I finished the body of the kimono coat thanks to a couple of dry temperate days :)

There’s also the slight possibility that the back is too narrow - just a skosh.  I could undo the shoulder seams and rip back to the center panel (Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!) where a bit more room could be added.  I could try to undo a stripe in the center panel, crochet some more rows and just stitch the thing back together.  Have any of you done that?  Is that even do-able?  Is there a way to incorporate extra room in the front that won’t be weird looking?  I suppose I can just leave it as it is, finish it up and hold on to it until I lose some weight - or give it as a gift to someone it will fit.

We are fond of muffins here and have them fairly often.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try something.  This idea came, mostly, from talking with my dad.  He says he likes muffins but that the ones available these days are way too sweet and might as well be cupcakes.

Cupcakes? 

Aha!

Thus was born the muffin sundae :)

First, you take a muffin (or a few of the little bite-sized muffinettes which is what we have here)…

Then you crumble them into your bowl of choice :)





Nuke for about 45 seconds.





And add your favorite ice cream. 





You can even put a cherry on top :)

Myria likes to mix her ice cream in with the muffin bits.  I just spoon it on top and mix as I eat.  Any toppings you might happen to have laying about would probably enhance this nicely - we just don’t generally have anything like that.  Certainly not slimming, but pretty cool anyway.  Fun too!

Happy Wednesday, all!

We had a pleasant, unfussy 4th here celebrated with tortellini and sausage, scones, soft drinks, games and the Monk marathon :) I am desperately hoping that the after dark noise level goes down now.  For the last three nights there have been firecrackers and whiz-bangs going off straight through the wee small hours and I’m beginning to twitch unbecomingly…

I admit to having been a bit obsessive over the last few days.  That is, I found a project I liked and stuck with it.  Ahem…

I wanted to see what the seed stitch would look like if alternate rows were worked in alternate colors.  It’s not bad and it certainly adds plenty of texture.  Interestingly, the seed stitch isn’t nearly as compact as the stockinette - spreads out a lot more.  This won’t be of any consequence when the hat is worn, but for the picture, a little creative messing around was called for :)





This one really pleased me because I was able to engineer the stripes so that the beginning/end of the round wasn’t obvious.  I have been looking at methods for “jogless joins” all weekend and I shall no doubt try them eventually.  And, since you all know me I can admit, with only a slight bit of embarrassment, what a zingy little thrill I got out of figuring out how many stitches I needed to have in order to go around the hat knitting three cream, three red, etc...until the diagonals were as long as I wanted them.





While I’ve had the Chicken Viking Hat in mind for a while, it took June’s 7/2/05 post over at Twosheep to kick me into gear.  I confess, I did not spin my own yarn as she is doing (beautifully too, if I might say so) and I also made some changes to the pattern.  Surprise!

First, I didn’t have a size 5 circular needle to do the seed stitch band with so I just went ahead and did everything on a size 6 circular (magic loop style).  Things seem to have come out nicely and I like the way the decreases are handled in terms of fitting the head.  I believe I will try this kind of decrease on other hats to see how it works out.

I also discontinued the stitch pattern when the decreases commenced.  I could tell you all kinds of stories about contrasting texture going from the dense seed, to the less dense goosebump and finally to the smooth stockinette - but I’d be full of sheep dip.  Once I started the decreases I was chicken to try and continue the stitch pattern and so I just abandoned it at that point.  I don’t think the hat looks bad though.  I like the colors here - sort of caramel and French vanilla.  Butterscotch sundae, anyone?  Oh, and the drumsticks?  I got hungry :)

Now I have a fragment of an old Neil Diamond song running through my head - something about “chicken-ripple ice cream”?

So, while I told myself I was playing with hats, that’s only a partial truth.  I’ve also been playing with color and that took me longer to figure out :) My last stranding experiments were more than a year ago and I would have told you that I hadn’t given it much thought since then.  Clearly there’s been more going on in the back of my head than I was aware of.

But then isn’t that always the case?