Champions!

Ha! We did it, somehow. Last night our (recreational) volleyball team won the league championship. I can't say I contributed much - I was pretty off my game until the final match, but hey we did it. Sorry no photos to share, but you can imagine my nasty floor burned and bruised knee.

Frozen Zapata Falls

This weekend David and I had the pleasure of having some friends come for a weekend visit. As we do with most of our visitors we drove up to Zapata Falls.

We hadn't remembered that the falls would probably still be frozen till we got there. This isn't an issue since they are still beautiful frozen, it just had slipped our minds. But my gosh were they gorgeous!

I'll just share with you a few of the
awesome photos we got.



^ it sounded really cool to hear the water running behind the ice


^ we got of few really interesting shots of the cracks. This is one of those instances where David's photography skills and my eye for a good shot worked together in perfect harmony.


^ I'm not sure how many different angles I took of this hole - I just liked it. I'm pretty sure it was left behind from some ice climbers a few months back.

Finished and for Sale

Today's finished object is fingerless mitts - photo on the right. Granted, this photo is of them in progress, but I have plans to shoot finished photos this afternoon. Wait till you see their cute green button, you'll fall in love.

I'm feeling good with how this mitts pattern has turned out. I'll be excited to offer it to you all once it has been knit one more time, straight from the pattern, and not by me.

The for sale item mentioned in the title is some new roving I listed in my Etsy shop.

You may feel as though I am on an Etsy kick lately, and well, you are probably right. I realized I greatly neglected my shop in April.

I did a lot of focusing on it in March and then April came and I got new yarn and the rest of the world melted away. It is sometimes nice how new yarn can do that.

Anyhow, so now I am trying to be a little more shop responsible. So here is the listing for my new lovely, super wash wool roving.

Cinnamon Rolls and Fish

Last Friday night David and I went out for groceries. I was in the mood for fish - this is a rare occurrence so I figured I'd better jump at the opportunity.

When I walked to the "fresh" (I live in a land locked state, how fresh can it be?) seafood section David said he was sorta hoping I was in the mood for the unhealthy breaded kind in the frozen section - granted, this is usually what I most enjoy. I scrunched my nose a little and said, "Let me see if I can do some good frying." And David said his only criteria was that it was crunchy and the breading stayed on - ha (that should tell you about my past attempts).

Before I continue you may be wondering why there is a photo of cinnamon rolls if I'm talking about fish. Well, just after we bought our talapia and green beans David mentioned how he was really in the mood for cinnamon rolls, all the sudden that sounded amazing so they were made on Saturday.

Okay back to the fish. When I got home I busted out The Joy of Cooking because all other recipes had failed me. The recipe for fish and chips sounded promising. It was a batter rather than a crumb based breading and that was the key to good crispiness. Success! David even wanted seconds although there were none.

So now we know we can make fried not-so-good-for-us fish at home, at least it won't have all the preservatives.

Saturday morning I made these cinnamon rolls from Smitten Kitchen. Although it was a long-ish process (lots of rising) it was definately worth the wait! Give 'em a try.

New Fingerless Mitts

Have a look at the newest addition to my Etsy shop!

Tanjalee Hat Pattern Available!

I am excited to announce I have my first pattern up for free! If you look to your right you should see a link for the Tanjalee Hat Pattern (free PDF).

The pattern is named after a friend of mine to whom I sent a simple hat formula from which I developed this pattern.

From this link you will find the Ravelry project page - if you happen to be interested in casting on this project or adding it to your queue.

Once I have things finalized with Ravelry and my test knitters I'll be listing my leg warmers and sunglasses case patterns for sale soon!
Happy Knitting to all!

Saddle Shoulder Sweater

Working on this sweater is one of my reasons for blogging silence, I got engrossed. Then I had to wait till the weekend to get photos for you, but now you can see how it turned out.

This Seamless Hybrid is my first Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern or formula. For the most part it went smoothly. When I reached the shoulders I had to do a lot of thinking to wrap my mind around the process, but after mulling it over and over it finally came to me. From there it was fairly simple.

I knit this sweater with Berroco Peruvia on US 7 needles. Here is my ravelry page for further measurement details.

The measurements I used to figure out my stitch count were from one of my favorite sweaters. I used a mixture of those sweater measurements and my actual real life measurements combined to get the stitch count for this sweater and even then I fudged it a little.

I am really very happy with the result. The look I wanted was casual and simplistic. I feel both of those were accomplished. Also it is super warm! It works great with my vintage snap up puff vests.

Sunglasses Sock Case

This sunglasses sock is the latest addition to my Etsy shop. The pattern will be soon to follow.

I originally knit one of these because for the first time in years I spent more than $10 on sunglasses - I spent a whole $17! Yay Target. It seemed there weren't any cases that fit big sunglasses so I decided to knit my own. And it is handy to clean the lenses with.

I also like to display those cute buttons from around Etsy!

Fair Isle Fingerless Gloves

Here's my latest shop listing. These are knit with Jamieson's Shetland Spin Drift.

I am generally happy with how the design turned out. It was my second time designing a fair isle pattern and I did enjoy it. This was the first one with three colors though.

Also I used the tubular bind off and cast on which always classes up any glove.

I hope they find a happy home. I'll be adding another pair of fingerless mitts soon!

Progress

My patterns are in the works folks! I have one currently being test knit (thank you Sammie!) and I have three others ready to roll for testing! I am finally feeling like I'm getting somewhere with writing these out and I am enjoying seeing the finished products - I hope you all will enjoy them too.

Since the title of my post is "progress" I thought I'd post a couple photos I found from when I was a toddler.

I was browsing around our computer and found the file of photos we had scanned for our wedding. The one on the right is one of my favorites, not really sure why. The one of me in the red boots is the one that David particularly likes to tease me about. He says I look like a boy - probably mostly due to the fact that it took me a long time to grow any substantial amount of hair. So I guess my "progress" would be that I now have hair.

Anyhow, moving on... another area of progress is high altitude baking. As those of you who read often know, the area of the valley I live in is at about 7,500 feet. Me being the mid-west girl that I am had found this to be highly frustrating when it came to baking!

I recently received a copy of The Joy of Cooking and have since been reading up on high altitude instructions. This red velvet cake was my most recent accomplishment.

This weekend was one of my volunteer-mate's birthdays and so I decided to take on the red velvet challenge. The texture was lovely and it tasted great so hooray for conquering the altitude.

I believe that is all the progress I have to update on... what have you made progress on lately?

Blocking

Yesterday I spent a good amount of time beginning blocking for the Barn Raising blanket that is in progress. I'm glad I started blocking now because I don't think I would find much enjoyment in blocking 48 squares at once (and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even have enough pins!).

In general they all blocked out nicely although there were a few irritating squares. One definately stretched out much farther than the others, but I did my best to keep it at 7.5 inches square. And there were a couple that were a bit tight to stretch, but it all worked out.

I'm at 16 count on my squares - not too shabby, but I need another project to keep me going. For that next project I await my yarn shipment that is scheduled to arrive on Thursday. But there is a little bit of a catch to starting my next project.

David and I have agreed that this week (Monday through Friday) when we are home together we will spend time with eachother not doing our personal hobbies. *gasp* I know, but I think we can handle it (as long as work is slow so I can start my sweater!).

We both agreed that we had a gotten a little lazy with eachother so for this week no computer games or knitting/spinning when we are together at the apartment. Turns out this is a pretty busy week anyhow, but I think it will still be a good little excise for us.