February 2010 Archives

I'm working on some unbloggable stuff so I hope you'll forgive me for talking food instead. I'll even throw a doggy fix in at the end.

My birthday is coming up and my parents freakin' spoiled me.

My first slow cooker with more bells and whistles than a bell and whistle factory. (I have clearly missed my calling as a writer.) The combination of working from home and being on a tight, oh-my-god-we-just-bought-a-house-budget, has meant I've done a lot more cooking much more from scratch and this is another tool in my arsenal.

I'm keeping track of any recipes I make so I can reference them later when I'm trying to decide what to make for the week.

I started with some slow cooked pork, that was good on the first day, but got even better than next day shredded, marinated in lime and mixed into a fresh salad

And of course, I had to make pot roast. I think that's law if you eat meat and own a slow cooker, right?

Some pork chili soon followed, another "must make" for a slow cooker.

And finally, I reworked my favorite short ribs recipe for my newfangled contraption

Recipes can be had by clicking any of the images.
I am finding that key to making the most of these dishes is to add something fresh, like a healthy sprinkle of fresh herbs, or cheese and chopped red onion. A little something to brighten up the dish makes all the difference.

And, while I have been cooking for us, I also picked up a book on (don't judge me) cooking for the dogs. So far, I really like it. Many of the recipes require no special ingredients, just stuff you might have around the house and the book is written by a chef, a vet and a canine nutritionist (is that really a thing?) so there's no worry of giving your dogs something that will hurt them.

The dogs have been losing their MINDS over these Peanut Terrifics. I need to adjust the recipe a little to account for the all natural peanut butter but these will definitely be made again.

My final installment of the Illustrator for knitting charts series, is now completed. I think that those of you who feel comfortable with the first two tutorials will find this one pretty straightforward, with just a couple new skills to apply.

For those of you who haven't seen the other tutorials, I highly recommend you watch them before trying this tutorial.

Illustrator for colorwork charts, has all sorts of introductory information on using Illustrator which will be applied through all the subsequent tutorials.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Illustrator for stitch pattern charts, builds off those basic skills and adds custom made shapes.
Watch it here.

Lastly, here is Illustrator for cablework charts where we expand on making custom shapes and build a more complex chart. I've created this last tutorial in High Def so you can enlarge these and really get a good look at what I'm doing.

Part I

Part II

Download the chart I built here and play along at home.

Next up, I'd like to do a tutorial or two on InDesign and features that may be useful to designers. If you have any questions or requests, please don't hesitate to leave me a comment. And of course, any hints or tips you want to share would be great.

I used to blog the most inane little bits of my life, at times, and now there is facebook and twitter to handle that task. But when it comes time to post, there are always such a varied assortment of things I want to tell you about that, for the life of me, I can't think of a decent title. Sorry about that.

Anyway, first and foremost, thank you all who purchased patterns from January 15th-31st, of this year. Your donations allowed me to make a total of $736 in donations to Doctors Without Borders. And lest you think that an impressive number, I've seen other knitters reporting several thousand dollars in donations from their own sales. It's amazing to see how a multitude of small gestures can add up to so much. Really, it's a metaphor for life and it reminds me that no bit of good is too small and every effort is meaningful. So thanks to all of you who donated personally or bought patterns from a participating designer. It's enough to make my crotchety little heart soften a bit.

In doggy news, the pups still love the beach with the white hot passion of a thousand suns

See all the pictures here.

The beef crunchies I made have upped the excitement for training time.

They work hard and they play hard. Awww

And lastly for your moment of pure comic relief at the expense of what little shame I may have had left, I got an honorable mention (as did the beautiful Stitch Diva,) in the Regretsy Skants contest.

Yup, this get-up doesn't even touch the wackiness the winners hit. Mine looks downright tame by comparison.