The Life, Designs & Crafts of Marie Haigh
Life is what happens while I am busy planning my next knitting design.
What a difference one stitch makes in a design.
I altered all the Yarn Overs in the Alpacas at White Horse Farm shawl to Double Yarn Overs.
Original Design:
Altered design with the Double Yarn Overs (minus the beadwork):
Note that the new version was done in a darker yarn. I didn’t want to waste anymore of the alpaca wool that will be used to knit the shawl.
You’ll have to use your imagination, but suppose the original version has the lace work of the new version. Would it look better?
You don’t see any chilli pepper fabric in my onesies, you say. Here’s the fabric waiting to be cut up into large squares and triangles.
When finished, the quilt will be small enough to hang in my sister’s kitchen. It will be laid out in a barn raising fashion. This is the first time I am working with triangles. Of course, I should also mention that this is only my 2nd quilt. Thankfully, it’s just going to my sister. Goodness knows she is not going to take a magnifying glass to my work. Or at least she better not!
Certain it would be too boring of a potato salad. I came up with this compromise.
Ingredients:
1 small onion, chopped
1 small green pepper, chopped
Lard (there has to be some sort of bacon in it, right?)
2 lbs red potatoes, quartered
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp potato water
1/4 tsp salt
Few dashes of hot sauce
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
2 tsp Old Bay Seasoning
1 tsp dry parsley
4 hard boiled eggs, cooled and diced
Note: If you agree with my friend about no bacon, then substitute mild olive oil for the lard.
Heat the lard in a saute pan. When hot, cook the onion till tender and golden. Set aside to cool. Heat more lard. When hot, cook the green pepper till tender. Set aside to cool. Bring the potatoes and 1 tbsp salt to boil. Then, cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes or till potatoes are just tender. Drain potatoes, keeping 2 tbsp of the water they were cooked in. Mix the potato water, vinegar, hot sauce and 1/4 tsp salt. When potatoes are cool enough to handle, slip the skins off and cube them. Sprinkle the vinegar mixture over the potatoes. Transfer the potatoes to the fridge to cool them completely.
Onto the dressing: Mix the mayonnaise, sour cream, Old Bay, parsley, cooked onion, and cooked pepper together. Add in the cooled potatoes and diced eggs. Gently toss all ingredients with a spatula.
Let salad cool for 24 hours in the fridge before serving.
And the verdict … Everybody enjoyed it, even my picky friend.
We’ve lived in Pottstown for 2 1/2 years now. Yesterday was the first time hubby and I went to see the local parade.
Storm Troopers & Darth Vador
Loved their hats!
Old Med van
A Goldendoodle; we thought he was the cutest!
It was a lot of fun; so glad we went.
Afterwards, we went to visit with friends. Here she is modelling the Striped Sweater.
I’m so thrilled that it fit her! The lenght is perfect (that was the one measurement I sweated over) on both the body and the arms.
Remember how excited I was about the Barbie shawl? The Barbie shawl was going to be knit up into an adult version, right?
Wrong. It’s been frogged. It was miserable to knit. It was difficult to keep track of where I was. I couldn’t imagine trying to write a pattern for it. The chart would have been hundreds of lines long with changes on every line. So I made an executive decision and into the frog pile it went.
Onto hopefully better ideas.
Here are pictures of my latest shawl design. This will not end up in the frog pile for complexity, that’s for sure. It may find its way there for a million other reasons, but not that.
Pros of this shawl:
Cons of this shawl:
So what is the verdict?
Off to the frog pile or into my list of KIP (Knits in Progress)s?
What do you think? Constructive criticism wanted!
Guess which one I worked on over the weekend.
None of the above.
Instead, I started a new project!
I couldn’t resist the new yarn I got in my Stitch n Pitch grab bag. The Frizzato yarn looked so lovely and so lonely sitting in the basket next to my knitting chair. It whispered in my ear that it wanted to be made into a scarf. I listed all the projects I had to finish, but it didn’t care, persisting that it had to be knit into a scarf now … in the middle of summer. I caved to its sweet talking.
I am glad that I did. Frizzato was right. It does look good as a scarf. You see it here paired up with Reynold’s Blossom yarn in white.
It wasn’t my intention to give it a patriotic flair. It just turned out that way. But, it seems right with July 4th right around the corner.
The Life, Designs & Crafts of Marie Haigh 