Stop Me Before I Turn Orange

So, every now and then I do a silly thing.

Like buy 5 pounds of carrots. (This bag was only 10 cents more than the 2-pound bag! That's like THREE POUNDS of free carrots! Plus, you can see, the carrots did their own marketing: "We're sweet.")

Except.
Except there are only two people in my house.

And we need to eat them before they go bad. So I turn to you, my fellow knitter-cooks. Please share your favorite carrot recipes. I promise to be honest and report if we actually make it through the bags. And also if we turn orange.

In the spirit of sharing, here's my favorite. It's so good there are never leftovers, even if I make more than called for.

Balsamic-Glazed Carrots

2 cups sliced carrots or baby carrots
1 can chicken broth
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Place the carrots in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and cover with the chicken broth. Bring to a boil and cook until almost all the broth has cooked away, about 10 minutes. Lower heat to low-medium; stir in the olive oil and sprinkle with the sugar. Finish by tossing in the balsamic vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste.

Study Aides

If hunkered down with a thick textbook and a paper deadline looming, sometimes it's the little things that make life a little easier. Two in particular.

1. Chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. A forced break every 12 minutes to switch the cookie sheets is a good thing. Plus, I find it much easier to study with the smell of baked goods hanging in the air.

Delicious, and yielded at least a dozen more than the recipe predicted. (I have it on good authority that some will be showing up at the happy place for late night.)

2. Happy feet, clad in new handknit socks for their inaugural wearing.

These are Loksins! The first one came to me from blogless Chawne as part of a single sock swap in the fall. I knit the second one in January, but it's taken until now to weave in the ends.

Loksins!
Pattern: Loksins! by Cassie Thoreson
Yarn: Cabin Cove Fingering in a rich yummy purple
Needles: US1 and US2 Addi Turbos
Notes: Love this pattern! It went super-fast. I knit it with no modifications, and it just zipped from start to finish. I told Steph, this pattern is heir apparent to the Monkeys... it's that addictive!

Thanks to Chawne for the first one, and for introducing me to a great pattern!

The Letter C

I was going to devote a whole photo-riffic post to Colorado, which is where I am right now. Yesterday was a quintessentially glorious Colorado day, with temps in the 60s and plenty of sunshine. Of course, I forgot to carry my camera with me as I whiled away the afternoon in downtown Boulder. And then, this morning, it is cloudy and snow is falling. So I will shift gears and make my latest ABC-along entry not Colorado but colorwork!

An Endpaper Mitt! This has been on my to-knit list FOREVER (since it first came out), and I have been really scared of two-color knitting. No real reason for the fear -- just a general sense that already knitting took up a fair amount of brainpower, and why add additional variables? But some people I trust promised me that two-color knitting was easy, and fun, and also addictive. You may now commence with the told-you-sos.

I cast on for the first one before we left, so I would have the time and right resources to do a tubular cast-on. Made it to nearly the thumb on the plane, and finished the knitting the following day. It took me a couple of tries before the tubular cast-off (aka kitchener cast-off) made sense to me. This site with helpful pictures finally led me to success.

The loden yarn is Koigu, and the contrast is Sunshine Yarns sock in Sandstone NSS - a bit variegated. The Sunshine Yarns is a bit thinner than the Koigu, so I made it the dominant yarn to try to make it pop more. I think it will show up even better when they're blocked.

Now... on to cast on for #2, and enjoy the softly falling snow outside my hotel room.

B Is for Breezy

Questions with no easy answers:

* Why do you gain weight first in your bum but lose it first in your chest?

* Why are there exponentially more awesome single women than men?

* Why would anyone think that bacon-infused chocolate is a good thing?

* Why did it take me more than 18 months to block out the Breezy wrap and finish it?

Okay, there actually is a decent explanation for that last one. Breezy, as written, is knit in two halves and grafted together in the middle. I started knitting this when I was taking the subway a lot, as it was a pretty easy repeat to remember and also, it's huge, so every little bit knit helped. The problem? I totally forgot about knitting to the halfway point and then starting the second half. I remembered... oh, when I went to bind off and pulled out the pattern to see which bind-off method was recommended. Oops.

So, it went into hibernation for a good long while... the last I blogged about it was in June 2006. I wanted to do it right, but at the same time, I also wanted to be done with it, you know? Well, the time came. I was ready to move it out of the "zzzz" category on Ravelry, and also wear it. I declared it good as-is. The verdict? Success!

Breezy Wrap
Pattern:Breezy by Martin Storey, in RYC Classic Summer
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Silk Alpaca, color #113 Ice, 6 skeins
Purchased at: Knit Happens, though they don't carry the Silk Alpaca anymore (sniff!)
Needles: US5 Addi Turbo
Started: March 2006
Finished February 2, 2008
Size: Blocked out to 20" wide and 74" long
Modifications: I knit as one piece, so the points on one edge aren't as well defined. I also didn't do the beading on the edging.
Comments: Love it! It's so light and airy, yet at the same time extremely warm. The yarn blocks out beautifully with crisp stitch definition.

I started knitting this because we had weddings coming up and I wanted a wrap. I ended up buying a cheap pashmina for those, but my guess is that Breezy will displace them in the future. Plus, it's versatile enough that I can also use it as a scarf under a coat, similar to a Clapotis.

So, B is for Breezy. (Finally!)

Feast of St. Brigid Poem

Winter Nights

NOW winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o'erflow with
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
--Thomas Campion

(For the Third Annual Bloggers' Silent Poetry Reading.)