Beating the heat

This hibiscus drink is an effective way to stay cool. So is a pool.

Mexico Cami

Finally, a little something done for me! Since my knitting clock is all mixed up and I'm dreaming of sweater knitting, I wanted to make a simple garment that would incorporate waist and bust shaping. Honeymoon Cami by Julia Trice to the rescue! This is finished just in time for our upcoming Mexico vacation. Yay!

Since I am incapable of following a pattern from start to finish and I am really short, I made a few modifications. The most noticeable is that I substituted a vine lace for the border instead of the twisted rib eyelet used in the original pattern. I like the scalloped edging that vine lace produces. I also used Elann.com Sonata yarn in the Spring Orchid colorway. This yarn is leftover from the Curve of Pursuit blanket I made last year - I ordered way too much yarn for that blanket, and I still have more left.
Since I substituted yarn and I like a tight fabric, this led to various stitch calculations due to my gauge and my measurements (which I will not post here, thankyouverymuch).

This is also done in time (OK, a little late) for my blogoversary! I've been knitting and spinning for 2 years now, which seems odd because it feels like I've been doing this forever.

The super secret project is almost finished. Hopefully, I can give it away and post it here soon.

Adios, amigas!

MeezerManx's Not Amused Cats

MeezerManx strikes again, this time with the International Cat Hat: USA. Methinks Abbey and Lucy look more pissed than Greaseball!

Kitchen Vespa

Vespa inhales her breakfast and Mingus takes his sweet time. Sometimes, he doesn't even want to finish his food, however nothing gets his appetite going like the threat of Vespa inhaling his food, too. Since he isn't too fond of that idea, I found that the perfect way to get Mingus to eat is to keep Vespa in the kitchen until Mingus finishes every last bite.

Vespa and I will do simple sit/stay exercises, and if I see Mingus stop eating, I'll have Vespa walk over to his bowl to investigate. That usually gets Mingus eating again.

Today's exercises included a little modeling.

I call these shots "Vespa is not amused."


This shot is titled "Give me the damn treat already."


We like to call this shot "Why do you torture me so?" This is alternately known as "Person behind the camera cannot shoot and hold a dog treat."

This final masterpiece is called "Half Head" or "Look at how big my ears are."

International Cat Hats Revisited

MeezerManx sent me some lovely photos the other day of her cats sporting the International Cat Hats, and she was gracious enough to let me repost these on the old blog.

A Siamese cat in the Thai hat? Genius. The fact that Lucy looks completely pissed? Even more genius.


Abbey is is not amused, either. I love how the Thai hat looks in variagated yarn.

So what happens if Abbey wears Le Mieux? Still. Not. Amused.


Many thanks to MeezerManx for the hilarious photos! Folks, if you knit any of the International Cat Hats, be sure to tell me so I can link your blog or post your photos!

In these rough economic times, remember this: furmiliating your cat is free.

The Beginning of Hammock Season

Personally, I do not find hammocks relaxing at all. Hammock zen eludes me because they make my knees feel like they want to bend the wrong way. However, hammock zen was achieved with the boy and Mingus.


Even Greaseball joined in on the fun.

Folks, do not try this at home, especially the last bit involving the grumpy cat with very sharp claws.

Bacon and Asparagus Gnocchi

On days where I work from home, I am loathe to leave the house to grab lunch. OK, so part of the reason I do not want to leave is because I am usually working in my pajamas... Also, if I muster up enough activation energy to leave, I'd rather do something like play outside with the dogs or feather toy a cat than drive to get lunch. (Yes, "feather toy" is a verb.)

Now that the first stalks of asparagus are coming to California, I've made it my mission to buy as many bunches as I can and to incorporate them into every meal. Last week, I think I ate a couple of bunches by myself, prepared simply by blanching. I relished each and every stalk with nothing more than a dollop of homemade, garlicky aioli. Winter squashes and chard still hold a soft spot in my heart and my stomach, but I am ready, oh so ready, to move onto to Spring's bounty.

I try to stock the refrigerator with whole foods that can be assembled with little fuss into a meal, although I do have some pantry items that really come to the rescue if I want to take a shortcut. Pre-made gnocchi is one of those items. Sure, it's not as good as the homemade stuff, but if you find some that are only made with potatoes, flour, eggs, and salt, they're not so horrible for you, either, as far as processed food goes.

Once you already have some gnocchi on hand, whether it be of the homemade, shelf stable vacuum packed, or the frozen variety, this bacon and asparagus gnocchi is assembled in minutes. If you want it to be more Italian, swap out pancetta for the bacon. It took me all of 5 minutes to prepare the ingredients, and another 10 to cook them.

The recipe can easily be multiplied. I just wrote out what I did for little old me.

Bacon and Asparagus Gnocchi
Serves 1 hungry person

Ingredients:
1-2 slices of bacon, chopped
10 stalks of asparagus, ends trimmed and cut into 1" pieces
1 cup gnocchi
Parmesan-Reggiano
salt
pepper

Heat a pot of water for the gnocchi. While your gnocchi water is boiling, saute the bacon in a skillet over medium heat. When the bacon starts to brown, add the asparagus and cook for an additional 3 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Once the water is boiling, throw in the gnocchi. The gnocchi is done when it floats to the top. This only takes a couple of minutes, so don't stray too far from the pot! Remove the gnocchi with a slotted spoon and add it to your skillet with all the goodies. If you want, you can turn the heat back on the skillet to high and pan fry the gnocchi before serving. Add parm, pepper, and salt (go easy, because the cheese and bacon are already salty) to taste.

Mug Cake Verdict

Last night, I was thinking about cupcakes a friend made for me last Valentine's Day. She used her grandmother's German chocolate cake recipe* and piped the top with a peppermint buttercream frosting. It was music with every bite, and I made sure I enjoyed a symphony.

We had no cake in sight, but we did have cake ingredients. Here was the problem: I have a short attention span with food, and I didn't want to make a whole sheet of cake when I knew that only a piece or two would suffice. Then, I remembered LeannIAm's recent microwaved mug cake binge. You can find the recipe here. Cake on demand? How brilliant!

The boy read off the ingredients as I measured and mixed. We popped the mug into the microwave, and watched it for 3 minutes. The cake rose above the mug and we were ready to rochambeau over who had to clean the microwave.


As soon as the three minutes were up, the "cake" deflated back to a reasonable size.


It was OK. The cake was dense and eggy, but not as dense as a chocolate decadent. I also added less sugar and used olive oil to try to make it more gourmet, but let's face it: it's a cake you make in 3 minutes using a microwave.

I ate a few bites, and then hit my cake limit. The boy happily gobbled the rest of it down.

Will I make it again? Probably not, but I am glad I did it once. It was a neat kitchen experiment.


*So, an odd fact about me is that I sometimes hate chocolate and most of the time I hate cake. Yes, hate. The boy and I were very close to having French macaroons as the celebratory dessert when we got married until Masse's Pastries came to the rescue. I have to be in the right mood to eat the stuff, so the fact that these cupcakes made me gaga shows that a lovingly made dessert can transcend my food aversions, because the odds of me liking them were slim. I almost let the boy eat all of the cupcakes, but I became suspicious that they were delicious when he overdid it on the "oh, these suck!" It's hard to convey that something sucks when you can barely stop chewing to properly pronounce words.

Irish Cottage Knitting

Last week, I watched this video featuring the Yarn Harlot knitting. Yes, she's like the wind! Since I'm working on a project right now that is just oodles and oodles of garter stitch (it's a super secret project, which is why there hasn't been much knitting content posted), I needed to do something to make my garter stitch time seem less like detention. So, I thought, why not learn a new technique? It wouldn't hurt for me to speed up my needles, plus, this seems like something an English knitter like myself can pick up easier than Continental because the yarn is held in the right hand.

Easier said than done. My tension is atrocious as if I am a fumbly beginning knitter. I had to switch off of the super secret project and start a practice swatch because my garter stitch looked wonky.

My biggest obstacle is that I normally tension my yarn by winding it around my right pinky twice, and then drape it off of my index finger. If I string my yarn the same way on my right hand as I try to lever action knit, my tension is too loose. I need to find a new way to hold my yarn. Also, I usually use circular needles for everything, but I had to switch to straights so I could hold the needle in my right hand like a pencil. I am so irritated now that I have to beat this! Thankfully (or unfortunately), being stubborn is a wildtomato specialty.

A little bit o' Internet time showed that "Irish cottage knitting" is also known as "Peruvian knitting" and "lever action knitting." So using these search terms, I found this video with a very clear explanation. The video is more than 9 minutes long, and the camera is focused on her hands the whole time. I also found pictures of lever action knitting here. The pictures are useful, but the videos are helping me more.

If anyone has mastered Irish cottage knitting and can point me to more tutorials or has tidbits of knowledge for a struggling newbie, please do share!

Onwards!

Chicken Fat Pyramid