We can now cook outside.

Rob brought home our first barbeque on Friday afternoon and spent the evening putting it together. He was sternly reprimanded by our squirrel for getting to close to the peanuts and was a source of complete fascination for Abby. So much so that this happened:


Rob called me outside once everything was ready to go and we both watched as a collection of little blue flames lit up the inside of our (very shiny) barbeque. It was really pretty exciting. Rob went out to get stuff to cook after that and came back with everything needed for both hot dogs and banana boats.


We stood outside and watched them cook (banana boats aren't all that exciting to watch but it was nice to be outside anyway). We brought Abby out with us and I let her explore the wilderness at the back of the yard. Rob called us to go back inside when he figured the bananas were hot.


I know a banana boat doesn't look great but it smells and tastes fantistic - all warm and gooey and full of mini marshmallows and Reese's Pieces and Smarties. It was so lovely to be eating food we'd barbequed ourselves. Meal planning for the week is now so much more exciting and full of all sorts of things we don't usually bother to cook because they are really only good when barbequed.

A barbeque is also a great excuse for having friends over and that's what we did last night. It was so fun and summery to all be standing on the back deck and smelling steaks cooking on the fire.


Everyone brought something and we had so many yummy things to eat. We did make one important discovery though: we've added a door onto the back deck to our list of future home renovations - walking all the way around the side of the house to get something you can see through the window gets annoying really quickly (especially when one staircase is broken and you have to go to the far one).

Pattern: Anne by Mk Carroll
Yarn: Araucunia Ranco Multy
Size: Until it was long enough
Yardage: About half the skein (~170 m)
Hook: 3.75 mm wood
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This is my very first ever finished crochet project! So exciting ... and pretty. I love the way the pattern works with the short colour repeats in the yarn. This is birthday yarn from last year (thanks Joyce) and is delicious to work with. So soft and so colourful but still kind of muted and quiet. This was one of those projects where I was constantly finding a new favourite colour: now it's the bright peacock blue, next the mauvy purple, then I find the most exquisite pale green ... and I've still got half the skin left for another project.


The pattern is very simple - I had it memorized by the second repeat - and it goes very quickly. I had trouble understanding the diagrams in the pattern - part of it just seemed backward to me - but the text was great. Since it was a scarf I didn't need to worry about gauge either, as long as I like what I was getting it was perfect. This was my carry-around project for the past while and I kind of miss it. Crochet has such nice rhythms to it.


Please ignore that mess behind me. My studio is a bit chaotic at the moment.

Pattern: Hemlock Ring Blanket adapted by Jared Flood
Yarn: Patons Classic Wool
Size: As written
Yardage: 2.5 skeins
Needles: 4.00 mm

I'm very glad to finally be done this project. I really enjoyed working on it - it's a perfect balance of mindless and pattern knitting - but with my currently limited knitting time it just took too long. I wanted to move on to other things and my basket is only so big.

My favourite part of the knitting was probably the flower petals. Most of the lace patterns I've done have involved charts so I could see what I was going to be knitting but this pattern is all text. I didn't even know I was making petals until I was past them and stretched out the fabric. So cool. I love the big gaps at the petal bases too; they looked like they were going to be really annoying to do - like casting off and casting on again or something like that - but they are just yarn overs with lots of stitches in them. So easy.


The cast off is really nice too. It uses the same yarn over technique as the petal bases but is fiddlier because there is a lot of turning involved; I spent most of the time I was working on it trying to decide if I could alter it to involve less turning. I had plenty of time to contemplate it too because it took me most of four hours to do the cast off! It's the first time I've taken more than one sitting to cast something off. It also took a lot of yarn; I joined in the last ball half way through the last plain round of knitting just before the cast off and still used almost half of it. All those little loops made blocking the blanket really easy though.

After blocking and relaxing my blanket is just under a metre (about 38") across at the widest point. It's a lot smaller than I'd expected it to turn out but then again I never once checked gauge. It might work for a small shawl but will probably end up either in the hope chest or being frogged and reknit. I'd like to knit this pattern again at a larger gauge -- maybe 5.00 mm or 5.50 mm - to get something more like a lap blanket but I'm not sure if I want to do it again right away; I'll probably wait for a while, and maybe get a another colour or a slightly heavier yarn.


Abby gave the blanket instant approval (and a taste test).