The Sweatshop of Love Blog

You know when you are really young and you don’t know anything but what your parents let you know? Like, when they give you chocolate milk that is actually half white milk and half chocolate milk, and you think it is great because you have never had straight up chocolate milk. Then you go to your friend’s house and her mom gives you real straight from the carton chocolate milk and you freak the fuck out because it is the most amazing thing you have ever tasted.

I thought shrimp pizza was chocolate milk until I had real chocolate milk.

Banana Pepper, Sun Dried Tomato, Caramelized Onion, Spinach, and Three Cheeses Pizza

The feta was out of control. The sun dried tomatoes were perfect. I will never have fresh onion on a pizza ever again, having caramelized them for this pizza. Having had corn meal in a pizza crust at a dinner party last week, we threw in some corn meal and it was out of control. And this pizza sauce was the best pizza sauce I’ve ever made, with fennel seeds and red pepper flakes. I didn’t know this pizza existed in the world when I declared shrimp pizza the best pizza ever. I retract that statement.

I’m glad we made the best pizza ever because PT really needed it.

Rough Day in Baseball Land

We went to the Twins Sox game this afternoon and the Twins got it handed to them. If any boy needed a delicious pizza, it was PT.

My 8 Year Old Boy

The Tigers, on the other hand, came back to win in the bottom of the 8th inning from a 4 run deficit. My 8 year old boy totally called that comeback! I did not need a pizza. I still ate it, though.

Glorious Fish Tacos

I needed the best fish tacos PT ever made. Fresh mango!

PT's Easter Present, and Velma

I did not need half of this Reester Bunny.

B(kinda)LT

I did need this fake bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado sandwich.

Pudge Rodriguez

Pudge disagreed.

On the eve of a home stand against the Sox, full of the best pizza I’ve ever eaten (not to mention some cookies and cream ice cream), sitting in bed watching Celebrity Apprentice, life is good. My sweater dress is a sleeve and about 3 inches in length away from being finished! Pudge Rodriguez is digging through the trash and ripping up tissues, and I’d like to shake her until she goes to sleep, but you can’t have everything.

I can’t wait to show the girls my finished collar!

Sweater Collar? No Problem! Give Me Two Days

Sweater Club is some serious motivation. I’m hoping to motivate everyone by how much serious knitting I can get done, and everyone motivates me to be the Super Knitter.

I’m going to be really sad when Sweater Club is over! Three-ish more weeks. I hope more people sign up for Round Two! Though I don’t know how I will be able to top knitting a sweater dress for Round One. A wedding dress? A bike? Trees? It will be tricky.

I’ve been trying not to measure the skirt part of my sweater dress too much. As Lori so lovingly told me at Sweater Club a couple weeks ago, I’m just driving myself crazy. I took Lori’s advise and chilled out. My plan was to get to 18 inches before starting the second sleeve. Yesterday morning I was knitting a long and looked down and was astonished! I had knit the shit out of that skirt! I measured and was just over 19 inches! I squealed and started the collar, just to mix things up.

I Could Wear it Outside if I Were LiLo

That is a one armed dress! The collar makes it look so awesome! I even squeezed into it this morning before work and it fits! The arm is a little big, but I’m not concerned. I could beef up my arms… I might just have to. Eh, I’ll wait to worry about it. Thanks to my mlb.com premium package, meaning I get every game I could possibly want every day, I’ve got many excuses to sit in front of my computer and finish this up by the end of Sweater Club! Trying it on really motivated me to finish it and wear it every day.

My meeting Monday with Distant Village, the Treeless Paper Yarn guys, went well! They are making some balls of it for me, I’m going to have a class, going to package up some kits for etsy, going to get rolling with this fun project!

Lunch

I was emailing him so treeless paper bead ideas while I was eating my lunch burrito. Homemade lunch burrito! I love life.

I’m going to do some preliminary Spring cleaning now before the tigers game. I’ve started doing that thing where everything is in piles, and then I refer to the piles of shit as tables. That just isn’t right.

My rewards program totally worked for my brain. I didn’t know if I could knit 26 inches for that skirt, but I knew I could knit 10 inches, and rewarded myself with a sleeve.

Sweater Dress Sleeve One!

Now I’m back on the skirt. I’m at about 13 inches and want to get to 18 before I knit the other sleeve. It actually looks like something now! The sleeve got me excited…

Pudge Rodriguez

but it blew Pudge Rodriguez away! She just couldn’t handle how awesome it looks.

And that is about the position I took after the Mexican Feast PT and I made on Saturday.

Fish Taco+Burrito=Love

One of PT’s specialties is the fish taco. We got tilapia super cheap at Emilio’s, cooked it up, threw it in the taco with salsa (with added fresh mango!) and avocado. The burrito has become my specialty! This one was with black eyed peas, tomato, guacamole, some of that home made mango salsa, and spinach.

Plantains!

I even fried up some plantains in butter for a side, which I haven’t done in a long time but want to do every day for the rest of my life.

Raspberry and Blackberry Pancakes with Potatoes

Not to mention we started the day with raspberry and blackberry pancakes with potatoes. We ate well Saturday.

Sunday I just couldn’t keep my tuna helper concoction to myself anymore.

Allyson's Tuna Helper Creation

I made it for PT and he loved it! I traded out the cheddar for pepper jack and it was even better. A little crushed black pepper! Love.

Shrimp Fried Rice and Spring Rolls

We rounded Sunday out with shrimp and veggie fried rice and spring rolls. In retrospect, I would have slapped that leftover rice on another shrimp pizza, but it was good with asparagus, broccoli, carrots and green pepper, too.

The soup of the weekend?

Purple Soup

Red potato and back bean with carrots and onions. Served with a hunk of freshly baked bread, of course. It is purple and delicious!

Off to Lula for dinner. Reliving all this food has made me really hungry.

I’m at like 8 inches with the sweater dress. I know I was talking big about having 10 inches done by class last night, but it just wasn’t going to happen. It takes me 11 minutes to knit one round, and five rounds makes an inch. You see my problem. And yes, I figured that out because I was so bored I was actually watching the clock while knitting.

Pretty Sweater Dress

But holding it up to take this picture I got a renewed sense of purpose. It is so pretty! Thanks to snow in the forecast I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say that I want to get to 10 inches on the skirt AND finish a sleeve this weekend. I know, I know. It is out of control since over the last two weeks I’ve knit about 6 inches, but I think I can do it.

Oh and check it!

<- You see my twitter widget? I did that by myself. Now if only I could remember to twitter. Tweet? I still don’t really get it.