Pottering About

I don't have anything pithy to share today; we have a short stretch of remote schooling, and my mind has turned to mush.  I also realized this weekend that I feel best when I'm doing stuff that is not computer- or phone-based, and so have tried to limit my time where I can.  (Yesterday was a complete disaster in that regard; turns out being off my phone and computer for more than 48 hours left me with a lot of loose ends that needed tying up).  Today has been more intermittent, so that's good.

I'm pottering with jewelry making, and made an orange bead necklace to match the earrings I showed earlier this month.  I've been wearing it with an orange jersey dress I thrifted last month.

The silver earrings below are a pair I bought last year on etsy (they are styled after Aethelflaed's earrings on The Last Kingdom) and I love them, but the original earring post was so thick that they hurt my ears.  I realized if I swapped the post out for an earwire, the earrings would be a lot more wearable.  It was a three-minute fix and I've worn them a bunch of times since then.

A while back I cleared out a bunch of jewelry I wasn't wearing any longer either because it was too heavy, not my style, or was broken, and I realized I can harvest them for parts for new pieces.  I have in mind to make some gifts as well. The owl charm (below) was a pair of earrings originally, and while I like the owls (it is our school mascot), they were too big for my face.  So I separated them from the earwires, added a jump ring and put one on a necklace chain.  I'm saving the other one for a possible teacher gift.  I made the earrings to coordinate.

On the Thanksgiving prep front, the turkey went into the crock pot last night and spent the night cooking.  The smell was disorienting in the night, but it looks pretty decent today.  I had ordered a breast and, much to my dismay, got "upgraded" to a full turkey for free.  The frozen turkey was bigger than the space in my freezer and I couldn't quite fit it in my 7 qt crock pot.  In a bit of a panic, I baked it frozen at a low temperature for two hours yesterday, covered with foil and sitting in a water bath, just to make it flexible enough to break the sternum and rib cage so that I could fit the thing into my crock pot.  It was a tight fit, but I made it!  

Today I roasted the sweet potatoes, and made one of the pies.  I need to take things in small bites, so I have a list of what I need to make each day, so hopefully on Thursday, I only have to reheat most of it.

We're nearly into the Nativity fast as well, so I'm also trying to have us eat down the non-fasting food in the freezer and fridge.  

 

Andrea Mowry came out with her Stripes pattern last week, and I immediately threw my knitting queue to the wind and dove into my stash to cast it on--I very rarely do this!  The picture above is from my attempts to figure out which colors to put where.  I think I have enough to make it, and in similar colors to her cropped version on the cover of the pattern (which I adore, by the way).  I was determined to make this a stash-buster sweater, so I am using light worsted superwash on a few stripes, but my tension is such that it works out okay.  I've just had to adjust my row count. The not-nice thing is having to swatch all the yarns for gauge, but at least three are the same yarn in different color ways, so that helps.  

I don't love short rows, but I found a little tutorial for picking up wraps that is better than anything else I've seen, so that helps.  I also figured out how to read on my kindle while knitting, so I've been enjoying Sarah J. Maas' Throne of Glass.  I just finished re-reading the Court of Roses and Thorns series (ahead of the next book's release in Feb) and was eager to stay with the author's style and genre.  I don't like Throne of Glass quite as much (and her writing has improved since that one), but it is a long series, so I can see sticking with it.

That's it for me today!  I'm off to knit a few more rows....