So many hobbies!

Beans or no beans?

As I suspected I would, now that it's the dead of winter, I'm thinking of gardening.  I can't plant tomatoes or potatoes because I've already grown them two years in a row in the same spot and the garden needs to grow something else (or nothing) the next two or three years.  Last night for dinner I had excellent homemade black bean tacos so naturally, I'm thinking I might grow black beans.  Growing legumes is good for the soil and growing beans is fun.  These are the beans I'm thinking of growing.  I'm not sure what to do.  My beef with gardening this past summer is I put a lot of work into growing tomatoes and got only a few tomatoes for my effort.  I think we're short on bees around here.  I still want to grow some dyeing plants and I'm not sure how much room I'm going to have.  Plus, I'm leaning toward growing a single zuchini plant.  (When you live alone, if you plant more than one zuchini plant, you risk alienating all your friends when you hide the tons of extra zuchini in their cars, mailboxes, etc.)  I'm very enthusiastic about gardening in the spring but as the summer gets hotter and more humid, my enthusiasm drops off radically.  I'm sure I'm not the only one to whom this happens.  What will you be planting this spring?  What should I plant?  Thoughts?  Ideas?

New mittens

The jury is still out on this.  I'd forgotten how much I dislike knitting with double-pointed needles.  I need something to work on at work during lunch and breaks, though, so I'll give it a shot.  On another, funnier, note, I'm watching The Big Bang Theory and it's hilarious.  It's one big nerd fest!

Busy

The weekend was busy but not with anything really blogable.  Saturday was a day of errands and picking up my new cable box.  Yes, after 5 years of being TV-free, I signed up for the least expensive cable option Comcast has.  I got tired of missing some of the shows I like on regular network TV.  As a result of getting cable, I had to rearrange my livingroom to put the TV on the wall where the cable jack is located.  The cats found this whole process rather bewildering.  I spent part of Saturday and Sunday blissfully watching watching the Food Network and FX.  When I wasn't cooking, that is.

Sunday was a day, again, of cooking.  I was at the grocery store at 7:00 am because I knew I had a day in the kitchen ahead of me.  I made mushroom stock for soup then used the stock to make mushroom soup, which was pretty good.  Did a lot of dishes.  For dinner, I  made a massive stir-fry with brocolli, carrots, green beans, red bell pepper, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots.  It was good but there wasn't quite enough sauce to wet the rice.  I should have doubled the sauce ingredients.  Next time.

The Andrea shawl is back at square one.  I decided that I don't like the onion dyed yarn I made and definitely don't like it with the brown of the shawl.  So that got frogged and I'm searching for the perfect yarn.  I've settled on this:

This is Cascade 220 "Salmon," purchased from The Loopy Ewe.  I searched Michaels and Joann and couldn't find the right color in a solid to go with the brown Merino/Polwarth I'm already using.  I think this one will go well with the brown.  I hope.

More yarn

The roving purchased at the Michigan Fiber Festival last August is finally spun and plied.  It's 80/20 Merino/silk.  Not sure what it's going to grow up to be but it'll be gorgeous when is finally does.  Happy week, people!

Finally!

I've been wimping out about dyeing with onion skins and putting it off because it's new and unknown.  I didn't want to ruin the yarn I dyed to go with the second knitting of Andrea's Shawl.  This morning, however, I decided to get off my butt and get to it.  The onion skins went into a big pot and simmered for an hour.  Once I pulled as much of the onions skins out of the pot as I could, the pre-soaked yarn went in:

The yarn simmered in the dyepot for another hour and then cooled in the pot.  In an effort to be as nontoxic as possible, I used Alum and Cream of Tarter as my mordant.  By the time I pulled the yarn out of the dyebath, it was a beautiful golden yellow.  The dyebath hadn't exhausted so now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it next.  I don't want to waste all that dye.

Sadly, it's not quite that golden in color.  It's a little duller than that.  For my first try at natural dyeing, I'm pleased with the result.  Next up will be using the cochineal.

Blah!

I may not be terribly interesting or useful for the next week or two.  You see, I've given up pop ("soda" for those of you who don't live in the Midwest).  I had a one to two bottle a day habit of Mountain Dew.  The sugared kind.  I gave that up about a week ago and the lack is making itself known.  I'm over the headache stage (I think) but now, according to my Google search, I've got a week or two of depression and general malaise to deal with.  By the time I get home from work, I'm really REALLY tired and I just want to lay on the couch and watch the telly.  Basically, I'm going to be rather useless for the next week or so.  It's only 8:10 at night and I'm already thinking about going to bed.  This does not make for an interesting blog.  Sorry.

I did manage to make a new pancake recipe tonight that were very good.  Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes.  Quite yummy and, I had an opened can of pumpkin in the 'fridge that needed eating. 

Beyond the pancakes, I've got nothing.  I've done a tiny bit of spinning but nothing of note and no more quilts have been finished.  Man, I could really use a Dew!

I cooked all day today

In an effort to not buy any food at work this week (except for Chinese Thursday!), I was in the kitchen almost all day today.  Cooking was interspersed with doing the dishes... over and over again.  At the end of the day, I have 4 servings of chili, 4 servings of Tuscan White Bean Soup, a batch of Morning Glory muffins for breakfasts and a batch of corn muffins to go with the chili.  I also made a batch of vegetable broth that went into the Tuscan soup.  Man, I am really tired.  And I still need to do a load of laundry before bed.  Hey, aren't weekends supposed to be for resting after the work week?

Granola

I started the year with homemade granola.  I'm not sure how much I like this recipe, which combines oil, molasses and brown sugar.  This concoction is heated until the sugar melts then poured over the oat mixture and mixed.  I may still be searching for the perfect granola recipe.  The stuff in the picture has rolled oats, sesame seeds, ground flax seed, sunflower seeds, chopped almonds and pistachios, dried cranberries and cherries and date bits.  I like the base ingredients, I'm just not sure about the molasses, which is add since I love molasses anything.  I take after my dad in that respect.

I was so productive over the holidays and now I've crashed and burned.  I slept badly last night so I have no drive to do much of anything except go to bed EARLY.  The cats, of course, just want to play.  This is mostly exhibited in the yarn they've used to string up the house.  Tyr is currently laying on some unfinished quilt squares and Galen is in the bathroom hoping I'll come and turn on the water.  This is the lull before the storm.  As soon as they find the aforementioned yarn I've wound up, again, they'll be at it again.  I'd been letting them sleep with me but I inevitably sleep badly when they do.  (No, they didn't sleep with me last night.)  Just about the only time I let them sleep with me now is on nights when I don't have to work the next day.

Everyone seems to make resolutions for the new year.  I've found that resolutions never last much past January.  I'm making some changes but I don't really know what to call them since they had better last more than 31 days.  We'll just leave it at that.  I'll tell you about them later once the habits have sunk in but I find if I talk about things I want/plan to do, I never actually do them.  Hey, something to look forward to!

Going to bed now...

Two down

This pattern is called Disappearing Nine-patch and was finished Saturday night.  I know technically the old year has ended and my push to finish UFOs should end with it.  However, I have Monday off so I'm fudging the dates and anything I get done, until I go to bed Monday night, will count in the race to finish.  Yes, I know it's cheating but the point is to wrap up old projects so I'm giving myself two extra days.  Happy New Year everyone!

FO #1

One UFO down!  I love how this top came out.  Quilting is next but I'll have to think on this one for a bit.  It would be best quilted free-motion but I stink at that and the funding isn't available to send it out, sad to say.  This was my attempt at using up scraps.  There are a lot more seams, as you can see, amongst the white background and I have to say, I rather like it that way.  It gives it more character.  I learned alot while sewing this one.  The first few had the tips cut off the roofs.  Oops.  But I figured that one out after a few.  This whole quilt was a lot of fun.  I tried not to have much of a plan in mind while sewing the houses.  I started adding windows by the end, partially because my cousins requested them.  My favorite house is the one in the lower right hand corner.