11.15.07
‘Tis the season for cooking and more yarn.
Yesterday Brian was in the mood to bake. Oh boy, oh boy! Aside from the mess he makes when he takes over the kitchen, I love it when he’s in the mood to cook because he’s actually pretty good at it. Yesterday he cooked pumpkin pie! Which reminded me that there was a guy we met at the market who asked us what we were going to do with the pumpkins. . . Eh, make pie? He seemed surprised that we were actually using real pumpkins, ha ha! It dawned on me that some people don’t make their own pies, and some that say they make their own pies only buy the ready made pie crusts and pumpkin filling from a can. Basically, they open a can, dump the contents into the ready-made crust, then bake. Instant pie! So, since I got to sit back and fool around while he cooked, I took some pictures of his ingredients:
We prefer to make things from scratch if possible, including the pie crusts. Usually we use whole wheat for the crust, but this time Brian wanted to try buckwheat. The first step is to bake the pumpkins. We cut them open and scrape out the seeds. We bake the seeds in a separate dish so that we can eat them later. This is what the pumpkins looked like after they were baked. The baked seeds are in the dish off to the left.
After the pumpkins are baked, they are blended up with the ingredients to make the filling. This is what Brian’s pies looked like after they came out of the oven:
I know we had more pie dishes, but they seem to disappear. I’m thinking we leave them at other places like my mom’s house when we take stuff over there. Sometimes I end up with some of her dishes, and she ends up with some of our dishes, ha ha! So Brian used one of our rectangular dishes to use make up the rest of the pies. While Brian was working on those, I decided to continue working on the gansey I was making for Matthew. This is how it looked:
I was able to get the second arm on. I thought I was done, but I’m thinking that I want to add a few more inches at the bottom. It turned out a tad shorter than I would like, so after I get that one, I’ll take another picture. But in the meantime, it’s pretty much done! My very first full-sized gansey! AND it is my very own design, too! The pattern on the table was my guide, but I had to change most of the pattern due to the gauge of yarn. Then I found that the pattern actually has two mistakes! I worked it out after much frustration, but now I know better. Anyway, here’s what it looks like now.
I didn’t even finish the gansey before Brian already put in a request for me to knit up for him. This is what it looked like when I got started on it.
Can’t tell what it is? How ’bout now?
Well that’s what it looked like last night. Below is what it looks like now. But Brian hasn’t seen it, yet. Shhhhhh.
It’s a knitted dickey that he requested. I saw a picture of one like on the net, and made my own pattern. I hope he likes it. It’s still sitting on the table, so he should see it when he gets in. I’ve actually never owned one of these before, but it’s what he wanted, ha!–A knitted dickey to keep his neck warm when he goes out at night. It’s made of organic merino wool from Treliske in New Zealand. It’s not dyed, so that’s the natural wool color. I guess here in LA a full sweater is just too hot! Matthew’s gonna burn up in his new gansey. . . But he asked for it! And I sure had fun knitting it up, heheh. So now I’m off to work on my other projects. I’ve got a few going on right now. Will report back on those later.
Okay, time for dinner!
Marlakins 
