Update: Big damn sweater

The continuing adventures of the big damn Washbourne.

After several days, I am one skein of yarn in.  And it only took casting on 3 times! So far, I have the bottom ribbing done and 5 rows of the pattern.  I might be able to elk out one more row with the amount of yarn I have left, but rather than have to stop mid-row, I'm stopping here for the rest of the work day.

Normal sized mechanical pencil for scale

There are definitely errors that knitters will be able to notice, and J said he could see where the pattern is different but not how I screwed up, but I decided it wasn't a big enough deal to have to rip back out.

The start of the central cable

Twisted rib?  Not my friend.  Since I finally got the gauge to work out, I'm not nearly as worried about this fitting properly (yarn held as double, size 10.5 needles) as I was, however I know the arm holes and sleeves are going to require some more editing to make work properly.  I've not even started thinking about the sleeves.  Oh darn, I'll have to spend large amounts of time watching Firefly when I get there.

I'm going to start stringing lifelines every 20 rows or so.  I've got the first one about 2 rows ago.  I'm thinking I'm going to leave them in place until everything is finished.

The longer cables for my circulars are making this much easier.  I went ahead and ordered the 60 inch length last week which is almost twice as long as what I was using.  I can now hold it up to J for sizing guess-timates without it being a huge ordeal.  Also, there's room for my backup row counter.

I'm mostly using "Knit Counter Lite" on my phone for this project.  And this might be enough to convince me to drop the $2.99 for the full version.  As I can link counters together so it keeps track of not only which row of the sweater I'm on, but also which row of the cable pattern.  The only real advantage of having the full version is the ability to have multiple projects going at once.  

Spring, finished booties

Never one for great wisdom, you should interpret this as you will:

ZOMG GREEN THINGS!!!  SPRING!!!  YAYAYAYAYAAY!!!!

And now for the crafting porn.

Starbucks Monkey says: BOOTIES!!!

In in further examples of how gauge matters: same pattern as the booties for Baby W, at least an inch bigger.  No new pattern notes other than at some point, I should probably try these with the yarn called for (sock weight) instead of worsted.  Maybe for the next pair.

In other news, found and ordered the yarn for Baby S-H's blanket.  KnitPick's Comfy Bulky in Marlin.  So I have yarn, pattern, and knitting needles.  Now I just need to actually knit it.  I also need to actually make progress on J's sweater instead of just toting the yarn and needles with me.

Have not even started on the pirate hat yet.  If Ostara celebrations get cancelled this weekend due to weather, I might start it then.  Other wise, it's going to wait until I finish this second sock.

Bren's Birthday Dinner

Dinner for Saturday night/ Brenna's birthday dinner type thing.
Roasted Veggies
Bacon Explosion
Peanut Butter Icebox Pie (sky high variety)
Colcannon

(Original recipes are located at the links)

I forgot photos again.  Like normal, just use your imagination.  Obviously, this was not a "healthy" night.  I got everyone to eat their veggies, there was meat for those who wanted it and more than enough veggies for those who didn't.  Final count: 1 lb of butter, 2 pints heavy cream, 5 lbs of potatoes (not all of them got turned into Colcannon, only about half).  I'm not even guessing about calorie count as I am very certain I DO NOT wish to know.


Roasted veggies are kinda a obvious one: parsnips, carrots, asparagus, red pepper, cherry tomatoes, butternut squash.  Maybe some other things too, I feel like I'm forgetting something.
Preheat oven to 350-375.
Peel, chop, etc everything into bite sized pieces.
Arrange on sheet pans in single layer, douse with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and roast until done, about 30 minutes.  May want to separate out smaller/faster cooking things (asparagus and tomatoes) and roast them on separate pans as they'll take less time.

They're roasted veggies, of course they're tasty!

Bacon Explosion.
Not going to lie.  This was my brother's contribution, I merely provided kitchen space and clean hands occasionally.
1 lbs bacon, thick sliced, uncooked.
1/2 lb bacon, cooked until crispy and chopped into pieces
1 lb sausage of some variety (we used italian)
bbq seasoning
bbq sauce (KC Masterpiece works well)

Pre-Heat oven to 300.
Take 1 lb of bacon and weave it together into a mat, like you would do for a lattice topped pie.  Except closer together.  Season with BBQ seasoning.
Spread sausage on top of mat.  Douse with seasoning and bbq sauce.  Along 1 end (narrow end), spread the cooked bacon.  Roll the sausage and cooked bacon into a roll and then roll that into the bacon mat.  So you have a jelly roll type thing with layers of cooked bacon, sausage, and bacon mat.
Coat liberally with BBQ sauce.  Place in tin foil lined roasting pan (or a disposable) and cook until done, about 45 minutes per inch of thickness, or until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.
Allow to rest before slicing.

Make this for large groups with healthy cholesterol counts.  It's tasty, but that's a lot of bacon.  The seasoning on these made it really spicy, and the italian sausage just multiplied that problem, so watch out for the level of spice.

Colcannon.
2-2.5 lbs russet potatoes
6 tbsp unsalted butter (plus more for serving)
3 cups loosely chopped Kale
1 cup milk or cream.

Peel, chop, boil potatoes until fork tender.  Set aside.
Melt butter into a pan and add Kale.  Cook 3-4 minutes until wilted down.  Add into potatoes, along with milk/cream  Mash together.
Per the recipe, serve with a knob of butter melted into the center.

Fail.  Apparently, you need to cut the stalks from kale?  Didn't know that.  It never really cooked down a whole lot, and just... failed.  I might try again, with the info I've gained from this, but... yeah.  Fail.

Peanut Butter IceBox Pie
Adapted to be Gluten Free

crust
1 box/3 cups Gluten Free 'Nilla Wafers or Not-Graham Crackers, pulverized into bits.
2 sticks butter, melted
Up to 2 cups buckwheat flour

Filling
Caramel Sauce (made according to this recipe.  I'm sure you could use store bought, but I forgot it)
2 cups heavy cream
3 blocks cream cheese
1.5 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp + 1 tsp vanilla extract (or 3 capfuls, which ever)

Topping
2 Cups Peanut Butter Cups, chopped into pieces

For Crust
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine crumbs and butter in large bowl, adding buckwheat until stiff enough to hold to side of pie pan.  Form crust in pie pan and bake until stiff and not jiggly (All told, I think it took 10-15 minutes).  Cool to room temperature

Caramel sauce.  Made according to recipe above.  I hate sugar work.

For Filling:
Beat heavy cream using whisk or mixer until stiff peaks form.  Cover, place in fridge

In separate bowl, beat cream cheese on medium high until smooth and creamy.  Add Peanut Butter, sugar and vanilla, beat until incorporated.
Fold in whipped cream, gently, until fully combined.

Assembly
Drizzle about 3 tablespoons of Caramel sauce in bottom of cooled pie crust.  Carefully fill crust with peanut butter filling, spreading out to the edges and smoothing out.  Sprinkle peanut butter cup pieces artfully on top. Cover, refrigerate at least 5 hours before serving.

Eventually, I will live in an area where obtaining GF not-graham cracker crusts will be fairly easily done and I will just buy them.  They will be prettier and folks won't look at me like I'm stupid when I'm staring blankly at the gf cookies.  This is really really tasty and really really rich.  Even people who normally go for double slices of pie went for half slices on this one.

Starting: J's Washbourne/ Big Damn Sweater

I love my husband.  I also have a feeling that this is going to become my mantra for the next several months.

J has wanted Wash's sweater from Firefly since he saw the show.  Long before he met me.  And now my knitting skills are finally where I'm comfortable making this sweater.

This is what he wants, only he wants it in green:

Because Cables are fun!!

Okay, good enough, I can do this.  Thank you Ravelry for useful things like more creative/talented people than me who have already figured out this pattern.

Pattern I am using is here.  This lovely thing is sized for a much smaller person than J.  42 inch chest would fit me nicely, but not him.  I need to add 12 inches around, a third repeat of the cable up and lengthen the arms as well.  It's hell knitting for an ogre.

Currently, I'm on gauge swatch number 5.  I've tried needle sizes 9 through 11, no dice.  Always too many stitches per inch.  I'm back on size 10.5 (the closest I've come) and doubling the yarn.  Hopefully, this will work.  It will make knitting it go slower, but at this point, it's more important that it fits right than he gets it soon.

It's a good thing he doesn't want this until fall.  Personally, my goal is for it to be done by Yule (Dec 21).

Yarn is Berroco Vintage.  I forget the colorway off hand, but dark heathered green.  Will ultimately need about 8 skeins I'm guessing.  Once I figure out the gauge, I'll get that part figured out.

And then, as an off project, I have a pirate hat to knit.  damnit.

FO: Baby C's 8 point Star

Baby C's 8 Point Star Blanket

You'll have to forgive the colors on the photos. Apparently, my camera doesn't like rainbows?  Properly, this is Red Heart's Mexicana, Forest Green, and Royal Blue.  I'm sure those are easily found.

this is the better of the 2 photos and is still awful.  But at least you can tell what the colors are supposed to be!

Pattern, such that it is, can be found here.

My final yarn count:

2 entire skeins of Red Heart Mexicana

Most of 1 skein of Royal blue

1 and a smidge of Forest Green.

I try not to pick on other folk's pattern's too badly.  Everyone has screw ups, everyone fails at math occasionally.  But, just so you know if you decide to do this one as well, the stitch counts stop being accurate after the 8th shell row in the printer friendly version.  The main pattern appears to be accurate through out (but my math could be wrong).  it's not a huge deal to fix, just add 1 dc in each side up the shell every row.

::edit:: apparently the pattern author has corrected this since I printed the pattern.  nevermind!

Attempted close up of the center.  Camera Fail.

The main part of the blanket took almost no time to knock out, even after adding additional rows to make it big enough.  The granny squares took longer than the blanket it feels like, just because there were so many, and then I had to sew them together.  All in all, this was a good learning skills blanket (granny squares!  sewing together!  sizing!).  It ended up way bigger than I thought it was going to.  I don't have the final dimensions yet, but it works quite nicely as a lap blanket for me or J, which is just amazing.  Before I added the granny squares, point to point was 34 inches and valley to valley was 27.  I possibly should have stopped there?  Adding the blocks between points adds at least 8 inches, possibly more.  

Baby C's blanket is now done.  Totally done even, outside of tossing it in the wash to get the cat fur etc off and out.  His booties will be done... in the next two weeks?  Baby shower is at the end of the month, so they'll need to be done by then.