The Sweatshop of Love Blog

Lacey Shawl Thing

I am finally giving in and knitting one of those lacy shawls that everyone is knitting. This project has been on my radar for a while because every time I jump on ravelry.com, every time I read a blog, someone is working on one!

I haven’t seen a lot of patterns I’ve liked, though. They all look pretty basic and, while cute, I couldn’t picture myself wearing any of them. Shawls are nice, but when they are knit with sock yarn they don’t keep you warm. They are basically glorified necklaces, and when you are talking jewelry you can’t mess around.

Then I saw this finished shawl on Team Knit, a blog I’m liking more and more! It’s the Twilight/Gloaming Shawl by Phoe M White. The finished shawl is beautiful, and Julie’s write-up totally sold me. I even BOUGHT the pattern, if you can believe it. Here is the ravelry.com page.

I’m using Knit Picks Gloss yarn, which is 70% merino wool and 30% silk, in Concord Grape. I had some of this yarn left over from a sweater I knit ages ago that is now too big for me and the perfect example of why knitters can’t lose or gain weight. It’s going to have to be pulled out at some point, but I don’t have the heart for it yet.

So far so good! I’m in the easy beginner part and have yet to start the lacy edging. Weekend football project!!

Carrot Fries, Pre-Baking

Sandwich With Fries

Last night I cooked up some carrot fries to have with a cheese and veggie sandwich!

Carrot Fries (for 2)

3 big carrots

1 tbsp oil

BBQ seasoning

Preheat over to 450

Drizzle oil (olive, vegetable, whatever!) in the bottom of a baking pan. Slice carrots to look like fries and put in pan. I sprinkle mine with some BBQ seasoning, but you can use whatever you want to. Just salt and pepper is even good!

Bake for 10 minutes, stir, bake for 10 minutes longer. Done! If you slice your carrots thicker they might take more than 20 minutes.

Carrot fries taste just like sweet potato fries but are healthier and take a shorter time to bake. And they help dress up a sandwich dinner!

Me and My New Baby

I’ve had the same Dell laptop for 4 1/2 years. It was really slow (I got a lot of knitting done while it was loading pictures, though!), the internet barely worked on it. I couldn’t listen to iTunes and have two windows open at the same time. The CD tray started randomly opening whenever it wanted to, and not opening when I asked it to.

We’ve been through a lot, me and The Old Lady. We went to Prague together. She was my first laptop. I wrote many many many stories on her. But. Her time had come.

I was wheeling and dealing with my mom in the hopes that I could combine my Christmas and birthday presents with her and my grandparents in order to get a new computer in December. But The Old Lady and I had a rough week last week. She almost got thrown out the window.

And PT came to the rescue.

New Lady/Old Lady

He bought me a new computer. Exclamation points at this point are redundant. Needles to say, I’ll be picking up PT’s 10 cent wing night at Cleo’s tab for the rest of time. It’s amazing. I’m on it right now! Its the big time! It’s a Dell something something. Its got a ridiculously large screen, as you can see. The Old Lady is trying to share it’s files with The New Lady, but The Old Lady is so old it took pretty much the entire weekend.

There is a learning curve to new things (it’s taking me a ridiculously long time to figure out how to resize my pictures, save them where I can find them, and upload them in the blog), but so far so AMAZING. PT is kinda the best.

Grilled Cheese and Veggie Sandwich

Veggie Pasta

Tomato and Cucumber Sandwich

I don’t know if you were aware that this weekend was NFL KICKOFF WEEKEND Y’ALL! I’m a huge University of Michigan fan, and the Wolverines won a huge game Saturday against Notre Dame! I’m also a huge Lion’s fan.

…

There wasn’t a lot of time between football games Saturday or Sunday to cook, but we managed to eat a few delicious veggie sandwiches and I even sacrificed some football time Sunday to whip up some Veggie Pasta.

Renegade Craft Fair

Crafty Ladies

We also managed to run to Renegade and check out the crafty goodness. And there was a lot of crafty goodness to be had. There were so many booths we didn’t even get a chance to really look at most of them. We did find our friends Jamie, Caitlin, and Kelsey, who were rocking it out (despite how they look).

Stockings!

In Three Months They Will Look Like This

With football season comes LOTS of knitting time. I like to watch at least two college games on Saturday and three pro games on Sunday. That is like 9 hours of sitting in front of the TV! At least.

I’m being productive, though. I’m not just sitting drinking beer. So I don’t feel bad about it at all. I did this weekend because it was 80 degrees and sunny both days and I was inside screaming at my TV…

But I finished the Christmas stockings! I love how they turned out. I’ve got to knit another pair because my mom caught sight of them and wanted some. They are coming, Mom!

Soon To Be Pillow

Pretty, Simple Cables

I also got a ton done on some cabled pillows I’m making for an upcoming wedding present. I can’t do much more because I don’t have a pillow form to size it over, but I think I’m pretty close to being done with this first one. I’ll just fold it in almost exactly in half, seam it up, add a button closure flap and call it good!

I’m playing around with the idea of dying or covering the pillow form in a solid cover fabric, so the contrasting color shows through. What do you think?

(Anne, if you are reading this, happy wedding!)

There are so many vegetables in my house right now I’m losing track of them! I set a bag of onions in the pantry that needed to be cleaned and just completely forgot about it. Last night I found them swarming with fruit flies and the skins covered in mold. I just cleaned them off and peeled a few layers off. I will smell like onions for the rest of the day, but I saved those onions!

Veggie Pasta Ingredients

My favorite go-to recipe when I have a ton of vegetables is a big veggie pasta dish.

Ingredients (for 2):

4 oz dry pasta

1/4 small can of tomato paste

1/3 huge can of tomatoes (diced, stewed, whatevs)

A splash of olive oil

Onion to taste (I use a whole onion, or half of a monster onion because I love onion)

Garlic to taste (I use two cloves because I love garlic)

Seasonings – I use fennel seeds, fresh cracked pepper, oregano, and red pepper flakes.

Veggies – I used fresh corn on the cob, baby bellas, and zucchini, but anything you’ve got works!

Since I had that corn, I shucked it and threw that on the grill pan right away. Zucchini takes a little while to cook, so I heated some oil in my wok, sliced up the zucchini, and got that cooking, too. The veggie cook times will vary depending on what you are using. If I had broccoli instead of zucchini I would wait until I threw my pasta in boiling water before starting to cook it.

While the zucchini and corn got a head start, I chopped my mushrooms and onion. I started boiling some water and threw in the onions with the zucchini, because that takes a little while to get soft, too.

I threw in the pasta and set the timer for 7 minutes. I threw the chopped mushrooms in with the zucchini and onion. The corn was done grilling so I took it off the grill pan and let it cool a little.

Corn Slicer

My mom picked up a couple of these corn slicer things that looked pretty silly in the package, but look at that! It totally worked. It cut the corn right down to the core, too; I always have trouble leaving too much corn on the core when I try to slice it off with a knife. As silly as this thing is, it worked, and I got a ton more corn than I would have had I tried to slice it myself with a knife. Silly gadget success!

I threw the corn in the wok, too, along with the garlic.

When there were about 3 minutes left for the pasta I dumped in the tomatoes, the tomato paste, and the seasonings and mixed it all together. When the pasta is done I drained it and added it to the wok and mixed it all up, too.

OOOooo

AAAAhhhh

I let mine sit on the stove top for a few minutes to work together the spices and burn off some of that extra tomato liquid. I hate extra tomato liquid.

Dish it up! Grate some parmesan over the top and in about 20 minutes you’ve got a fresh pasta dish for two that doesn’t even use canned pasta sauce. The only way to get this more healthy is to can your own tomatoes and make your own tomato paste, which I haven’t quite gotten to yet.

Still, this is pretty close to a perfect meal.

LOVE the Bread Maker

Bread?

I also had a chance to attempt making pumpernickel in the bread maker. I say attempt because I have trouble making bread. It’s an illness.

I thought I messed this up, too! I’ve never made pumpernickel before, but all the other breads I’ve made in the bread maker have needed 2-4 oz more water than the recipe calls for. So I added 2 more oz of water!

It was so watery, I really didn’t think it was going to turn out at all.

Delicious Pumpernickel Sandwich!

But it worked! I’m going to take out those extra 2 oz, though, because it deflated a little, but it made an amazing tomato sandwich this afternoon!

It is so nice having so many vegetables around! There are so many meal options at every turn!

Back from a long weekend in Michigan and I’m feeling big/tired/groggy/just totally out of it.

I don’t sleep much when I’m at my mom’s house. I stay up late watching TV and hanging with my mom (I blame the Tivo – it’s just too amazing to stop watching at a reasonable hour), and I get up early so I don’t miss anything. My mom is an early riser, so by 7, or 6 central time, I’m up and at ‘em! And then it’s go go go all day long.

Cropped Jacket at Biggby

And I ate very poorly. Lots of sweets and pizza and cheesy potatoes. My body is so mad at me. I’m sore with no reason for it! It’s not like I got any exercise at all.

And I didn’t do a very good job of taking pictures, either! I pulled the camera out at Biggby because I was wearing the Vogue Cropped Jacket I worked so hard on while I was home and working away on at Biggby every day a few weeks ago.

Notice how my buttons are a little floppy? I need to reinforce them with some more yarn in the backs of them. Otherwise, I love this sweater! I wore it at least a little bit every day I was home.

PT Loves Biggby!

While PT checked his email (and celebrated the delicious Biggby coffee!)…

Early Stocking

… I worked on my stocking. I started it Saturday because I couldn’t work on anything else, with my mom being around all the time, and PT’s present would be a no go.

Moving Right Along!

Aren’t they coming out so well? That light green was exactly what I was looking for. The contrast between that light green and the red is perfect! Christmas-y, but not hit you in the face Christmas-y.

Oat Bowl!

Tomato Sandwich and Cheesy Potato Leftovers

In Michigan PT and I shopped like people going into hiding for the winter. I’m pretty sure we won’t have to go grocery shopping for months! The combination of Michigan prices, fresh Michigan produce, and having a car are just too much for us to handle.

Let the detox begin! It was so nice to have an oat bowl this morning with fresh Michigan peaches and grapes!

My lunch today was a tomato sandwich with my mom’s tomato, romaine, a little miracle whip and a pickle, with a side of leftover cheesy potatoes.

I’ve got so many veggies in my fridge my brain is exploding trying to think of what to make for dinner! Best problem ever.

I grew up in a house that always had food in it. My mom is an amazing grocery shopper, and she got it from my papa (who is doing much better now, thank you). We often discuss the amazing deals we found on our recent grocery trips over our Sunday meal. I suck at this game. Everything in Chicago costs so much more than in Michigan that even when I get a good deal here, it’s like paying full price for something in Michigan.

Which is why PT and I have been building our grocery list in anticipation of our trip! We leave late tonight!

Which is why PT and I have been needing to get creative with our eating this week. But when I say I’ve got no food in the house, it isn’t like when other people say they’ve got no food in the house. I’ve just got a lot of pantry staples with no way to bring them together. I’ve got a pantry full of food because my mom always has a pantry full of food, because she is an amazing shopper. And she taught me well, despite my Chicago cost of living.

Pantry Staple Stir Fry

Wednesday night I cooked up some potatoes in the wok to get them crispy, and I dumped in a can of corn (Forgive me. A can of corn during CORN SEASON? I wanted to cry.) a can of black beans, and some taco-y and spicy seasonings. We topped it with some shredded cheddar (stolen from my roommate) and dumped some salsa on top. Served with chips (also stolen from the roommate)! This was great! Filling and fun; kind of like eating a whole lot of corn and bean salsa, with potatoes.

Toe Up Socks!

Sock are the Sweetest!

Wednesday night was Toe Up Sock class, finally! I have been trying to teach this class forever, and something came up every time. So I was so happy when Tara, Gil, and Lori signed up!

But, quickly, my delight turned to their horror. Really, they are only laughing to stop from crying. Toe up socks are hard to get started, but I kept saying the more stitches you get on your needles, the easier it gets!

Yeah, it’s a lot of needles. And yeah, that figure 8 cast on is hard. But they got it! And I bet if you ask them now they would recommend the class!

… right? I mean. Probably.

Oatmeal for Everyone!

Yesterday all of my meals looked like this. Random stuff mixed into oatmeal made on the stove, with a piece of toast. I love oatmeal, I do, but. But. But I’m excited that we are going to have some new food in the house real soon.

Soon to be Stockings

My Knit Picks order came in today! I ordered that Wool of the Andes yarn on top for the Christmas stockings I’m going to knit for PT and I. I love off color Christmas stockings, so when I saw that green I had to have it. It looks great with that Caron Simply Soft red.

Cucumber Sandwich with Swiss, and Leftover Potato Stir Fry

For lunch today I heated up the leftover potato bean thing, and had another cucumber sandwich. It wasn’t as exciting as I’m making it sound.

Off to Michigan in a few hours! I’ve got to pack. Have a great holiday weekend!