Yikes!

Yes, I haven't posted in over a month.

No, I'm actually doing quite well.

Just busy. And distracted. Had a lovely summer, went to two nice family reunions, didn't knit as much as I'd hoped. Read a lot. More on that later.

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.

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.

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.

A long list of mediocre recipes

I've been great about trying new recipes since I went on summer break, but I haven't had much luck with actually picking the recipes. You know, they sound great when you read them, but...

Anyway, here's the handful of duds from the past couple week:

Peanut Noodles: never a fave in my house (DH prefers sesame noodles and I prefer something with fewer carbs) but my tahini had gone bad and we were hungry. So I tried a new, very easy version. Perfectly edible, but not memorable.

Kale and Lentil Stew in the Slow Cooker: DH got me a slow cooker and recipe book a few years ago. The recipes I tried were all terrible, so we gave up after 5 or 6 tries. In the course of unpacking the basement recently we located the slow cooker, so I thought I'd give it another try. This recipe is the best thing I've made in it yet, but that isn't saying much.

Greek Salad: a rare dud from Smitten Kitchen. Part of the problem may be that, first, I don't like raw peppers, and second, I didn't have any fresh oregano.

Peppers stuffed with pesto avocado: see above about me not liking raw peppers.

Vegetarian Stuffed Mushrooms: I was so entranced by the stuffed mushrooms from Blue Apocalypse that I thought I'd try to extend that love to the vegetarian side of the family. Um, no.

White Bean and Fennel Dip: it sounded so lovely in the description... and wasn't actually bad the first time out, but was just nasty as leftovers.

Chicken Poached in Milk with Tarragon and Peas: going the other way, this was intensely boring the first day, but had perked up noticeably by day 2. Still not worth doing again.

Spaghetti with Garlic and Arugula from You're Doing it Wrong: Sounded so lovely, tasted so boring. I used three HUGE cloves of very fresh garlic, which actually may have been too subtle for the dish. A smaller, older, feistier garlic may have been more effective.

New recipe count: 37

Ten on Tuesday: 10 things I want to do with my summer

1) Read a lot
2) Catch up on TV viewing (like Body of Proof, which I haven't even started watching the 3rd season and now it's been cancelled!)
3) Keep trying new recipes
4) Catch up with family. We've got THREE (count 'em, three) different mini-reunions this summer, not counting the one at my aunt's funeral last week
5) Learn all about the math section of the ACT...
6)... and the SAT
7) Relearn calculus
8) Lose some weight
9) Knit something really different, like lace.
10) Finish knitting my first sweater.
11) Knit more mittens. Like these:

FO: more mittens

Just dropping in for a quick update. It's been a crazy month, what with the end of school and my aunt dying suddenly. I continued to push through trying to make mittens for ALL the people at the elementary school who were important in my sons' lives. Here are the next two pairs:

Yes, that's DROPS 110-39 (rav link) being done as fraternal twin mittens in pink and blue. My younger son was quite insistent. Yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash, knit on size 3 wooden needles.

And these are another mild variation on NHM #5(rav link) same brand of yarn, same needles, etc.