First things first

The Thrifty Knitter (and author of Naughty Needles has posted a free pattern for her Spring Forward Fall Back Raglan, perfect for the warm/cool days of spring and autumn.

Do you find yourself saving the “disposable” wooden chopsticks you get a restaurants, not wanting to add them to the local landfill but not sure what else to do with them? Try making your own knitting needles! (Tutorial here.)

The Worsted Witch points us toward a tutorial from Lion Brand Yarn on using edible items to dye yarn. I’ve heard before of using turmeric and onion skins and other things for this purpose, but it’s nice to have the information–with recipes!–in one place.

St. John Ambulance in London (UK) is asking knitters to help with its fundraising by knitting 5,000 (yes, five thousand) tea cozies (which will be sold throughout the UK) by the end of November. There’s a funky free pattern here, and knitters are invited to create their own patterns, too. (Via Crafty Crafty.)

Looking to participate in a knitting competition? Round two of the Walking Stick Cosy Competition is underway; submissions are due 1 May 2008.

Why throw down big bucks for a row counter bracelet when you can make your own?

Dogwood buds do indeed look like E.T. heads (and chickpeas). In just a few weeks the ghost trees in my neighborhood will be making their (fleeting) appearance.

Whenever the seasons turn, I love seeing other people’s blog posts—and photos—about these changes. Back in February a guy in Portland was talking about forsythia blooms, last month someone in South Carolina showed off the daffodils in her yard, and right now I’m telling you all about my dogwoods.

—————

Don’t forget to enter my cookbook contest. (Please! I need to find a good home for these books!)

Real-life/local friends are eligible to enter. And though the thought of rigging the draw so I don’t have to give any money to the USPS is tempting, rest assured that local friends have no more chance to win than far-off ones.

And if your own shelves are groaning under the weight of too many cookbooks and you don’t want to enter the contest, that’s fine. But please do feel free to share your tales of cooking woes and triumphs!

I have a lot of cookbooks. A lot.

With the exception of the top shelf (which is glass and can’t bear much weight), this bookcase contains only cookbooks. An identical bookcase on the opposite side of the piano contains the overflow (a few more books, back issues of Cooks Illustrated and Vegetarian Times, file boxes of printouts and photocopies), but the bulk of my cooking library is here.

For a long time I worked hard to increase my cookbook collection. But last spring, when we remodeled our living room, I resolved to have no more cookbooks than those that would fit comfortably in the bookcase. No more stacking them higgledy-piggledy, leaving towers of books in the corners of the room because the bookcase was full.

So I went through my collection as honestly as I could. Haven’t opened it in years? Gone. No chance I’ll be using it in the near future? Gone. The result: a nice stack of cookbooks that need a new home.

Here are the vegetarian cookbooks:

• Vegetarian and Vegetable Cooking, by Christine Ingram
• Indian Vegetarian Cookbook, Pat Chapman
• The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine, by Rose Elliot
• The Shoshoni Cookbook, by Anne Saks and Faith Stone
• Natural Foods Cookbook, by Mary Estella

And here are the nonvegetarian cookbooks

• Martha Stewart’s Healthy Quick Cook, by Martha Stewart
• The de’Medici Kitchen, by Lorenza de’Medici
• Pizza Art, by Karin Neidermeier
• Fresh Start, by Julee Rosso (one half of the Silver Palate and New Basics duo)

These are all great cookbooks, and they’re all in like-new condition. But they overlap with many of the ones already on my shelves. (For example, I have a gazillion books on Indian vegetarian cuisine. Well, maybe not quite that many. Let’s call it a half-gazillion.) And because these are the ones I consult very rarely (if ever), they obviously need to find a new home.

If you’re interested in getting a box full o’ cooking inspiration in the mail*, leave a comment to this post and tell me about your greatest culinary triumph—or your most horrific culinary disaster. (If you’d rather post your tale in your own blog, that’s fine; either include a link there to this post or put a comment here telling me to go read it there.) Each story is an entry, so if you have a triumph story and a disaster story, you get two entries!

I’ll let this marinate for a week. Next Wednesday evening (April 9), I’ll randomly select from the entries one person to get this mini-library of gastronomic goodness!

*I regret to add that, because of exhorbitant postage rates (ah, international media mail, how I miss thee!), this contest is open only to people in the USA. There are a lot of books, and the box will be heavy!

I’ve always liked the Hobbit custom of giving away gifts on one’s own birthday. It seems a nice way to thank people in one’s life.

My own birthday is coming up in early May, so I figured I’d do a birthday giveaway of my own. More than one, actually. April will be the Month I Give Away a Lot of Stuff. It’s my way of saying thanks to those of you out there who wander over here from time to time.

So keep a lookout for some contests here! In fact, I think I see one on the horizon…

Today’s mail brought a special treat: the prize I’d won by guessing that Blindpurls was moving her blog to Wordpress! She sent two skeins of Merino 5 from Crystal Palace Yarns and a copy of Crazy Aunt Purl’s book (which looks like it will be lots of fun to read!).

A day when something that’s not a bill or an advertisement arrives in the mail = a good day.

A day when yarn arrives in the mail = a stellar day. Heh.

Thanks so much!

Way back in the fall, I told you all about KnitMap, a new website with user-generated content (including reviews) of local yarn shops throughout the country. It’s a terrific site, and I encourage all of you to plug in info about your own favorite (and even not-so-favorite) yarn shops.

KnitMap recently ran a contest to encourage users to submit “what I’d like to see at KnitMap” suggestions, and I was one of the two winners. Golly gee! Stacy at KnitMap contacted me for my address last week, and my prize arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon (that was quick!): a skein of Socks That Rock in the algae colorway. I’ve heard about this stuff (usually in reverential tones) but have never seen it in person. Now that I have a skein of it for my very own, I feel like I’ve joined an exclusive club. I wonder if there’s a secret handshake?

I really love the colors in this yarn. I can hardly wait to start some socks with it!

Twelve people entered my blog-birthday contest, which asked entrants to name the three things they’d take with them to a desert island (and explain why).

In spite of some similarities (many said they’d bring an Internet-connected computer–who needs to bring a boat to use to get off the island when you’ve got e-mail and blogs to keep up with, right?), there was a lot of variety in the responses. Food items such as coffee and good wine made it to the list, as did spouses, children, and pets. Some people thought in terms of basic survival (Leatherman tool, anyone?), and the knitters all put yarn on their lists (though one declared that he wouldn’t need to bring needles because he’d make his own from twigs–talk about resourceful!).

I posted my own answers, too, and briefly considered making those items the prize package for this contest. But a solar-powered computer was way out of my budget, and tastes in yarn vary wildly (and not all entrants are yarnophiles). And Chuck Norris said he was too busy.

So I opted for stuff that I think would be nice to have on a desert island but didn’t necessarily make my list. (Come on, it’s hard to top a computer, yarn, and Chuck Norris, you know?)

Reading material: The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono. (And I’m delighted that the end of this contest coincides with Buy a Friend a Book Week. Hooray!)

Sustenance: Cherry Moon Green Tea (mildly caffeinated, so you can be alert when the rescuers arrive!), and chocolate from Iceland’s Nói Siríus’

Skin care: Pure shea butter soap from the Out of Africa project (the soap is handmade by women’s cooperatives in Benin, West Africa, and a portion of the price helps fund children’s education in Benin), and all-natural lip balm (with “NO FAKE CRAP” on the label–love it!)

Optimism: An affirmation ball (because when you’re marooned on a desert island, more than ever you need to be told nice things like “You smell nice” and “You rock!”)

It took some coaxing, but I managed to get Sylvia to draw a name from the hat, er, mixing bowl. The winner is Jennu!

Thanks, everyone, for playing! I really had a fun time running this contest and seeing what sorts of things people came up with. I can definitely see another contest in my future. Soon. Stay tuned.

I figured that, in all fairness, I ought to answer the question I’m asking the rest of you to answer.

I’ve given this a lot of thought. I’ve opted not to bring any family members (human or feline) with me. They probably wouldn’t enjoy it there, and I figure someone needs to be coordinating rescue efforts to find me. (Here’s hoping it’s the humans and not the cats who are in charge of this…)

So here’s my list:

1. A solar-powered computer (maybe something like this) connected to the Internet via satellite broadband. This will provide a ton of information, music, video, and communication to keep my brain from turning to mush. Plus when I finally do get rescued, I’ll already be current on who’s president and what wars he or she has started in far-off oil-rich regions since taking office.
2. As much yarn as possible. And maybe spinning equipment, so I can turn coconut fibers and stuff into more yarn when my original stash is exhausted. Assuming I can teach myself how to spin, of course.
3. Chuck Norris. No, not for any prurient reason. The way I see it, anyone this tough should have no trouble figuring out how to survive on a desert island.

If you’d like to join in the fun, go here to read the details of this contest. Be sure to put your comments after that post (not this one) so I can find them. The winner will be chosen at the end of this month!

Today’s Booking through Thursday:

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

(Funny that this turns up on Booking through Thursday just days after I posted about my blog-birthday contest, which has a similar “what would you pick when you can choose only a few things?” theme.)

For comfort reading, I would probably turn to The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy, which I’ve read a gazillion times. It’s a black-and-white world with no moral ambiguity. The good guys get to be heroes, and the bad guys get their just desserts. It’s a feel-good, happy ending. Well, until you get to the part where Frodo is miserable and still in pain years after the ring is destroyed. Maybe I’d just stop with the scourging of the Shire.

This reading would, of course, be accompanied by my favorite nonliterary comfort food: instant macaroni-and-cheese (yes, with the packet of cheese powder)–eaten straight out of the pot. (Because I know I’m going to eat all of it anyway, so why dirty up another dish that needs to be cleaned, right?)

Hard to believe but true: today marks the second birthday of this blog. Wow.

When I started this blog two years ago, it was a place for notes and photos of my knitting projects. For a long time, that’s pretty much all I wrote about. But gradually, the scope of this blog expanded, and I found myself talking about religion, electricity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, food, and even the Hoff. And knitting, too.

It’s amazing how blogs facilitate a certain type of communication. Through the blogosphere, I’ve encountered lots of people I never would have met otherwise, and some of them have even become friends. I’ve gotten to know some real-life friends better (both through their comments here and through their own blogs), and I’ve renewed contact with people I haven’t seen in years who happened to stumble upon this blog.

In the last two years, I’ve switched from Blogger to Wordpress (and never looked back!), changed the name of this blog, written lots of posts (this one is #300, in fact!), and even gotten my own domain for this blog. A celebration of sorts seems in order, both to say “Happy birthday!” to this blog and to thank everyone who’s stopped by and joined in the conversation here.

A contest!

I thought about asking people to write about why they blog or why they read blogs, but that’s already been done before in many other places. Besides, everyone generally come up with the same answers to that question.

My most recent food post, with its mention of one particular cookbook as being desert-island-worthy, inspired the question I do want to ask all of you: What three things would you take to a desert island with you, and why?

If you have a blog, post your answer there (with a link here) and let me know in the comments here that you’ve done so. (Between the comments and trackbacks, I’ll be able to find your response.) If you don’t have a blog, just post your answer in the comments here. In either case, make sure I have your e-mail address.

Participants’ names will be written on pieces of paper (if your answer especially strikes my fancy, you’ll get your name on two pieces of paper–whoo!), and on the last day of this month my two-year-old daughter will pick one piece of paper out of a hat (or a bag or a box or a bucket or whatever I can find that day).

The winner will get eternal glory (yes, that’s right, eternal–remember, everything that appears on the Internet never completely disappears!) as well as a box of goodies via good ol’ snail mail. I won’t specify the contents in advance, since they’ll depend a bit on who the winner is (e.g., a knitter will get some knitterly goodness, whereas a non-knitter, um, won’t), but they’ll definitely include stuff that would be pretty nice to have on a desert island.

Anyone can chime in on this topic–knitters, non-knitters, old friends, new friends, people who’ve stumbled across this blog for the first time. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!