Guacamole & Empanadas

The spread, three kinds of guacamole, and two types of empanada (the third type of empanada was still in the oven when this photo was taken).

That's Sandy's arm, she couldn't wait.

Ham and cheese empanadas.

Black bean empanadas.

I didn't get a good shot of the chicken and green olive empanadas, they looked pretty much the same as the black bean ones, only they didn't all explode while baking. They're actually the empanadas on the blue plate in the top picture.

And, of course, the guacamole. We had a sort of cook-off, even though you don't cook guacamole. The guacamole cook-off inspired the empanadas.

There was knitting too, I just didn't take any pictures of it.

Beauty Shots

The hand painted sock yarn that I took with me to knit a wrap while on vacation.  

The two colors of tweed yarn that I bought at This Is Knit in Dublin.  

The roving and drop spindle from the Handweavers Studio in London.  

Silk top also from Handweavers Studio.  

Eggplant colored wenslydale wool from I Knit in Waterloo.  

Hand painted roving, also from I Knit.  

Silk lace weight (yes it's from Habu, but I never see Habu here in Chicago), also from I Knit.  

Lovely soft merino cashmere blend that I bought at Loop in Islington.  

And lambswool, also from Loop, that I have now seen all over Chicago!  Oh well.  

One of my yarn buying goals was to try for things that I can't get here in the states.  

More Spinning, and the Kureyon

I started working on the brown wool again. You can see I spun a lot more this time. I have to figure out what to do with the portion already on my drop spindle. This is so much faster, it's great!

Yesterday I also ripped out my Kureyon wrap and cast on for gloves. I wasn't sure that I had enough yarn to make a wrap the size and shape I wanted. And I had read that it wouldn't soften up as much as I was hoping. So I ordered another yarn from the same company that contains a hefty percentage of cashmere. I will make the wrap with that and I will make fingerless gloves from the Kureyon. I am calling them my iPhone gloves (you need your finger tips for iPhone manipulation).

The Kureyon wrap, before destruction.

The new Kureyon gloves, in progresss.


Sandy just said that these are very "Fame!"

And the Winner Is...

Not this one!

This is the drunken cable border with a pie crust cable center panel.  It still looks bunchy and sloppy to me.  I am not a fan.  

Next I tried a ribbed cable, something I'd seen in the Vogue Stitchionary but had never tried.  A commercial sweater that I have, with an oversized cable, utilizes this technique.  It also employs other cheater methods to give the appearance of a cable where there isn't one though, so I wasn't sold on the idea.  

I used the idea of the drunken cable, but instead of crossing 9 over 9, I crossed 9 ribbed over 9 ribbed.  It looks much much nicer.  The cables lay relatively flat and seem pretty defined.  

So the winner is this one.  

I tried different numbers of rows between the cables.  I think this distance works the best.  

And I think I will have to use three columns across instead of two.  

I'm currently working out how I want to make the increases/decreases for the sleeves.  I think I'm going to knit this from the top down.  I'm going to knit one more swatch to see how wide three repeats of the cable will be and to make sure I like how it looks worked upside down.  

I'm so close!

Palin makes my head hurt.

Knitting makes me feel better.  

I worked on another swatch for the brown sweater while Josh and I yelled at our TV.  I need to knit a bunch more and block it a little to see if I like the cables.  So far I like the drunken cables bordering the pie crust better than the pie crust cable itself.  We shall see how this plays out.  

Fiendishly Difficult Stitches

Our first class, Thursday at 9:00 am, with Merike Saarniit.  She was awesome.  We knit up a little sampler in class.  

A previous participant dubbed it "The Cod Piece".  

At the bottom, we started with an Alsacian Scallop, next (above) we knit an Estonian Embrace Cable, then an Estonian Butterfly, and topped it all off with the Berry Kisses colorwork.  

Another Bear - Francis

Just finished another bear, two more to go!  

The Pink Bears

I knit up a little bear from a pattern that I found online, back in March. There was a lot that I didn't like about the completed bear, so I wrote a new pattern. A friend ordered one, and wanted it to be pale pink. Lion Brand doesn't make the yarn I'd been using in pale pink, so I bought a bunch of white and dyed it. Unfortunately I didn't dye enough. I had knit everything but one leg when I ran out of yarn. I ripped out the leg, arms and body, and reknit them on smaller needles. When I got an order for a second pink bear I bought and dyed an extra skein. I completed pink bear number two with yarn to spare.

First Sweater

My own design.  I wanted the collar to fold over instead of just standing up.  I'll have to try again on another sweater.  I do like how this one turned out.  

(I finished this in April)