Saturday, March 21, 2009

March 14 - 20: the week in photos

It's really feeling like spring around here. And it's not just the weather -- so much is going on, it's like everyone's energy has woken up after the long winter sleep. These photos give you a flavor of the week.

First up: The veggie box is back! The Two Small Farms CSA made it's first delivery this week: flowers, fennel, kale, carrots, napa cabbage, parsnips, beets, spring mix, parsley and green garlic. The flowers were the most beautiful bouquet we've ever seen from the CSA and the fennel, orange and arugula salad was a fabulous first receipe on Wednesday night. On Friday, we munched up half a head of napa cabbage in Sesame Noodles with Napa Cabbage. Mmmm, peanutty.

And of course, as I mentioned last week, Spring means Madness: March Madness & Sock Madness.


The first Sock Madness pattern, called Tropical Mer-tini, came out very early Thursday morning.

The design is inspired by the Drunkard's Path quilt block and comes with a photo of a nice blue martini-style drink. I wanted to stick with the blue theme and I had some great yarn in stash to work with. Socks That Rock mediumweight, in a great color called Star Sapphire


I knit 4 inches of cuff using my first choice of yarn, and decided it was just not going to work. Too big, too floppy. Curses! And to rub salt in my wounds, Illinois lost their first round game to Western Kentucky. Grrrr!

Friday, a full 36 hours after the pattern came out, I cast on again - this time with a thinner yarn and size 0 needles in another lovely blue - "Pacific" Artisan Sock yarn from Hazel Knits. I knit through the evening basketball games - two squeakers featuring Big Ten teams (Go Wisconsin!) and I've caught up to my first sock. Sigh.

I'm way behind the fastest knitters in my division at this point. But this is the weight of yarn and the size 0's are the right choice and the new yarn is beautiful. You can look to see whether I make it into the top 40 knitters in my division here on the Division 2 - Great Knitspectations - scoreboard.



The last update on the week - the Roger Steen Band, featuring our very own Janice and my multi-talented spouse-man, Bill Walker are playing TONIGHT at the Quarter Note bar in Santa Clara, just off Lawrence Expressway near Central, at 9 pm. To get ready for tonight's show, Bill sorta casually "picked up" a brand new Nord Stage EX to extend the range of available keyboard sounds.


[EDITED TO ADD... ]Whoops - I nearly forgot spin-in last Saturday! We had 4 wheel spinners, 2 spindle spinners, 2 knitters, and 2 onlookers at the spin-in, which was a great turnout on what had looked like a slow day. I had met a needleloca from Sunnyvale at Stitches & invited her to join us - and she brought delicious artichoke fritata to keep us energized all afternoon, mmmm! Around 5:30, we had a real treat when Seltsame & her fiance M. stopped by. M. tried a little bit of spinning - with terrible fiber I offered him.


And just *look* at Emy's plied yarn, in perfect Emy purple! Spindle spun, spindle plied and look how happy it makes her. Way to go, Emy.

There you have it. A busy week of veggies, knitting, basketball, music and spinning. Oh, and work. And not enough sleep!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm behind in checking your blog because of the exciting events here. Sounds like you are keeping occupied. Hope the socks are progressing well. Mom

March 28, 2009 6:38 PM  

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