September « 2008 « Stoneview

Leftovers

Jason made a lovely roast chicken for Sunday dinner this weekend. Now Daniel’s not especially crazy about roast chicken but he adores creamed chicken which is what I often do with the leftovers. Last night found me picking all the meat off the chicken carcass and baking biscuits to go with.

Creamed Chicken

3 cups roast chicken, diced
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
1 cup frozen mixed veg
salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and whisk in the flour, continue to cook while stirring for 60 seconds. Whisk in the (cold) milk, season with salt and pepper and stir frequently until the mixture comes to a simmer and thickens. Fold in remaining ingredients and cook 4 or 5 minutes or until heated through. Serve over warm biscuits.

Busywork

All that carrying of things up and down stairs and moving furniture about was very tiring so rather that try to knit on the sock and goof it up I went for something simple but very useful. Ever since I was gifted with some fabulous knitted cotton dishcloths in Secret Pal 11 I’ve been meaning to make some more. This is just the a houndstooth slip stitch pattern from 365 knit stitches a year, some navy and white kitchen cotton left over from a disastrous crochet afghan knit on size 6 needles. It worked up very quickly indeed and was immediately pressed into service.

Gabby just loves anything that ends up on the floor that she can get inside. She had a field day this weekend!

Reorganization

Yesterday a few of Jason’s friends came over to help us move furniture around. Since Chris is all graduated and off working in the real world with his own apartment and everything, we decided to commandeer his room and turn in into a sewing room thus un-cluttering the downstairs living area. The knitting and spinning things were all moved into the computer room.

The new sewing room is a complete mess but we’re going to buy a nice new (large) bookshelf to help with organization in there. As a bonus the "lightbox" is now off the kitchen counter which is quite a relief. The living room is looking very empty waiting for the new couch and chairs. The guys did try to put the old couch upstairs but it was just too massive.

Stick to your ribs

With the advent of cooler weather I’ve definitely had more comfort foods on my mind and last night I cleaned out the leftover veggies by making a delicious beef stew. When I saw the wine with the llama on the label I was sold and to tell the truth it turned out to be a very nice wine indeed!

Guest knitting

In our little local sock swap, one of the members has someting really important to do that’ll keep her busy for awhile so I’m doing a bit of guest knitting. This pattern has been on my todo list for awhile so I’m quite pleased to get to do it sooner than expected. Socks aren’t due until the end of October so there’s plenty of time to finish this pair as well as the mate to my own swap-ee’s socks. The pattern for these can be found over on Flickr and is a quick easy knit. I’ve subbed a flap and heel turn for the short row heel partly because my net has been down so I can’t print out the tutorial but also because I like to finish things early and I was worried about having to rip and reknit an unfamiliar heel. I’ll try it again as written later.

Rainbow Raindrops

When this yarn arrived in my mailbox I knew it had to be something for Madame Purl. This came to me just a week or so before I visited her. While I was there visiting she gifted me with these gorgeous socks that I’ve raved about since they were born as a hand-dyed skein in her basement. Upon arriving home I tiptoed through my sockly patterns and decided to revisit Fiber Trends’ Raindrops Lace Socks by Evelyn Clark. This is a great pattern to knit, interesting enough but not *too* interesting, if you know what I mean. I cranked them out in record time and enjoyed every minute of it. The yarn is incredibly soft and is available here.

Disconnect

Our home net connection is down again- they are working on it and hopefully I’ll be back online again regularly asap. In the meantime, don’t worry if you are not hearing from met! Please play nice while I am gone.

Just passing through

The shawl has turned out beautifully and it’s incredibly soft. The pattern is dead easy and I’d definitely knit it again at some point as there’s enough going on that it’s not mind-numbing to knit. I used Henry’s Attic Prime Alpaca (1 skein) and size 5 needles. The pattern is available on Ravelry here. As far as I can tell it’s not available anywhere else on the web. It was a simple quick knit. I completed 6 pattern repeats and added one more section of garter stitch to finish it off. I used a knit 2 through the back loop style bind off (#3 here).

I know fall has arrived when the boat-tailed grackles begin passing through. When a large flock is in the yard it sounds like hundreds of squeaky hinges wanting to be oiled but this visitation was much smaller with only 5-10 birds checking out the feeder in the back.

I took the path less traveled by

Having recently realized that there were town trails all the way from our house to the farmer’s market we decided to try walking them to see if it might be quicker. Our first attempt was a little wobbly since we lacked the trail maps but we did get there and the first thing we did was walk another block or two to the community center and purchase said maps. It’s not any quicker and in fact takes a bit longer but it’s much prettier and a better workout to boot.

In addition to a fun trip to the farmer’s market I also managed to finish up the shawl and get it blocking with Gabby’s very helpful supervision.

It’s getting tough to take photos of the shawl now since it’s too wide to stretch out full length anymore but it’s progressing along nicely. Having weighed the shawl and the remaining ball of yarn I think I can get two more repeats out of it but I’ll weigh again after one to be on the safe side. It’s my goal to be finished by Thursday, keep your fingers crossed!