Are you thinking, I’ve got to be some kind of moron to need a recipe for iced tea?
Ice tea can go beyond the simple sun tea or the ever populat, scoop and add water tea. I’m sure we all have favorite additives or favorit ways that we like to make iced tea. I’m going to post mine and I hope you comment with ideas too. Tea is one of the most refreshing ways to get fluids on a hot hot day. Plus, there is only so much water this gal can drink in a day before getting bored with it.

Old family favorite iced tea:

4Tbs instant tea
2Tbs Lemon Juice
1 Cup Sugar
2 quarts of water.
Mix it all up and serve as it is

My newest favorite
2 Tbs Good quality Green tea leaves
2 Tbs Good peppermint leaves
2 quarts of hot water
Steep for 4 hours or so at room temp or in the sun
add 1 dropper of Vanilla Creme Stevia Sweetener
Add ice and drink

Other favorites include:
Black berry leaf sun tea
Half Lemonade, Half tea
Orange flavored black tea
White tea with no flavoring or just a mild one.

Tell me yours.

Knitting news..
I finished the litte green cardi over the weekend.

I need to get the pattern sizing done and I’ll pass it along to all of you.

Not the most attractive photos I’ve ever had taken of myself. But I suppose it’s my fault for being excited at finishing it and telling Husbeast to take my photo in it. So he sat there and took a few photos. I guess he didn’t feel the same excitement I did. I’ll take a few photos on one of the dress forms so the details are easier to see.

It’s that time of year. The time when a young girls thoughts turn to her woolen knits. She thinks of wearing them. She wants to wear them. Alas they’re all really too darn warm to wear. She starts thinking of strange ways to get to wear her knits….What if I turn up the AC and stand in front of it? cool cool air, but will it penetrate the wool well enough? What if I put it in the freezer for a while, then put it on? It would be like wearing an ice pop. mmm ice pop. I have a chest freezer, I could just hop into it.

The logical part of the brain eventually chimes in…
Ever thought of knitting something from cotton?
It’s true, I have a few cotton garments. A sweater and I’m working on the short sleeve cardi. The logical brain wants me to make a tank top. A tank top will shut up crazy brain. This is the time of year I talk myself in and out of knitting a tank top. In the past week I’ve searched through Ravelry, purchased 2 tank top patterns, set aside 2 from magazines, pulled out 3 more from what I have in books, and printed 6 from the web.

That would be a total of 13 tank top patterns I have in my hot wool loving little hands. I’ve refrained from buying yarn. So far. I have a ton of cotton yarns from previous year’s crazy tank top knitting desires, I think it will be enough to satisfy me this year. Do you need proof? I’ve put a good lot of my yarn onto my Ravelry Stash. I haven’t got any of the sock yarn in there or alot of the single skeins here and there. Oh and then I’ve left out the really really really old stash. I have some things that are old even for my Gram’s stash. And of course I thought I was done and then found 4 more bags of yarn so, I’m not sure I’ll ever really be done. Oh. Right. Back to why we’re playing in my stash bins. We are looking for cottons. Go ahead look, I’ll wait.

I lied, I’m not waiting, I’m going to keep babbling.
I don’t enjoy knitting with cotton. Yes, I do realize that I have quite a lot of cotton for someone that dislikes knitting it. In my defence, last year I made a cardi from cotton ease and I have something going this year as well. But I want a tank top, I think. The problem is that as I think about it, I just don’t want to do it. I want the tank but knitting cotton is just, so, well, not quite enjoyable most of the time. Knitting with cotton is like wearing a wool jumpsuit to the beach in August. Now I’m babbling, whining and exaggerating….

What you want to hear is if I actually cast on for a tank top.
I did.
I cast on for This in Black. Yes, I know there is absolutely no cotton content in that yarn. Yes, I know it’s called a vest… I think what’s important is that I’m knitting a summery type item in a yarn that I can stand.

This is all I got done yesterday:

I know that’s a pitiful little amount of knitting, considering this should be a pretty fast knit for me.
In fact I did probably knit 8 inches worth if you added it up in between the froggings. I printed off the pattern and looked at the chart. It looks odd, all these blank spaces.

oh well, I’ll just do it.
Nope, it doesn’t work out. Rip. So, I figured the chart was wrong and I tried to interpret it a different way. No. That just doesn’t work either. Sadly being the stubborn shit that I am. I tried to interpret it yet again and had to frog. FInally, I hopped onto the web and tried to find someone who had made this. No one has made it on Ravelry. I did a few other searches to no avail. I searched my pattern books to see if this pattern could be found. Nothing there either. I went back to the net.

Aha, someone made something called princess. It was the t-shirt though. Sad I moved my hand to backspace and in a blink I realized the bottom of the t-shirt was in the pattern I needed. I went back to Elann (who hosts the free pattern) and I found the pattern for the Princess T-shirt.

Well what do you know. What I was stubbornly reading as ONE square really should have been divided into, oh, 2 or 3 or 4. I know, you thought I was brilliant and in one fell swoop I dashed your visions of me upon the rocks. I spent half my day yesterday screwing up because I never re-drew the graph lines that were missing. I’m not sure when I got to be so dense. Husbeast thinks it was around the time we went to MA Sheep and wool. I seemed to lose intelligence along the drive. Unfortunately on the drive back I didn’t seem to be able to find the bits of intelligence I left here and there.

I’m going to spend my weekend (whatever part of it, isn’t busting my butt on the shop) working on summer stuff. This wool girl will have more cottonish items to wear. No more standing in the meat locker at the grocery store just so I can wear woolens.

I expected to come here this morning to remind you that today is the last day of my sale on Louet equipment. I logged on and I typed this in:
Drumcarder Sale
Louet Wheel Sale

And then my Mom called. There was a hot air balloon nearby. We live around tons of fields and over the years have had several land nearby. I looked out and this is what I saw:

I kept hearing *woosh * woosh* If you’ve ever been aorund them landing, you know that the sound of one trying to come in. Which in some way is slightly distinctive from the longer woosh of it trying to raise. So I grabbed the girls and walked over the field I thought they were going to land.

Land they did

And then they went back up. Each and every one of us that wanted a ride up, got one.

How cool was that!!?!?!
The owners of the balloon company are relatives of the man my Dad works for. He knew we all lived in the area so he worked it to land nearby. It was a fantastic start to my day. Go see my flicker set for today

You’ll see all these photos above. I didn’t want to overload the blog with all the individual photos.

I’m hoping to take more pictures of the fireworks tonight. I’m inspired by Pippi Knee Socks and the killer photos she’s taken lately. I hope you all have a happy happy day.

Yesterday was a happy happy mail day

Yes folks, that’s some of the famous “herbal” sock yarn from Hello Yarn Her little note was perfectly correct, Boogie and some Herbal sock yarn is a happy happy face.

I also got in an advanced copy of Knit Simple Fall 2007

That would be the sweater I designed and knit for them. There is another one someone else designed that I really really want to make. I’m going to finish the little green thing first though. I can wear that as soon as I finish it. I was wearing that rag of a t-shirt yesterday wishing it were my little green sweater.

Feeling crabby? Or like eating crab?
Normally when I make crab burgers I make them without a lot of spices and then make a sauce to go with them that’s a little tangier. I always did this because of other people that are eating them, this way they get to have the amount of tang they want. Well, I’ve come to learn that no one else eats them. I’m making them how I want.

1 Can of lump crab
6 slices of bread, crumbled up
1/4 cup of minced onion
Fresh cilantro and parsley chopped
nayonaise or mayonaise
salt and pepper
Chilli pepper powder or paste
oil for frying

Mix it all up and taste it. Add more of whatever you think you need.
Make little patties and fry them. You can also broil them if you want to avoid the oils. I don’t overdo the oils though. Really I only use enough oil in the pan to keep the patties from sticking.

The Kale - I peal the leaves off the rough spine. I then stick it in the pan that I used for the crabcakes, add a little garlic salt and pepper. I cover it and let it wilt. It makes a good side for the crabcakes.

What happened in the knitting world?
I finished this:

It’s supposed to be a sweater for Knitty to go with my article. It’s blocking now and hopefully I’ll get them some pictures soon. I feel like I haven’t had much for finished projects but really, this is my 3rd sweater in one month that I’ve finished but not one has been something I can show. I did spend the rest of my weekend working on projects I can show off:

Just to make Adrian happy, I picked up Boogie-Baltic again. And I quickly proceeded to make the front of the sweater…. Only to realize that I had already knit the front before I set the sweater aside for other projects.

A sweater probably doesn’t need two fronts. If I had 2 fronts, it would be all well and good. Trust me, I tried to figure out how to make it work with 2 fronts. It doesn’t. So I ripped and knit a back. Just to keep with the momentum, I bound off the shoulders and did the neck too.

I also picked up the stitches for the sleeve. Then as I was going along realizing this was hot in my lap, I wondered when I would wear it….. As good as it would feel to have this off the WIP list, I wanted a sweater I could wear now.

I’m working on this green thing:

It’s being done in Gedifra Wellness from my stash (60% cotton, 40% acrylic). I’m basing this design on a t-shirt I reconstructed. It was a henley tee that just didn’t fit well. I chopped it into a small elbow length severely cropped cardi. As cute as it is, I kept wishing it were a sweater. Hopefully it will be a sweater soon. I already have a desire to make several of these for myself in different colors, strictly to use up my cotton stash of course.