Veggie Tales

This week was the first pickup for my Produce CSA from That'll Do Farm, and lookie here at what was in my basket!:

Radishes, garlic scapes, lettuce, strawberries,
garlic flower infused vinegar, and fresh eggs!

My pickup is on Thursday this year, which is knit night, but it's all close together...and you might notice that I couldn't wait to munch on the fresh goodies! I bit into a radish before I even remembered that I wanted a nice picture of everything!  Ohhh, and it was yummy!  So yummy, in fact, that I even used some of these radishes and some chopped scapes to make myself a hot breakfast on Friday morning!

Buttered radishes and poached egg!  (The recipe called for
green onions, but I didn't have any, so I chopped scapes!)

I don't usually cook on a weekday morning (and truth be told, I only cooked for me...didn't even offer to Sweetie - does that make me a bad wife?), but the basket just begged for my attention...and it did not disappoint!  I have never cooked a radish before, and now I can't imagine living without having this dish at least once a week!  I am thinking there will be a Veggie Tales segment in the blog every Saturday through the CSA season!  I just love this stuff!

Of course, this is a knitting blog, and I have made some knitting progress recently, so check this stuff out!  A new, updated photo of the hitchhiker, which is really growing (despite the fact that I don't get much time to work on it). . .

The color transitions are just lovely!

I've run into a bit of a snag on the baseball sweater, tho.  While I was laying it out to show you that I have finished the back and the left-front, I noticed that I forgot the 3 garter stitches at the seam side on the right-front!  Aargh!

I know, I know.  Rip it back and do it right...

I thought about just going on without it...I am more than halfway done with the right-front...but I realized that I really won't be happy unless I rip it back to row 20 (sigh!), so that's the plan.  At least the ripping goes faster than the knitting did, and the knitting was pretty quick in either case, so easy come-easy go!  Then easy re-knit, right?  (Somebody hold me, please?)

Wait. . .  Did you hear that?  Was it?  No, it couldn't be. . .but I think. . .  There it is again!  It's my Spinning!

Well, hey there, Spindles and Fiber!  It's been just ages!  You guys look GOOD!  Better than I remember. . .Oh!, and one of you even has singles!  But enough about your yarn, let's get a better look at those whorls. . .

I believe these are some kind of resin.  The pink is very light, the
purple a little heavier, but I can't remember the exact weights.

From an Etsy store called Dragoncraft, these are the real reason I ever made it past my first, very rough yarn. . .which is not very pretty:

Ok, it's not pretty, but it's got personality!

However, I did untwist that tiny skein to check for balance and such. . .and it doesn't really seem that bad now.  Well balanced, a little art-yarny. . .

When I held this up, there was no kink at all...

It was rough "practice wool" that came with a much less than pretty spindle in a kit I bought a couple years back.  The pretty spindles inspired me to keep going, but I did eventually lose interest. . .until yesterday morning.  I woke up Friday, wondering what I could do with the singles still wound on that pretty, pink spindle, and I decided to give the Navajo ply technique a try.

So I basically unwound the yarn from the pink one, and plied directly to the purple one. . .I think the fiber is llama.  Here's a closer look:

It's not super even.  It's nowhere near perfect, and I don't even know how many yards it might be, but it's really not half-bad!  I think I am going to spin some singles with some of the better "practice fibers" I have in my stash, checking out what it will take to make it thicker and/or thinner as I go. . .then maybe I can dive into something spectacular, like the ply-on-the-fly method of Navajo plying!  


Wow!  Thinking about all that twist makes my HEAD spin a little!  I hope you'll excuse me while I sit down over here and knit for a few minutes.  On second thought, please join me!  Can I get you a cup of tea?  Oh, you can't stay?  Sure, I understand. . .I hope you'll stop in again soon!  


Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!