Green Things

I got a gift from my friend Nancy, who went on a trip to Mexico. She gave me this really cool bag:
Pretty neat, huh? It'll be perfect for revolutionary trips to El Safeway for tostitos. Viva la reusable shopping bag! I wonder if there are Mexicans getting good use out of Washington Crossing the Delaware tote bags? The bag also came with some mystery yarn:
There were no labels so I don't know much about it. It's a very fine 2-ply of what I think is acrylic. This may take some investigating.

Knitting Recap

Here's a quick summary of the stuff I've knit recently. There were a bunch of sorta slouchy brioche stitch hats:I also got sucked into the ruffly scarf trend.
They are quick and so deceptively easy. Also, here's my first finished object of the year:
It's my standard stocking stitch scarf in self-patterning Kroy sock yarn. Now if only the weather would cooperate and turn sufficiently wintry to warrant socks. I'm always disappointed by 50 degree temps in January!

Resolved

That was a very long blog hiatus indeed. I certainly didn't intend to be off the air for quite so long, but life events, anticipated and otherwise, got the better of me. I'm not in the habit of making New Year's resolutions, so instead I'll just call this is regular old resolution to try to blog a bit more regularly.

There was a wee bit of crazy baking over the holidays. Not as insane as at the height of my crazy baking glory, but still pretty respectable I think:
7 types of cookies spread over 9 sugary tiers of dessert goodness. From the top left:

1. pecan bars
2. Nanaimo bars
3. caramel heavenlies
4. more pecan bars
5. lemon bars
6. marble brownies
7. dulce de leche bars
8. more dulce
9. oatmeal caramelitas

The caramelitas didn't come out as intended. I tried making my own caramel sauce instead of using bottled topping. I substituted whole milk for cream, and, well, I got a reminder of why sometimes there is not substituting for the real thing. Ah well, still came out sort of caramelly, just not as creamy.

Back to Blogging

Well that was a long time of no blogging. It wasn't intended of course. Life got busy and before you know it, it's a whole new year! I've decided to pre-select some sock yarns to turn into socks this year. Here they are all caked and ready to go:

I started at the upper left with the extremely soft Princess from Rapunzel Yarns.

It's much farther along than this (I'm actually on the second sock), but I haven't had a chance to take a recent photo. The yarn is fairly fine and a bit fuzzy. I'm using 00 needles to try for a sturdier fabric.

I've also decided to spin more regularly, so I tried to turn this:

into a chunky single, which I haven't been able to produce reliably since I was a very new spinner who could do nothing but big fat singles. I came up with this, which has moments where it looks like it was gonna get chunky, but then thought better of it and went skinny again. Still pretty though.

It's ok. I have lots of fiber, and 11 more months to go. I will have chunky singles!