Hawaiian Fingerless Mitt

Hawaiian Fingerless Mitts, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

Still plugging away on mitt #2, but isn’t this the cutest thing ever? Don’t look at the chubby fingers or all the Hawaiian freckles on my forearm. I was thinking if I got enough of them, they’d blend into a tan. How’s it working?

I didn’t take good enough notes on the first one, and had a horrible time trying to figure out if I did 4 rows or 6 before that first cable crossing, then trying to figure if I did 6 rows between crossings or 8.

Now David wants a pair, so I’m looking for some blue. Like I need more on my queue.

My favorite chili

I thought I’d take a break from all the Hawaii pictures and post one of my favorite recipes.  It’s one of those “can of…” ones.  Where there’s no measuring, just decide what you have on hand, or what you want in it, and get your can opener.  Even though it doesn’t need it, I like to make this in the crock pot in the morning, and then the house smells good all day.  Basically, here’s the recipe…

1 onion

3 – 5 garlic cloves

1 lb meat (ground beef, ground turkey, chicken, or leave this out)

Brown those 3 in a skillet with a tbsp or so of olive oil.  While that’s browning, get your crock pot and can opener and start dumping in…

1 can black beans

1 can kidney beans ( or substitute any 2 cans of your favorite beans here)

1 can corn

1 can fat free refried beans

1 can tomato paste or sauce (add a little water, or broth, or beer if you use the paste)

1 big can crushed tomatoes, or diced or whatever tomatoes you like

1 to 1 1/2 tbsp cumin

2 to 2 1/2 tbsp chili powder

When the meat stuff is done browning, de-glaze the pan with a little liquid.  Sometimes I use beer, sometimes broth, sometimes the liquid from the can of corn, it doesn’t really matter.  Then dump all that in with the beans and stuff.  Stir it up a little, the refried beans and the tomato paste will be a little lumpy at first.  Leave it alone for a couple hours, then stir it again, and it’ll be fine.  Serve with corn chips, sour cream, shredded cheese, etc.  If you happen to be on weight watchers, and you use the very low fat ground turkey, and the fat free refried beans like I said, about 2 soup ladles full is a serving, and it’s 3 points, if I remember right.  That’s before the toppings.  Forgot, you can also add peppers, whatever else you usually put in your chili.  This is just how my family likes it.  Leftovers freeze well, and are also great on baked potatoes.

More knitting tomorrow.

Teaser

Angora Yarn, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

Remember Christmas? Remember me writing about my now favorite sister in law who bought me the angora from www.yarn.com? Here it is. Don’t you wish you had pet-o-vision or something? Trust me, it’s soft. Very soft. My kids kept asking if they could use one of the balls for a pillow. Bless their hearts. No, get away from Mommy’s angora!

Souvenir yarn

RavelryYarn 001, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

This is one of the yarns I got in Hawaii. I’ll put up the other later. This one is so pretty, colors of green with a little stripe of purple thrown in. I will be buying more of this yarn here or wherever I can find it. It says it’s superwash, so that’s neat. I had originally planned on making it into some socks, but I was inspired my a lady at my knit night who was making long fingerless gloves. Hers had little cables all on the front side and I think 2 x 2 ribbing everywhere else. I think the fingers may have been plain stockinette. I bet if I looked at all, I could find it on Ravelry, but I wanted one that was shorter, and less cables, and no fingers, just one that was sort of a cuff around my knuckles. Except that I wanted a thumb. Not a hole, but an inch or so of thumb knitting. I couldn’t find anything that was exactly what I wanted, so I’m making up my own pattern. I’m almost done with the first one, I’m on the ribbing for the wrist. I made this one from the top down, not knowing how much yarn it would take, and I didn’t want to run out. Looks like I’m going to have quite a bit leftover, which will make son David very happy. I need to have hubby put up something on my blog that will allow me to do a chart thing for the pattern I made up. It combines a regular 6 stitch cable, then separated by 2 purls, there’s also 2 sets on either side of twisted rib. That’s the one where you do a K2tog, then leaving both loops on the left needle, twist the right needle around and K again into just the first stitch. Then drop both loops off the left needle. I’ve also seen this called the baby cable. Anyway, I will post a picture and the pattern soon. They are turning out so cute! Now I’ll have bamboo socks and fingerless mitts as souvenirs from Hawaii! Who else has that?

 

Edited to add…I just finished the first mitt!  I’m so excited, it looks so adorably cute I may puke.  I’ll be sure to put up a picture on my next post, tune in tomorrow.  I also have the pattern mostly written out, except for the chart part.  Need hubby’s help for that, and due to previous time commitments, I don’t know how much he’ll have for me in the next few weeks.  I will try to put something up though.

Just another day at the beach

Hawaii2008 135, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

This was the morning that Steve, my sister, and Jim went on their helicopter ride. I wasn’t planning on going down to the beach, so I didn’t put sunscreen on the boys. We just started off on a walk, and ended up here. It was so beautiful. Those rocks in the backgound provided a nice breakwater for the waves, so that little area between the boys and the rocks was just a nice pond that ebbed and flowed depending on the waves at the time. Right there, you see them digging tide pools. Patrick was down to his armpit at the time. They had such great fun. The only thing missing was a shave ice stand.

On knitting notes, I have dug into my Hawaii yarn. The bamboo will be a pair of socks, regular toe ups, no pattern, the yarn is enough by itself. The self striping wool is becoming a pair of fingerless gloves. I couldn’t really find a pattern I liked, so I’m making one up. I’m borrowing parts from about a dozen other patterns, and the cable from the Irish Hiking Scarf I made for Les for Christmas, and the twisted rib from those socks I made ages ago. I had to frog it a little though, I didn’t think about how much those pattern stitches would draw in the glove, and so I’m adding in some increases to make up for it. I’ll post the pattern when I can get it to make sense. Right now, it’s just notes on an index card and a 1 row chart on a spiral notebook page.

We got lei’d (hee hee)

Hawaii2008 127, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

Here’s my sister and me just after our lei making. This is the finished product. Pretty, huh? We’re standing in front of the little garden area that was just outside our lanai/patio. They planted those to hide the unsightly outdoor grill. If Jim had waited a few seconds to snap that picture, he also would have gotten my 3 boys slamming themselves through the plantings as if they were breaking out of prison. I never mentioned the resort we stayed at, did I? It’s called The Point at Poipu Beach, I think. It is a partner of the Disney Vacation Club, which is pretty much the only thing that has allowed us to take vacations some years. I’ll put up a huge free advertisement/blog to the Disney Vacation Club sometime. Really, they’re wonderful, and the places we’ve been able to go have all been fantastic, including this one. We got in at like 9 pm or very late, local time, which was 4 hours later for us. And we had been up since 4 am. You do the math. We got checked in, and almost right away when we get to the room, here comes some guys to re-make Kristi and Jim’s bed. They were in the 2nd bedroom, which had 2 twins, and we had mentioned that at some point, maybe the front desk could send someone to mush them together and make it into one bed. We certainly weren’t expecting it to be done that night. So, by the time we got the sofa sleeper unfolded and made up for the boys, and used the sofa cushions and another sheet on the floor for the oldest son, and got the bags all unloaded from the minivan, Kristi and Jim had a new bed. The people there were all very nice, and, unlike the Grand Hotel up on Mackinac Island, never once told us our children were “so full of life.”

(That’s code, by the way, for “For goodness sake’s, please get your boys under control before they completely tear up this over 100 year old hotel.”)

Making leis

Hawaii2008 126, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

This is my sister Kristi making her orchid lei. The lady gave us a huge needle that was almost a foot long, and showed us right where to stick it inside the flower. It was really quite fun. That row of flowers in front of her shows the ones she’s already threaded on. And that bracelet she’s wearing? She made that herself.

More from Hawaii

Hawaii2008 020, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

This picture was taken by my hubby as I was looking out over these lava rock cliffs. It was a short walk down the rocky beach and up a hill. I was standing there thinking that if someone wanted to commit suicide, that would certainly do the trick. I didn’t get too close to the edge though. It’s not that I’m afraid of heights; it’s that I’m afraid of depths. It was a looooong way down. And more lava rocks on the bottom. You’d really have to time a jump so as not to land on the crashing waves. I think if there had been a chair, or a seat, or a comfy rock, and if I had some yarn with me, I could have literally stayed there all day just listening to the sound of the waves. I can’t really describe it, but it’s one of the memories I will treasure always. We used to live in FL, and visited the beaches on the Gulf occasionally, but there wasn’t the same sound. It’s somehow peaceful and powerful, soothing and terrifying. I wish I had had some kind of recording device to tape that sound and have it with me. For now, I’ll just be happy I have the memory. And, yes, if you’re wondering, I am that tiny in real life. Or smaller, the camera adds 10 pounds, you know.

The Haul from the Farmer’s Market in Koloa

Hawaii2008 029, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

Ok, not totally true. The smallest pineapple we got at a grocery store. It cost more than the bigger 2. And didn’t taste as good either. That’s my mystery hand holding up a coconut. See, I did drink something out of a coconut. Let me tell you, the milk out of a FRESH coconut is way better than those brown ones you get in the store. Let’s see if I can name off some of what all we got. There’s mango’s or papaya’s, I can never remember which, but no body liked them. Good thing someone bought 5 of them. There’s oranges, tangerines, tangelo’s, grapefruit the size of a newborn’s head, 3 different kinds of tomato’s, scallions, green beans, some kind of little citrus thing that looked like roundish kumquats, but Kristi said the lady called them something that started with an S. I think there may have been one other orange variety, but it’s all such a blur now. Oh, I forgot the bananas. Wow, were they good. That was the only thing that we got way too little of. They were smaller than I’m used to, these were like 4 inches at the most, and so super-concentrated in the banana flavor. I could have eaten a whole bunch by myself. I don’t think we were expecting them to be that good. The ones here now taste like cardboard. I’m ruined forever.

Guess what I found in Hawaii?

Hawaii2008 144, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

No, really, guess. You’ll never guess. SHEEP! We saw these on a wrong turn. We drove into Koloa looking for this fish market that was supposed to have really good plate dinners. When we got into town, we didn’t realize that our entry point was about the halfway mark of the main street. So, we turned toward what we thought was the town, and drove past and didn’t see the fish market, and just kept going, thinking we’d get there. Hubby had the bright idea to try and look for an address to see if we had maybe missed it. A while after the sheep, we found an address. So, we turned around with a promise to come back to the sheep and get a picture later. The fish market was quite possibly the smallest room ever. I stayed outside with the boys and played with a one-eyed cat who was very friendly until some bicyclists came up with plastic bags on their handlebars and the wind whipping through those bags scared the cat. Steve, Kristi, and Jim all went inside. I asked Kristi to order something for me so Steve didn’t have to try to think enough to pick something for him, something for the boys, and something for me. She chose wisely. Actually, they all did. Steve got for the boys some fried chicken. I can’t even remember what he got, but if he reads this, he can feel free to edit/leave a comment as to what his meal was. Jim got this tuna with caper sauce that I wanted to eat right up. Kristi picked 2 things for us to share. One was Kalua pork and cabbage, and the other was tea-leaf wrapped pork. Sounds odd, right? Oh my gosh. I alternated bites of each, and still couldn’t decide what I liked better. For desert, we cut up a pineapple. That was the day we went to the Farmer’s market. That’s a funny story, worthy of a new paragraph.

Steve had read about these markets, and how they’re apparently quite cutthroat. So, we get there early to get a good place in line. It’s over at this ball field. There’s a guy in a rain jacket holding everybody back until the official open. Steve was saying we had better get in there or there wouldn’t be anything left. So, he went and got near the front while Kristi, Jim and I and the boys waited off to the side. I figured if there was going to be some kind of mad stampede for fruit, I’d rather be next to it than in it. Steve was getting his competitive on though. It was rather funny/cute. I wondered how fast could this really be. Answer…not very. The raincoat guy suddenly motioned a couple of people to go on in. We were several hundred feet away from the actual stands, and turns out these were sort of the pre-boarding ones. One guy with a cane, a couple of strollers, etc. When they had progressed enough, he let everyone else go. It was not as fast as Steve had anticipated, to say the least. I said to Kristi, so, that’s what a mad stampede looks like on Kauai.

When we all did finally make it over there, there was lots of goodies. I’ll continue this on another post, because I just realized that I have a picture of what all we got. To be continued…