Yummy!

Digging into my yummy carrot cupcake from Jilly's Cupcake Bar. I love beautiful food and this certainly takes the cake so to speak!

What a beautiful morning!

It was a beautiful morning in the park this morning as the puppies and I made our circuit. I can tell New Year's Resolutions are still going for a number of people since it was more crowded than usual as well. It's wonderful to see the sun on these cold days!

All in the Family Socks

I'm loving the socks in progress using the yarn my brother bought for me for my birthday. I love the colors but I was afraid of what they would look like knit up. Fortunately I find the striping pattern to be awesome. Spot likes them too as he sits in my lap and helps.

Hats Belong on Heads

One of the best things in the world is getting a picture of someone wearing the item you knit for them. My beautiful great-neice Leila models her hat perfectly. They look SO much better on the baby's head. So cute!!

It's Not Easy Being Green

So we've come to the end of summer and I realize my much neglected garden has been picked clean of any semblance of red tomatoes by my puppy Spanky but it is flat out filled with green ones of all shapes and sizes. I planted (2) Cherry Tomatoes, (2) Sungold Tomatoes, and (2) Better Boy plants. While I haven't touched these plants in at least a month, the dog has thoroughly enjoyed their bounty but managed to leave enough I needed to figure out what to do with them. I searched through the recipes on AllRecipes and found an intriguing one for Green Tomato Relish. Since most of my tomatoes are not big enough to slice and fry, this seemed like a good option.

Therefore, Saturday I picked the remainder of the various tomatoes left in the small garden and filled about 1/3 of a typical reuse grocery bag. Then I sorted through them all and picked off stems and removed any icky tomatoes from the piles. I ended up with a large mixing bowl and a medium size split relish bowl filled with worthy bounty.

I love the shapes and colors in these! I decided I had about half the amount of tomatoes the recipe called for so I halved most of the ingredients in the recipe except for green peppers which I completely eliminated. I really don't like Green Peppers. I also made two jars worth with no Mustard seeds just for Mom to avoid her allergy issues. See Mom, I take care of ya!

The results are 12 jars of Relish and me trying to figure out who's going to eat all this stuff. It was pretty yummy when it went in the jar so I think I'll find some folks willing to give it a go. Good Christmas presents I think. :)

Starry Citron

While touring Ravelry for a way to use my beautiful Dream in Color Starry, I came across this other knitters Citron with a beaded edge and I knew immediately I must use the beautiful, sparkly yarn I had in just this way. I also thought the sparkle in this yarn was perfect to put more sparkly on the edge and I really just love sparkly. Can you tell? Citron is one of the hot new patterns and adding these beads just seems to kick it up a notch. Love it! When I went to my local bead store in search of the perfect complementary bead, I just about lost it. They had a rainbow worth of colors but none seemed just right with the colors in the yarn. And then I moved a little further down the line to the stone beads and saw the hematite. I love hematite. I love the magnetic power in the stone and how you can't really say just what color it is. Is it black, grey, silver, I just don't know. But upclose next to this yarn, it's color is perfect!

I decided on a garter stitch ruffle and did 6 ridges. I might have been able to get a few more ridges out of the single skein I had but since I never beaded anything before, I wasn't sure what I would need and didn't want to risk it. I love the way this turned out!

I so loved my Starry Citron that I started thinking about the next one. I was shopping at the local Tuesday Morning and discovered some beautiful green beads and knew I had the beads for my next shawl. Then, what yarn to use? Well I have the most beautiful yarn from Dyeabolical and thought maybe it would work. Well, after winding it into a ball, I realized I can't get my crochet hook through my beads and I'm no longer certain this is the right yarn for a Citron; too much color variation I think. Tonight I hope to find the perfect pattern for the gorgeous yarn shown below.

Lastly, a quick little baby hat for the Great-Niece of my partner. Simple 48 stitches cast on, 2x2 rib for a while, stockinette for a while, decrease. Pretty cute.

Now I'm trying to decide what to take with me on a trip I am leaving for in the morning. Will it be a pair of socks? Another shawlette? A hat? Hmm..time to decide.

Falling for Fall

Don't be fooled, the photos below are not what I'm seeing out the window around herejust yet; they are what I am waiting for. I, like many others, really like this time of year. I like the cool weather. I like being able to use the oven again. But most of all, I like the colors and what they make me dream about.

Beautiful!