Knitting Spools

I've been wanting a knitting spool for a while now.  I feel like I used to see them at stores fairly frequently, but as soon as I starting looking for one they all seem to have disappeared!  

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I mentioned my frustration to David and he came up with a brilliant solution.

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David cut off about 3 inches from the end of one of our broom handles and drilled a hole in it.  With 4 nails in the top it works great!

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The cord that my "broom" knitting spool creates is pretty dense.  To make a looser cord the hole would need to be bigger and the nails would need to be further apart.  That clearly wasn't going to work with the "broom" knitting spool" so David made me another one!

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This one is made from a piece of Cocobolo wood.

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The cord that it makes is definitely looser, so now I have 2 knitting spools and 2 options for cord making.  And they are way cooler than the store bought kind!  Thanks David!

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So now the only question is: why did I need to make cords?  Stay tuned: the answer to that will have to wait for another day.

Helpful Pup!

 Sprocket tends to assume that if you sit on the floor you want to play with him.

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So much for stretching!

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He also still thinks that he's a lap dog.

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Silly Puppy!

Eggplant

With all the eggplant that we've been getting lately (and by lately I mean for the past 10 weeks!) people have been asking me what I cook.  We have tried a plethora of things: eggplant rollatini (similar to lasagna), eggplant stew (very much like chili), but the thing that we have done the most of is eggplant curry.  Last week I made Kaanda Vangi aka Pan Blistered Eggplant with onion.  This recipe is from my curry cookbook: 660 Curries.  While we've only tried about 20 of the recipes we've enjoyed them a lot.

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It was pretty darn tasty!  To go with it we tried a new recipe Lebanese flatbread.  The flatbread was also really good.  I think that this recipe will replace the naan that we usually buy to go with currys.

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Fog at the Dog Park

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Autumn Shrug

With the weather turning colder and colder (and with me being kind of a wimp when it comes to cold temperatures), knitting season has definitely begun!  You may remember that I recently finished my blue sweater "Shalom", well now I've made a variation on the "Dream in Color Shrug". 

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I made one of these 2 years ago in green following the pattern as written.  This time around I used the same basic pattern for the shrug but used a different lace pattern.  The lace is from Lace & Eyelets from the Harmony Guide series, it's called "Goblet Lace".

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Stay tuned, I have another sweater that I started last winter that I have only 1 sleeve left to knit!

Paint

Last week, while David was in Toronto for a conference, I painted our bathroom.  Mid way through the painting I realized that I forgot to take "before" pictures.  Oops!  Luckily our guest bathroom looks almost exactly like our master bathroom: same color, same fixtures, etc.  So I took some pictures of the guest bathroom to stand in for the "before" pictures.

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before painting

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before painting

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after painting

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after painting

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after painting

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In addition to painting, I redecorated, but I only used things that we already had!  The paint is a little bit darker than I thought that it would be, but once I put the towels back up, hung the shower curtain and got some things on the wall I think that it is looking pretty good!

Harvest

On the 12th day of the Harvest my CSA brought to me:

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12 baby carrots

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11 ruby chard stalks

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10 Italian eggplants

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9 ears of corn

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8 salad turnips

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7 green tomatoes

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6 sweet peppers

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5 celery stalks

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4 banana peppers

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3 broccoli heads

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2 fennel bulbs

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And a bunch of Cilantro.

Body Double

A while back David helped me make a dress maker's form out of duct tape and an old T-shirt.

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Basically, I put on an old T-shirt, got wrapped in duct tape, cut open the back so I could get out, taped it back up and stuffed it.

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I've already used it to help me do some finishing on the "Shalom" sweater that I recently finished.  Above you can see the arm holes were way too big, so I wanted to sew them up some.

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Using the dress-maker's form I was able to see clearly what I was doing to get the arm holes even, and make it pretty hard to see the added seams.

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Sweater complete!  This pattern is called "Shalom" and is knit using "Minnow Merino" yarn that my mom got me for my birthday 2 years ago.  It is wonderfully soft and just the right amount of warm!

Jack-O-Lanterns

Last night, David and I went over to Shane and Abby's for homemade pizza (Yum!), and carving pumpkins.

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from left to right: 

Shane's smoking skull, my curvy lines, David's happy pumpkin, and Abby's pumpkin eating another pumpkin.

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Here's a close-up of the pumpkin eating another pumpkin.  You can see that the little pumpkin has a distressed face.