This is just a postscript to my previous post this morning …

It’s not just the weather that’s freezing, it’s the condensation on my windows. One of the hazards of buying an older house (1970) is that the windows aren’t really “double’glazed”, they’re two sets of sliding windows that have an air space in between, but not a vacuum.

We did get estimates for getting the windows replaced a while back, but the cost shocked us into inaction! ($15000 to $19000)

So I woke up to a cool house (thermostat set to 12 C/54 F) and outside it’s minus 11 (12 F). According to my favourite weather website, it’s currently minus 15 at the airport, but that’s a few kilometres away on the other side of the lake. The maximum forecast temperature for today is minus 7. And this is the pattern that’s apparently going to stay for the coming week.

At least the sun is shining!

It’s an irregular week for us. Tai Chi Man is working Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Wednesday and Thursday he’s taken as holiday – it’s his birthday on the 9th and our wedding anniversary on the 10th (22 years, where DID that time go)!  We’ll be making the most of his time off and heading over to the H2O pool complex (waterslides etc), going out to dinner at our favourite restaurant, and even going on a homeschool field trip to the local theatre – The Nutcracker is playing so we’ll be seeing the sets and behind the scenes. Tai Chi Man doesn’t usually get to join us on field trips so that’ll be fun.

On the knitting front, the In the Pink socks are done – I was so looking forward to those being finished. I get to the stage with some projects (OK, most projects) when I just want them to be OVER. I knitted a few rows on the green cardigan over the weekend – developing some nice callouses on my fingertips from that one. And I am also knitting some more fingerless mitts, though I can’t yet say who they’re for.

My shift at the hospital this afternoon will give me some good knitting time, as will meeting two of my friends for tea at a cafe this evening.

No gift knitting for Yule….I am seeing others (on Ravelry and blogs) talking about their crazy plans and unreasonable schedules for getting their Christmas knitting done and as usual wondering why they didn’t start it all sooner

I hope it’s OK to reproduce this photo here, but I want to show you this amazing scarf that I found on Ravelry…

It’s designed by Sharon Emery and the pattern can be found on Ravelry’s database. It’s free to download as a pdf.

Isn’t it just gorgeous! It uses 4 strands of fingering weight yarn at the beginning – you knit the spider section – then as you work the scarf, you change to 3 strands, then 2, then 1, introducing lots of intentional dropped stitches, until the last section is very airy and cobwebby. Ingenious.

There are some errors in the pattern, I hear. There is an October is for Spinners Knitalong group on Ravelry where the knitters have discussed a few corrections to the pattern. I’m not sure whether the pattern has been updated yet. However I still want to make this scarf.

As I don’t use wool, one option I’m considering is this -  elann pure bamboo.  It’s $3.13 Canadian a ball – I think I’d need ten. I can’t decide on the colour (but I see that a couple of the shades are almost sold out).

By the way, if you’re a knitter and you’re not yet a member of Ravelry and you want to follow those links….get over there and join. Ravelry.com. Simple.

This was my lunch today! These pancakes are so different from the ones I ate when I was a child. My mum would only make them on Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) so we had them once a year!!! They were more like crepes, made with eggs, and rolled up with sugar and lemon juice. They were really good. The problem with them, though, was that mum could only cook one at a time so it seemed like a long wait between pancakes.

Of course here in North America pancakes can be an everyday affair. They’re smaller and you can buy them in stacks with maple syrup on them just about anywhere. Mine are vegan and I invented this recipe recently so I thought I’d share.

This recipe makes 10 or so small pancakes, enough for one or two people, depending on your appetite.

half cup buckwheat flour

half cup spelt flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon soyflour

1 tablespoon soymilk powder

half teaspoon salt

1 cup water

Mix it all together while your pan is heating with a little oil in it. I use olive oil. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the pan, cook for a few minutes, flip and cook a few minutes more. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

Serve with real maple syrup or agave and fresh fruit.

This is a cute baby hat that I made today. I made it just like this one – Knit Flat Baby Hat. At first I cast on 30 stitches but it was WAY too much. The amount I cast on makes up the depth of the hat, and this is for a newborn, so I ripped it all out and started again with 17. Once I’d knitted the garter stitch strip for the body of the hat, I picked up stitches along the side edge (47 in total) and decreased 5 stitches every other row at first, then after 4 decrease rows I decreased every row.

I used US10.5 needles (6.5mm) and two strands of yarn – Berroco Comfort DK in Cornflower, plus Needful Yarns Portofino (which just happened to be discounted). I bought these yarns at Art of Yarn after we had our Ravelry Sit ‘n Stitch yesterday.

The hat is destined for my neighbours’ new grand-daughter – we are house-sitting for them right now as they dropped everything to go to the coast when they received the news that the baby had arrived.

This was a fun distraction from the cardigan and the socks (and I did get some knitting done on the cardigan at the Sit ‘n Stitch, honest)!

As I thought, my hospital volunteer shift today allowed me some knitting time…the Braided Earwarmer is finished. The pattern said to sew the ends together but I did a provisional cast on with waste yarn, ended with a couple of rows of the different colour, and grafted the ends. It’s not perfect but it’s less obvious than a seam.

I’m going to have to find a way to get better photos. I tried this evening, with and without the flash, to get a reasonable picture which showed the cable pattern. This is the best I could do, with a bit of tweaking in iPhoto.

A little bit of progress was made on the In the Pink socks and none on the cardigan.

Details for the earwarmer (I cannot type earwarmer…every time I get it wrong and have to redo it):

Bernat Cot’n Corn – oatmeal – size 8 US needles

I didn’t mean to leave you hanging for days but I haven’t had any inspiration for posting. I did make some progress on the green garter cable cardigan today, thanks to a tea-and-chat session with a friend this afternoon. And I am about halfway through the braided earwarmer so as soon as I get a photo of that I’ll show it to you. The pink camo socks are languishing.
However, I will be at the hospital in the morning and I usually get a fair bit of knitting done there – I’ll probably take all three projects with me!
Back tomorrow…

That raw vegan “cheesecake” recipe that I told you about the other day? Tested!

I don’t have a springform pan so I just used my 8 x 8 inch glass dish. It made for a very deep cheesecake, but that’s OK. I used frozen blueberries instead of blackberries in the topping but apart from that I followed the recipe.

It’s funny how the kids were thinking yesterday that they wouldn’t like it with all those cashew nuts in it, but you know what? They all ate some at dinner tonight and loved it! I love showing them that they really shouldn’t judge things until they try them.

A friend treated Tai Chi Man and me to some classical entertainment this evening.

We went to listen to the Okanagan Symphony play some Mozart and Schubert and something else more modern but decidedly less tuneful! Originally, said friend was going to take Tai Chi Man, knowing that I am not really interested in this sort of entertainment, but another ticket came available, and she asked, so I went.

It was OK, but I kept wishing I’d been able to bring my knitting!

The thing I noticed most was how silent the audience was – I’m used to going to informal events which usually involve children, so sitting in such a controlled audience was bizarre

I was also tickled pink to see that a teenage boy who I know from the homeschooling group was playing his cello in the orchestra.

It’s so late…I really should get off this computer…after returning home, though, Tai Chi Man suggested watching an episode of Inspector Morse (library DVD) which is quite uncharacteristic for him (as it was already past his bedtime)! So an hour and half later, he headed off to bed, but the kids are still up.

I bought a ball of Bernat Cot’n Corn today at Zellers. It’s exactly what it sounds – a blend of cotton and corn fibre. The colour is called oatmeal – it’s a solid off-white shade – shame it’s not tweedy because I love tweedy. Anyway my plan is to make the Braided Earwarmer (I’ve given you the blog link there though I found it through Ravelry). The plan is to make this so I have something to keep my ears warm and wind-free while I run.

I went for another jog today and managed 37 minutes around the neighbourhood. It was about 6 degrees Celsius but there wasn’t any wind so it was perfect. It’s so hard to know what to wear when it’s cold out – one day I went out with a fleece hat and mittens on (it was 4 degrees and it turned out to be a good decision) – today I wore a short sleeved t-shirt, sweatshirt and sweatpants, and half way through I took the sweatshirt off and tied it around my waist. I tend to get hot really quickly these days.

This headband idea will probably work better than a fleece hat – it’ll cover my ears but let the heat escape from the top of my head, and being a natural fibre it’ll be absorbent.

One more thing before I stagger off to bed…my dad has been going from strength to strength all week in the Royal Bournemouth Hospital in England. I talked to him on the phone a couple of days ago and he sounds happy and relaxed and full of praise for the staff. I’ll be calling him again Sunday as he is scheduled to be discharged Monday. I believe someone from the hospital will be accompanying him to the airport, on the flight to Jersey, and seeing him right to his front door. He won’t be able to do anything for at least 6 weeks while he heals up. I’m sure mum will make sure he has everything he needs.

I am definitely going to try out this recipe. I heard about it on Vegan.com’s blog and it looks like a regular cheesecake, except it’s not. It’s raw, it’s vegan and it’s healthy. Dee-licious!