My Mom has closed her shop for 2 weeks so we can get her entire space moved out of the large barn area into the smaller garage space that I occupied. All of my pottery has been moved to my garage or demolished to make way. I can’t even imagine the large amount of work we need accomplish in these 2 weeks. And not to mention that even show she closed the physical shop, she has wholesale orders and a craft show to work towards. I have a shop update coming up and club of course will ship on schedule.

This is where we’ve started to move Mom (all the shop photos have “notes”):

This is where the Spin Stitch and Weave shop (and Dye space) is going:

It looks like it might be small still but trust me it’s HUGE. We’ve started to move out some of the shelving:

I didn’t get in all the little spaces. You can see all the fun demolition and cleaning ahead. Can you say paint party?

In the knitting world, I finished that Knitscene sweater and I’m back working on this:

I have the sleeves done and I have one more inch on the back, then I can go to the front. This is supposed to be the companion sweater to my Knitty article. I’m hoping I have time to work on a finishing a few projects this summer. I’m looking forward to marking a ton of projects on my Ravelry account as finished and putting a little happy face on them.

In this house we love Egglplant parm. I think husbeast likes it more than chicken parm. Since he’s a fearless carnivore, it might just be the recipe rather than the vegetarian aspect. Since I became mostly vegan I have made them in individual portions instead of a big pan with a ton of cheese. I think this works out well. Husbeast is able to have his with regular dairy based cheese and I can have mine with out any cheese at all or with a soy based version.

There is always left over and if you make it this way you can save the eggplant leftovers to make individual parms later or you can make up all the individual servings making them easier to package for lunches or freeze for later.

Eggplant Parmesan
1 eggplant - large big purple one
bread crumbs or flour
Garlic powder
Salt and pepper
Good Spaghetti Sauce
Spinache leaves
Mozarella cheese (cow or soy)
Vegetable oil for frying.

Slice the eggplant into 1/2 inch slices. Salt both sides of each slice and set aside for 30 minutes. This step removes the bitterness form the eggplant. Rinse the eggplants well, don’t dry. Most versions of eggplant parm wil lahveyou dipping them in egg but since this is a vegan friendly version we use the water to help adhere the flour or the bread crumbs. I choose to do one or the other, using both won’t work. I season which ever I’m using with garlic, salt and pepper.

I dredge each slice in the flour or breadcrumbs and then I fry it until it’s golden. You could broil the egglant if you are avoiding the fried stuff.

I always put a little sauce down on the baking sheet first, then a slice of cooked eggplant, sauce, spinache leaves, cheese, eggplant., sauce, cheese.

Over the past weekend and actually for the past week or so, this has been the project.

I know it doesn’t look like much. I messed up and that’s the piece that I eventually frogged. This is a sweater for commission so it’s about all I can show right now. I’m hoping to finish this today to give it time to block and dry so I can ship it off by Thursday.

I have some you tubing for you. Some stuff I just couldn’t pass up. I’m about to head out to label club but I thought some of this would brighten a Friday. I hear lots of you are having a bad week.

This is one I’ve had for a while but never posted:
FAT RANT

And then a silly song sure to put a Friday smile on:
BEAUTIFUL BIG GIRLS

I saw this one before it hit the news. I completely forgot to post it. So if you haven’t seen it, here it is:
The Landlord

Finally, Seed Stitch Cheryl informed me that there is another Tour de Fleece. The person that did it last year is doing it again. Wasabi Tour de Fleece. Now you have 2 choices for the Tour. I thought the one I posted yesterday was the only one since they talked of doing it last year as well. Amazing that the knit blog world is so big that we support TWO of the same spin along events.

I didn’t join this last year. I was knitting designs for a book and had no time to think of join up. Really, I spent from March to August of last year designing and knitting. I think I did 7 different things. I lost count after 5. It was fun and I enjoyed working for the author. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. This year, I have one more commission sweater to complete for Knitscene and then I haven’t sent in any other proposals. I plan to take a month off to work on the shop and to relax. Or relax as much as a high strung, business owner and mother of 2 is able to do.

The month of July is all about spinning. I’ll of course be spinning for the the coopworth fair isle. I’m thinking with spinning every day for 2+ weeks I should have that sweater ready to cast on. Or maybe I’m dreaming. You know I dream big so we’ll see how far it goes.

If you’re thinking you want to join up go see Star’s Blog or check it out over at Craftster. There is also a Flicker group.

Check out the guidlines(not rules) - they’re easy. Really, if it’s not easy, you know I wouldn’t have joined up. Come play along.

1. Spin every day the Tour rides, if possible. Saturday July 7th through Sunday July 29th. Days of rest: Monday, July 16th, Tuesday July 24th. (Just like the actual tour)
2. Spin something challenging Wednesday July 25th. (The last hard climbing mountain stage in the Pyrenees - Col d’Aubisque)
3. Take a button if you want one. Then we can use the button on our blogs in show of solidarity. Take it from here or grab a clean one from the flickr pool.
4. Wear yellow on Sunday July 29th to announce victory. Why not wear yellow on any day you feel particularly successful? (Yellow is the color of the race leader in the Tour - but here we are all ‘race leaders’)
5. Other colors if desired: Green (sprinter - think FAST), Polka-dot (climber - as in uphill), and white (rookie)

Now about me and my sweater
I’ve been looking at this book:

The Alice Starmore one hasn’t come in yet so my opinions may change. Right now I’m leaning towards a swedish sweater something like :

I really want to do corrugated ribbing and my own design in the fair isle part, but I really like the way this one looks as a whole. It may just be that it’s all in grey so I can really see my fleeces workign well with this. I don’t know if anyone but me finds this interesting but I’m going to keep posting about it. I really like to see my indecision thought process on how some of these things come about. Often designs just pop into my head, I sketch them, I swatch and there it is. Then there are those, like this baby, that keeps working around and around in my head. They morph and change on an almost hourly basis.  Hopefully I’ll settle on something before I cast on or there will be lots of frogging.

I’ll be starting to ship Club tomorrow so I won’t be posting. Have a great weekend.

What’s been going on in the land of skull obsession?
I’ve had a bunch of skully things that I haven’t talked about. I think it’s about time.

My friend Dianna gave me Skully needles when she came down to play with all the shop wheels a couple of months ago

Baby Boogie stole them but I’m bigger so I took them back.

I also got some amazing skull stitch markers from Joni of Union Center Knits.

How cute are those little things?!

Finally there is Sparrow. I’ve finished one cop:

I love how the fiber looks through the voids of the top. It’s just so so pretty. The cop just slides right off. It’s perfect.

I don’t have to wind it or nothing. I’m thinking of knitting right from the cop….
So many projects so little time. I need a clone.  Once this last commission project is done, I’ll be working on my stuff.  I really do want to finish off some of those WIP’s.