an ent knits

After two weeks of life exploding and preventing me from participating in One Local Summer, I finally pulled together a completely-local dinner last night:

This is salad mix under sautéed tofu, purple beans, purple pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, and mushrooms, all either acquired directly from local farmers at the farmers’ market or labelled "local" at the co-op.  Non-local ingredients: olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, basil, parsley (imported from my dad’s CSA).  It was pretty mild, but that meant that the flavors of the veggies came through.

This is the beginning of a sock I’m knitting out of my handspun.  I am possibly unreasonably excited about knitting socks with handspun.  (I’m also happy about knitting socks on a 3 and a 4 instead of a 2.5 and a 2.75mm needle.)

I have a huge pile of freshly dyed wool!  I think I know what I’m going to be doing this weekend…lots of spinning.  And probably even more gazing at my wool with a smile on my face.

I showed the first batch of roving on Sunday; here’s the rest:

The three bits on the left were microwave-dyed; the fourth was kettle-dyed blue; the two on the right started out as grey-brown wool blend. 

I think this shows the blueishness of the kettle-dyed stuff a bit better.  Anyway, it’s a lovely greyish blue.

Now, the yarn.  I bought two half-pound skeins of Henry’s Attic kid mohair specifically for dye-day.  One of them is now yellow and orange and brownish-orangey:

This may just turn into an Icarus shawl as soon as it gets sufficiently cool and dry to deal with mohair.

The other skein was supposed to be chocolate brown with bits of yellow. 

That’s basically what it is (the yellow bits are hiding from the camera), but the brown came out a little purplier than I wanted, so I’m going to let it sit for a while and think about what to do with it.

And…I overdyed the stuff I posted about last week:

Much better.

I’ve been reading and working and rereading, without much fibery happening, so you get pictures of other things today.

These are cranberry-spice muffins that I made last night, after discovering that I didn’t have enough nuts for granola.  (Approximate recipe in the extended entry.)

And these are flowers from along my walk to work.  (I think they’re dahlias.  Please correct me if you know they’re not.)

(more…)

I spent Saturday with a bunch of the PhillyFiberists, dyeing lots of wool.

This is the one batch of my dyeing that I brought home (they were all still at least damp when I left)–5oz of BFL, which may turn into socks.   (More pictures on Friday, when I’ll have the rest of it.)

Dyeing is awesome. 

orange-moth.jpg, originally uploaded by enting.

Not all moths are horrible.

I have no idea what kind this one is, just that it’s not going to try to eat either my wool or my grains. And that it’s pretty. (I found it in the entryway, attracted by the lamp.)

Happy Friday! It’s something like ten degrees cooler than yesterday, so I’m pleased.

I’ve already started knitting with my onion-dyed wool:

It’s a multi-directional scarf–I’ve knit the first bit and started the first short-row section.

I’ve also done some more comfort spinning–this is about 45 yards of random fluff.  I may overdye it; I don’t really like the color, but part of the reason I put most of this stuff into blends was because I didn’t like the starting material.  Eh, it was fun to spin.

As I said last week, I’ve been doing some comfort spinning to try to deal with some of the unpleasantness of life.  Here’s the wool I dyed with onion skins, all spun up:

Some of it is wound into a ball because I didn’t secure the skein very well before finishing.  I’d like to think I’ve learned my lesson…but we’ll see.  It’s not especially even, but I don’t really care.  It was fun to spin, and it’ll still be great for the project I have in mind.

And here’s a fellow spinner whom I found in my kitchen the other day. 

On a semi-related note, I think a bunch of people I know will appreciate this felted insect pattern booklet.  I found it through Ravelry.  (Such a dangerous time-suck, but such fun!)

In lieu of new pictures of different summer flora, here’s a very happy Mel.  I could use some of that peace, myself. 

Happy weekend, everyone.

Although lots of things about my life are incredibly good (a fact of which I have been reminding myself a lot), there are a few major aspects that are not making me happy at all.  I don’t want to get into the details here, but I thought I should mention that things are not great rather than just pretending that life is perfect. 

I have been soothing myself with knitting on the peacock feather shawl (still in chart 3, though) and spinning, so there should be picture-worthy fiber stuff soon. 

First: I tracked my running and walking as part of the second round of Run-a-gogo!  I didn’t get in as much running as I’d’ve liked, but my total distance moved on foot (mostly walking, plus running and hiking) was about 230 miles from April 1st to July 1st.  That’s a bit shy of my goal of 250 miles, but I’m still pretty happy with it.  I stopped tracking my mileage after that, but my new goal is to walk faster.  (Especially to and from work.)

Second:  Although I responded to the participant survey, I never got around to posting my summary of costs for the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge.  As I said earlier, I went a bit over my budget goal of $45, but I was well under the average single-person weekly food budget of $68.  There’s a table of things I bought and things I used in the extended entry.

(The rose of sharon is just there to be pretty.)

(more…)

This edition of Eye Candy Friday is brought to you by the silly decision to start a 36-exposure roll of film halfway through a day of hiking (when I also had a digital camera with me).  All of the pictures here are from wandering around Philly in the last week of June, trying to use up the roll of film before my hiking companions forgot that I’d taken more pictures. 

I’m also declaring this to be my 007 post for June despite the fact that two of these pictures are actually from July 1st.

I love sidewalk weeds.

Okay, this week’s OLS meal is more like "real" food.

This is whole wheat linguine with ground beef, kale, zucchini, yellow squash, garlic scapes, fresh mozzarella, and lemon basil.  (Also included are an onion and olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika.)

[This is about half of the leftovers, in sunlight instead of crappy indoor late-night lighting.]

DSCN5940.JPG, originally uploaded by enting.

I spent last night plying and watching Desperate Housewives. I am really glad both to have two bobbins free and to be able to justify spinning the wool I finished carding a week ago. And, of course, to have this skein…it’s about 180 yards of sportweight.

Although I bought the roving with plans to put it into the freeform blanket, I think I’m going to try the yarn in socks. I’m a little worried that it’s not spun/plied tightly enough to wear very well, but the mohair should help a bit. And, well, I want handspun socks. So there.

This may actually lead to my first lone sock abandoned for other socks.