I'm going to imitate a literary blog I read and jot down a list of oddities for my Halloween entry.



Oddest Item in the Refrigerator: I recently cleaned it out but the oddest thing currently is probably soy lecithin granules. I used it many moons ago for making my own Wonderslim/prune puree/baking fat substitute.



Oddest Habit: I like to rescue insects and put them outside or out of harm's way. This includes black widows and centipedes but I use a broom for them.



Oddest Food: I really like fluffernutters (peanut and marshmallow fluff sandwiches) but rarely eat them out of embarrassment. But that's nothing - I have a British friend who adores plain cold tofu topped with grape jelly.



Oddest Movie I've Seen: Liquid Sky - I guarantee anyone else unfortunate enough to have seen this movie about aliens seeking heroin would agree with me.



Oddest Place I've Been: I was just there yesterday. Madrid, New Mexico -described as a place "where old carnies go to die." Quite funky and worth a trip, especially on a day where the locals are having a "parade."



Oddest Thing in My House: I display lots of photos of dead pets which drives my friends nuts.



Oddest Web Site I've Been To: I could probably answer this differently on a daily basis but just today I was checking out a web site on how to paint light bulbs.



Oddest Web Site I check regularly: http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com



Oddest Accomplishment: In college some of my poems were put to music and sung by the glee club.



Oddest Book I've Read: Fiction: That's a tough one but I guess it would be Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

Nonfiction: I used to have a fruit cookbook that was illustrated with drawings of naked people for no particular reason.



Oddest Halloween Costume: In grad. school I was Pat Benatar one year.



Oddest Party Trick: I can touch my thumb to my wrist (same hand) as I'm double jointed.





HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

QUARTER POUNDER SOCKS



By my calculations, each of these thick socks for DH weight at least 4 ounces. I haven't finished the second one because I need to spin more of the Romney. The color looks darker here - they're really a lovely cornflower blue.









Congratulations Red Sox! DH is on cloud nine.

I purchased another Tracy Eichheim spindle, the hearts production spindle seen HERE. On the sheet that came with the spindle it states, "DOGS chew on spindles! One lady came home to find her dog had opened her backpack and totally destroyed her spindle. I have repaired several spindle stems with teeth marks. Be warned!"



So it seems I'm not the only one with unruly spindle-eating pets. Here's a photo of Peaches & Jack the cat where they both look like they're up to no good.

GETTING ORGANIZED



Yesterday evening I organized my overflowing recipe file and today I plan to organize my knitting/spinning stuff. All through the week I have a container in the living room where I put my needles and balls of yarn after I finish a project. At least once a week I put all the needles back in their circular solutions containers and all the yarn back in the Rubbermaid containers in Peaches' room.



I also need to write down my various completed projects in my knitting notebook. I'm about a month behind on that but I can use my blog archives to quickly get the info. I'll post my totals for the year once I finish. I also use my knitting notebook for project notes, a list of knitted items I send off to friends or charity, and fun quotes or ideas. Once I was watching figure skating on tv and a coach had on such a beautiful sweater (probably a Dale). I used my knitting notebook to jot down the details and I included a sketch.



I keep a small index card file for spinning. I put a small sample of each yarn spun on the index card along with all the pertinent details - date, whether spindle or wheel spun, where I got the fiber, what I plan to do with the yarn, etc. This index card file is also nostalgic with yarns from pets now in heaven and a sample of my very first handspun yarn in 1996.

I finished my experiments with my Romney. Surprisingly I could find absolutely no difference in the yarn plyed on the wheel and the yarn plyed with a spindle. None. I'm waiting until next week to look at the difference between the same fiber wheel spun and spindle spun.

I now have enough Romney spun to finish a pair of socks by Thursday to show you. This Romney isn't as elastic as I'd like so I'm just knitting some plain ribbed socks with it instead of something cabled.

I think these socks are seriously ugly. I think there is too much yellow in the multi-colored yarn not to mention the pooling. They are uglier in person because there is even less contrast between the two yarns. I really really really hate multicolored yarns so please slap me if I ever buy any again.









I'd normally quit knitting on a project I found ugly but I couldn't come up with anything else simple enough to work on during the ALCS. Now we have the World Series and I just know if I start a project with a complicated chart the minute I look away Manny Ramirez will start doing somersaults in the outfield or Curt Schilling will start hemorrhaging. So the rest of the week I'm going to be spinning my pretty blue Romney and then making a pair of socks with them for the last project of Socktober. After that I plan to work for a long time with size 0 dpns and my wonderful stash of Shetland wool.



Go check out Chery's gorgeous Dale of Norway sweater! It seems like she can turn out one of these babies in about a month. Also check out a new knitting blog with some delicious-sounding cake recipes and the world's cutest knit hat model.



Apparently Peaches isn't the only bad house rabbit in the blog world this week. Go check out what Miss Baxter did to a perfectly innocent computer mouse.

I've been trying to be a fair and balanced blogger. I know that knitters have all sorts of viewpoints and beliefs and I've attempted to keep this blog neutral and unbiased. However, I can no longer hold my tongue. Frankly, I'm about to burst.



GO RED SOX!!!









These were quickly whipped up on size 4 dpns with 48 stitches and Nature Spun sport weight to look like socks on the Red Sox logo. I duplicate stitched a B on the heel.

I can't understand why my spinning is so much more even when I use the wheel. I prefer spindles and use them more often so I don't understand why the wheel makes such a difference. I'll be using a wheel and will notice all sorts of unevenness while spinning but the yarn always ends up looking better. I'm beginning to think it is the plying, not the actual spinning. I've been considering asking Santa for THIS or THIS (if Santa is feeling more extravagant) which may make a difference.



It looks like there are many more hours of baseball in my life this next week so I'm going to do an experiment. I'm going to spin some of my Romney on the wheel and on a spindle. Then I'm going to ply the singles both ways - with a wheel and with a spindle. If my hunch is correct the spindle spun, wheel plyed yarn will be the nicest.



Speaking of spindles, look at what one very large brown rodent-like creature with big ears did to the shaft of one of my Bosworth spindles. She's now grounded for the rest of her life. Fortunately it still spins fine although I estimate the shaft is now about 1/2" shorter as a result.

Baseball seems to be taking over my life lately. I normally don't even watch much but something about the Red Sox and Yankees together makes for some seriously exciting and tense baseball. DH the lifelong Red Sox fan has even been having trouble sleeping after all these 4-5 hour extra-inning games every night.



While I've seen some really nice colorwork using one solid color and one multi-colored yarn the autumn socks are unfortunately not turning out that nice. I've decided to keep on knitting them though because they are mostly mindless and a good accompaniment to all this baseball. I'm not knitting as fast as I normally do because I keep putting them down to stare at some new amazing development on the field - police in riot gear, injured bleeding pitchers, bitter disputes with umpires, and really long games hinging on the very last pitch on a full count in the last inning. Susan thinks the Red Sox are trying to kill her from all this stress.



In lieu of a knitting FO photo this week, here are the Halloween socks I knit last year. The pattern is from Blackberry Ridge although I used an orange from the stash rather than the gold they sent. I charted out the BOO! on top and had to sew the long floats in after I finished the socks.

STRANDED COLOR KNITTING IS ON SALE!!



Yesterday I put all the items in our 4 Corners Bunnies Cafepress shop on sale. I reduced the price of every item over $10 by $2 and every item from $5 to $10 was reduced by $1. That means Stranded Color Knitting is now only $8.99. The reduced price will be in effect through the end of 2004 so now is the time to buy a copy of the booklet or one for a gift. I also added new and different photos to most of the Peaches merchandise for holiday shopping.



We now have Peaches the rabbit holiday ornaments for sale. Because of Peaches' success in winning the calendar photo contest, I decided to upload photos for a 2005 wall calendar of her own. That isn't the actual photo I chose for January though. You can see the 12 photos used HERE.









All the money from all the sales in the 4 Corners Bunnies shop (including Stranded Color Knitting) goes to the Colorado chapter of the nonprofit House Rabbit Society. The Colorado HRS runs a shelter in Denver for rescued and abused rabbits along with operating a satellite in Ft. Collins and many foster homes. 9 months ago Peaches was adopted from the CO HRS rescuer in Durango, CO.



The Cafepress shop also has Peaches buttons, mugs, t-shirts, tote bags, greeting cards, mouse pads, etc. My personal favorite is the Peaches flying disc seen here.

I've finished spinning all the angora the shelter sent me. They want it all back to sell in their bunny boutique but it will be torture to give it up. I want to knit it! They have more fur to send me though so perhaps next time.

Peaches is proud to announce that her photo (the one where she was smelling the wildflowers) won the Colorado House Rabbit Society calendar contest. She's demanding more treats now that she is a calendar girl.



I've been spinning angora all weekend while the Red Sox are breaking DH's heart once again. The skein in the middle is purple merino blended with silver angora and the other two are pure angora. You can see that I haven't yet set the twist on the skein on the right in my hurry to scan it.

Peaches has officially announced her candidacy for President. Her campaign slogan will be "More Toys Not Taxes" and she plans to convert this country into a banana-based economy. She is pretty sure the weapons of mass destruction can be found in our bedroom closet and she is strongly opposed to all forms of veterinary health care. She feels cats should be allowed to serve in the military, especially the two cats she lives with, and she promises not to chew any of the furniture in the White House. Her common sense solution to the energy crisis is to take more naps. She won't be able to attend any campaign rallies because she hates going in the car but she does hope you'll all support her efforts to make this country a better place.

FALL SOCKS

Here is the yarn for the fall socks from Blackberry Ridge's Four Seasons of Door County sock kit. I actually like all the socks in this collection but am looking forward to working with these colors. Here in NM we don't get a lot of fall color. Actually we haven't even had a frost yet so it will be nice to at least imagine a real autumn while knitting.

I am working on a boring scarf and spinning the Romney. I have a bunch of rolags ready to spin on the wheel that I hope to accomplish today.



I started using my music stand to read novels while knitting. I want to read more fiction and this is a good solution. In the past month I've read Barchester Towers (the second in the Chronicles of Barsetshire) by Anthony Trollope, The Jane Austen Book Club, How to Cook a Tart and Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage. I want to read all the Chronicles of Barsetshire by Trollope so I went backwards and am reading the first in the series, The Warden. I also started Dickens' Bleak House but couldn't get into it at this point in time.



DH chose our latest Teaching Company class, Robert E. Lee and His High Command. I wasn't all that knowledgeable on the Civil War previously and now I know way too many details about Jubal Early. The professor sure knows his stuff but I'm not sure I really needed to know all this. I get to order our next class this week and I'm leaning toward either Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, Buddhism, or the Age of Henry VIII. There's an inexpensive $15 class on Modern British Drama I'm also going to order.



Another rabbit person sent me this photo. I do believe lops are the cutest creatures on the planet.

I did practically no fiber work this weekend. I doubt this week will net many FO's to show either. I'm trying to finish up some items to send to the Colorado House Rabbit Society to sell at their November Bunny Boutique.



Elizabeth is seeking recipes for a knitblogger's cookbook so go to her blog and submit some of your faves. Here are three I submitted. All are from my cookbook, 'Tis the Season: A Vegetarian Christmas Cookbook (Simon & Schuster, 1995, now out of print but easy to find used). The stew is pictured in this photograph from the book.











VEGETABLE STEW WITH PUFF PASTRY CRUST



Serves 8



This savory stew is one of my favorite winter recipes. In this incarnation, I've topped it with an elegant puff pastry crust but it is also delicious served plain or with a simple biscuit topping. It is a great vegetarian Thanksgiving main dish as well.



1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 Tbsp. canola oil

3 Tbsp. unbleached flour

2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp. firmly packed brown sugar

2 Tbsp. prepared mustard (ballpark-style)

3 cups vegetable broth

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

2 large carrots, chopped (about 1 cup)

2 large potatoes, peeled & chopped (about 2 cups)

1 cup fresh or frozen peas

1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels

1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed for 20 minutes at room temperature



Saute the onion and garlic in the oil for 5 minutes over medium heat or until tender. Stir in the flour until completely mixed. Add the vinegar, brown sugar, and mustard. Stir in the broth, cinnamon, carrots, and potatoes. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until thickened and the vegetables are tender, about 45 minutes. Add the peas and corn and cook an additional 10 minutes. (The recipe can be made ahead to this point.)



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 2-quart casserole dish with nonstick cooking spray. Spoon in the vegetable stew and let cool slightly. On a floured board, roll out the puff pastry sheet to a 12-inch square. Cut the pastry to fit the top of the casserole dish and place on top of the stew. Bake the casserole, uncovered, until the pastry is golden brown on top, about 20 to 30 minutes.







SALLY'S BAKED APPLE PANCAKE



Serves 8 as a first course, 2-4 as a main dish.



My mother-in-law operated a bed and breakfast called Farm Home in the apple country of Fly Creek, New York. This wonderful pancake was her signature dish.



2 tart apples, such as Granny Smith

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar plus additional for dusting pancake

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, divided

4 eggs, beaten

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup unbleached flour



Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. Mix the apples with the confectioner's sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice. Melt 4 Tbsp. of the butter in an ovenproof skillet. Saute the apple mixture over medium-high heat in the butter until just tender, about 4 to 5 minutes. Set aside. Melt the remaining 2 Tbsp butter.



Whisk together the eggs, salt, milk, flour, and melted butter. Pour over the apple mixture and bake for 20 minutes or until puffy and slightly brown on top. Dust with confectioner's sugar. Cut into thin slices for serving. Serve hot.







THE ULTIMATE LEMON BARS



Makes 24 bars



These lemon bars always disappear instantly at potlucks. If you can find lemon oil at a gourmet store, do try it in this recipe. Lemons can really vary in quality. Buy the best you can find to give these lemon bars the strongest lemon flavor. Avoid largish lemons with a very thick pith, they often yield 2 Tbsp. or less juice per lemon. Look for small, heavy lemons instead.



2 1/4 cups unbleached flour, divided

1 cup unsalted butter

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar plus additional for dusting bars

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

5 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

1/8 tsp. lemon oil or 1 Tbsp finely grated lemon zest

1 tsp baking powder



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. With a pastry blender or fork, mix 2 cups of the flour, the butter, and the confectioner's sugar until crumbly. Pat the mixture into a 12 by 9 inch baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until just brown. Do NOT overbake.



With an electric mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, salt, lemon juice, lemon oil or zest, remaining 1/4 cup of the flour and baking powder until frothy. Pour into the hot crust. Bake for 25 minutes or until firm to the touch. Cool on a baking rack; cut into 2-inch squares. With a flour sifter, sprinkle the bars evenly with confectioner's sugar

Here is some of the blue Romney I purchased at Taos. I just adore the color - it is a cross between periwinkle and cornflower blue.









Today we finally checked out the new huge Talin international foods market. It is on Central and Louisiana in Albuquerque and is definitely worth a trip. I'm already planning on what to buy when I return. The store is divided into aisles for various cities - Manila, Kyoto, Milan, Bangkok, Cairo, etc. DH said it is his favorite grocery store of all time. The prices were good and the products ranged from the absolutely wild (headless ching chang, vegetarian squid balls, bottled eel, mustard oil, British white breakfast pudding, kimchee base, five kinds of natto) to the more mundane (Italian olive oils, tons of soy sauces, and a large wine section.)



I found many unusual items and was quite attracted to the wonderful smells in the Indian aisle with all the spices such as cardamom, the large moon cake display near the deli/bakery section (lotus rolls anyone?), and the produce section. There were plenty of vegetables I've never seen in my life - galangal root, bamboo, tiny green thai eggplant, limes the size of grapes, and yampa. They even had some of the controversial durian. But what really turned me on was the variety of Chinese greens. I hope to go back and get some soon - gai lan, gai choy, and many varieties of bok choy and cabbage. I did buy a few things - some imported Italian tomatoes, some chili bean paste, sesame oil, and some fresh dill for Peaches.

Pretend there are two socks below instead of one.



The color showing up as blue is actually bright turqoise and the gold is a lot brighter. This is a Santa Fe Sock from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road done in Nature Spun sportweight and some Socka sport from the stash.



I had hoped to finish both today but that will have to wait as we're having guests this weekend. I spent the day cleaning and baking THIS as I found some frozen cherries when I cleaned out the refrigerator. I also made some graham thumbprint cookies from my new favorite cookbook, Nava Atlas' Vegetarian Family Cookbook. I still have to vacuum, do another load of laundry, make dinner, and go grocery shopping. Have a good weekend! I'll be back Sunday with something to show. I hope.

Peaches is a lot more into toys than other rabbits I've known and loved. She enjoys tossing around anything with a bell late at night and occasionally she manages to flip one of her toys into her water dish which seems to make her very happy. (Her proudest accomplishment is when she managed to flip her water dish onto me, soaking everything in sight.)



Bunny Bytes has the best selection of rabbit toys to keep your pet occupied. Word has it that a shipment of stuff from Bunny Bytes is on its way to our house as we speak.

Busy Bunny and Bunny Luv also have some great products, especially great baskets full of goodies which rabbits can eat, basket and all. American Pet Diner is where I buy her designer hay in small quantities. I also buy her Timothy-based pellets at APD.



Tomorrow (late night) I will have yet another pair of socks to show you, this time in southwestern colors. And maybe I'll finish spinning up a skein of that lovely Romney roving I bought in Taos.

SAILING AWAY...



Here are the Lake Ontario Socks, designed by Joanne Conklin . They are the current sock of the month for Redbird Knits. The pattern uses size 2 dpns and two strands of Zephyr (50% merino, 50% silk). The Lake Ontario Socks have a white cap top above the ribbing and a sailboat on the heel. I added some additional sailboats and some seagulls in duplicate stitch.

Apparently the National Scrabble Championship game was televised on ESPN this weekend with a rebroadcast on ESPN2 on October 14 at 5 pm EST. The game-winning bingo was TEOPANS which means a type of Aztec temple. My less-exciting new Scrabble word from this weekend is WITTOL which means a man who tolerates an unfaithful wife.



Michelle has declared this SOCKTOBER and I am in agreement. I'm planning on continuing to focus on knitting socks all month. Here's a sneak preview of a pair I should be able to show you by late tomorrow. First I have to fix the seagull on the right.

TAOS WOOL FESTIVAL





I really wish I lived in Taos. It has many of the great things that Santa Fe has (and even more yarn stores) and less of the bad stuff like traffic and crime and crowds. And it is drop dead beautiful up near the ski area, especially now when the aspens are turning golden.



Our day started with driving up the Turquoise Trail. We could have driven up through Albuquerque and seen the thousands of hot-air balloons from the Balloon Fiesta but this event makes the already awful drivers here even worse. They actually stop ON THE INTERSTATE to gawk at the balloons.



Traffic started to get bad again with all the construction they are doing near Tesuque and the Santa Fe Opera House. They are adding some neat retaining walls with large artistic renditions of lizards, birds, snakes, and rabbits.



After Santa Fe we hit Espanola. I have heard there is a Fiber Arts Center there now but I had no clue where it was. (Espanola is a relatively isolated small town with a huge heroin problem and the highest heroin overdose rate in the country. Experts think it is generational and keeps getting passed down from parents to children.)



Next we drove through Velarde, one of the greenest parts of NM. It is a pretty valley full of fruit orchards. I went to the largest produce market, the Fruit Basket, and purchased a bushel of Jonathans, a mini bushel of Winesaps, some tomatoes and garlic. I also unwisely purchased some monster zucchini for 25 cents each which we'll be eating all week.



We arrived in Taos about 10:30 am and the festival was starting to get crowded. In the past 10 years I've been attending I mainly spend my money at four booths - Fire Ant Ranch (where I first learned how to spin on a drop spindle) , La Plata Farms (I visited their sheep farm when I lived in SW Colorado), Palanca Farm (they have a booth full of books), and Elsa Sheep and Wool. Elsa S&W is all about Cormo. They sell ready-made garments and both worsted and woolen spun Cormo yarn in 2 weights. This Cormo is the Rolls Royce of yarn. I bought A LOT.









I purchased about 20 oz. of Romney from La Plata Farms for future socks.









I purchased two back issues of Spin-Off from Palanca Farm along with this wool/kid mohair blend, also for socks.









Some of the newer trends in knitting have finally reached the festival. I saw poncho kits and scarf yarn. The most crowded booth was one selling multicolored yarns. There were several booths that just sold felted items which I'd never seen before. I admired several angora rabbits and there was the cutest miniature Southdown sheep in the demo area. There was also a baby yak who was totally adorable.



I found Tracy Eichheim's Woolly Designs and checked out his spindles. The only heavier top-whorl spindles he had were Kokopellis. He had more bottom whorl spindles - actually throughout the festival I saw many more bottom-whorl spindles and many more Navajo spindles than I'd ever seen. Are top-whorl spindles going out of style?



Next we drove up to the ski area and found Taos Sunflower yarn shop. It was a cute building full of scarf and novelty yarns. They also had a good selection of Lamb's Pride for felting and all of Elsebeth's Lavold's new books and her silky wool line. I was in search of sock yarn but couldn't find any at all in the store. Lots of Mango Moon and Noro but no plain wool other than the Lamb's Pride.



Some of the most interesting fiber sightings of the day happened at the ski area. We went into a sporting goods store right near the lifts. I found lots of ready made Dale of Norway sweaters, including Norge, priced from $200-$250. Upon examing them I noticed that even though they were machine knit the tension was visibly different on the patterned part than the plain stockinette part. Interesting - the floats were pretty long as well on the inside of the sweaters. I also found Dale of Norway hats, some with a relatively simple colorwork pattern, for $59. They did have a fleece insert around the headband pattern but $59 seems high to me for a hat. I really liked the gorgeous Dale cardigan called Lysekloster - here's a photo.



Andean Software , also at the ski area, is a store full of Peruvian handknits and some raw alpaca fleece. This store has great prices and is definitely worth a trip. I debated getting some awesome knee socks done in about 20 colors but I know I can come up with something similar myself. The chullo hats were done in an extremely fine gauge and were just beautiful. They also had wonderful gloves, fingerless gloves, children's items, etc.



Next stop - Wool Festival of the Southwest in Farmington Nov 13-14. I think I'll get some alpaca and try harder to find another spindle.