News, food and a return?

This once a year blogging has got to stop. I am going to try hard to return to the blogosphere now.

It seems that everything happening right now in our lives is new! I got a new job at the end of February. I started working a couple of days a week at my local yarn store. It is literally 10 minutes away by car, if there is not a lot of traffic. I can even take public transit if I need to. I am also working as a Knitting Tech Editor. Editing knitting patterns for designers. I'm taking a lunch break right now from that in fact. I am loving my life!

In other news, our oldest, John got accepted into Pharmacy school for this fall. He'll be moving down to Corvallis at the end of summer. I will really miss having him around. Kim and the dogs will be here to keep me company though!

I made an Orange Julius a few weeks ago and it was really good. I based it off of this recipe. Today I made another one, just a little bit different. It is very tropical tasting, just what we need in this rainy season.

2 cups Pure Silk Coconut Milk
1/2 can of orange juice concentrate
1 fresh, ripe banana or frozen banana
approximately 1 cup frozen pineapple tidbits
1 TBSP vanilla extract
2 TBSP sugar
1 TBSP chia seeds
Ice cubes optional to make it more frozen

Finished a Vest

Nothing new here, knitting away all week, thinking of menu ideas now for the week. Will post those tomorrow.

I did finish the hooded vest as a test knit for Samantha Roshak. I went downtown Portland on Wednesday and found some clasps I am going to try on it. They are darker than the picture shows, they don't have the gleam on them.

It's hard to see the color here but it's a dark green with blue in it. Malabrigo worsted in Verde Azul. Oh, if you go to my Flickr account you can see both of the pictures I uploaded to Ravelry and see them bigger there to see the color a little bit better.

I am getting close to being down with Kim's pullover. I finished the front neckline this evening and have put the back stitches back on the needles and will finish that tomorrow. I still have sleeves to do, but we think we might do short sleeves, it depends on how much yarn we have left. It looks like half a ball at this point. We started with a full ball and made a good 3/4 of the sweater with it. I don't positively know what yarn it is, but it is a Blue Moon worsted, or dk.

Lily got a new toy this week. It's supposed to keep her mind busy trying to figure out how to get the squirrels (that look like chipmunks) out. She had fun with it the other night and was able to get one out. I see all three on the floor now, so need to stick them back in the stump for later. We are talking in both of them, but you don't need the sound on, we were mostly talking to Robert in the background. I'm loading the videos onto Flickr and it is sooooo slow getting them up.

This first one shows her playing with the stump, trying to figure it out.

This one shows her doing the same and finally getting one squirrel out.

Yesterday I made some yummy breakfast sausages from ground lamb, garlic, sage, salt and pepper. I see more of these in our future. They were easy and freeze nicely making a quick breakfast in the morning later.

I'm listening to a Sherlock Holme's book on tape. The Sign of the Four. I got two versions from the library, one is unabridged and not a super good narrator. The other one is an abridged version done by the BBC. I think that one will be better in forms of voices they will use. :) It is in preparation for a Victorian Writer's club package from Woolgirl. The first one is Sherlock Holmes. We (as a group) are reading a book from each author before that shipment. Should be fun.

Lost

I know, I have been non-existent here. I'm sorry. I've thought about blogging, then realize I really don't have much to say. I am going to try harder though.

We have had a lifestyle change at our house over the last two months. It's been hard, though not impossible. I don't remember if I said much when Kim went on an allergy friendly diet. She went gluten free, mostly dairy free, chicken egg free, and peanut free. There were some other things in there too, but these were the biggest ones. That was around Thanksgiving of 2009. She has done really well on this diet and rotating her foods through so she isn't eating the same thing every day. This last fall, the other three of us did an allergy panel as well and found that most of the same things we needed to avoid. Gluten, milk and chicken eggs. We did switch to duck eggs last year, mostly for Kim, but now two of us have found we can't tolerate them either. :( Eggs are such a great protein for us and this is hard to get rid of. If you look at any of the good breads that are out there in the gluten free world, there are eggs in them. We have been trying to make bread at home and just haven't gotten it right yet. Soon I hope. We really miss bread. Good protein breakfasts are hard now at our house since the eggs are out. Anyways, enough whining on that. I will try to post some recipes once in a while that we have found to be good. We did come up with the most awesome chocolate chip cookies that taste exactly like the ones we made before going gf. Today Kim is in the kitchen with some gf oats and I don't know what else. She's making something that I am sure will be tasty! She likes experimenting even if it fails.

On the knitting front, I've done quite a few things for the BSD (Beaverton School District) Yarnfest. It goes to help out the 1600+ homeless kids in our school district.

I've also been working on several sweaters. My Traveling Sweater that I started in Ireland is still only about 1/2 way done. I've got 3 other sweaters on needles as well. 2 for me and 1 for Kim. One is actually a test knit that I am almost done with. Deadline is Tuesday and I have to sew the pockets on, weave in a few ends and block it. It is a hooded vest/cardi for Knitquest. She has been designing a lot of sweaters lately and I love it!! Sam is a friend from the first year of BMFA Sock Camp. I joined a group on Ravelry called 12 in 2011. We are making our way through some of our stash, queue and patterns that we already have, so one of my sweaters in the February Lady Fitted Pullover for Kim. It is in an amazing green that will look good on her.

Other things I will be doing in regard to knitting, going to Stitches West in Santa Clara, California in February! I am taking three classes in hopes of preparing myself to do more tech editing of knitting patterns. Two of the classes are actually on tech editing and one is on designing your dream sweater. I actually have a drawing of a sweater I wanted to make several years ago and I think I have a picture of a sweater/vest that I saw in a store a couple of years ago. I am excited to go. I'm taking some extra time to spend before and after with my parents as well.

Oh, the other thing I am doing, I signed up for some writing classes through the Community Education at the local community college. Those start in about 10 days. I signed up for three classes, but they aren't all at the same time. They do overlap a few days on each one, but for the most part they will be by themselves. They are all online as well, so I don't have to commit to being "in" class every session.

Christmas 2010 of Kim and Lily. It almost matches last years picture.

Christmas 2009 Kim and Lily.