Pita power!

I made pita bread this week! I was totally afraid of it for the longest time, but I got sick of paying $3.50 for six pitas at the grocery store. I found this recipe and decided to give it a whirl. They actually turned out great, and I will definitely make them again. Even Sydney loved them (she spread butter on the top of hers and sprinkled it with cinnamon sugar - how could she not love it?). Next time I will bake them a little longer and roll them out a little flatter. I had no idea what I was doing this time around, and they came out a little doughy and the pocket didn't form as well in the pitas that weren't rolled out quite as much. I felt like such a rock star in the kitchen, though, the day I made these!

To celebrate, I went to our local kitchen store and bought a Sauce Master (in preparation for this summer's tomato bounty). I am determined to can a gajillion tomatoes this year so I don't have to buy the cans next winter. The canned garden tomatoes are so much yummier! I was on the hunt for a pressure cooker for making rice and beans but the only on they had there was $350. I don't really want the $35 one from Target that's from a brand I've never heard of, but $350 is a bit too far in the other direction. Anyone have a reasonably-priced pressure cooker recommendation?

I also spent much of the day yesterday (it was nice out, at long last) weeding our front garden. It is such a mess, but I managed to make a bit of a dent. The garden's now in pretty good shape (apart from the strawberry patch, which needs some serious attention), but our front slope is just hopeless. The kids had fun playing in the long grass. I swear, we're going to be the family on the news whose neighbors have reported them to the city for yard neglect. I'm determined to get it into shape somehow, but it seems so daunting at the moment. I need to keep reminding myself that I can just do it a square yard at a time - I don't have to weed the whole slope in a single day! If only we didn't have blueberry bushes we wanted to save - I'd take a flame weeder to the whole thing and be done with it. It was heartening to see that we have both pea shoots and asparagus appearing. The asparagus is now 2 years old, so we'll be able to harvest a few shoots (and next year we should be able to go nuts on it at last).

Since I don't have any pictures for this post, I'll leave you with a preview of the neck warmer that will be debuting in the line in June. It's a "fauxbius", which means it uses a 360 degree twist in the cast-on (a true moebius is twisted only 180 degrees). It's made from a single skein of Lorna's Laces Pearl, their new silk-bamboo blend. Yummy!



And a close-up of the back of the neck and the stitch pattern...



Love that Gordian Knot cable! Right now I'm finishing the neckband on the lone sweater I'll be offering for the fall. It's an empire-waist design made from Schaefer Danya, which is one of those mohair yarns that looks skinny but knits up fat. It's really lovely and lightweight, and it doesn't shed like other mohair yarns I've knit with. I was kind of afraid to knit a whole mohair sweater but it has gone quickly and I've really enjoyed this yarn. It also smells dreamy. Bill thinks I'm completely nuts when I sniff the yarn, but I love that vinegary freshly-dyed smell and this yarn has it in spades.

I've managed to get lots of knitting done this week while watching the Masterpiece Theatre version of Anna Karenina (which I highly recommend - it was excellent). Good thing I didn't manage to get my hands on the 4th book in the Twilight series. We own the first three but I have to borrow Breaking Dawn from my brother-in-law. Otherwise, you know what I would've been doing this week instead of knitting...

Contest winner, birthdays, Easter and eagles!

I know I was supposed to draw our Fiber Gathering winner on Friday, but I know it would've been too shocking if I wasn't a few days late. Our winner is...GreetingArts! Congrats! I already know where to find you, so I'll be getting your book in the mail to you shortly. Yay!

I had good reason for my distraction this week, though. I've been getting patterns ready for June TNNA (one of my tech editors e-mailed me and mentioned that she hadn't been expecting any patterns for June since, you know, I'm publishing a book this summer and all... I answered that, as a result of sheer stupidity, I've decided I can do it all), throwing a 4th birthday party for Owen, reading New Moon (the 2nd book in the Twilight series) and playing plenty of Rock Band with Bill. Such a hard life I lead!

Owen's class did a neat thing to celebrate his birthday last week - he brought in photos from each year of his life and the kids used them to make a birthday poster for him. It was so much fun going through all the pics - here are the ones I chose.

From 2005:


From 2006:


From 2007:


From 2008:


And from 2009:


What a kid! I can't believe he's 4 already. It seems like just yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital.

Owen's party on Saturday involved lots of treats, but nothing compared to Easter. We tried to tone it down a bit (Bill's family LOVES to do up Easter in a big way), but the kids were still hovering about 2" off the floor most of the day due to the huge amount of chocolate that was consumed. I didn't get any pictures yesterday, so I thought I'd post this photo that I dug up of the fateful day that the postman delivered the misdirected box of 40 chickies to our house:



Here's what our girls looked like at around that same time:



Aren't they cute?

And now it's time for me to get back to the pattern formatting grind (I will NOT start the next Twilight book... Oh, who am I kidding - my creativity needs a break sometimes, right?). I'll leave you with this video that I just put up on YouTube of the most amazing eagle sighting. When my mom, the kids and I were up on San Juan Island for the first book formatting session we happened upon this huge group of eagles flying around right next to the road. There must've been about 15-20 adults and 10 juveniles. We stopped and watched them for about half an hour, much to the kids' dismay, and mom shot this video from her digital camera. It's not great, but it'll give a hint of the coolness that we witnessed. It was crazy!

Nine years!

Wow - nine years ago today, Bill and I were doing this:



Don't we look young? Two kids, four states and two new careers later, we're more in love than ever. Before I met Bill I'd always assumed I'd be one of the 50% of Americans who get divorced. These days, I'm quite confident we'll be rocking together on the porch with our great-grandkids someday. I count my blessings every day that I managed to get lucky enough to find the love of my life (and was smart enough not to let him get away).

Happy 9th anniversary, honey!

Quick - gather your fiber!

Our internet is behaving very badly this morning, which is why this post isn't already up. I am having a really bad week with technology, it seems! My next project will be to fire up the old printer and pray that it still works after spending a year in the basement...

And now on to the tour!



The book is Fiber Gathering by Joanne Seiff (click on the cover to buy from Powell's, my local Portland bookstore, or pick it up at your LYS), and if you love going to fiber festivals (or if you're one of the poor souls who doesn't have one near you and you can only fantasize about going), this book is for you. With luscious photos and great attention to detail, this book will transport you around the country to some of the best fiber fests the US has to offer.

Joanne is somewhat of a triple threat (or rather a quadruple threat) - she designs, spins, dyes and writes, making this book a treat for those who appreciate all of those different skills. She did solicit patterns from other designers for the book, however, since she was busy traveling the country petting sheep and interviewing alpacas. Her husband took all of the photos in the book, and they are quite spectacular. They visited the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR, on their whirlwind tour and I tried (and failed, I can't remember why) to meet them there. It sure is fun reading about it from Joanne's perspective!

I had to take solace in designing my own little project for the book, which is one of the most adorable things I've designed, if I do say so myself. It helps that it's modeled by the cutest little peanut... Here are a few of the shots that didn't make the book:







Don't you just love those baby feet? It almost makes me want another. But not really (I can hear Bill downstairs having a heart attack when I say that).

I don't normally like working with thick-and-thin yarn, but this project seemed made for it (in keeping with the fiber festival theme, we wanted the pattern to be appropriate for handspun as well). It's a simple little hat and cardigan that uses a simple ridged rib pattern that works extremely well with the variegated yarn (Lorna's Laces Revelation in Child's Play). I'm telling you - if an extremely colorful variegated yarn isn't quite working for you, throw in some purl stitches. It can make all the difference!

The book isn't all about knitting, which particularly makes it a worthy addition to your bookshelf. My favorite is a section on making a drop spindle out of an old aluminum knitting needle and an apple. There are lots of great tutorials on spinning and dealing with raw fleece and although I am still resisting spinning like Jamie Lee Curtis resisted Mike Meyers, it's fun to read about the process! Maybe someday I'll succumb (it feels a bit inevitable, but first I want to get my sewing machine out of the box).

And now I'm going to publish this post before we lose connectivity again. Tomorrow the tour moves back to Joanne's blog, where her husband/photographer will talk about all the gorgeous pictures he took for the book. And before I forget - leave a comment to win your copy of the book! I'll draw randomly on Friday from commenters on this post. Blogger makes it so bleeping difficult to get commenters' e-mail addresses that I can't guarantee that I'll be able to find you if you win, so please check back on Friday to see if you got lucky. You might even get some yarn along with it...you never know!

Yarn, cream cheese and doom.

What a week I've had! On Thursday, my printer had a meltdown (as in, one of the print heads failed and I can't print anything until it's fixed). I've been using an off-brand ink (Media Sciences) that has a good reputation for standing behind their product. When my printer failed, I first called my Xerox guy and desperately asked for help. The technician called back and basically said that ordering a replacement print head from Xerox would be more expensive than replacing the whole printer. This of course got me all ticked off about their scam of a "maintenance" plan that makes it impossible to fix your printer if you don't pay their hefty monthly fee.

I then called Media Sciences and was shocked and amazed to talk to someone who was actually friendly, helpful and who gave me hope that maybe my printer could be fixed instead of trashed. After a horrible unrelated service call with the fine people at QuickBooks (fine is used in the most sarcastic sense of the word there), it was so refreshing to talk to someone who wasn't trying to sell me a $79 service plan (and only $39.95 a month thereafter! What a bargain!). We'll see how it all plays out, but if Media Sciences comes through like they say they will, I will be a customer for life. I am so sick of companies making stuff that is designed to break, just so they can sell their profitable (for them) "maintenance or replacement" plans. What a scam. Our disposable society should be so ashamed of itself. But I digress...

After the printer fiasco, I needed some kitchen therapy. So I made 2 dozen snickerdoodles (which the kids sucked down in less than 24 hours), some sweet potato cookies, an apple cake and chocolate chip bread. I also decided to take a chance on cheese again, and whipped up a batch of cream cheese. It was totally fun, and it actually worked (unlike my mozzarella disaster of a few weeks ago)! Here it is hanging out in our kitchen, ridding itself of its whey:



I'm still not sure what happened to the mozzarella (it set up, but then when I tried to mix-and-heat, it just dissolved back into the whey again instead of turning into cheese - I'm suspicious that it might be our water), but the cream cheese was incredibly easy. If you want to learn how to make your own, there's another Lost Arts Kitchen cheese class coming up on April 17!

The book has been coming along nicely. Now that it's with the designer, I'm feeling at loose ends. We still have a few more photographs to do, but the writing, editing and knitting are pretty much done. Now that that's out of the way, I can start to panic about new patterns for Gardiner Yarn Works. I've got a bunch of yarn that is slated for June projects and I'm just starting to realize how freaking close June is to being here. What in the world happened to March? One day it's Sydney's birthday (late Feb), the next it's nearly Owen's (early April)! It's crazy!

Here are a couple of sneak peeks...the first is just yarn, waiting to be knitted:



Yes, that's a big old pile of Buffalo Gold. The socks that I designed for the book out of the Buffalo Gold sock yarn were so incredibly delicious that I can't wait to knit some lace out of these (although, sadly, I don't get to do the knitting - two of my very lucky sample knitters get that privilege!). The green is their Lux, which is bison, cashmere, silk and tencel. Yum! The natural-colored is laceweight 100% bison.

Next is a little project that I whipped up after realizing I needed something new and quick to go in an ad that's due on the 10th. Photography will be imminent (and better than this picture, of course). It's a single-skein neckwarmer made from Lorna's Laces Pearl (silk and bamboo). It is heaven to knit!



And now, it is a beautiful day here so although I have a to-do list that's longer than my arm, I'm going to go enjoy the sun. Don't forget to check back tomorrow when the Fiber Gathering blog book tour is stopping by here, and enter for a chance to win a copy of the book!

I love this woman!

There were a host of April Fools jokes racing around the internets yesterday, but I didn't find my favorite until this morning when I opened Clara Parkes' Knitter's Review newsletter and found a story about a new "green" yarn made from recycled kitty litter. I've been lucky enough to spend some time with Clara in person and she's got an incredibly quick, smart sense of humor that doesn't often have a chance to shine through with such clarity in her more serious write-ups.

Cheers, Clara, for the day's clear winner!