Puppy Pride

Welcome back to my blog! 

On a recent trip to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to visit my aunt Martha Ann, I spent a good portion of my time playing with her tiny poodle Prissy.  Like any good girly-girl ~ and with a name like Prissy, you would expect a tomboy? ~ Prissy loves to dress up.  And like anybody at all in Tuscaloosa, Prissy loves the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team.  (I grew up obsessing over Bear Bryant’s boys myself, so I can’t blame those Tuscaloosans.)  So when Martha Ann and I dropped in to Serendipity Needleworks, we both fell in love with a specially hand-dyed colorway of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted: “Crimson Pride,” a soft, pleasing combo of crimson, cream and shades of gray (the gray being for Alabama’s elephant mascot).  “You should make Prissy a sweater out of this,” I told my aunt.  “What if I bought it and you made the sweater?” she asked, knowing I love to play “Project Dog Run” with the puppy clothes.

Done!  Here’s the sweater, a sweet little appliqued dress with cheerleader skirt, high neck, elephant applique and a silly pompom.  Since Prissy’s not here to model, I pressed the ever-willing Willie into service.

                                                                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The easy FREE PATTERN (linked on my Patterns page) comes in three sizes to fit small doggies and can be worked up in any worsted-weight yarn, in any color combination to match your team’s colors.  Got a gator or a tiger for a mascot instead of an elephant?  You can Google clip art, and my pattern includes instructions on how to download a drawing and make your own applique template.  If your pup turns up his nose at wearing a skirt, you can finish this one off with a more-manly ribbed hem to match the neck.

Better hurry!  The Tide kicks off against Virginia Tech in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome Saturday night, and your team likely starts playing soon, too.  Roll Tide!, er, Go Dawgs!

      

  

  

  

  

  

 

 

Bet I Can Make Just One

My Apologies

I’ve been MIA again.  Things have been hectic, what with end of the school year and a little something I’ll share with you next week.  Daughter had her prom two weeks ago.  Here’s my “baby”:

You can see the rest of the pictures on my Flickr page.  A great time was had by all, and we nearly went to the poorhouse with all the prom stuff.

Chipped Off

I finally succumbed to the lure of the Chip Bag, which has been in my Ravelry favorites for a while. While the result is cute, the project annoyed me. Here’s my bag:

   

I used two yarns held together ~ Blue Heron Texture (89% cotton/11% nylon) in “Leaf” and Cotton Licious (100% cotton) in “Spring Green”.  Because of the texture of the Blue Heron, I knew the cables wouldn’t show up, so I did the center cable in just the Cotton Licious (two strands) and eliminated the two smaller cables on either side of center.  The 9″ bamboo rods are from M&J Trim, and the lining fabric is Amy Butler’s “Full Moon Polka Dot” in Lime from the Lotus Collection.

Here’s my main gripe about the pattern:  It’s lazy.  First off, the pictured bag is knitted in Laines du Nord “Cleo”, but there is no gauge listed, so substitutions are iffy.  The main chart is not numbered.  Finally ~ and most irritating ~ the instructions end with “Secure your dowel or bamboo to the top of your bag with yarn …”  Um, excuse me for being dense, but HOW DO I DO THAT???  It wouldn’t be too hard to put together my own chart for a simple cabled bag like this, but, being lazy myself, I paid $7.25 to have someone else do the legwork. 

So, though I like my bag well enough, the pattern gets a C- from me.  (Oh, and now that I look more closely at the photos on the patternmaker’s website, I see she seems to have wound some yarn around the place where the bag and the wrappy thingies go around the bamboo rods, so I guess I’ll add that.)  **rolls eyes**

By the way, I have a ton of the Blue Heron left.  It was $33.50 for 367 yards, and there’s about half left.  If anyone wants it, let me know.  I’ll sell for $15 including shipping within the United States.

Summertime … and the Cookin’ Is Easy

It may still be cool where you are, but it’s summertime and the crops are in where I live.  Last week I used some of our backyard bounty to make a wonderful version of the perennial Louisiana home cooking favorite, maque choux.  My favorite all-time cookbook, “The 100 Greatest Dishes of Louisiana Cookery,” by Roy F. Guste Jr., describes the origin of maque choux:

This dish is one that was in fact given to the Cajuns by the Indians of Louisiana, the Choctaws, and was originally called matache, meaning spotted.  It is a corn dish which is in fact spotted wiht the color of the tomato pieces.  I believe the Cajuns, in their own patois, twisted this word into the French sounding maque choux.  The Cajuns brought the dish to the Creole community who quickly accepted it. …

The skillet stir-fry ~ not the Asian kind but the Southern one, in a cast iron skillet ~ is my favorite kind of cooking, and home-grown and Louisiana would have to be tied as my favorite kinds of eating.  My recipe came from epicurious.com, and it was scrumptious. I used red onion scallions, tomatoes, bell pepper and jalapeno from our garden, along with some fresh yellow corn and okra from Polk’s vegetable market downtown.  Can you beat this for easy, delicious summer fare?