It's official!!

After years of going great lengths to avoid it, I am officially in debt. It's a little scary, but also really exciting. Yesterday Sarah and I closed on our business loan and today we finished the negotiations on the space we want to rent. We sign the lease on Monday and then we are set to start renovation. I am ecstatic!!!!

Here is the front of the store. Sarah and Philip evaluate and measure as I take pictures. We are keeping the wooden display, but everything else will need to be moved out. There is also a little sun room (you can't really tell since it is dark outside) in the very front where we will have a sofa and chairs for knitting.
Here is the back of the store. The entire back room which will be our classroom is filled with boxes of books, all of which need to be moved out.
As you can tell, the space needs a lot of work, but we are up for the challenge. This means that for the next month the knitting content of my blog will be pretty small, but you will get to witness the renovation of this space first hand. We are hoping to open our doors to the public September 2 of this year. Fingers crossed!!!

Secret Pal stuff

Jenn from SP8 requested that all participants do an extra little questionnaire in addition to the one we filled out in the beginning so here are my answers.

1. What is your favorite season of the year and why? Fall, I love the colors and the weather.
2. Summer is hot. What do you knit in the summer? I actually knit more in the summertime than I do in the winter. This summer I have been making market bags and dishcloths. I just started a baby kimono from MDK.
3. If money was no object.....what would you buy at the LYS? I would probably buy a ton of hand-dyed, hand-spun yarns. Lately I have been pretty into linen so I would also buy some Euroflax and some Lantern Moon needles in every size available.
4. What are some activities that have become family traditions for your family? Super Happy Fun Day- a few times a year Philip and I will randomly declare the day a holiday of excess where we only do fun things
5. What is the weather right now? Right now it is bright and sunny outside, about 85 degrees. The weather is absolutely perfect.

Also, I received a new package from my SP spoiler.

This package contained 4 balls of dark red yarn, some white fun fur, a crafty kitchen towel, and Ingmar Bergman novel, a bath puff, and some patterns. Thank you SP!!!

An update on those silly resolutions

I am a few weeks overdue on this, but I would like to take a mid-year look at the goals I set for the year to figure out where I am now and where I should be. I looked back at the resolutions and these are my thoughts on my progress.

1. Consume less- This is a tough call. On on hand, I am still actively trying to stick to things that are reusable and I am buying very few things new. On the other hand, I am just as much as a crazy packrat as ever, if not more. Our apartment is now completely full including the basement and the garage of my acquisitions. We had a yard sale and just took a ton of stuff to Goodwill, but I have a long way to go.

2. Buy locally- I am rockin' this one. Since I am at the Farmers' market every week anyway I try to buy as much of my week's produce as possible and I try to frequent the small businesses around my neighborhood.

3. Fix my bike- I have been walking a lot lately so I still haven't replaced my poor bike tires.

4. Learn to bake- As most of you know, I gave this a shot toward the beginning of the year, but I quickly got bored. I will probably try again closer to the winter holidays.

5. Start my own business- I gave up every Saturday this summer to vend at local festivals and Sarah and I have been hard at work getting everything ready to open the store. There have been some rather annoying obstacles, but things are finally looking up again. Our anticipated opening date is September 1 with a grand opening event around September 17 with cupcakes and lavender lemonade. I don't know how practical this is seeing as everything has taken three times as long as planned, but I am still very positive about the whole thing.

Jalapeno poppers

My trip to the Farmers' Market on Saturday was quite fruitful. In addition to my weekly bunch of organic red lettuce, tomatoes and corn I bought some Georgia peaches (I know they aren't local, but there don't seem to be any Kentucky peaches,) the most perfect eggplant, some sweet onions, and a ton of peppers. Peppers were really out in abundance so I stocked up on sweet banana peppers and jalapeno peppers. I don't actually eat straight jalapeno peppers, but there is an unopened container of Tofutti cream cheese in my refrigerator with no purpose and this seemed like a great excuse to veganize jalapeno poppers. The man at the Farmers' market recommended using a beer batter (1 part beer, 1 part flour, salt and pepper to taste) and then fry the poppers. We didn't have any beer in the house so I decided to try a baked version instead.

Jalapeno Poppers

12 jalapeno peppers
1 tub Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
1/2 tsp. taco seasoning
2 Tbps. vegan bacon bits
1 cup soymilk
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup bread crumbs

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and grease a 9x13 pan.

Mix together the cream cheese, taco seasoning, and bacon pieces until completely smooth and set aside. Next, wearing gloves or plastic wrap, cut the jalapeno peppers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds. Score the outside surface of each pepper half. Spoon the cream cheese mixture into each of the pepper halves. Dip each pepper half in soymilk and roll in flour. Set aside. After all of the pepper halves are floured, add the oil to the soymilk. Dip the floured peppers in the soymilk mixture, roll in bread crumbs and place on greased pan.

Bake for 30-45 minutes. The longer you cook them, the milder the peppers come out.

Makes 24 poppers


This recipe was a variation of the recipe found here.

Finished swiffer cloth

I woke up early this morning and put buttons on the swiffer cover so that it fits the swiffer head. I am really happy with the way this came out and I can't wait to use it on my dirty floors.

Practical knitting

One of my co-workers is having a baby and I have been looking for just the right gift to knit her. I have been checking Web sites and the knitting section at the library, but still nothing. Then the other day I stopped by Not Scarlett's blog and I saw the cute baby kimonos she made from Mason Dixon Knitting. I have been thinking about getting this book for awhile and after seeing these kimonos I decided that I need it. I bought the book on Tuesday and I love it. Most of the patterns use kitchen cotton, mercerized cotton, or flax all of which I love working with.

Yesterday I made the ball band dishcloth with some scrap yarn and I liked the stitch pattern so much that after seeing this I decided to make a Swiffer cover too. It is in the flat stage since I still have to add the buttons. I will post the finished project tomorrow.

Fun new dyes

The weekend before last some girls from the Lexington snb went up to Michigan for Convergence. They brought back tons of great books and fiber, but Zabet also picked up a little something for me.


She saw this natural dye kit and decided to buy it so that I could dye some yarn for her (I do realize that the dye is for her yarn and I will simply be the dye lady, but that's okay since I really want to try it out and I can dye some of my own yarn with it as well.) I think that I am going to dye some mercerized cotton with it to really show off the colors. Once I find a yarn I like I will post the results.

New Knitty

The new knitty is up. I don't need any more projects right now, but I do love this and these and these. now I have incentive to get all of the socks I have going off the needles.

More tiki

This seems to be a good summer for tiki since I made another great score at Jonk. I think someone sold their entire tiki collection since there were twelve mugs, a vintage totem, two small tiki sculptures, a salt and pepper set, a decanter set and some other miscellaneous pieces. I ended up buying eight of the mugs and one of the wooden sculptures to add to our collection.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, I found these fondue plates which color coordinate with my fondue forks.

Today I also went shopping for a wedding present for my sister and found these.

In case you can't tell, these are ice cube trays that make cube shaped ice. You would think that since they are called ice cubes, finding a tray that shapes them like cubes wouldn't be such a challenge. I have been searching for three years for these trays and until today nothing came close.

On the knitting front, I am trying to finish some of the billion projects that I have started and use up some of my stash. This weekend I finished two froofy scarves and a market bag and made some progress on the Jaywalkers.

Sun, knitting and pirates

Today started like any other Saturday with me crawling out of bed at 7am and hauling all of my stuff down to Phoenix Park for the Artists' Market. Things are really picking up at the market and sales were good today which makes the early morning worthwhile. While we were at the market, an old friend came by and invited us to his birthday party where costumes were encouraged. Since I hate to miss out on a chance to dress up, Philip and I dressed up as pirates. We arrived at the party and didn't know a single person. I am not sure why I found that so surprising since I am still new to this city, but I was completely thrown off by a party full of strangers. We only ended up staying for about 45 minutes and then we headed over to Third Street Stuff with Sarah and Erik for some late night Scrabble. It was a fun day despite some momentary awkwardness.

A long awaited entry

I have been a bad bad blogger. I wanted to blog, but the warm summer sun has kept me far from my computer except during work hours. I have been a little lax in my knitting lately, mainly knitting some new market bags with all of my scrap yarns. I only have enough yarn for one more bag so after that I should be back on the knitting bandwagon. I have also been helping Philip make sock monsters which has been really fun. Last week we made 10 new little friends to sell at the Artists' Market.


I currently have 3 pairs of socks on the needles so I really need to get back into the knitting thing.