Blogging about knitting (mostly), stamping, gardening,
beading, and cooking
Ok everyone, get back to your
knitting!
--Fred (or George) Weasley
friday, february 24, 2006
Pros and Cons: To Typepad or not to Typepad
I've been debating about switching my blog to Typepad. Wendy and I discussed it last week and I actually got the RSS issue dealt with since then, but my current blog is
so high maintenance that I'm still debating... any thoughts from those of you who use Typepad?
Pros:
Do not have to manually create comments through Haloscan, or create a new RSS feed item each time I post.
Easier to upload photos--no cropping or re-sizing in Photoshop.
No need to host photos elsewhere before adding them to blog.
Comments will be automatically mailed to me.
Archiving actually possible (and by topic, I believe).
Cons:
Cost: $50.00/year
Another new blog (the data of my last blog was lost and Mindspring wasn't willing to put the effort into figuring out
if it could be recovered).
I need to type quickly 'cause I want to finish watching the women's figure skating tonight. I
missed my cooking post yesterday, but I've decided that I'm just going to do the cooking posts when inspired to do so.
Most of my week has been spent focusing on the South Beach Diet. I'm on Day 5 and
I've survived although I have had many a chocolate craving. I haven't lost much weight, but I suspect it's because I'm
eating too much despite the fact that nothing that I'm eating is the carbs I'm supposed to avoid.
I've been buying a bunch of veggies including these from the Lucky Seafood asian market in Mira Mesa.
If you haven't been there (or the Pho restaurant next door) check it out. I thought I would try a few new things, and
luckily my co-worker Sam who is from Taiwan helped me figure out what some of the unusual items were. He suggested I
try Chinese broccolli (on the bottom) and I also picked up freshly made tofu (still warm!) and some baked tofu.
I made a couple of tasty items this week: a grilled salmon with a simple balsamic vinegar reduction
with some Limequat (yes, that's right) juice that at the La Mesa Farmer's Market that I went to with Wendy, this past Friday. I also made some Thai Grilled Beef with Green Beans (SB Diet recipe) that was super
easy flank steak mixed up with tamari, fish sauce, scallions and cilantro. Yum.
Speaking of food, we recently watched Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Cheese, gardening, bunnies and knitting together at last--it had to be great:
I'm just past the armholes on the back of the Drop Stitch Cardigan. Mostly done while laughing at outrageously ugly/80's prom dresses on the ice dancers. Yikes...
Well, it only took about a week and several interactions with tech support, but there is now a RSS feed for my site.
I still have to create a new entry for each feed which is a pain in the ass, but Earthlink doesn't support RSS so you have
no choice but to use an outside vendor (FeedCraft, if you're interested). Again, it's a free blog, sort of, so it will have to do. Click on the Bloglines button on the table to the right. And please tell me if it doesn't work!
I have been thinking a lot about food lately (more than usual that is ;). I have decided to go back on the South Beach Diet. At first my plan was to start Monday but I didn't plan well enough. So even though I had eggs for breakfast,
and I resisted eating the bagels my boss brought in, I remembered how much I love coffee in the
morning and had milk in the fridge at work that I didn't want to waste, so it was doomed to fail.
So the plan is to start Sunday. I have already gone through the South Beach Quick & Easy Cookbook and picked out recipes, wrote out a tentative menu and made a grocery list. Meanwhile, I need to find solutions
those things that will sabotage me:
Lunch time: not bringing something from home
Co-workers going out for lunch
Urge to eat bread
After dinner chocolate craving
Lack of time/energy to make a low-carb lunch
Meanwhile, this week, I tried a new recipe: Ma Po Tofu. A little ground beef, tofu, green onions
and black bean sauce (which I keep at home for stir-frys) meant I didn't have to go to the store. Not too bad.
And don't think it's all "fancy" food chez nous. We didn't feel like eating much one night so I threw a couple
of hot dogs in some split-pea soup. A gastronomic delight ; )
A friend of mine is having a birthday this weekend and I know she's coveted a hand knit scarf
for a while. I have a scarf stash which I occasionally go through and see if I can come up with some
cool combos. I think this one's turning out pretty cool. It's Skacel's Favola combined with Caron's Jewel Box in Emerald which I had left over from one of the first things I ever knit! This is why I really need to sell off some
of the stash...
There is blue in both yarns so they coordinate nicely and even though I started of in US 35 I switched
to 17s because these big needles are just a pain in $(*%.
So Mary-Kay was generous enough to have a bunch of of us spinny/knitty folks over to her house last week and I purposely didn't bring
my knitting (actually, I forgot). I did, however, bring this drop-spindle and bat that I bought a couple
years ago at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. At the time, I attempted it, but quickly became much to familiar with the reason it's called a drop-spindle.
So there it sat, waiting for someone to wake it up.
Wendy and Mary-Kay were kind enough to show me the basics, and this is what I had after a while (since I attempted this after I started drinking
beer, I'm really not sure how much time I actually spent on it...) Heidi and Jessica knit, and Hilari made fun of me (just kidding--but she did admit that the spinning looked like fun; it's true, I heard it!)
The blue on the spindle is the stuff from the festival and the bat on the left is what Mary-Kay gave me (thanks!)
and which I plan on spinning once I get some more experience. I also got to meet Kristine (the owner of Curious Creek Fibers), her fiance, and the Suzanne owner of Knitting in La Jolla. Very Cool.
Meanwhile this weekend, I did a bit of gardening. I planted some grapetomatos,
green pepper and green onion seeds. And I finally put these collard green
seedlings in the ground:
Just a quickie post with a pic of the yarn I'm going to use for my Sockapalooza socks. I've been swatching using
different pattterns to see what will look good with this yarn. I initially thought of using one of the patterns in Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles but I think I'll end up going with something out of Sensational Knitted Socks.
Not much cooking of interest this week. I made the Rosemary and Garlic Potatoes from 30-Minute Meals 2, despite the fact that I was reading my South Beach Diet book over the weekend and he was writing about how potatoes are one of the worse things you can eat. Well, they were
turning green so I had to use them :)
I was good however, and resisted both Pringles and pizza that was offered to me at the Whistlestop on Sunday. I've been debating over going back on South Beach for a while, but you really have to plan meals ahead and
I'm not up for it right now.
I've made good progress on the Drop Stitch Cardigan and even started on the back. Yesterday I realized that I had cast on too many stitches for the back.
I cast on 79 (for the 3rd size) instead of 71 (for the 2nd size). I'm sure this had nothing to do with the fact that
Luna had ripped a hole in that part of the magazine (to be fair, I think I just wasn't paying attention).
So I've been debating over what to do. I'm not going to rip and knit this over. So I've decided to add
a couple more decreases in the waist shaping where that pattern has no decreases. I've also decided
that when I start increasing above the waist I won't increase as many stitches. This may be a bad idea,
but again, I'm not ripping it. So I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens....
...I found the Log Cabin Socks (oh, and it's Groundhog Day.) I have a love hate relationship with
the progress. For a while I loved it--the pattern was just interesting enough to be fun but not so complicated that
I would keep screwing up or couldn't watch TV at the same time. Then I turned the heel and having it on a large circular
doing the magic loop thing was driving me nuts.
Luckily Wendy loaned my her DPNs which seems to be working better. I wonder if other folks who knit these in Rowan Cork
are getting hand cramps as well; the yarn just doesn't have a lot of give. Ok, back to the movie (yes, Groundhog Day).
Just a brief entry today. I have a to mention a recipe I made again this week and will make again and again: Rachael
Ray'sBalsamic Chicken Cutlet over Spinach Salad. The dressing is ridiculously good. Pon (DH) actually made something good last night. He mixed up
some chicken and eggplant & "mild" peppers (from the garden!) with some thai peanut sauce and put in basmati rice.
Good stuff.
The waitress at our local pub Johnny B's told us that the heat in peppers is affected by when it's picked. I did not know that, but those peppers
last night sure as hell didn't tast mild.
I was zoning out watching HSN this weekend and decided to get this Immersion Blender (or as we call it in Portugal "the magic wand") for a friend as a wedding present. If you've used one,
you probably love it. If you haven't, I think you're in for a treat. I've had a Braun one for years and it's perfect
for making soup. Just cook up the veggies and then blend everything right in the pan.
The Wolfgang Puck one also comes with a cup so you can use it for salsa and pesto and
smoothies without having to clean up the blender or food processor (I'm much less likely to cook something
if it requires using either. Actually, I don't even have a blender, so there you go ;) They actually used it to
make margaritas right in the pitcher on the show--which rocks (he he).
