I have 2 new colorways and I can’t decide which one I like best. In case you aren’t on the Notify list - the update has been done.

We got nuts for bananas around here. The littlest one especially is monkey crazy for them. Making a Monkey fart, banana colored yarn and fiber was just natural. I think I’ll make something out of this for the baby monkey child.

And of course, ’tis the season for the Grinch. This was inspired by the cartoon and my Dad. He’s not really a Grinch but he plays one on Christmas. I need to make socks for Dad so it just seemed natural that I had to make some Grinchy colorway. I started these for him:

Not that I have a whole lot of time. I have some awful socks to finish. I’m procrastinating on buying another skein. I weighed the yarn out and there is no way I’m getting another sock out of what’s left. I did buy some more of the worsted weight version - it’s only slightly less painful.

And then I realized that with all my mittens in the shop as samples, I have none. Zero. Zilch. I have one pair of fingerless mitts and that doesn’t always cut it. so I’m making some out of the same handspun I used for Baby Boogie’s bonnet.

They’re convertible mitts. I’ll finish the mitt part then make the little cap. In case you’re wondering why there are no fingers and it’s just a tube, the fingers in fingerless mitts, bug me. I find it restricting for some reason and mush prefer them without.

I’m so gleeful when I come to the green sections and the red orange sections of this yarn. I think I’ll be making a new set after the holidays. A pair that is all greens and orange reds. In fact I’ve been spindling that yarn in my spare moments.

Lots and lots of accessories for you today. Something for your knitting and for your spinning. It may be more useful than jewelry but much of it is just as pretty.

One of the neatest accessories I have for you is the Knitzi - if you use DP’s you NEED this.

Isn’t it pretty? It holds your Dp’s and a project. It keeps the DP’s from stabbing anything and it keeps the project on them. I love this thing.

GoosePond I mentioned them before but they deserve another mention for that sheep ruler/needle gauge. Though they also have many many other great products.
Immel Designs has a ton of stuff for your knitting.

Markers:
Like Body Jewelry for your knitting. You know with a title like that, I had to look, they are really very unique.
These are awesome and very different from all other markers I’ve seen.
Donuts!
Debra’s Garden
Coffee!
Chappy’s Markers on Ebay

Row counters:
Hide and Sheep, Crimson Orchid, and Siclady who also has some skully stitch markers.

Finally - something for your spinning wheel - Orifice hooks:
Scott’s Mountain has ones that are wooden and beaded. Fancy kitty has some pretty wooden ones. But they always have pretty stuff. Who could forget about these Amazing glass hooks. Mountain spring has some simple silver and gold ones. Ball and Skein has some exceptionally pretty ones. I have 2 from Judy and I love them. (Soon I’ll have them in my store too) Then of course, EBAY has some.

What have I been up to? Besides shopping???
Boogie Baby’s shawl is done. I washed it and then forgot it in the sink. So today I’ll go the shop and dig out and block it. Then I’ll find some fancy button (because buttons are her second favorite thing ever). She’s pretty good at holding her blankets over her shoulders but I thought she would like a little hands-free time.

As for Miss 7 on 20’s present.

These things are awful but at least they are fast. 2 hours and I have a sock. It’s super chunky knit tight on 10’s. I have 3 more socks to go.

I think I’ve probably talked about Roasted Veggies before. I don’t think I mentioned adding beets to the mix. It’s good. You don’t need to add much for extra flavor because the beets bring it all for you. And the beets do one more really cool thing. It turns everything PINK!

Choose equal amounts of root vegetables. I chose Carrots, White Maine potatoes, Sweet potatoes, Beets and Turnip. I had about 2 cups of each and then I added in 2 cups of mushrooms, 1 cup of onions, 1 head of garlic (peeled and minced, I don’t need to tell you to peel it though do I?)

I put it in the oven late so I added 1/2 cup of water to the bottom of the pan and covered it so everything would steam first to cook through at 400F and then I uncovered it for 15 minutes to get a little more roasty flavor. If you have yourself “together” then you can just roast at 350 for about 3 hours (depending on the amount you put in of course).

It’s all really easy and you can set it up in the oven and spend the rest of the time knitting….

I finished Baby Boogie’s new winter bonnet:

I used Hello Yarn’s Top Down bonnet pattern and the yarn is handspun from a month of the Hello Yarn club.

And I’m almost done with her Christmas present that I started this past Wednesday:

That’s right, she’s getting a yellow blob. It’s a Forest Canopy done in Worsted Superwash in the Colorway “Walking on the Sun”. Yellow and Pink are the 2 colors she knows well right now. She goes around the house pointing out YELLLLLOOOOO. So it had to be yellow for her. I have one more wrong side row and then I’m binding off. If I hadn’t fallen asleep on the couch at 8:30 last night, I’d have gotten it done. I’ll finish it and then block it at the shop after club is shipped out.

Once that is done I’ll get working on “7 going on 20″s Christmas present. She changed her mind about the sweater, well she still wants it. There just happens to be something she wants more:

Super chunky bedsocks. Yes it’s acrylic. It’s because she leaves her clothes on the floor and then scoops them all up indiscriminately and throws then in the wash. There is often doll clothes or the dolls themselves that end up in the wash. Acrylic it is.

Then I want to make Dad a pair of socks. Not necessarily for the holidays because I don’t like to get too stressed out about holiday knitting. But I came up with a new colorway this past weekend and because of it’s name, my Dad has to have socks in it. I’ll unveil the new colorway on Thursday with the update. It will be December’s color of the month.

And that’s it for the holiday knitting. Both girls could use a new sweater but with other gifts in the box, I’ll be able to knit sweaters without feeling like I have to get it done “in time”. I have other holiday projects up my sleeve but I’ll talk about that another day, it could get long.

It’s that time of year again. There are only so many days left to shop for that gift for your favorite fantastic knitter or spinner. As I have in past years, I have a ton of new links for you.

Usually I start by pimping my store and my friend’s stores but this year, I’m skipping the fiber and yarn pimp. You know about Spunky Eclectic, Hello Yarn, Abby’s Yarns, Pippikneesocks, Union Center Knits, Electric Sheep, and so many others. You know where to get your fiber and yarn. It’s the little gifts that are sometimes missed. So this year I’m going to talk about them.

This week let’s talk Jewelry. Partially because I just picked up a little something. I commissioned a necklace I loved this one so much. Looking for links for this blog feature is really hazardous for my wallet.
It was made by Sassafrass. . And I love it. I’m wearing my needles!

Here’s a few more that I don’t have (yet) but thought were very cool:
Knitting earrings. How cool!
Silver Jewelry
Knecklaces and more - very simple and very pretty.
Ceramic Pendant.
Knitter’s Charms
Needle Bangles
More knitter’s Charms
Knitter’s gauge Necklace!!
As you would expect, there are a ton of options on Ebay
Even the Smithsonian gets in on the act with Vermeil Yarn balls.

As for my Christmas stuff. I’m working on nothing. I need to get a couple of projects done first:

And then a bonnet for the Babe:

Then I can work on the girl’s Holiday sweaters.

There’s a new cook in the house. Baby Boogie insisted on cooking her own eggs the other day. She didn’t do a bad job either.

Both girls helped me with the pumpkins yesterday. Which was good because even with all their help it still took me all day to do all the cooking and canning I had planned. Because of all the cooking I did, I’m able to share 2 recipes with you today.

Cranberry Dressing (jelly, sauce, relish, whatever you want to call it)

Makes 1.5 pints

1 - 12 ounce bag of Cranberries.
1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup sweetener (rice syrup, cane juice, not honey that changes the flavor)
1/2 orange pureed (skin and all)
1/2 cup of Apple sauce

Dump everything into a large sauce pan. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat by half. Stir frequently for about 30 minutes. The cranberries pop as the cook, though it’s not wild popping so you don’t need to worry. You’ll be able to tell when the sauce is done because the cranberries will have popped and it’s an amazing red color. Remove from heat - the sauce will thicken as it cools.

I canned my sauce and I quadrupled this recipe so I’d have lots to can. This is a good way to bring it to Thanksgiving dinner and it can be a gift to the host or it can be eaten that day. It’s also good muffin filling. Remember this because I’ll give you a recipe for “surprise” muffins soon.

The Reason for the Pumpkins
Pumpkin Pie

Vegan, no soy, no gluten. And now that I’ve said what’s not in it:

3 cups of pureed cooked pumpkin
2 cups of Cashew milk
nutmeg, cloves, allspice, cinnamon (I only used a pinch of each but you know what you like)
a pinch of salt
3 flax eggs

I put everything but the “eggs” into the saucepan and reduced the pix just a bit. There was a lot of water in my pumpkin and I didn’t want it to take forever to set up. So I cooked it on med-low for a while until it started to thicken. If you use canned pumpkin you might not need to do this.

Then mixed in the “eggs” and I poured it all into 2 dishes. One dish was just greased, no crust and it came out more like a pudding. Because of the flax it was nutty to begin with and a really good pumpkin pudding. The other pan was a pie pan that I used a walnut crust. The crust is simple walnuts that I crushed into flour almost and moistened it with cashew butter so I could spread it over the bottom of the pan.

The pie came out a little too nutty with the walnut crust. When I make it again I’ll come up with a different less flavorful crust.

We canned a ton of pumpkin yesterday - we do a lot with pumpkin throughout the year. Finally my canning is done for the year. This is what the shelves look like:

Not too shabby. My Mom is storing all but a few jars of the stewed tomatoes. So all you see there is what I was able to can over the year. Oh, yesterday I also pureed a more oranges and canned those in the tiny little jelly jars. I didn’t know you could do that. It will be perfect for when I forget to get oranges at the store and I need one for a recipe.

And now, I got some spinning done.
I had ordered a massive box of feathers and I had to make this:

Falkland wool, Pheasant feathers, Crochet cotton in gold sparkle.
I’m in love with this yarn. It’s hanging at the shop right now, though I think it needs to be a hat.

The other bit of spinning I have done that I can show off is my Aftur sweater.

I still have about half of a pound of the main color (not shown up there). I don’t think I’ll need it though. I started the sleeve for the sweater only to really realize that I need to be finishing up deadline projects. It’s that time of year….

Speaking of which, my “what to buy” edition will be starting next week. I’ve been collecting links for weeks. There’s some cool stuff that you NEEEEEEeeeeeeed. Or that you need to have bought for you.