Katydid Knits

Fall is totally soup weather in my mind.  I love it.  Hubby, however, is less of a fan.  Unless, of course, it’s something like this – Lasagna Soup, originally shared by Cristi, and a permanent part of our rotation since.

First, brown 1 pound of Italian sausage.  I used hot sausage tonight, but if you are less of a fan of spicy, you could mix sweet and hot, or just go with all sweet.  Remove it from the casings, and just break it up with a wooden spoon as it browns.

Once it is browned, add in 2 cups of diced onions,

And one cup of diced carrots.

And then five cloves of garlic, minced.  Or be like me and use a garlic press instead of mincing it by hand (Teh Lazy, I has it.)

Once the onions and carrots have softened a bit, add in 1/4t crushed red pepper flakes, 1/2t dried oregano, and 1/2t dried basil.

Pour in 4 cups of chicken broth (conveniently, that’s exactly one box),

one large can of crushed tomatoes, and one regular (14 oz.) can of tomato sauce. (Organic not required. I just happen to like Giant’s organic store brand stuff)

Once that comes to a boil, add in 1 cup (or more like 2 in my case) of dried pasta. The original recipe called for campanelle, but I can never find it, so I use gemelli.

Simmer 10-12 minutes, or until the pasta is cooked. Then add in 2 cups fresh spinach. Or be like me and throw in the whole bag. What? I like spinach.

Stir in the spinach and let it simmer for one or two minutes until the spinach is wilted. Nom.

Remove from the heat. To serve, put a little bit of the liquid in the bottom of a bowl. (This keeps the cheese from melting solidly onto the bowl)

Top with a small handful of shredded provolone-mozzarella mix.

Ladle on the soup, and top with shredded parmesan and fresh basil.

It will be ripping hot, so I recommend giving it a minute or two to cool. Of, you know, write a blog post about it.

September 15th, 2009 | Tags: Food | Category: Misc. | Comments (10)

So, JP posted his list the other day, and challenged me to do the same.  Fall tv season is upon us, so I share with you my planned tv watching for this season.  Generally, I don’t watch shows the night they actually air, because I’ve got rehearsals and stuff (and if I don’t, Kris does), so our DVR is our favorite toy. 

Monday

How I Met Your Mother

The Big Bang Theory (ADORE this show – so excited that Jim Parsons got an Emmy nom!)

Dancing with the Stars

Castle (Mmmmm… Nathan Fillion goodness)

Tuesday

Dancing with the Stars – results show

NCIS

NCIS: Los Angeles (Loved the crossover pilot on NCIS, so I’m excited to see how the series is)

Wednesday

Law & Order:SVU

Glee (My new addiction.  Hilarious, sweet, and so very familiar to me.)

Thursday

Bones

CSI

The Mentalist (Mmmmm… Simon Baker goodness)

Friday

Law & Order

Dollhouse

Wow.  You think we have a procedural crime drama addiction around here?  I don’t actually watch anything that airs on Saturdays or Sundays, although I’m thinking I might add Three Rivers to the lineup, if only to see if they even come close to getting my ‘Burgh right. 

I already miss my summer shows like The Closer, Burn Notice, Psych, and Eureka, L&O: CI, In Plain Sight, and the newest additions to that list – Warehouse 13 and Royal Pains, even though some of them are not quite done yet.

*Edited to add the original NCIS, which I forgot to list last night, and In Plain Sight, which is one of my summer shows.  Gah.  I’m worse than I thought!

September 12th, 2009 | Tags: Misc. | Category: Misc. | Comments (8)

That’s right – my Icarus shawl is done!

Pre-blocking, laid out on the kitchen table.  Already big.

Taking a little bath. Sadly, this will be the last time I soak anything in this salad spinner. I’ve been using it for 4 years to soak my knits and handspun, and it developed a crack across the bottom. It leaks. Looks like I need to pick up a new one.

A little dye bleed from the yarn. Wasn’t expecting it, because I didn’t get any on my hands working with it, but it rinsed out quickly.

Pinned out on the guest bed.  It just barely fit on the queen sized mattress.  Think I can convince Kris that we need to get ourselves a king sized bed so I have more blocking space? 

Unpinned.  Yeah, it’s bigger than my wingspan.  It’s more than 6 feet across the top edge, possibly 7 feet or slightly over.  (No, I haven’t measured.  I’m lazy.)

I’m pretty damn happy with it.  Can you tell? 

Pattern: Icarus by Miriam Felton from Interweave Knits Summer 2006.
Yarn: Ellen’s Half Pint Baby Alpaca and Silk (80/20). I bought two skeins at Stitches East in October 2007 for this pattern. Unfortunately, when I got home, I double checked, and I didn’t have enough yardage. Luckily, I saw Ellen at Rhinebeck the next week and lamented my mistake. She still had another skein of the yarn in the same dye lot. Yay for small independent dyers! It’s lovely stuff – I really enjoyed knitting with it.
Mods: Since I had the third skein, I now had a fair chunk more yardage than needed, so I added two repeats of chart 1 before beginning the lace at the edge.  That took it from a nice big shawl to a HUUUUUGE one, which makes me so happy.

I started Icarus on July 4.  It wouldn’t normally have taken me two months to finish it, but I took a few weeks to work on a sample for a friend, which I (obviously) couldn’t blog about.  It’s a neat pattern, though, so I’ll be sure to mention it when she publishes it.  Overall, I really liked knitting this shawl, although I whined from time to time about how boring the center section was.  It actually got to be pretty good mindless knitting, and I worked on it quite a bit during rehearsals.

Now, on to the next project – it’s the Milkweed shawl in Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast” I’ve seen a few examples of the shawl around, and I decided it would be nice to have something solid and neutral.  How unlike me, I know, but I like to shake it up every so often. (Oh, and yes, those are Ravelry links.  Apologies to any non-knitters who were curious about them.) I started it yesterday, and those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know that I made some decent progress before goofing up and having to rip back everything I knit at last night’s rehearsal. Happily, while ripping all of my new Beatles cd’s today, I caught back up and have now progressed beyond where I had been.

September 9th, 2009 | Tags: FOs, Knitting, Planned Projects | Category: Misc. | Comments (14)

No, not me.  Pretty sure that’s beyond hope. 

The background: When we had the patio done last summer, they did exactly what they were supposed to do – they graded it so that rain wouldn’t pool against the house.  It drops about 4″ across the 12′ width of the patio.

This isn’t a problem, unless of course you plan to put a large container of water on it.  You know, like a hot tub.  Yeah.  Our hot tub has been tilted ever since it was delivered last June.  It meant that we couldn’t fill it quite properly – the uphill side was just barely to the neck jets while the downhill side was overflowing.  This weekend, though, that was remedied!

Kris and I spent Saturday afternoon building two 4′x8′ platforms and draining the hot tub, and on Sunday our very very dear friends Mary, Rich, Roy and Billy helped us get them under the hot tub.

I wish we had an extra person there with a videocamera, because it was an interesting process, to say the least.  There were several moments that we thought we might not get it to work.  Happily, thanks to some creative thinking and a lot of sweat from our friends, it’s in there.

(T’ain’t glamorous, but it works!)

We did have a little panicky moment Sunday night when we couldn’t get the second pump running, but it started working yesterday morning (probably just a little air in the pipes from moving it – it happened when it was first installed, too).  We tested it out in the afternoon, and then again with Mary and Rich last night, and it works like a champ.  And now that we can fill it all the way, it’s possible to be submerged right up to your chin, which is heavenly.

September 8th, 2009 | Tags: Porch project | Category: Misc. | Comments (8)

Clean water.  Such a simple thing, right?  And yet for so many people in the world, it’s something nearly unattainable.  Charity: Water aims to do something about that, and Knit Witch wants knitters to help:

Here are some interesting facts for you:

- 1.1 billion people in the world have no access to clean water (that’s 1 in 6 people).
- If we divided all the freshwater among all the people we could allot about 2.5 gallons/person/day. The average person in the US currently uses 300-400 gallons/day.
- Our planet is 70% water – of that 70%, 97.5% of that is saltwater leaving us to divide the remaining 2.5% of freshwater.
- Many communities must have wells in order to access underground aquifers for clean water
- Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
- Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault.
- Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water. Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old.

Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?  And makes me feel a bit ill, frankly, especially as I hear Kris taking his morning shower and am wondering how many gallons are going down the drain right now.

Knit Witch’s Goal = $5,000 – don’t you think we can achieve this in order to provide clean drinking water for 500 underprivileged people? I do. I started it off with $50. I don’t care if you donate $5 or $500 – whatever you can afford helps. If you skip your morning Starbucks coffee tomorrow you can send that $5 as a donation instead. Send me an email to theknitwitch@gmail.com and let me know how much you donated so that I can keep track of our total – or – you can leave a comment on the blog. I’m keeping track of the progress over on the right hand side of the blog.

Go.  Read her whole post.  Help if you can, even just a few bucks.  She’s going to draw names from donors for prizes, if you need a little incentive. 

And thanks to Cristi for posting about it this morning and letting me know about it.

August 27th, 2009 | Tags: charity | Category: Misc. | Comments (4)

And don’t follow me on Twitter, I’ll mention it here, too.

I got the call last night – I was asked to play Nancy in “Play It Again Sam” at Laurel Mill Playhouse in October.    She’s the ex-wife of the main character, and appears in flashbacks and fantasy scenes (No, Hugeness and Kiwanji, not THOSE kinds of fantasies), so I’m going to have a lot of fun with her.

Hubby was asked to play Doc Baugh in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at PGLT, also in October.  So, we’re both going to be crazy busy for the next two months, and should see each other again in, oh, November? 

Be prepared for theatre updates as the show progresses.  Hopefully I’ll get some knitting done backstage and during rehearsals.

August 6th, 2009 | Tags: theatre | Category: Misc. | Comments (15)

Warning – spoilers ahead!

Shipment #2 from WoolGirl arrived at my door yesterday – this was the Dorothy-themed package.

Once again, lovely stuff! As expected, the pattern (Dorothy Gale Socks by Bethany Whitney – very pretty.  Basketweave and cables.), some stickers, and this PILE of gorgeousness in the bag above:

I tagged the photo in Flickr again, so click on through if you want to see what everything is.  I do want to highlight two things, though.

First, the yarn:

Dashing Dachs fingering weight in “Dorothy” – a colorway inspired by her blue and white gingham dress and her brown pigtails. Such pretty stuff!

And possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen:

A stitch marker Dorothy by Jillian from Wee Ones. I’ve ordered markers from her before, but this one made me absolutely squee from the adorableness.  Look at the teeny little ruby slippers!!!

Oh, and since I’ve been grumped at (Looking at you, Kiwanji…) for not updating – the auditions are going well.  I did one Sunday night and one Monday.  I’ve got a callback for the Sunday night one tonight, and we’ll see what I hear about the other.  I’ll keep you posted as soon as I know anything.

August 4th, 2009 | Category: Misc. | Comments (7)

And I’m sticking to that.  After I stopped to see her on Friday, she told me that I really needed to check out the new shop Fibre Space, just a couple of blocks away.  I had some time, so I decided what the hell.  I walked over, and entered the door of a really lovely new shop.  They’ve got beautiful yarns (all different lines than are carried at Knit Happens), friendly staff, and a great classroom space.  It’s probably a good thing that I don’t get to Alexandria all that often.  It could be dangerous.

I did pick up a couple of things (duh):

Three skeins of Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast”, which called to me from the shelf and said it wanted to be a Milkweed Shawl (which I’ve been drooling over on Skyline Chilly of late – she’s made two), two braids of merino-bamboo top from Miss Babs in “Frogbelly” (how could I resist a name like that?), and a drawstring reusable bag from Fibre Space.  They aren’t doing paper or plastic bags, so you can either grab one of these cuties for $5, or bring a bag.

If you get a chance, DEFINITELY check them out.  I did hear one of the employees mention that they are still adding more yarns to their stock, so I’m looking forward to another trip to check it out again!

August 3rd, 2009 | Tags: Knitting, Spinning, Yarn Acquisitions | Category: Misc. | Comments (7)

See, I’ve been pretty good lately.  Haven’t been buying much yarn or fiber, because I really, really have been trying to work from the stash.  And then Olga Tweeted on Wednesday that she needed a local to help her out with a design (She needed someone to work up a sample, so I can’t blog about it).  I volunteered, and went down to Alexandrian on Friday to meet her.  Since she works at Knit Happens, well, what was the likelihood of my leaving without picking something up?

Yeah, not good.    They had just gotten some DiC Smooshy, and I couldn’t resist.

The color is “In Vino Veritas” – it’s a gorgeous deep red.  It’s going to be a second Ishbel, more of a fall-winter one, because I enjoyed doing the first one so much.  And I’ll probably figure out how to enlarge it, too.

And in other news, wish me luck.  I’m auditioning for a play tonight, and another one tomorrow.  It’s been far too long since I’ve been onstage, and I’m pretty nervous.

August 2nd, 2009 | Tags: Knitting, Planned Projects, Yarn Acquisitions | Category: Misc. | Comments (9)