Small Projects

With the basement turned inside out (but dry and non-stinky, thankfully), I've only been able to really wrap my mind around small projects lately. With all the chaos around me, I find myself turning more to little manageable nuggets -- it's easy to see progress quickly, with fairly quick gratification.

For instance, these socks are finished and I never even blogged about starting them! THAT'S gratification, mi amigas.

I'm calling these the Hurry Up and Wait socks since I knit more than 70% of them while waiting on something. Waiting in line places to change my name.... DMV, Social Security, on hold with the credit card people.... Waiting for contractors to show up and do work at the house.... Thankfully, the pattern is cute and the yarn is scrumptious. I highly recommend scrumptious yarn to counteract annoying long waits.

Hurry Up and Wait Socks
Pattern: Little Shell Socks
Yarn: Ellen's Half Pint Farm, bought at MDSW06 by Maeve and Erin (great job shoppers!!) There was no colorway on the label.
Needle: Addi Turbo 1s, done on 2 circs
Gauge: 8 stitches = 1"
Modifications: I added a pattern repeat on the ankle (63 sts total). Then I added a ton of stitches over the gusset to make sure that it would slide over my ankle, and decreased back down to a 60-stitch foot.
Comments: LOVE the yarn (wish the Ellen's Half Pint Farm site was a little more user-friendly -- they would have a hard time keeping it in stock -- it's fantastic!). I've had this pattern in my mind for a while -- it works really well with a variegated yarn and helps break up the yarn that would have spiraled more noticeably.

Close-up of the ankle detail:

And the heel:

[Thanks to Mother Nature for giving me a full day of sun to take these photographs!]

What's next on the needles? Well, I finally made a path to the yarn closet, so have picked up Sea Breeze again. (I had no idea where the right size needles were, so I had to stop by the happy place on Sunday to get a spare set.) And while I was looking for the needles, I came across a design I had concocted but stopped midway through, so I've picked that up again too. (If it works, I'll share the results here!)

*****

There have been little projects of another variety, too:

This is hands-down my favorite wedding gift to date. I LOVE IT! It sat in the box for a few weeks while I figured out where it would live, and then had to clean out the cabinet to give it a home. But as soon as it came out of the box, I put it to work:

First up: Banana bread with chocolate chips (and no nuts). I melded recipes from How to Cook Everything and Cook's Illustrated, and took a deep breath because I was also adjusting some of the liquid ingredients -- always a risky bet in baking. But it turned out delicious! The fellow knit-n-noshers on Friday were lucky enough to get some while it was still warm.

Then, yesterday, I wanted to really see what this baby could do:

Strawberry Angel Food Cake from The New Basics Cookbook (their recipe calls for raspberries; I swapped out strawberries). It's an amazing thing to see 10 egg whites go from liquid to soft peaks in 60 seconds. Unbelievable! (And it tastes fantastic, too--especially with fresh strawberries on top!)

There's definitely more baking and mixing in general in my future. Maybe this will be the fall I finally learn how to make bread?