Almost finished!

First off I will tell you about my knitting.

On my needles:

I am a handful of rows away from finishing the baby blanket I have been working on for the last three weeks. It will (embarrassingly enough) be my first finish of the year. I got out of the crafty habit for a while, but now I have no idea why! I am so excited. This blanket and the quilt my aunt helped me make will have pictures taken and ready to be posted as soon as the baby shower in may is over. I wish I could show them off now, but they are still super secret gifts.

UFOs:

I still haven't finished the skirt that I started knitting for my daughter last year. I put it up and haven't worked on it in months. I plan to start on it and finish it in the next month or so. I would like her to be able to wear it when the weather starts to cool down again this year. If I wait too much longer it won't fit, so somebody needs to yell at me occasionally to work on it!

Also the sassy stripe socks I started last year didn't get completed. I took them out of the purse I had them in and my bamboo circular needle I had them on was broken and most of the stitches of one of the socks had fallen off. You might not remember, but this was my first attempt at socks. I went with two at a time, toe up on one circular needle. I ended up making the heel too soon so they didn't fit me. I am going to frog them and start over. I didn't like how the pattern I had chosen was turning out anyway, so they weren't a big loss. I am sad about the needle though. I really need to get a project bag or two!

Future craftiness:

I plan on knitting some vanilla socks with my sassy stripe yarn, hopefully in my size! I also had promised to make some slippers for a friend late last year but never got them cast on after I finished my Christmas knitting. In addition to those two projects and Serenity's spiral skirt, I want to learn to crochet. I started learning last week and hope to take time to learn at least enough to make some hats and baby booties. I also have a few more super secret gifts to make for my best friend and hope to get them done before the baby shower.

Now for gardening and cooking!

Garden:

I still have most of my seedlings alive! Some are looking a little sickly, but I have transplanted some to bigger pots until I can get them out to the garden.

I haven't gotten the garden ready yet. By all zone maps for my area it is still too early to put them out. I need to find someone with a tiller soon, though, so I can get everything tilled up and figure out where I want to plant everything. Last year the squash and tomatoes took over the garden until I could barely walk through without squishing something. I need to plan it out differently this year.

Also I have to figure out where I want a strawberry bed. I bought ten strawberry plants and want to make them a nice bed that Joey won't mow over. I went today to my aunts farm and collected some rabbit and chicken droppings to mix in the horrible clay dirt we have and also some pieces of wood to place around the perimeter of the bed to protect it from Joey. I got a good amount of straw for the bed and still need to go back and get more for the garden after it is tilled. The straw plus the landscaping fabric I used in the garden last year made the weeding a breeze.

Cooking:

As for cooking, I haven't tried a lot of new recipes. I found a nice chocolate oatmeal cake recipe and a butterless oatmeal cookie recipe on allrecipes.com that turned out well. I made them to share with my friend who is with child and deserves some sweets occasionally.

Tonight I didn't feel like making a big meal since it was still close to eighty outside at dinner time, so I threw together some ingredients I had on hand and made a one pot meal. I started with some wheat spaghetti noodles. After they were cooked to almost how I like them, i drained them and I added some frozen bell pepper and onions, frozen chopped spinach leaves, a jar of spaghetti sauce with mushrooms, and some baked chicken I had in the freezer. Cooked it until everything was hot. I had thawed out the frozen ingredients mostly so it didn't take long. It turned out great!

If you are wondering about the frozen chicken, I had cooked six pounds of chicken at the beginning of last month. I always stock up on boneless skinless chicken breast every month because we love it so much. I decided that it would be nice to have some on hand already cooked so on days I didn't want to mess with a time consuming meal I could just throw that in with some pasta or rice and add a few frozen or canned ingredients and be done. I finally got a cast iron stovetop grill a couple of months ago and love how the chicken tastes when grilled on it, so I grilled up three pounds and also baked three pounds for variety. I cooled it, cubed it, separated it into one pound servings, bagged it and threw it in the freezer and have been loving it!

I can't wait until the garden starts producing some fresh veggies for me!
Then I will be able to have fresh ingredients instead of frozen or (ick) canned.

I think I have rambled on long enough for tonight. I don't have anything ready for review right now. I have a few crafting books I want to read and review soon, as well as some magazines and podcasts. If anyone has anything specific they want to hear about, feel free to let me know either on here or on ravelry. I am anonymous76 on ravelry for those that don't know already. Also you can email me at ahume08@gmail.com. I love hearing from my loyal tanglers!

Until next time.... Happy crafting!