A Blog-worthy Dinner

I never remember to take pictures of great meals, but Seth took one bite of this particular dinner and said, "You should take a picture of this and put it on the blog." Apparently, he thought it was pretty tasty and deserved a little blog attention.

On Saturday I pulled out a bunch of my Rachael Ray magazines and flipped through looking for something "different" to make for dinner. I've never in my life made meatloaf, so I thought I'd give it a whirl with this recipe. "Mini Meatloaves Smothered with Onions"

It. Was. Delicious.

Um. No, the french fries are not homemade. 

Obviously, the best part is that the recipe includes bacon. 

We're also going to be eating leftovers for the next week because Seth insisted that I make the whole recipe, which made 4 mini meatloaves. 

In knitting news, I finished my Blair Sweater!!! It's drying now, and still needs the buttons sewn on, but it should be completely done and ready for some photos tomorrow! 

Hope all is well with you!

Love,

liz :)

Handspun Milo Vest

I took a small break from working on the sweater for Seth's Dad (I just have part of a sleeve, seaming, and the collar left!) to whip up a quick baby gift for an old co-worker of mine from Maine. Her baby is due in early March and since she received tons of newborn stuff at her shower, I decided to make something for the fall/winter.

There was a skein of handspun in the shop that had been sitting there for quite a while, and I thought it would be perfect as a little girl gift.

It started as this handspun:

And was knit into this:

Pattern: Milo by Georgie Hallam 

Yarn: Handspun Rambouillet Wool dyed by Two if by Hand

Modifications: None. I followed the directions for the 9 month size. It was a really well written, easy to follow pattern with several different options for the cable. It knit up really quick (I finished in a day) and only used about 200 yards for the 9 month size. 

I will definitely be making more of these as baby gifts. So quick and so cute!

Seth and I took a drive up into the mountains today to do a little bit of XC skiing. The weather was beautiful and we had a great time...and of course Sailor had a great time romping through the snow.

Please excuse my terrible XC skiing form....it's really quite atrocious.  

 Sailor spent the first 1/2 mile running around like a madman...until we ran into a 1 year old goldendoodle. They practically knocked me over and then had a good time wrestling and playing. Unfortunately we didn't think to snap any pics of the madness. Sailor slowed down quite a bit after that!

 crazy dog.

We had to stop at the store to pick up some essentials that we were completely out of on our way home. I was fully intending to just have soup and sandwiches for dinner tonight since we ate out last night and had a HUGE meal complete with appetizers and dessert (flourless chocolate torte....soooo good).  But then I was walking through the baked goods aisle and a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread was begging to come home with us and become french toast for dinner. It was a loaf from some local place and it made for some crazy good french toast:

This is Seth's french toast with bananas and walnuts. There was maple syrup added after the photo was taken! 

Well, I should start thinking about bed...

Miss you!

Love,

liz :)

Glad You're Alive!

Before I tell you about our weekend at Da Vinci Days....

1. Wow! You're moving back to New England! Now you can knit lots of warm things to wear during winter! I'm actually going to be home in October....we'll have to plan something!

2. Creepy about your wallet. ugh. Sorry you had to deal with that.

3. The birthday dress for baby Charlotte is ADORABLE!!!! Even as she grows too tall to wear it as a dress, she could wear it as a super cute shirt.

4. Love the vest you are going to make! It's actually similar to the one I made (Kristen Kapur's designs are lovely and really well written). I highly recommend checking out this post on Purl Diva's blog about organizing all the charts. I did something similar and it was really helpful to have until I had the pattern memorized. Also check out this post, also by Purl Diva.

5. I don't like rhubarb. The smell.....ew. We actually had some in our yard and Seth's Mom used it to make strawberry rhubarb pie.

6. Which Ysolda book were you thinking about buying? I have Whimsical Little Knits I and II. They both have great patterns in them. She also has a book coming out in September called Little Red in the City which will be all sweater patterns. You could also just buy individual patterns on ravelry if there are certain ones you want.

7. Weekend Sewing is a good book. It has a lot of cute dresses and kids stuff in it, but I've honestly only made the drawstring bags so far. I'm not brave enough to attempt any garments yet! I think the PJ pants will probably be my first garment, though.

Phew.

Corvallis has a festival every summer called Da Vinci Days, which is a science and art festival. The big event of the weekend is the Grand Kinetic Challenge. Kinetic sculptures are built to ride on roads, climb sand dunes, ride through mud, and float down the river. It's kind of hard to explain....so maybe some pictures will help! :)

Friday the sculptures were judged and the teams had to sing their team song. On Saturday there was a parade of the sculptures along with unicycle riders, electric cars, and solar powered cars. We caught a little bit of the parade while we were biking around town. A few hours after the parade the sculptures take off down the race course, which is mostly on the bike path. Tons of people take off on their bikes to ride along. The sculptures stop at the fairgrounds and have to climb a sand dune before continuing on the race course.

Here's one of the sculptures waiting in line at the sand dune:

Here is the lobster climbing the dune:

Some more sculptures:

This guy has participated in the race for a number of years, and you could tell. He flew right up the sand dune with absolutely no problems.

On Sunday, the sculptures had to ride through a mud bog and then go 2 miles down the Willamette River. I was going to try and catch all of the Sunday festivities, but I ended up skipping the mud portion. It was pretty entertaining to watch the sculptures come down the river, though!

Crazy, huh?!

Well, I have some foodie things to share, but I haven't uploaded the pictures yet. I'll post tomorrow with those :)

Love,
liz :)