Thursday, July 29, 2010

Zinnia

Zinnia's are my very favorite flower.


I wanted you to see the color of this Zinnia.

It is red on the bottom and orange on top.

I LOVE it !!!

I think that it is so pretty.

It is 67 degrees and raining.

And I took this pic with my cell phone.

So it is not a great pic. But I think it is sooooooo Beautiful!!

Monday, July 26, 2010

Sweet Corn from our garden

Our Sweet Corn is ready!!!!!!!!
Wooooooo Hooooooooo!!!!
Guess who is having Sweet Corn tonight!!!!!!!

Lucet bracelet

I went to the Brooking's Art Festival earlier this month. While I was there I bought a Lucet. A lucet is a tool used in cord making. This tool dates back to Viking and Medieval periods. A lucet cord is square, strong, and slightly springy. The cord is formed by making a series of loops, and will unravel if cut.
I was watching a good movie on Masterpiece Mystery last night. to keep my hands busy while watching the movie I made this little bracelet with my lucet.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Sweet Corn and Flowers



We have 1 row of Sweet Corn in our Garden and it is looking. The Flowers are on our corner. They are sooooo Pretty!!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

This book has 8 main characters that you get to know very well. A mystery is solved, and you learn that you can NEVER keep secrets. It was a good book.

Seriously Simple Shawl


My shawl is Finished, it is Beautiful and I LOVE it!!!! I used Patons Kroy Socks FX yarn for this pattern. I LOVE the way the color looks in this shawl. I used lots of stitch markers and life lines while knitting this shawl. The stitch markers saved my knitting so many times. You find your mistakes right away when you use stitch markers which makes mistakes so much easier to correct!!! The pattern for this shawl can be found here
I can hardly wait to wear it!!!!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Shawl


Another progress photo of my shawl. I have completed chart A twice now.
Time to move on to chart B.
I think that it is looking good!
And I am finding the stitch markers very helpful.If I make a mistake, I find it very quickly, and am able to fix it without frogging the whole shawl!!!!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Zucchini Muffins


I baked Zucchini Muffins today. I had fresh Zucchini form our garden!! I used Splenda instead of sugar, and I added a few chocolate chips. This is the recipe that I followed.
For those of you who prefer to use oil over butter, be my guest (use 1 cup vegetable oil instead of the butter) but I have to tell you, I've made these both ways, and the butter version just tastes better.

Ingredients
•3 cups grated fresh zucchini
•2/3 cup melted unsalted butter
•1 1/3 cup sugar
•2 eggs, beaten
•2 teaspoons vanilla
•2 teaspoons baking soda
•Pinch salt
•3 cups all-purpose flour
•2 teaspoons cinnamon
•1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
•1 cup walnuts (optional)
•1 cup raisins or dried cranberries (optional)
Method
You don't need a mixer for this recipe.

1 Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). In a large bowl combine the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Stir in the grated zucchini and then the melted butter. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the zucchini mixture and mix in. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Stir these dry ingredients into the zucchini mixture. Stir in walnuts, raisins or cranberries if using.

2 Coat each muffin cup in your muffin pan with a little butter or vegetable oil spray. Use a spoon to distribute the muffin dough equally among the cups, filling the cups up completely. Bake on the middle rack until muffins are golden brown, and the top of the muffins bounce back when you press on them, about 25 to 30 minutes. Test with a long toothpick or a thin bamboo skewer to make sure the center of the muffins are done. Set on wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Remove muffins from the tin let cool another 20 minutes.

Note, if you are including walnuts and dried fruit, you will likely have more batter than is needed for 12 muffins. I got about 14 muffins from this batch, and that included filling the muffin cups up as far as they could possibly go (above the surface of the muffin tin).

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson

This is an exciting crime novel, about Mikael Blomvist a journalist that solves a cold case, through old photographs. It is part of a Trilogy. I will probably read the other two books, sometime. A great story! I enjoyed the book.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Shawl


This is the progress that I have made on my shawl. I have finished the set up chart and chart A. Now I have to knit Chart A again. I have already frogged this shawl once. I was about 20 rows into Chart A when I found out that I have dropped a stitch many, many rows back. I was not using life lines or stitch markers. So on this 2 try I am using both life lines and stitch markers. I don't want to frog this shawl again. I love the colorway of this yarn.