In which we will collectively ignore the fact that I am inexcusably truant in my blogging obligations as I blithely blog along as if nothing were amiss.

For me A has always been for Anne. Years ago when I was a young school girl I read the book, "Cheaper by the Dozen" by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr and Earnestine Gilbreth Carey. The book is a memoir of their life, recounting tales of growing up in a family of twelve children with a father, and then later their mother who worked as efficiency engineers.
I was charmed by the story* and became enchanted with the idea of having a large family and decide that I wanted my first child to be girl and to name her Anne, as was the oldest child in the book. My "plan" remained so until after I had my first two children, both of which were boys and both of which I referred to as Anne while I was pregnant up until the moment they popped out and were revealed not to be good candidates for the name.
After the first two children arrived, we thought it prudent to scale back the "plan" for a large family and on the third pregnancy decided to opt out for a moderate family of three**
I still held out hope for a daughter to name Anne, and in the wee hours of a cold January morning, my wish was granted and we were blessed with the daughter, whom was the first child we had had that we had no trouble agreeing upon a name. We couldn't have been happier.
That's all well and good you may be thinking, but how does this relate to a knitting/fiber arts, ABC Along?
Well, let me tell you, how about this.

Remember this skein of "Anne" from Schaefer yarn Company?
A little over a year ago I regaled my knitting woes to all regarding a Pooling Colors Scarf that I was trying to knit for a birthday gift for my daughter Anne, and it has occured to me that although I have listed the scarf in my projects on Ravelry that I haven't shown you the finished scarf here on the blog, most unfair of me, I know.


So with out further ado, I present to you my version of the Pooling Colors Scarf

As I stated in my earlier blog entry, I had difficulty working the stitch pattern as was written, so I played around with a few different stitch patterns and settled on this stitch pattern as follows: Row 1 - K1 *yo,K3, K3tog, K3, yo, K1* repeat between *'s to end.
Row - 2 Knit
This pattern will produce a zig zag pattern if you knit the scarf in stripes but as you can see it doesn't zig or zag much unless you alternate colors. None the less, I liked the laciness of the scarf and decided to use it anyway.







There may not be horizontal stripes but none-the-less there be stripes. If you knit this scarf just so the colors will pool in long vertical stripes, or as I like to say knitting a vertical striped scarf the hard way. However I found the process intriguing and interesting and I was in the end quite pleased with the results.



As was Hobbes, (though he isn't very discriminating, he will sit on any wool I put down to photograph)

and also quite pleased was the intended recipient....

Ani

(How about that Anne? Two whole scarfs in one year, I'm on a roll, yay me!)

* I was less charmed by the recent movies, loosely based on the book.

**My husband scheduled and had a vasectomy after the birth of our third child and yes, we have four children, sometimes life takes an unexpected turn, but that's a story for another time. (perhaps when we get to the letter K.)

The thing is I don't really have a recipe box. If I look really hard I may be able to find a plain metal box, but the box I'm afraid would be empty.

Because the thing is, cooking is my least favorite thing to do. I, do it, of course, out of necessity, we do not have the money to employ a full time chef, so it's mostly up to me that the cooking falls to. So I do the cooking, but believe you me, if I didn't have to, I wouldn't. I've got nothing against food, mind you, I find it most pleasing and tasty...when others do all the work.

It's just too labor intensive for something so temporary. It takes up way too much time to plan a menu, shop the groceries, chop, dice, or otherwise prepare the food and then serve it to my ravenous hoard who will devastate all my work within minutes and leave me with the clean up. No, the pay off is definitely not worth the effort and the worse part is that within another couple of hours the whole cycle will need to be repeated. No cooking is not for me.

But the gals over at the Mason Dixon knitting blog were curious as to where I keep my recipes. Here they are, this is my recipe drawer.

These are not my recipes per se, they are mostly my mother's and mother-in-law's recipes that they have tried and refined over the years, I've just borrowed them. The recipes I most use are written in two notebooks, The other books are cooking and baking books that have been given me in an attempt to excite my interest, it's not working, but I hold on to them just in case.

The recipe on top is a recipe for Potato Soup that my mom wrote on a recipe card and reduced the portions for a single person for when I went to college.

This is a favorite recipe among my family. I'm a potato girl, we are potato people, we eat potatoes cooked anyway. Potato soup is a very plain recipes it doesn't have a lot of ingredients mostly just potatoes.

I have doubled the amounts from the above recipe and then I usually double it again. Actually I don't measure anymore I just make whatever amount I think will be enough.

4 cups of cubed raw potatoes - I used a large pot full.

Cut up potatoes in cubes add 6 cups of water and cook. It doesn't say to add salt to the water but I do, and so did she.

2/3 cup chopped onion - I used - One large & one medium sized onions.
4 med stalks of celery -chopped - I used six stalks.
Fry onion & celery in 1/2 cup of oleo...aka margarine. I use butter. Cook about 10 minutes or until the onions begin to look clear. (I add the salt and pepper and sweet basil to the fry mixture) Add the mixture to the potatoes and continue cooking until done. (Done is when the potato's are cooked through and are soft easily pierced with a fork. That's not on there either that's just common knowledge among us potato people.)
When just about done take the 1/2 c milk and flour (about three Tbsps) and shake together in (a covered shaker cup) and shake real hard so there is no lumps, and add to potato mix.

Add cut up wieners if desired.
This soup is a comfort food and a few weeks back we had an unexpected death in our extended family so I made up a batch, a large batch for my family at home, I expected to have left overs, there was none.

PS. This is what is actually in the back of the notebooks, recipes that haven't made it into the official notebook. I have asked my daughter as a birthday gift to enter all the recipes in the computer database so that we can print them out and then put them in plastic sleeves in a binder. This would benefit her as well, if she would someday like to have a recipe from my collection she could print out her own copies. She's thinking about it.

PPS. And these sit atop the microwave. A gift from my friend Amy at Knit Think.

I love them!

...and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot? and auld lang syne ?

In the interest of fairness, before we move onto the new and all the newness of the new year, I felt that perhaps it would be a good time to look back and update the progress of the projects that I have been working on in this past year that remain incomplete for one reason or another.

So here we go, just in case you had been wondering what ever happened to that one thing she was working on. Let's start with the oldest (of last year, at the end I will show you the projects that I still intend to finish that are from years past that also linger in indefinite stasis. )

The Forest Path Stole remains unchanged.
After polling the blog, I had come to the conclusion that most of you thought that it would be best to keep the stole all one color.
Which meant that I would have to make a search to find more yarn in the same color. Going back to the yarn store that I bought it from was out of the question. I had bought their last remaining skein.
So I did a search on the Internets and there is someone in England who is selling the same yarn in the same color on ebay.

And just as I had made my mind up that this would be the best course, I started receiving comments on the stole on Ravelry.
Comments that said that the stole was absolutely lovely and that they loved the colors of the stole and that they thought the cream border should stay. Gah, now what do I do?
So I have decided that I cannot make this decision and that I am going to leave it up to the recipient as to which way she prefers,
( Which in retrospect, is what I should have done in the first place, hindsight is 20/20.)
She has seen the stole, I worked on it while my daughter was having her lessons. She doesn't know that I intended to give it to her for a wedding gift though, but I am so unsure of what direction to go on this that I think I need to consult her, I'm willing to finish it either way, I just want it finished.
The Mystery Stole 3 also remains nearly untouched since the last up date. There is no problem with this stole. It remains a lovely project, and I love the beading, and I am more than pleased with how it is going.
However, this project requires uninterrupted blocks of time with little to no distraction. The kind of time that has been in very short supply as of late.







I have begun the feathered section of the stole but that is where it remains. I am hoping that as things begin to slow down now that the holiday season is over and everything will grind down the eternally slow pace of Minnesota's endless winter that the opportunity to finish this stole will once more arise.
The Stellar sweater that I am knitting for my sister is progressing nicely. I have finished the body. I am currently in the progress of joining the shoulders and then I will cut the arm steeks to begin the sleeves.





I've decided to knit the sleeves down from the armhole to the cuff. My sister has long arms so I think this would be the best method to insure that the sleeves are long enough.
However the pattern is written for them to be knit flat from the cuff up so it will mean that I will have to do a little translating to get the shaping correct for a top down knitting.




And then one last project that I haven't shown you yet, although I actually began knitting this project back at the beginning of last year and then lost interest in it because I couldn't decide how I wanted to do the striping.
Needing another gift for my son and after two or three different tries, I finally decided upon this one for a tie for my son. Why, yes it is Packer colors, go figure.











BTW, this is knit in Jamieson's Shetland Spinthrift. The way the cat acts toward this yarn you would think it's made of catnip.

The dude will steal this yarn right out from under my hands. I must keep the yarn zipped in a bag even as I knit it or he runs away with it any chance he gets. I cannot put this down for a moment to do anything that he doesn't make a play for it. He's stolen yarn out of my bag before but has never shown this much persistence or been this bold in his thievery. Who knew that Shetland wool was his kitty crack?

Auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Now for my hall of shame, for old long ago.

Latvian Mittens















Bazaar Socks




Rogue Hoodie









Great Adirandack scarf for Lalle.





Monk's Travel Satchel



Same Old Lang Syne

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling New Year's eve
I stole behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve

She didn't recognize the face at first
But then her eyes flew open wide
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried.

We took her groceries to the checkout stand
The food was totalled up and bagged
We stood there lost in our embarrassment
As the conversation dragged.

We went to have ourselves a drink or two
But couldn't find an open bar
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store
And we drank it in her car.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.

She said she'd married her an architect
Who kept her warm and safe and dry
She would have liked to say she loved the man
But she didn't like to lie.

I said the years had been a friend to her
And that her eyes were still as blue
But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw doubt or gratitude.

She said she saw me in the record stores
And that I must be doing well
I said the audience was heavenly
But the traveling was hell.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to time
Reliving in our eloquence
Another Auld lang syne...

The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away.

Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain --