This is so pathetic. I wanted to see how many pairs of socks I could knit in May and all I accomplished was 2 complete pair and this miserable partial Andean sock. Oh well - I did get a LOT of sewing done and I'll take an FO picture next week.

I still have more sewing to do although I'm waiting on some fabric as usual. I also plan to get some reading done. I looked at the New York Times' List of the Best American Fiction of the
Last 25 years and was ashamed I'd only read 8 of the 27 books mentioned. I did manage to guess the book that won the most votes though. DH was gloating that he'd read most of the books on the list so I ordered a few from the library to try to catch up.

I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day. We're going to Gallup to meet up with my favorite brother-in-law.

My favorite part of Albuquerque is an area off of Central Ave./Route 66 called Nob Hill. We went there tonight to sit at a table outside at Kelly's Place with friends. You can kind of see Kelly's Place (where the star is) in this photo. The Sandia Mountains are in the background.

Nob Hill is full of cool shops and galleries and restaurants. You can find a bead store, tattoo parlors, two paper stores, a health foods co-op, a vintage hat store, and even a magician's/juggler's supply house. Peacecraft is a wonderful and unique Fair Trade store where you can buy some colorful handknit items.

Graze by Jennifer James is apparently considered one of the best restaurants in the city. I liked the restaurant that was there previously (Kanome - Asian fusion) but I haven't been to Graze.

Tonight was also the worst part of Albuquerque. After dark we took a walk and saw a thermometer on a shop that said 86 degrees F. I came home and took my first cold shower of many this summer. I am NOT a hot weather person.

Here are my Bazaar socks done in various sock weight stash yarns. The pattern link and my variations are in the two previous blog entries. I should have striped the heels but I am too lazy. The socks from Andean Folk Knits are next.

One of the cool things about being a member of a CSA and getting weekly deliveries of various organic fruits and veggies is that you learn to like more produce than you originally did. I never was fond of daikon but now I love it. It really is good in stir-fries. I was also previously disenchanted with mangos but after I made this recipe I became a mango convert. In fact, I ate the entire bowl of salsa by myself instead of waiting for DH to come home.




MANGO-CUCUMBER SALSA
(Makes about 2 cups salsa; shown here with homemade baked tortilla chips)

1 ripe mango, pitted and diced
6 scallions, diced
1 Tbsp pickled jalapenos (I will also try this with fresh jalapeno), minced
1/2 English cucumber, sliced
Juice of 1/2 lime
Salt to taste

Mix all ingredients together and enjoy.

Rob asked in the comments about the fit of the PGR Bazaar socks (free .PDF pattern is HERE). I have to admit I'm not really using her pattern. I am only using the charts and color inspiration and knitting them from the top down. I am using size 3 (US) dpns and sock yarns from the stash, mainly some Kroy I purchased recently on sale at Herrschners. As far as fit, the less expensive sock yarns like Kroy and Knitpicks Essentials seem the least elastic. If you're concerned about stranded color socks being difficult to get on your feet, go with a more expensive sock yarn that has merino in it.

Also, the longer the cuff in stranded socks, the more likely you might have trouble pulling it up over your heel. I notice my tension varies as well in the difficulty of a pattern. A simple pattern like checks or stripes will usually result in a looser tension than a more complex pattern. For the Bazaar socks, I'd recommend avoiding the fourth pattern down in the chart for the cuff to help them fit better.

My feet are skinny though so I just did the cuff chart as she wrote it. I did change the foot chart to suit my needs. I'm almost finished with the second sock and will get a photo of the socks on my feet pronto.



Today I sent some money off from the Stranded Color Knitting and pattern sales. I sent $319.68 to the Colorado House Rabbit Society and $225 to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary's Great Bunny Rescue of 2006. $125 of that came from Lisa who auctioned off a Dale sweater kit on Ebay and wanted the proceeds to go to rabbit rescue. Thank you Lisa for your kindness and generosity. You are the best!

The sock knitting continues at a snail's pace. Today they closed the mountain for the summer due to extreme fire danger so DH will be around much more on the weekends without his regular hikes. I'm not really sure if this means more or less knitting time for me.

If you sew or are thinking about sewing, patternreview.com is totally essential. I think you may have to sign up for a free membership to view all the content but it is definitely worth it. There's a large message board, contests such as designing your own ready-to-wear knockoffs, and regular reviews of sewing patterns, books, and machines by members. It has really helped me decide what patterns to buy when I can see photos of what the garments really look like on real people. They also offer regular online classes for all levels of sewing ability.

In honor of Mother's Day, HERE's a cute story about the world's busiest mom. Okay, she's a bunny but she has managed to successfully raise 30 orphaned baby rabbits at Best Friends Sanctuary's Great Bunny Rescue of 2006.

Here's Jack the cat deciding whether the store bought satin pillowcase (bottom) is better than the satin one I made myself (top).



Peaches the Enormous would like to wish all moms, bunnies or otherwise, a terrific weekend.

Here is a very quick wrap skirt made from cotton broadcloth (which I can tell wrinkles very easily - sigh) and Kwik Sew pattern 2946. This can be made in an afternoon and I added an extra button.




I added the button because I can. I am now the proud owner of 8 lbs of buttons (for $10 - a great deal from FabricMartFabrics). I spent about 3 hours sorting them all.

Here is the beginning of the PGR sock (free pattern download at the Interweave Knits web site in the current issue section). I ended up changing my color choice, going with what I call "circus colors." What can I say? I like bright colors.

I'm doing these top down instead of toe up and as you can see the top is curling. That is because I was very distracted while I was knitting and did stripes but not ribbing. I'm calling it a design element. You may have read last summer about the various creatures that somehow get into this house. This year is the year of the birds. They are mysteriously getting in our wood stove chimney which whirls around on top and is at least 4 feet above the roof. Last week I was sitting on the floor cutting some fabric and nearly had a heart attack when right next to me a bird pecked on the window part of the wood stove. We got the bird into a cat carrier and got him outside. Then DH put screening in the top of the chimney.

Yesterday it was a baby bird in the stove pipe (I don't know how because we can see there is no nest inside) so DH had to come home early and rip out the stove pipe and move the stove and the bird still wouldn't come out until this am when DH reached into the top part of the stove and grabbed him and put him outside. Anyway, we decided to leave the stove pipe off and stuffed newspaper in the top of the pipe in the ceiling. Under we're putting a hamper and cat beds with blankets in case any thing falls through the pipe.

Here's someone who is very interested in the idea of birds flying through our house. Jack the cat is already setting up shop near the wood stove.

I have three FO's to show today. I made these thick socks for DH (he hikes 20 miles a week and only wears thick socks for this purpose) out of a double thickness of Paton's Country Garden DK wool yarn and size 6 needles. I used 32 needles and the usual 8 inches of K2P2 ribbing he insists on. I continued the ribbing down the foot of the sock just to do something different this time.

I always go a bit bonkers at this time of year. I'm not a hot weather person and the beginning of the hot weather here makes me crazy. This year I've decided I'm going to battle the heat by making lots of lightweight summer clothes.

I made the shirt for DH who also needs more summer clothes. He picked out this fish fabric and unbeknownst to me, the fabric is only 3 directional. In other words, there is only one direction of this fabric where all the fish are upside down or sideways. Guess which direction of fabric I used? It is hard to tell but it has a pocket and a nice back yoke. I really like this pattern and plan to make him four or five more shirts in various fabrics. This one is a quilting cotton bought on sale and the pattern is Kwik Sew 2935.

Last is a fun skirt made of a cotton broadcloth. The pattern is Kwik Sew 3108 and it was anything but quick. Because of a fabric imperfection I had to cut out all 16 pieces separately. Then I didn't like the way they did their elastic waistline so I ripped that out and did my usual elastic waistline. I also had to redo some of the tops of the godets once I figured out how to fix them. I do like the silhouette and definitely plan to make this skirt again in a heavier fabric. I notice I twirl around a lot while wearing this skirt.

Today I'm going to start a new project - a free PGR colorwork sock pattern download from Interweave Knits. (I lost the URL but go to Interweave, then choose knits, then choose current issue, then look for the Bazaar Socks.) I chose the six colors randomly but am not sure I can live with them.

I will have the socks for you tomorrow. At the rate I'm going I'll only finish 4 thick pairs of socks this month but I hope I'll get more motivated.
I've shown a lot of photos of Santa Fe over the years and I've always felt bad that I haven't shown many photos of Albuquerque. Here is a photo of my favorite place in Albuquerque. It is Talin international supermarket which has everything exotic your little heart desires. I was watching an episode of Top Chef where they blindfolded the contestants and made them identify various strange ingredients like natto, longan, hibiscus extract, durian, and umeboshi plum. Every ingredient they used for the challenge can be found at Talin.



There is also a boba tea place and a little store that sells Hello Kitty merchandise. What did I buy at Talin?




I mainly went there for olive paste which DH uses for his excellent pasta puttanesca recipe. I also got the ingredients for green chile sauce and various other items.

And as long as I'm showing food photos, here is what we received in our CSA box this week. Those are yellow carrots which taste like a cross between carrots and parsnips. I love our CSA.

In the comments Anne asked if I had made anything with Bosco's fur. His fur was really slippery and hard to spin but I did make a little bell with just his fur. It is packed away with the Christmas ornaments. I did once blend his fur with my former Persian cat Pumpkin's fur to make a combo yarn. I just brushed their fur, carded it together randomly, and spun it on a spindle. I liked how it turned out and made myself a simple stockinette cat fur scarf. Pumpkin hated our other cats so this scarf was about as close as they ever got.



And here are the donors - a young photo of Bosco (sniff).




And the diva of all cats, Pumpkin. I made some fun fold-over cuffed mittens with just her fur.

I am working on the thick green ribbed socks for DH. Pair #2 will be the Ukrainian socks from Folk Socks. I haven't made anything from this book in a while but I remember how important this book was to me when it first came out. Until then I had no idea there were so many different toes and heels for socks and I immediately wanted to make every pair of socks in the book.

These cuties are featured on our Four Corners Bunnies rescue web site. These adorable baby bunnies (along with 2 others) are available for adoption in the Los Alamos area.

Thank you all for your kind words and quotes and poems. I greatly appreciate it and I printed them all out to include in a memory box I made. Peaches and Jack the cat seem fine and are enjoying the extra attention. This is the first time I've only had 2 pets in about 20 years. We do plan to adopt a dog in the next 6 months though if I can find one that likes large spoiled house rabbits .

I am surprised at all the extra time I have now that I'm not caring for a sick pet so I've decided to institute a May knitting challenge. I plan to see how many pairs of socks I can knit in one month. I did this before in September of 2004 and managed 11 pairs although I don't think I'll do that well. I started a thick pair for DH last night during the very exciting Red Sox game. I also plan to knit a lace edging for some pillowcases out of this bridal satin I found on sale.