Inspiration Saturday: OctoMitts

I know that usually I end up with a slew of patterns as part of my inspiration posts, but today I just have one pattern that's on my mind: OctoMitts by SpillyJane.

Photo credit: SpillyJane

SpillyJane is known for her adorable colorwork designs.  She's done gnomes, flamingos, cupcakes, and all sort of fruits and vegetables.  There are so many of them I would love to try.  But the pattern for these just happened to be free on Ravelry on Tuesday (now it's available for $6 if you're also feeling 'inspired').  And my spoilee in that long term swap just happens to like sea creatures.  So I think I might need to push my colorwork skills and try to make the fingerless version.

I'm wondering if I have enough of the Winter Night and Kenai left over from Affection-ite to do them.  That wouldn't make them quite as colorful, but still sea-faring.  Or maybe one of the yarns should be Chroma, for slightly psychedelic octopuses?  I have time to decide, I won't attempt to cast on until I've finished my Twist of Death.

Do you do colorwork?  What kinds of projects or designers do you prefer?

Cubicle kitchen: Gingerbread Truffles

I don't have any FOs this Friday, but I do still have some catching up to do on my reporting of baked goods, so here's last week's.

This is one of those times when I feel slightly sheepish about calling this a 'recipe'.  Mostly what it boils down to is that the principles of the still-going-strong trend that is cake balls, or cake truffles (which just sounds so much nicer), can also be applied to gingerbread, with delicious results.

What's more, because of the dense nature of gingerbread, you don't need to induce any further guilt by adding a lot of extra frosting into the mix.  Just the crumbled up gingerbread itself holds together well enough to be rolled in this gingerbread-flavored candy coasting, which had a bit of a butterscotch taste to it, but still delicious.  Especially with a nice, milky chai.

Gingerbread Truffles
Makes about 30 truffles

Ingredients

• 1 boxed Gingerbread mix, and additional ingredients as called for
• 1 bag gingerbread-flavored candy melts

Optional:

• 1/4 cup frosting
• 1/2 cup crushed Pfeffernusse

Directions

1. Bake gingerbread according to directions for cakey, rather than cookie, gingerbread.  Allow to cool enough to handle.
2. In a large bowl, tear the gingerbread into pieces.  If you think your gingerbread could use some additional moisture to hold together, add some frosting.  Otherwise, just dive in with both hands and squish the gingerbread together.  Form into balls about the size of a tablespoon.  Place on a tray lined with parchment paper and freeze.  I let them freeze overnight.
3. When ready to assemble, melt the candy melts according to directions.  I prefer to do smaller batches and add additional melts as needed, just in case I don't need all of it.  Arrange your workspace so you have your chilled balls, melted 'chocolate', and any toppings you want to roll the truffles in close by.  Also: somewhere to place your finished truffles to set.  I simply used the same try that the balls had been frozen on.
4. Dip each ball in candy melt, coating completely, then roll half in topping, and place back onto the tray.  This will have to be done fairly quickly, as the coating will begin setting relatively quickly, so you need to get the topping applied and your fingers off of it before that happens.
5. Repeat until all of the balls are coated, or you are out of coating.  Allow truffles to set, then transfer to an airtight container until ready to serve.

Summer of cinema: Guys and Dolls

Remember when we all watched movies on VHS?  And if there were trailers before the feature, we either had to watch them or carefully fast forward through them?  I still have, hiding in a closet somewhere, my collection of childhood DVDs.  And when I first started it, aside from the many Disney princess movies, that collection was dominated by musicals.  There were the double-tape epics 'My Fair Lady' and 'The Sound of Music', as well as the not-quite-child-appropriate 'Grease' and  others.

The musicals that I did have were watched many, many times.  But they represented just a handful of the entries in that genre, and many remain that I haven't seen yet.  'Guys and Dolls', for example, was not one of the musicals I grew up with.  It seemed like a worthy use the second of my ten Flix Tix passes to see it as part of the Paramount Theater Classic Film Series, having already seen Destry Rides Again.

Though I had never seen the movie before, it did feature in the trailers for some of the musicals I did own, so I suppose I have seen the same 5 seconds enough times to match it's total run time.  But it was good to see the other 9,000+ seconds and put that well-known 5 seconds in context.

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie and I think I need to add it to my DVD collection.  Some of the songs are still popping into my head a week later, and I have to say, the Crapshooters Dance was like the Sharks and the Jets rolling dice on the set of 'Metropolis'.  Marlon Brando was very...Marlon Brando.  His romance with the upstanding citizen Sally Brown is sweet, though it does make me wonder just how many fictional romances are begun as bets.  I guess 'She's All That' utilized some classic tropes.  Frank Sinatra was fantastic, of course, but I think Vivian Blaine was my favorite as Adelaide.

Stay tuned for something completely different next time, 'The Third Man'.  Teaser: Orson Welles doesn't sing any show tunes.

WIP Wednesday: Summer social butterfly

You already know that I love routines.  Which can make me kind of a homebody by default, but I feel like this summer I've been a little more willing to venture out and socialize.  For example, this past Sunday I went to Gauge for a going-away party for a local yarn dyer who is moving to Colorado.  Sure, it consisted mainly of noshing on strawberries, chatting, and knitting, but that's the kind of fun I like to have.  I'm not looking for raging keggers.  As further evidenced by the fact that I went downtown yesterday, not to drink my way down 6th Street, but to go see 'The Third Man' at Paramount.  I'll have a post on that, and 'Guys and Dolls', eventually.

And now, I have an exciting Wednesday planned.  After the usual klatch and yoga, dinner plans will shift from Indian at Tarka to a summer salad at Panera so that I can also go and get my hair cut.  This may not be riveting to extroverted, popular people, but I've been looking forward to the Strawberry Poppyseed & Chicken Salad since last summer.  And I love my stylist.  She's super nice and is great with my hair.

I've also been watching most of the World Cup matches.  Not really with groups of people physically, but spiritually, emotionally....Twitterly.  I'll be holding my breath along with everyone else in tomorrow's match between the US and Germany.  I'm rooting for both of them to make it through the group, preferably with a draw or US win, because Germany has a goal difference cushion so I wouldn't have to worry too much about them.

All of these highly-social engagements have given me plenty of opportunity to knit, but not a lot of time to take pretty pictures of it.  So I'll have to keep you in suspense a while longer. But I am really enjoying my Twist of Death. Right now it's just knitting and knitting around and around, but the yarn is soft and pretty.  I'm toying with the idea of adding beads to the rib at the collar, but I haven't committed to it yet.

Maybe that's a decision for next WIP Wednesday. In the meantime, you can find more at Tami's Amis.

Cubicle kitchen: Scrambled Cadbury Cream Egg Cookies

I love Cadbury Creme Eggs.  I am not alone in this.  Recently, one of my favorite food bloggers, Vanilla Sugar, recently tweeted:

Amazing how fast the weight comes off when you drop ice cream, Cadbury Eggs & strawberry shortcake from your diet. No?

Indeed it is.

I still have a precious few Cadbury Creme Eggs stashed away in my freezer from this season's Easter haul.  That's my preferred way to eat them: fresh from the freezer, with the chocolate hard enough that I can bite into it to crack it and then eat the little shards while saving the creamy center for last.  Freezing them is the only way for the center to still be relatively intact and not completely all over my fingers by the end.

There are two ways to look at why I made these cookies.  The first is that I generously sacrificed part of my Creme Egg stash for the sake of the tastier klatch good.  The second is that I just wanted to see if it would work and was once again experimenting on my coworkers' taste buds.

I'm going to go with a little bit of both.  Either way, these are yummy.  I like Sally's recipe because the cookie is soft and fluffy, which pairs really well with the milky chocolate shell and fondant creme.

Scrambled Cadbury Creme Egg Cookies
Recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction: THE Chocolate Chip Cookie

My notes:

• Instead of chocolate chips, I chopped up about 8 Cadbury Creme Eggs and mixed those into my cookie dough.
• To chop up the Creme Eggs without making a gooey mess, place the eggs in the freezer at least overnight.

Inspiration Saturday: Om my mind

Habits, rituals, customs, routines.  Whatever you call them, I love them.  I'm not a surprise type of person, I like to plan things well ahead of time and take as much pleasure as possible in looking forward to them.  Whether it's something that comes once every year, like Wimbledon (starting Monday, I already have some strawberries and 'cream' to watch with), or once a week, like froyo Fridays with my fellow knitters, I love expected pleasures.

And one of those more frequently occurring expected pleasures is Wednesday evening yoga practice, followed by Indian dinner at Tarka with my dad.  Along with the weekly coffee klatch with my coworkers and the fact that it is, after all, Hump Day, yoga and a veggie curry makes Wednesdays one of my favorite days, and almost certainly my favorite workday.

So even though this is called Inspiration Saturday, here's some inspiration from earlier in the week.  Just random thoughts, projects, and tastes:

All Twisted Up Yoga Socks by Bonnie Pruitt

Photo credit: Bonnie Pruitt

I know I already mentioned one pair of yoga socks last week, but these caught my attention because of the yarn they're knit with.  I love the colors of self-striping yarn like Felici, but I'm not always sure how I want to use it to make best use of the stripes without being overpowered by them.  I like the way this twisted rib breaks up the stripes just a bit without losing them totally.  Plus, like having bright pink running shoes, having ridiculous rainbow yoga socks will make me smile even as I'm pushing my heels down just a little bit more in downward dog.

Slouchy Cabled Sleeves by Lime Scented

Photo credit: Lime Scented

I think it would also be nice to have some wrist warmers that could, like the yoga socks, keep my extremities a bit warmer while not impeding my grip.  There are plenty to choose from, but I like the idea of the slouchy cables on these, and making them long enough to start above my elbow.  That way I can wear my tank while I'm running on the treadmill before yoga, then when I'm leaving my shoes in my locker I can grab these and stay warm as I cool down and stretch.

Finding my happy place

At the end of every practice, we go into 'final resting pose', which is basically lying on the ground, relaxing all of your muscles and your mind for about five full minutes.  The instructor, in her very soothing voice, tells us to think of a place where we were happy, and to let your thoughts drift in and out like clouds, not to hang onto them.  So I've started making Kefalonia my go-to place in my mind. It's a Greek island that I've been to just a handful of times when I was younger with my grandparents.  Here's a photo that I took back in the days of film and scanned in a few years ago:

It's probably pretty obvious from this photo why my mind would go there when instructed to think of a relaxing time. I particularly like to imagine that I'm floating in the sea, just being taken by the current, and any random thoughts that pop up from the day I just let pass me by on the waves.  It's also perfect because I can concentrate on the sensory details of warm sun, salty sea water, and softly crashing waves to try and keep the random thoughts at bay.  Or on shore, as it were.

Tark-ya very much

One of the thoughts I have to let pass me by in my Greek daydream is deciding what I'm going to eat at Tarka.  I think my favorite dish is Chana Saag, a chickpea curry with a kind of creamed spinach.  So good especially ordered with extra veggies and a side of roti bread.  No need for rice.

Photo credit: Budget Bytes

One of these days I think I'll try and make this myself.  This recipe from Budget Bytes seems relatively simple.  The only ingredient that I don't usually have on hand is the fresh ginger.  There's even a recipe for homemade naan, but I still haven't quite ventured into cooking with yeast.  Maybe a flatbread is the right place to start.  My dad always orders garlic naan with his curry.  While I like to rotate around various veggie curries (aloo gobi, vegetable vindaloo, chana masala), he almost always sticks to his usual chicken tikka masala.

So while I continue to enjoy the weekend and dread Monday morning, at least I can still look forward to Wednesday.

What's your favorite day of the week?  Why?  Have you ever tried yoga?  Is final resting pose your favorite part as well?  How about Indian food?  Lots of questions for you to choose from today!  Don't forget to check out the patron blogging saint of Inspiration Saturdays, Woolen Diversions.

FO Friday: Peeps and Pops

This week's two FOs are very different projects.  The first was yet another swap handmade, a relatively simple pattern in basic black but a luxurious fiber content.  The second was a spur-of-the-moment cast on for myself with lace and a rainbow of colors.

First, Bow Peep's Black Sheep:

I already have plans to make another one of these for myself, because it's such a clever knit.  It's so simple, just knits and purls with some increases and decreases to create the shape of a beautifully tied bow.  Then you just block it flat.

I actually think that tying the bow each time you wear it would be more challenging than knitting it, but then again I've always found that challenging, along with most of the other aspects of gift wrapping.  The yarn was a perfect compromise between wanting the soft halo but not wanting mohair.  And as a bonus it didn't require me to knit double.

And then, the colorful sugar rush that is 198 Licks of the Lollipop:

This knit up so fast!  Partly because it's a wee little shawlette, but also because it was just so much fun to watch the colors coming and going.  Although this was cast on to sooth the panic of having cast off the bow and never wanting to go more than a few hours without something on the needles, I had been planning on making this for some time, so it also feels good to cross something off of my list.

As I say, it is very wee, so I'll have to see how easily it stays put around my neck.  My preferred method of wearing triangle shawls is with the tip in front and the other points wrapped around my neck all the way.  After blocking this makes it all the way around, but without much to spare.  I might use some kind of pin, or sew a button onto the two end points that can fasten into any of the yarnovers.

How do you wear shawls?  Have you finished up anything recently?  You can find more FO Fridays floating all around the interwebz.