Can I breathe now?

I've been busy. Busy knitting, busy working, busy at home. Today's my day off. I'll be working today. I'll be knitting today. I have a pattern for the store to print up today and a couple more to work on. This is a good thing. The brain's still in gear. I'm knitting more hats. The ones I'm knitting now are patterns I've already knit before, but I have a reason to knit hats. That's for another day. Let's just say that Strings 'n Things Designs now has a partner and leave it at that.

One of the hats I've knit again is the Men's Toque á la Strellson. I was chatting with my sister about that particular hat and she commented that it looked kind of long and was it supposed to be folded up? So I re-knit it and took a pic of it along with the original ad (which I tore out of the magazine it was in). To show you how it is intended to be worn, might I present (again) the Strellson Toque...

Again, it's knitted out of Sirdar's Country Style DK. One 100 gram ball will easily do two of these hats, with almost enough to make a third hat. In other words, two balls will easily make 5 hats. Do I really want to make five of these?

In other knitting, like I said, I'm working on hats at the moment so pretty much everything else is on hold at the moment. I really need to get back to my Donegal Tweed cardigan. I could use it right about now. The weather, gorgeous as it is, definitely has an autumnal twinge to it and I'm finding it more and more difficult to stay warm. It's almost time to pile on the shawls, I'm thinking.

I HAVE been doing other things, too. Over the past week, I've made, and frozen, a couple batches of apple sauce, 9 jars of oriental style plum sauce, 4 jars of plum marmalade (jam), frozen 4 quart bags of pearl onions (we can't find them in the freezer section here and we like to put them in our stews and chicken pot pies). I've been quite domestic over the last little while. Both John and I like to process fresh foods for consumption later in the year, but we don't always have the time. This year, we've done more than we have in the last few years and it really hasn't been a lot. In addition to what I've already mentioned, we have a few bags of freshly scraped corn in the freezer, too. Oh, and a couple of bags of rhubarb. I might turn that into jam later this winter.

I'd still like to make a few jars of salsa (I have this wicked recipe and the field tomatoes are still around and delicious), just to have them around for those nights we don't want to cook. Nachos are always good, yanno? (Just not too often!) Speaking of recipes, I bought a book a couple of years ago that I really love. It's title is "Small Batch Preserving". Offhand, I don't remember the names of the authors, but it's an excellent book. The recipes make, on average, 4-5 pints per recipe. That's just perfect for the two of us. The salsa recipe I referred to is in that book as is the plum sauce I made. I've made quite a few things out of that book already and all of it has been good.

That reminds me... I really should add some recipes to my recipe page, shouldn't I? I've been neglecting that page. Note to self: add that to the to-do list... somewhere near the bottom for now.

Enough rambling for now. John's at work (his eye is SO much better now, but he did feel like he's been straining a bit the other day), the roomies will be leaving before long, and I'll have time for ME! Now, where did I leave my glasses and my knitting last night?