The Casper Pillow

When I saw this decorative pillow pattern on ravelry.com several months back, I immediately added it to my queue of future projects. Not just because it bears an obvious resemblance to my kitty, but because I thought that it would be an easy intro to Intarsia knitting.

Hard Work Never Killed Anyone...

... but it sure makes me sneeze! I'm on a mini cleaning/ organizing kick today. I guess I felt that Spring Cleaning was just too far off in the future! Ever since returning from my trip to India, I've been meaning to do a few things around the house, which I'm now finally getting around to. Things like putting the last several months' worth of magazines in piles to give to the library for whoever wants to take them home; storing away my summer dresses to make more room in the closet and pulling out my winter sweaters; reorganizing my desk/ craft table. I don't mind this kind of work; actually it's very satisfying to get these things done. I do, however, think I must be allergic to it. Whenever I spend prolonged hours toiling away, I get a runny nose and itchy skin, and have to take an antihistamine. Blah!

On a related note, today I was reading my new January issue of Real Simple magazine, and I found two excellent lists I wanted to share. The first is the Ultimate To-Do List, a great place to organize your plans, big and small. With the New Year quickly approaching, many people seem to be up for this sort of thing. The only New Year's Resolution I've made for the past several years is to get regular haircuts... which I've finally succeeded in doing. Check. However, I have just rescheduled my next haircut for the second time. It was originally in November. Now it's in January. I'm growing out my bangs though, so I have a valid excuse.

The second list worth printing is the Weekly Meal Plan and Shopping List, which is organized in a very handy grid layout. Down the first vertical column you write down what you'll be making on any given day of the week, and in the horizontal boxes to the right of it, what grocery items are needed for said dish, along with any sundries.

Enjoy!

Quiche me, baby!

Sometimes I like to share recipes that were real winners. The Spinach, Feta, and Tomato Quiche from Vegetarian Times is just such a recipe! It only has 218 calories per slice, yet every bite is just amazing! When I made it, I used a pre-made pie crust instead of the phyllo dough. I also used fresh rather than frozen spinach, which I wilted in a pan on the stove. Squeeze a little lemon juice on it when you do... somehow lemon juice just adds that little je ne sais quois. Enjoy!

photo from Vegetarian Times

Merry Christmas, Kitty!

The tree wasn't up for 5 minutes before Casper planted himself underneath. Cute!

A New Technique

I like to keep expanding my repertoire of knitting techniques, so now I'm tackling Intarsia knitting. This is a colorwork technique that allows for blocks of color that don't have strands of yarn carried across the back. It's going pretty well so far, but since you need a separate ball of yarn for each section of color in a particular row, they tend to get kind of tangled and twisted, and it gets a little chaotic. For instance, in this cat pillow I'm making, I need a pink ball of yarn, an ivory one, and a second pink one . This looked like an easy pattern to learn from, because it is pretty much just a big circle of ivory in the middle.