14% nylon 90yrds/50gr in Indigo
Needles: US 10 1/2
Gauge: 16 sts/21 rows = 4" in stockinette st, but let's be honest here, it's a scarf. This isn't terribly important.
Finished size: 55" long, 3 1/2" wide

Cast on 14 sts: I prefer long-tail for a stretchy edge

Knit 2 rows in garter stitch
Row 3: *K1, YO, YO*, repeat until last st, K1
Row 4: *K1, drop YO loops*, repeat until last st, K1
Knit 4 rows garter stitch
Row 9: *K1, YO*, repeat until last st, K1
Row 10: *K1, drop YO loop*, repeat until last st, K1

Repeat Rows 1-10 until scarf is desired length, BO loosely. Add fringe if desired.


And I made it in about 3 hours. It probably would have gone faster if my fingers weren't freezing off. XD
Note: I used acrylic needles for this project since the yarn is fairly slippery tape-style, and this helped keep everything in place while dropping stitches.


Enjoy!

Kitchen Witchery!

Or, No One Is Hiring Anywhere And I Have Got To Make Use Of These Leftovers To Save Money:


Today, I'm making soup stock. Yesterday Em and I got a delicious dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant down the street (called, of course, Vietnam Restaurant), and because I decided to branch out from my usual meat roll vermicelli and try their duck I was left with a lot of, well, duck bones. And gristle, and skin with tons and tons of delicious duck fat. Also, Em didn't finish her vegetables. So I'm making soup stock today, and it smells HEAVENLY.
Not sure what I'm going to do with it at the moment, though I do have some leftover sauce and thin slices of barbecued pork and a ton of rice, so I'm thinking some sort of....Risotto/pilaf/jambalaya/what-have-you.

ETA: This is freaking delicious. Here's a halfassed recipe so I can remember for next time.

Knit-a-longs are fun!

But I knit way, way too fast. XD I feel a little bad that I've got this honking great shawl already and the rows take forever and some people haven't even started theirs yet. :/ this is the Supernatural summer KAL/CAL/WAL where we fill the lonely weeks until season 6 with knitting, and try and stave off withdrawal by watching some of our favorite episodes. Since I'm new to the fandom and watched all of SPN in about two months, the withdrawal is hitting me hard and I've already broken down and started watching Dark Angel just because Jensen (tiny tiny baby Jensen with bad hair!) is in the second season. woe is me.

However, I kind of want to finish this shawl before next week, since I'll be moving, and the fewer WIPs to worry about, the better.

Why I Have a Staggeringly Low Opinion of Diana Gabaldon

Congrats, Diana, you're the second woman to go on my list of Authors Who Just Plain Suck. You and Stephenie Meyer have something to celebrate! Sisters are doing it for themselves!

Washcloths, or Why I'm Slowly Losing My Mind

So, over the past year I've done a lot of knitting that I never thought I'd do. I thought I'd graduated from the scarf-knitting stage, whining about how boring and repetitive and flat and lifeless they are, only to discover Estonian lace (reminder: I really need to get working on Triinu again), which makes scarves one of the most challenging things I have on my needles at the moment.

I swore up and down that I would never, ever, not in my life become one of those crazy people who knits socks. Because it's silly and pointless to knit something you can buy so cheaply and they're all complicated with the heels and the toes and stuff and sock knitters seem to all be certifiably insane. Cue last week, when I finished my second pair of socks and have a third about halfway done (two at once magic loop, no less!), and I'm haranguing mom and kara to join me on the sock bandwagon. Surely, socks are the most addictive branch of the knitting tree. I don't know why. but they're just magic. The Baudelaire socks, in addition to being fancy and challenging, also remind me of me new favorite children's book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events. There's also a pattern called Snicket Socks, and you know I'll be working on that soon.

And now, NOW, I'm getting really excited about things I used to think were totally boring and ridiculous: WASHCLOTHS. I blame Mason-Dixon Knitting and that totally sweet brick-like color pattern. (hey, who knew slipped stiches could be useful and not a horrible mistake?) I also blame the genius behind the "Exfoliate!!" Dalek washcloth, which I made in one sitting that required me to stay up until about 1 in the morning making crazy little bobbles. I'll have to make a TARDIS one to match. The next washcloths I make are going to be Supernatural-inspired Winchester Washcloths. I used to think that knitting a boring old square with some sort of squashed-looking design on it in boring old knit and purl stitches was...utterly useless, but that was before I knew I could make boring old squares with "bitch" and "jerk" written on them.

The conclusion that ought to be drawn from this blog is that Fandom Will Get Me To Knit Anything. wooohooooo

River Cottage foraging and Kitchen Witchery

Walking to and from work in the spring affords me a lovely opportunity to see plants as they grow and flower and bear fruit, and ever since reading the River Cottage Cookbook I've looked at the assortment of greenery in the tree lawns in my neighborhood and seen not weeds, but food. There's a ton of wild strawberry plants scattered around that are going to be delicious later on, and today's walk home supplied the fixings for lunch. I discovered (hooraaaaaay) that I started my period today, and I grabbed a handful of young dandelion leaves to brew into a tea to relieve the bloating. it's fairly mild but tasty.

There's a TON of chives growing around here, which is awesome, because I pretty much never need to bu chives again. I gathered a goodly bunch and chopped them to put into tuna salad. YUM.

Tonight I want to do something for the full moon, and since it's also Passover I'll do something unleavened. I've been wanting to make hoe cakes for a while. mmmmmm hoe cakes. perhaps with beans and..um...salad. I don't know.

ETA: took a hot bath with rose petals and some crushed aspirin. Cramps are now gone. SCORE.