Welcome

Welcome - today is opening day. I will blog about handknitting and about food, sharing some simple knitting patterns and easy recipes. Since I occasonally search for these things myself, it is only fair to share! :)

On the needles:
Currently I'm working on the left front for a lightweight cardigan out of Discontinued Name Brand Yarn Supersock. Yes, it's a sock yarn, but it should make a lovely sweater too. The colorway is called Wild West, and is kind of a reddish-pink with some mauvy-taupe. At any rate, it is knitting up beautifully in an eyelet pattern on a size US 4 (3.5 mm) bamboo needle. The eyelet pattern was inspired by an old issue of ZAZA, a Japanese machine knitting magazine borrowed from a knitting friend. When there is more of the sweater done, I will post a photo.

Designing sweaters:
A while ago when my personal size exceeded the usual knitting pattern size range, I taught myself how to adjust existing patterns. Since then I've taken up designing my own sweaters. That means I do a lot of knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping, and knitting as my ideas evolve. Frequent ripping is the reason why I start with a front when making a cardigan - less to rip.

The above cardigan, let us call it Zaza in honor of its stitch inspiration, has had a few false starts to get just what I want. First it started with a K 1, P 1 rib at the bottom edge, then a few inches into the body I decided that a turned hem with a picot edge would be more interesting, and started over again. (I can hear my friend Janet chortling. I'm afraid I have something of a reputation for ripping things out to get them right. Sometimes "close enough" just will not do.) Of course, it took a few tries for the bottom edge to behave in the desired manner, that is to say not curl up, wretched thing. The part that would be turned under to the back was cast on using the crocheted provisional cast-on and knit on a smaller needle so it would fit better when the edge was turned, but I finally realized that when knitting the live cast-on stitches together with the body, I should do fewer rows above the picot row (the turn row for the hem) than before it. Also a garter ridge is needed above the hem to help it lie flat. Fortunately this is also more aesthetically pleasing.

In the kitchen:
During the summer I prefer to avoid heating up the house by turning on the stove, so we usually cook dinner on the grill. Tonight we are going to have leg of lamb steaks. These are just slices of bone-in leg of lamb ready-to-cook from the supermarket. Since lamb has sufficient fat on its own, there is no need to brush the steaks with oil first. Just sprinkle them with plenty of garlic salt, and close enough. Grill them to desired doneness. We like ours about medium, maybe medium-well if the grillmaster got distracted.

Afterwards, our lucky puppy gets to gnaw on the bones for a while till all the remains of meat are gone. We have to push the marrow out for him with a finger. It's a gooey mess, but he likes it. Yes, our dog is spoiled.