a not so quiet long weekend

Not that that’s a bad thing. Saturday we ran some errands, one of them being a run to the Purple Purl. I wanted to pick up Ysolda’s new book that just came in and pick up some needles. Sean needed to pick some yarn for his mother’s holiday gift. I went through and selected some patterns that would work with the yarn he selected and he chose the one he thought his mother would like, a Anne Hanson pattern, because he liked the look and he said something along the lines of well you like her stuff and it always turns out nice. He also picked up some sock yarn for his next pair of socks when I finish his current ones on the needles (he now has to buy his own sock yarn as he has very good taste and always selects the top pickings from my stash that I want to use for me).On Sunday we had swapped desk spaces and we went to Ikea to pick me up a new desk as the table I was using was never really suited to be a desk and I was just making due. I assembled it while someone napped and started working on the spare bedroom. It is finally looking like a room instead of storage space! I will try to remember to post a picture once the room is a bit more organized.

Today I made crepes with strawberries, whipped cream and maple syrup as well as some oatmeal cookies with dried cherries and dark chocolate nuggets. I don’t have any plans for the rest of today and I think I will spend it knitting and sorting through what needs to be done in the spare room.

I started work on a baby sweater for my friend Mandi who is expecting her first munchkin to appear in the end of December. They aren’t going to find out what sex they are having so I have to make sure whatever I make looks good for either a boy or girl. I’ve decided to try Tanis’s Sunnyside Baby Cardigan with the cables. So far it is working up lovely but I am not particularly fond of the way Tanis writes up her patterns. I find for the raglan increases she has way too many markers placed into it and then she tends to ignore some of the markers and make mention of others which can be quite confusing while increasing. Needless to say I have paired down on the number of markers I am using.

The hitchhiker scarf now officially lives with my Aunt Lynn who loves it (I got a very email from her describing what she liked about it and all the different ways she can wear it).

cookie monster!

Well I did end up making ciabatta this weekend. The holes weren’t quite as big as the last time I made it but I did notice the dough was not as wet this time either. I also used the traditional bigga instead of my sour dough starter. It is still light, airy and delicious!

It went lovely with harira, a Moroccan soup, that we had last night. It is a nice thick soup, almost stew like, and is full of flavour. It is supposed to be made with lamb but since we have so much beef we used a hunk of stewing beef from our freezer.

I ripped out what I had done on the Dashing fingerless mittens. The cuffs were far too long for what I would need and I most likely would never wear them. So I’m adjusting the pattern so that the cuffs are smaller and I am also adding a thumb gusset.

I also had a craving for cookies last night so I made us some chocolate chip cookies with milk and semi-sweet gourmet chocolate chunks (Sobey’s was featuring them once upon a time). Here is a picture of a not so elusive cookie monster eating one.