It's a cooking and cleaning type of weekend

On Wednesday night we hooked up our new freezer.  I have been wishing for a freezer for a good long while.  I hate always having to wonder if I have enough room in the freezer when I'm at the grocery store if I see something on sale, or having to eat spaghetti sauce twice a week because there is no room in the  freezer after making a big batch.  We've also got fairly busy schedules so it's nice to be able to have something reasonably easy to thaw and heat up.

I've been very excited about this and have gone on a cooking binge as a result.  Last night I made a nice large batch of spaghetti sauce that should last us a good while.

Today, I had the bright idea that I should try making meatballs since we had no special plans for the night.  I've only ever made meatballs once.  And that was with a friend's help.  They were actually turkey meatballs from Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes by Gilda Laurentiis.  These ended up being quite tasty and I should try making some again.

For some reason making meatballs has always intimidated me.  But tonight i decided to go for it. I found a recipe in Make-Ahead Meals (Original) from the Company's Coming Series.  I keep being gifted with these cookbooks and there are usually a few good recipes in each one.  So far they seem to have turned out well, none have fallen apart.  I did for some reason think it would take all evening to make the meatballs, but it didn't take me super long.  Waiting around for them to cook on the other hand.....


Now I'm debating whether or not I should bake myself some corn muffins.  Could be tasty and good to take to work next week.  It might be more fun than the cleaning I've also been doing.

On Starting Yoga again

Over the years, I've been practicing yoga on and off.  I've tried Ashtanga, Hatha, Restorative, Iyengar and the "whatever the community centre teacher is teaching today".  For the past 2 years though, I've been actually practicing yoga pretty much on a weekly basis.

However, due to the need for some abdominal surgery in January, I haven't been doing any Yoga at all since mid November.  I've really missed it.  There is a sense of well being that I often get from the practice. For the most part since about April of 2009 I've been working on the restorative with a few classes of Iyengar thrown in.

This past Thursday I was able to start yoga again.  There is a group of us that decided to go to the Yoga Centre Toronto to take the fundamentals of Iyengar classes (6 week course).

I was a little nervous about the class as I often still have pain in my incision and since yoga does involved a lot of muscles stretching, I  thought it might hurt.  Thankfully I was wrong.  I was able to do all the poses we did that night.  The only pain I experienced was my muscles elsewhere that I haven't been using.  And that was a good pain.

The instructors in our class were quite well informed and made sure that everyone understood what they needed to for the poses and helped with alternative poses if needed.  I also found that there wasn't that sense of "you have to keep up with the rest of the class" that you often get in group fitness classes.  There was a lot of emphasis on going at your own pace and that everyone is at a different stage in their practice.

I'm already looking forward to next week's class.

As an aside, I've previously been having a lot of problems with working on the bridge pose.  we did the beginnings of the bridge in the class and I found I had no problems with it.  This made me quite happy as it had been bothering me to no end that I wasn't able to do it before.

For some reason, I've always seemed to have trouble with seed stitch. Couldn't manage it for some reason. Which is silly as it's a relatively simple stitch. Then this summer, I seemed to get the hang of it and started making the Big Bad Baby Blanket out of the Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook.  It was going along swimmingly, until about part way through November.  I was just over a half done the blanket.  Then I got some bad news about my health and that apparently made me lose the ability to do  seed stitch.
Of course I had to rip about 5 rows out several times to realized I should just put the blanket away and wait until my brain was in a better place concentration wise.  I was quite frustrated.    So it has been sitting in a bag waiting for me to come back to it.

Now that I'm feeling better I think sometime in the next few weeks I will see if I can salvage my poor blanket.  Mind you I am kind of distracted by the granny squares I'm crocheting right now, but perhaps I can pull myself away.

Leaf Hat

I've been spending a lot of time over the past year or so making little baby hats for friends, family and coworkers. Most of the time I've been making the Umbilical Cord Hat from the Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook. However, after you make 15 or more of the same item, no matter how cute, it can be a bit boring. So I've been experimenting with other hat patterns. One of them was the Berry Hat Pattern I got from the Random Stitches Blog. almost identical to the Umbilical cord, but with some intarsia that requires some thought. I really liked how the hat came out. So the next person I know having a girl. It seems like a girly hat, will be receiving this wonderful hat.

Oh and I would like to introduce you to my hat model. I'm really not sure what "stuffed toy creatures" she is, but I bought it one day when I was feeling down and carried it in my arms all the way home. Then I discovered it was just the right size for being a baby hat model. She doesn't have a name yet, but I'll get around to it.

Granny Square a Day

I think I may try making a granny square a day for the next little while. They take almost no time to make up and I would still have time to work on my many other projects.

This is how scattered I am right now. I have the following under way:

1 baby hat - on hold due to the fact I lost a dpn and I'm waiting for some to show up in the mail.

1 bunting bag - I am stuck on

1 scarf - it's a scarf and just straight garter stitch. Sometimes I lose interest for a few days.

1 baby Kimono - the needles i have are too short and I' waiting for some circulars to show up.

1 baby blanket - having seed stitch issues and I put it away.

Too many things on the go. I'll hopfully whittle this down in the coming weeks. But for now I'm on the obsessed with making the granny squares.

Granny Squares - Woop

I've been dithering about with what to do with all the bits of yarn that are left over from my projects. I was going to just crochet up a big old ugly blanket. Crochet because I find it goes faster. So I started with the bits of yarn I had. But that was sure to the ugliest blanket ever. So I started looking around for patterns that might be of interest. I did of course think of granny squares, but I didn't think I had the talent for crochet that it required. But I thought I would try. So off I went and downloaded some patterns. Sadly I didn't really understand the patterns as I haven't learned crochet pattern reading yet. In fact, I really only know a couple of stitches and hope that things turn out all right. I got a little frustrated and then I recalled.... we have the intarweeb. There must be a video on Youtube. And I was right.

I found this wonderful video that showed me how easy it is to make granny squares. This is going to make using up those bits of yarn far easier. I've already made several squares.

The new place for my Craft Blogging

I've broken down and moved around the blogging of my crafting. I think this blog should be more accessible for the world in general and I won't be cluttering up my friends list on my slightly more private journal. Many of my friends on their probably don't need to hear my babble about my knitting, photography and other crafty type stuff on a daily basis. So i present it here! Lucky all of you.