autumn already?

These early autumn days are flying by. Cool, crisp mornings, pumpkin spice lattes, lots of baby hugs and kisses, swinging at the park, even a jaunt to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.

I met up with Rue at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool and had a lovely time. My purchasing was rather restrained, which is just fine since our flat is already full to the rafters with wool. Some Briar Rose merino wool for a sweater for Erik, a beautiful skein of Sun Valley laceweight just because, and whimsical buttons by Jennie the Potter. I also ran into the lovely Caffeine Girl at the Briar Rose booth. So nice to meet her in person at last!

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Some bad to go with the good -- making three trips to Minnesota in four weeks to help with some family health problems was exhausting, but all seems to be well now, and we're thankful for modern medicine.

I knit Erik a hat while sitting at airports and waiting in hospitals.

pattern: barley, by tin can knits

yarn: orange flower sw merino worsted, about half a skein

needles: US 5 and 7 16" circs and DPNs

size: child

notes:

Erik has a large head, so I went with the child size rather than the toddler size. That was overkill! This won’t fit him for another year or two.

Well-written pattern, lovely yarn. I will definitely use both again. I learned about tin can knits' free, truly easy "Simple Collection" of patterns with tutorials for new knitters from the Double Knit podcast, which I've been enjoying during my lunch break.

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A child-sized hat doesn't take too long, so I knit a shawlette while I was waiting, too.

pattern: mirabelle texture sampler shawl, by Zehava Jacobs

yarn: madelinetosh tosh sock, turquoise, 1 skein

needles: Clover US 7 bamboo circs

notes:
The yarn was extremely disappointing -- many, many knots. Weaving in lots of ends in a lacy shawl is a pain. Tosh light more to my taste than Tosh sock anyway.

I ran out of yarn partway through section 9. I bound off purlwise on row 7, doing a p2 tog, slip stitch back to the left needle bind-off.

I love the texture in this shawl, but the dark yarn was too murky to show off the stitches. I also hate doing the butterfly stitch. It ends up too taut for me, and in one case I missed purling the slipped stitches together and had to go back and make a creative fix.

As noted by others, there are some typos in the pattern, but it is not too bad. I would knit this again, using a lighter colored yarn with more yardage, and I might substitute a different stitch pattern for the butterfly stitch section. 

I learned something from this experience -- I tend to knit with yarn that's already wound. There were many skeins of yarn in my stash that would have worked better in terms of color and yardage, but I was in too much of a hurry to wind them.

I finished another shawlette, too, but will save the details for another post.

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Pasta with Roasted Eggplant and Mozzarella

Serves 6

1 lb. eggplant, diced
1-2 large red bell peppers, diced
4-6 medium-large tomatoes, diced
1 medium onion, diced
5 garlic cloves, pressed or chopped
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
3 T. olive oil, divided
1 lb. conchiglie (medium shells), rigatoni, or penne
1/2 lb. spicy Italian sausage (pork or chicken, loose/removed from casing)
8 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese, diced
1/2 C. Parmesan, shredded
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees for the veggies. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil for the pasta.

In a large bowl, combine the eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, oregano, crushed red pepper, and 2 T. of olive oil. Toss to coat the veggies thoroughly. Spread the veggies on a baking sheet or shallow pan -- it's best if they are in a single layer, so you may want to use two pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the peppers are tender. Toss with a spatula a couple of times during baking.

Once the water starts boiling, drop the pasta in and cook until al dente.

Brown the Italian sausage, breaking it up as it cooks, and drain.

Drain pasta thoroughly in a colander and place in a large bowl. Add the veggies to the pasta along with the remaining T. of oil. Add the sausage, mozzarella, Parmesan, salt, and pepper, and toss.

NB: A good vegetarian option would be to substitute oil-cured black olives for the Italian sausage.

almost autumn

There's a nip in the air and a spring in my step -- forsooth, autumn's just around the corner here in the upper midwest. We've been happily munching away on apples and pears from last Saturday's green city market.

I've been knitting away at f.pea's mossy jacket pattern. I'm using the specified yarn, Classic Elite Beatrice, now discontinued. This is a machine washable, heavy worsted weight merino wool with a neat construction -- 3 plies very lightly twisted together, which means that it's very easy to separate the plies (esp. with my pointy Knit Picks Harmony needles).

What's neat is that the 3 plies are different colors -- 1 tan, 1 beige, and 1 variegated. The yarn knits up into a very pleasant variegated, marled fabric -- not garish or awful like so many other commercial yarns. Each of these three plies seems to be a plied light fingering weight. Great stuff! Too bad it's no longer on the market.

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In August I instituted a no-new-yarn policy as we prepare to move, but this has already been bent a bit, as Quince and Co. restocked Lark in pomegranate. Not only did I order one more skein to finish Camilla Babe, but also a color book.

I'm contemplating colors for an Aidez cardigan using Quince's lofty aran-weight Osprey yarn. Frost?  Peacock? Delft? So pretty!

Two small projects are blocking on my dining room table as I type, so I'll be back soon with FO posts.

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in the kitchen

-- I really want to make pumpkin ice cream -- I just saw this recipe, but it's definitely more complicated than I'd like. Any recipe suggestions?  Otherwise I'll probably experiment (I'm thinking pumpkin butter + a slightly less cream-cheesy version of my cream cheese ice cream recipe).

-- Sour cream brown sugar ice cream was on the menu for a get-together last weekend! It was awfully yummy. I swirled fig butter through half of the batch, and that was especially tasty.

  Sour Cream Brown Sugar Ice Cream

2 C. sour cream
1.5 C. half-and-half
1 C. brown sugar, firmly packed (preferably dark brown)
.5 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 T. bourbon
fig butter (optional)

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until completely smooth. Pour into your ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer's directions (about 20 min.).

Optional: Pour half the ice cream into a freezer-safe container. Dot a few blobs of fig butter over the top; swirl with a knife. Add the rest of the ice cream. Add a bit more fig butter if desired.

Put in the freezer and allow to harden for at least 3 hours.

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A copy of Moosewood Restaurant New Classics has been sitting in my kitchen bookcase for a few months, sadly unopened and untested. I pulled it out to peruse at lunch today, and the recipes look fantastic! I'm getting very excited about veggies again. 25 tape flags now mark recipes that were calling my name. I'll keep you posted as to the successes.

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Jane Austen fans, the Los Angeles Review of Books features an interesting review article on two new books about Jane Austen.  

orangey goodness

There's nothing like a bowl of juicy citrus to drive away the winter blues...
So maybe it's just citrus colored yarn, but still... Sarah and I headed over to Loopy to check out their 40% off sale yesterday, and I made out like a bandit with 5 skeins of Rowan Cashsoft 4-ply in Ginger, as well as enough navy Silky Wool for a sweater (maybe Basic Black?):
I've been reading proofs all day, and the one thing that kept me going was my fabulous new Bialetti stovetop cappuccino maker:
It creates marvelous foam, and all the hissing and whirring is pretty awesome. I had been wanting an espresso/cappuccino maker for some time, but had neither the space nor the budget for a big fancy one. This is perfect -- space-saving and not budget-breaking (even better, it was a Christmas gift from my in-laws). I hadn't realized just how great an insulation layer cappuccino foam provides! My coffee stays so nice and hot now. You can use it to make lattes, too, but there isn't any cool whirring then.

Anybody catch the new adaptation of Persuasion last night? I thought it was pretty awful. The pacing seemed off -- very jerky. The acting wasn't very good, and it lacked all the subtlety and wit of both the novel and the adaptation from the 90s. What a disappointment! The intro by Gillian Anderson should have tipped me off. What inanities! The entire production was marred by a lack of good judgment and intelligence.

Let's hope Northanger Abbey's better...

still life with yarn

On Saturday I introduced a dear friend (and newbie knitter) to the joy of the LYS. The fruits of my labor include:

- Lana Borgosesia Merino Otto, in the smurfiest shade of blue (4 balls).
- Pear Tree 8-ply merino, in moss (4 skeins). So soft and lovely, with little white slubs interspersed among the green. Destined to become a scarf and hat for a friend's birthday.

The Lana Borgosesia Otto is an unusual yarn for me. It's very rope-y and springy, and it almost doesn't feel like wool as I'm knitting with it. Smurf blue is not my color of choice, but I'm knitting a scarf for my brother who has specifically requested a bright med/dark blue. It seems that, despite being a native Minnesotan, he does not own a scarf and has stooped to borrowing my dad's. He has had a rough winter, so I'm going to send it to him with a couple sci-fi DVDs.

I started the "Cashmere Scarf" pattern from LMKG, but it has an awful tendency to curl, at least at this gauge. I'm thinking about starting over with the Yarn Harlot's easy peasy one-row wonder, a tried and true scarf pattern. If anyone has any quick, masculine scarf suggestions, please speak up!

Mia knit me a lovely red scarf that I'm looking forward to wearing jauntily with a black sweater. Please excuse the bad photography.


She also sent me some linen and evenweave, along with patterns, thread, and frame, in her forementioned attempt to lure me away from the dime store Aida I usually use for my needlework projects.

Thanks, Mia!