Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Work in Progress Wednesday

I continue to knit Norwegian star mittens in Cascade 220 Superwash. Both blue mittens are just missing their thumbs, while the first red mitten is missing its thumb and the second red mitten is half-way through the second star. The blue is NHM #1 and the red is NHM #12.



Saturday, July 13, 2013

FO: Socks for a little boy

Actually, he now demands to be called a "medium boy".

Anyway, it was too hot to knit at the beach, so I worked on a pair of socks. I did the cast-on, heel, and toe while my mum did the boring (easy) bits in between.

Yarn: Felici Sport in "Dapple" from KnitPicks
Needles: #1 (as always, I did the "Two Circs" method using a pair of 16" wooden tipped needles)
Pattern: followed the basic sock pattern in "Sensational Knitted Socks", at 56 stitches. For variety, we did these cuff-to-toe. We didn't stress out about making them match, so these are technically fraternal twins instead of identical twin socks.


Friday, July 12, 2013

A Week in Niantic

Sorry for the blog silence! We went to the beach at Niantic for the week surrounding July 4th and saw amazing (private) fireworks up and down the coast for hours. There's a new Thai restaurant in Niantic: The Spice Club. We only had take-out so I cannot speak to the dining-in experience, but as for the food we had: YUM! The crispy duck salad was amazing, and the Pad Thai and Massaman Curry were both good.

Other than that, we ate at our old standbys. The Black Sheep Pub is reliably good and they have a fascinating array of beers on tap. I highly recommend the sweet potato fries and the seafood salad wrap. DH loves their veggies burgers. The menu changes weekly, so don't get your heart set on a single entree until you check the menu. We had pizza from Eleni's - I lost the battle of the seafood pizza so I didn't get to try one, but their basic and their 5-cheese were both very good. We got lobster rolls and onion rings and fried onions at Skipper's. I wasn't a fan of the lobster roll, but that's on me not loving lobster and not on them: the service was great and the other food was great. I just couldn't face 7 oz of buttery lobster in one go. Next time I'll pay 1/3 the price for the seafood salad sandwich and probably enjoy it more.

Of course, the big draw for us is The Book Barn in Niantic. It's grown to 3 locations and is part is worth devoting several hours of your day. We like to go from 10-3, when we're trying not to get sunburnt. The pile shown below is about 1/3 of the total haul.