Chipmunks and bunnies

This week’s hot topic was the brazen chipmunks which have invaded everyone’s yards. Annika has a family of bunnies as well. Carole was able to harvest some rhubarb from her garden to make strawberry rhubarb pie. She made great progress on her “Close to You” shawl too. Those colors are lovely.

 Janna (bottom center) knitted the whole border of her variegated blues and purples and teal shawl..

 After watching a YouTube video tutorial to learn the I-cord bind off, she is well on her way to the      finish line.    

New York State is slowly opening up but we still need to be careful and wear masks and wash our hands if we need to be in public. Be kind to each other as we try to return to the outside world. Stay healthy, stay happy, and if you don’t absolutely have to go out in public, stay home and keep those  needles clicking!

Garden talk

In between catching up on what we’re knitting, we heard about Janna’s experience with the vegetables she bought from the Cooperative Extension. She bought a bunch of things to put in her raised garden bed, thinking she would receive 4” pots with good sized plants. Instead, she was handed teeny weeny seedlings which had to be cared for like a baby in an incubator! 🤣 Not feeling confident with her skills for hardening off the seedlings before planting them outside, Janna decided to return them and look for already hardy plants to assure a better outcome.

Carole told us about her friend who shared rhubarb plants with her for her garden. If all goes well, might we expect a rhubarb pie in the future???

Maureen went stash diving and came up with this pretty rosy yarn for a baby sweater (the top right picture). Jan is working on her Emiliana shawl, Janna is finishing a long border on her blue shawl, and Annika added rows to her striped shawl.

In the bottom left you can see Carole’s “Close to You” Shawl. Her yarn is a slow changing variegated fiber and I’m excited to see her progress next week.

I’ve seen some funny memes online about Zoom meetings but so far every one of ours has been a good experience, not like Jennifer who forgot her coworkers could see her in the bathroom!

It feels good to see my Chicks each week to keep our connection. I’m going to have to figure out how we’re going to celebrate our anniversary this year. After all, we will be marking our 15th year together! Maybe by August things will improve enough to have a celebration in person.

For now, stay healthy, stay happy, stay home! And keep those needles clicking!

There were some four legged visitors

If you look closely, in the picture in the upper right corner is Dorah’s kitty who decided to join us this week.

 Then Annika’s kitty made an appearance as well. She’s right in the middle, top row.

 Not to be outdone by the felines, Debbie’s dachshund stopped by too. He’s in the middle band of pics, to the far right. I love that all the fur family members showed up for the Zoom meeting tonight!

 On the very bottom, Barbara K. showed us her Mistake Stitch Scarf in progress.

 Dorah made good progress with her scarf/shawl called “On the Spice Market”. The colors are lovely. 

 I almost had a catastrophe with my second time around making “Shawl with No Name”. As you can see in this photo, there wasn’t much dark brown yarn left and I still had four rows of over 250 stitches and growing to complete before moving on to the next color!

 But the Knitting Goddesses smiled upon me and I found a whole skein of yarn, same color and dyelot, in my stash so I could knit to the end without worry of running out.

It needs to be blocked and then it will be stored in our inventory for donation to the homeless women veterans when we’re able to make deliveries again. Until then, stay well, stay happy, stay home! And keep those needles clicking!

Knitting and baking

 This week on Zoom with the Chicks I remembered to have them show their projects. Maureen is making the Sunnyside baby cardigan. Janna is working on a Palindrome scarf to go with the hat she made last week. Carole frogged her original cable hat because the cables drew in too much fabric making it too small. She added enough stitches for another cable and now it’s perfect. Annika is making a variegated yarn scarf and Debbie is making the ribbing for her project. Barbara is between projects at the moment. But she told us about the yummy oatmeal cookies she made which required one quarter cup of batter per cookie! 

I’m wearing my latest FO, the “Shawl With No Name” and I casted on for a second one to donate with our next round. The picture below is my shawl but the one I am currently knitting for donation will be cream, russet, and brown colored yarns.

We talked about recipes of interest and I’ll be sharing the no knead white bread recipe I found on a YouTube video tutorial. The top crust baked up more like a crunchy artisan bread, so as soon as it came out of the oven, I rubbed it all over with butter to make it a soft sandwich bread. My son declared it the best he ever tasted.

Janna told us the story of when her son was in grade school, studying foreign countries, he had to bring items that represented the country and maybe some food from that culture. She made an Ethiopian dinner which one little boy loved so much, he asked for seconds. Later when her son was in high school, he asked if a friend could come for dinner. Janna likes to cook ethnic foods with lots of spices so she warned him the friend might not like what she cooks. Her son’s response was, “Mom, your cooking is legendary!” How wonderful that he recognizes the effort and talent his mother puts into feeding him!

So as we approach another week of social distancing, I will search through patterns and recipes to see what new things I can learn. In the meantime, stay well, stay happy, stay home!