Rainbow Scarf

My newest creation is a rainbow scarf. Lately I have been making scarves lengthwise with scrap yarn. I find it much easier to complete a scarf when I knit it the long way. I think it might have to do with less turning. With shorter rows you have to turn more often and then it gets twisted and you have to untwist everything. This entire scarf was 52 rows, so much less turning. 

I made this scarf using the linen stitch. I like how each row blends into the next, and I thought it would be fun to try that with all the colors of the rainbow. And knitting lengthwise, makes it actually look like a rainbow.

I had been looking for the perfect yarn to make this for a few months. Since it is 7 colors, and doesn't use that much of each color I needed a yarn with less yardage. Otherwise I would end up with excessive amounts of leftover yarn, and I have enough stuff that I don't need more sitting around that I will likely never use.

I was at my favorite local knitting store few weeks ago, and they had this display when I walked in. I skipped the pink, but grabbed the rest. It was just asking to be a rainbow. The yarn was perfect, 60 yards each. I don't have any left over. There were a few scraps, but I added that to the fringe and the rest is gone. 

Before it was a scarf.

I tried to get my fluffy white cat to be a cloud in this picture, but he choose not to cooperate. 

Download Pattern

Book Review - Einkorn

I choose to get this book because it was about a grain I had never heard of. Finding the grain to actually use was harder. I didn't see it at any of the Whole Foods like stores I normally shop at. I did find it online. I was only able to find one maker of it, Jovial Foods. This happens to be the same people who made this cookbook. I'm considering it more of an instruction manual for their product rather than an advertisement. The recipes look good. I am looking forward to trying quite a few of them. Most, but not all, of the recipes have lovely pictures that make you want to make them.

My largest complaint with this book is that the recipes do not have a total time or preparation time or baking time listed. I thought I had enough time to make the loaf of bread before I had to leave. I look at the cooking time and skimmed the recipe. The particular recipe that I chose required the bread to rise twice, which of course added almost two hours to the total time. I could have read the entire recipe more carefully and done the math to add up all the wait and cooking times, but it is nice to just have that done for you and written at the beginning of each recipe.

The bread turned out well despite my issues with timing. I like the book, and the Einkorn grain is tasty. I probably would not have purchased this book on my own, because the grain is so hard to come by. I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.


Here is a picture of my bread ready to eat with homemade butter to spread onto it.

Birthday weekend: two hats and two future hats

I haven't done anything official to celebrate my birthday yet, but I did seem to have a fun filled weekend despite a total lack of planning. Friday for a completely unrelated event, the new knitting group I've been trying out decided to go cider tasting after knitting. It was a cute little place called Rabbit's Foot Meadery. They had very very tasty ciders, and really inexpensive tastings. So it is a perfect excuse to try all the things. Below is a picture of the 3 of the ciders we tasted. 

My friend Jamie had a lovely wedding on saturday. I'm sure there are a lot more pictures taken there than just this one. Their wedding arch had this adorable jellyfish hanging from it, so Steven and I took a selfie under it while they were off taking a million combinations of pictures.

Today I wanted to go fly a kite and throw my boomerang at the beach. I have a butterfly kite I got a few years ago, and hadn't gotten around to using. We got the boomerang on our honeymoon trip to Australia almost 3 years ago.

We invited some friends along and they brought an awesome adult sized beach toy set. Full size bucket, full size shovel, and a homemade sieve. In front is the very small looking child size toy set.

There are no pictures of the boomerang. Throwing boomerangs is not ever going to be one of my skills. I file it with paddleboarding. Very cool and easy looking when other people do it....

It took a while for the wind to pick up enough to fly the kites. Steven has a pirate ship kite. It reminds me of Peter Pan. Having nice kites is great and all, but they take so much more wind. The 2 dollar Hello Kitty kite I brought to share had absolutely no trouble getting up in the air. It was more of a let go and hold on to the string. But, if there is enough wind, you can't beat a flying pirate ship.

My kite is a colorful butterfly, complete with ridiculously long streamers that like to land in the wet sand. Once it gets going it is pretty. I'm going to try it again on a much windier day, and try to get it to go higher.

I've heard a lot of people talk about the yarn store in Half Moon Bay called fengari. So obviously I needed to go check it out. I got two balls of yarn that will become hats at sometime in the future. The store seemed to have every size and color of Malabrigo yarn. They also had a lot of crazy weird yarns that I would have no idea what to do with. 

A post mostly told in pictures.

We went camping at Pinecrest Lake last week with friends. It was a pleasant place to camp, my only complaint is the location of the showers. I loved the lake, camping by a lake is my new favorite thing. Also having a decent espresso bar within walking distance of my tent isn't the worst thing ever. :)

We did not pack light...

The view looking up.

Essential camping equipment.

This tent remains both absurd and ridiculous.

Paddleboating on the lake was fun, next time I'm jumping off into the water. 

Lake selfie. Also HATS!

Lake. It's pretty. 

They became yarn. At a cheese place on the way home. 

Silly BBQ place on the way home.. It was hillbilly themed. 

The Broad Fork

This is my newest cookbook. I got it because it was designed for using all the vegetables that come in your CSA box. Steven and I like our CSA, but sometimes we run out of interesting things to do with the contents. This book is definitely one to grab your attention. The cover is nice, with easy to read lettering. The book itself is huge and full of pictures. 

When I first started looking through it I started with the summer chapter. I found it overall disappointing. There were no recipes that jumped out at me. One I thought I might try, was the corn spoonbread. I found more success with the other seasons. There are quite a few recipes that are now in my to try list, once their season comes. 

This book is organized by season. I found the season's vegetables don't line up with what I get in my CSA. I was disappointed with Summer's selection of recipes, but apparently I get some non summer vegetables in my summer box. Maybe this is because I live in a warm state?

There are a few things that I don't like about this book. There seems to be a lot of pickling recipes. This doesn't really interest me, and almost every vegetable seems to have it's own. There are a lot of overly complicated recipes that call for a lot of ingredients. I was hoping this book would be more of tasty things to do with your CSA vegetables, not you have your CSA vegetables now go to the store and buy a million other things.

I like the book, but if I had been flipping through it in the store I would have put it back. I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Something for Steven to wear with his top hat :)

I got this book to give to my husband. He has been interested in making fun knots when a suit wearing occasion comes up. I thought this would be a fun book to have around.

Starting on the outside. This book has a neat fabric cover. The back information is all on a sticker. I removed the sticker as soon as I got the book because once I opened the book the sticker got a huge crease in it and looked terrible. This does not affect the book.

The book is mostly about how to tie various knots. It has a little information about matching colors and different types of collars and coats.

The book has nice big pictures of each step in the directions for a bunch of knots. The pictures are of just the tie, not on a person. I am told that this is normal.

I gave him the book and asked him to try it out. The directions were good, and he managed to make several knots with no issues. He was able to tie a bow tie, which he has previously had trouble with before. His biggest issue with it was keeping it open while trying to tie his tie. A binding that could open flat would have been better for this book.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.