Weekend Update, Yarny Stuff and Cooking

Whew! Busy weekend! Friday was my oldest SIL's birthday. (She's 47 - bwa ha ha *smirk*)! Anyway, we had her up for the weekend and had a really great time! She's pretty laid back so we just hung out here, had some steak dinner, played Upwords, had some pumpkin birthday cake with cream cheese frosting...MMMmmmm, we ate almost the whole thing between the 3 of us! Sunday morning we chilled at the park in Alfred with the wild man. He met a couple other kids his size and hooked up with them. They played for over an hour! Then we scooted up to Portland to the Christmas Tree Shop (I swear I was going through withdrawal!) and Michael's. I bought some lovely yarn and SIL bought some tie-dye crafty stuff. We both had a blast trolling the aisles! We ended up heading over to my MIL's house in Westbrook and hung out there for the afternoon while the wild man napped. His first time in a big boy bed!! He was out cold. Of course, it was because his memere' snuggled him up!

My yarn score was 3 beautiful skeins of Patons Lacette in Maroon Mist which is slated for my first ever fingering weight shawl - the Swallowtail Shawl. I would have liked to do my first shawl in something really luxourious, unfortunately I can't afford to. But I think I'll be happy with the Lacette - it really is lovely and has a great sparkle to it! I also picked up 2 skeins of Cotton Ease, one in Almond and one in Cactus to make the wild man a turtle amigurumi. In his case, I wanted yarns I could wash! I am almost finished with the first Trekking sock for the above SIL. I showed it to her because it was supposed to be a birthday present! She'll get it for Halloween instead! Anyway, I have to pace myself. It's getting closer to Christmas and I still need to get hubby's sweater finished. I've only been picking away at it so I'm giving myself a limit. I am not allowed to start another project, no matter how tempting, until the Trekking socks are done and the sweater is done. I believe I can do both by the end of the month. That will put me in good stead for the onslot of Christmas knitting. I will need a list this year! And, I'll need to know who my person is (we pick names) so I can get started on their gift...provided it's not for one of the ones living in FL!!! So as painful as it is for me to say, I have to buckle down and not have umpteen WIP's distracting me from finishing the hubby sweater. *Sigh*

I'm going on a cooking binge again, I can feel it! I am responsible for the snacks for my parent group tomorrow so I'm going to do mini muffins from scratch. I think I'll also do an apple bread since we have so many hanging around! My dad is going to make and can some apple sauce - if only I can convince him to use my food mill to avoid lumps. I still want to make apple jelly so I need to get crackin' on that! But today, oh, today I experimented with another first...homemade beef jerky. Mmmmm! We have a dehydrator and successfully dried some apples so I decided to take the lovely beef round hubby bought and test it. After slicing, marinating and seasoning, and letting it rest for an hour, I stuck it in the dehydrator for about 8 hours. Man, was it yummy!! Hubby loved it too!

Well, I've blabbed on enough for now. Pics will be posted soon! Happy knitting, y'all!