In the Berry Patch

Raspberry Fool

              

On Ravelry last month, the Malabrigo Junkies group had a Holiday Stockpile One-skein Design contest, so I looked in my stash to see what inspired me.

The clear, bright pink of this lovely Malabrigo colorway, Geranio, took me back to a day in the summer of 1969, when my college friends and I picked buckets full of fresh raspberries on a farm in Pennsylvania. That evening, I found a recipe for “Raspberry Fool,” a deep-dish cobbler, and we all devoured it while watching the men walk on the moon and marveling at how far our country had come.

Consulted Donna Kooler‘s indispensible Encyclopedia of Crochet for some sort of berry stitch, and the result is my first crocheted dog sweater pattern, Raspberry Fool, modeled here by the always-willing, always-chilly Willie.

  My boy does love to be in pictures, and he loves his new Mmmmmm sweater.  Try it ~ the pattern’s on my Free Patterns page (my gift to you dog-loving crocheters or crochet-loving dog parents), and it’s quick and easy, a great place to start if you’re ready to attempt your first crochet project.  And you could do a lot worse than Donna Kooler’s great book for instructions on how to wield the addictive little hook.

I have another puppy pattern, this one knit, that I will try to get up this week.  I say try because I am having a total knee replacement on Thursday, and there are way too many things to do between now and then. 

I hope to keep you updated throughout my recuperation.  This is my second knee, and I’m not looking forward to spending the holidays limping and learning to walk again.  My last surgery was on almost the exact same date two years ago, so I’ve done it all before.  This time I’ll be getting a custom knee joint created from a special MRI of my knee.  This is new technology, using the OtisKnee (TM), and it will be interesting to see how it compares with my other, one-size-fits-all knee.

If I don’t get that pattern posted before Thursday, see you on the other side …

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?