First things first

I really enjoyed reading the entries for the cookbook contest! And I especially loved the recurring theme of “here’s an awful meal I made for someone I love…who ate it without complaint.” So sweet!

The winner (determined by writing names on pieces of paper and randomly choosing one) is Deb at Chappy’s Mom! Congratulations, Deb! And thanks to everyone who posted their stories!
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I feel I ought to share my own tale of culinary tragedy. Well, I’ve made many mediocre meals, but there are two true disasters that come to mind. The first was when I was in high school or so and was instructed to roast the (then-thawed) whole chicken my mom had pulled out of the freezer that morning. This was in my pre-vegetarian days, but even then I think I knew less about meat preparation than I do now. I seasoned the chicken, put it in the pan, and put it in the over…all without removing the bag of stuff (giblets? guts?) from the interior. (I didn’t even know it was in there, much less that it had to be removed.) Yeah, we did not end up eating chicken that evening…

The other disaster involves literally burning the teflon off a non-stick pan while trying to stir-fry something. I’ve actually done this twice. (And I’ve since learned that teflon does not like being covered with oil that is then heated to a very high temperature.)

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.

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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!

Via Craft, I recently rediscovered a pattern I’d first encountered last winter via my SP8 downstream pal’s blog. It’s for a double-sided star scarf that looks awfully fun to knit. I’m thinking about giving this a try with a different motif or maybe even a set of motifs.

And here’s another scarf pattern—this one a foulard—from Topstitchgirl. She writes her blog entries in both English and French, so here’s a fun chance to try knitting from a pattern in another language (with as-needed peeks at the other), if you’re interested.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I first saw this O RLY scarf. If you want to know what’s so funny, check this out. Yes, I wear my geek badge proudly!

Here’s a lovely pattern for a scarflet that fastens with buttons. Me, I’m more of a long-scarf person—something that be wrapped around your neck a couple of times—but I do think this is a nice design and could work very nicely (perhaps in a luxury yarn?) for something a bit more formal.

It took some thinking, but I finally found a good project for one of the skeins of yarn Sylvia gave me for Christmas: I made a hat for her. It’s more like a bonnet, actually (and that’s what we’ve been calling it), and it’s similar to one wore by the character Lyra in the recent film The Golden Compass.

I haven’t seen that movie yet (I’ll probably wait until the DVD is out for that one), but I’ve long loved Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra is a fabulous personality—so full of fire and determination and cleverness. Sometimes Sylvia reminds me of her a bit. And of Arya Stark. Especially in the willfulness department. (Has anyone else realized that two-year-olds are master tautologists? “I don’t want to do X because I don’t want to!”)

Sylvia wore her new hat Friday morning to our weekly playgroup meeting, and when I was asked where I found the pattern, I honestly couldn’t remember anything beyond “online somewhere.” (Isn’t that where we find pretty much everything these days?) But I’ve now tracked it down. The pattern is available at Froggie Meanie, at Marmalade, and on the Lion Brand website. All of those patterns are free, and they include both child and adult sizing. I am thinking about making one for myself, too. After all, I’ve got another skein of thick yarn that Sylvia gave me…and what else am I going to do with size 19 needles, anyway?

Winter is coming. (Of course I am rooting for the Starks. Aren’t we all?) What better way to prepare than by knitting some cold-weather gear?

Keep toes warm with these knitted slippers.

Keep babies warm with this knitted vest (inspired by Jared Flood’s Cobblestone Pullover).

Keep babies warm also with the adorable Peace Baby Sweater. The pattern is a free PDF download that the author asks you to pay for by making a contribution to Medecins sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders. I love this pattern, and I love DWB, so I’m including this on the list even though it’s not technically a freebie.

Keep baby legs warm with handknit baby legwarmers.

Keep bird-loving necks warm with the Bird Seed Scarf, knit in seed stitch, lightly felted, them embroidered with a whimsical bird outline (or other animal or object). Simple design, but very crisp and beautifully executed.

Keep scholarly necks warm with this knit pencil scarf. (Pair it with a school bus scarf–which is not, alas, free–and you’ll have a school-worthy set.)

Keep hands warm with the Lady Moss Mittens (which are thrummmed–toasty!).

Keep geeky heads warm with a Space Invaders hat–with earflaps! (And if Space Invaders isn’t your thing, use one of these Star Wars motifs instead!)

Keep your tea warm with the Three French Hens teapot cozy or a robin teapot cozy.

I just came across these knitted pirate socks–far too late for last month’s Talk Like a Pirate Day, obviously. But if I get started on them soon, maybe I’ll have them ready for next year…

It’s a beautiful design, with the pirate motif going around the leg part and the rest of the sock being pretty straightforward–not too “busy” looking. And I love that they’re knit in eminently affordable KnitPicks sock yarn. Hip hip hooray! (Via Craft)

Shortly after I started knitting, I saw some knitted “fruit hats”–you know, the ones that make babies’ heads look like strawberries or blueberries or whatever. I bought the pattern and realized that I didn’t know any babies. So I knit adult-sized hats as several gifts. (This was my first experiment with modifying patterns.) I knit one orange hat with green leaves and a green stem–I called it the Pumpkin Hat, and I wear it proudly every Halloween.

Apparently, some other knitters out there agree with me that pumpkin hats aren’t just for kids. Crazy Aunt Purl just created her own pattern for a knitted pumpkin hat–and a reversible one, at that. There’s another knitted pumpkin hat pattern at Crafty Crafty.

If you’re not keen on wearing pumpkins but still want them around, try knitting up some seasonal decor: felted pumpkins. The best part is that they’ll never rot.

If pumpkins really aren’t your thing but you want to keep warm while trick-or-treating, a knitted skull illusion scarf may be more up your alley.

Of course you need a bag to haul all that candy loot, right? This candy corn-shaped felted bag should do nicely!

I love how the Internet makes it possible for me to meet and communicate with people all over the world. I adore its usefulness as a research tool, such as when watching a movie and having a “Hey, it’s That Guy” moment, then opening tabs to Wikipedia and IMDB to find out exactly who he is before wondering drives me nuts.

But it’s when I come across oodles of free knitting-related patterns, advice, and reviews that I really feel like thanking Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

Need a way to corral your DPNs when they’re involved in a project–and a way to keep your knitting on those needles? Make some point protectors for ‘em. These consist of two pieces of felt (one for each end of the needles) connected by a piece of elastic to hold everything snugly together. If you want to crochet–then felt–a set, try these instructions.

Felting requires wool, however, which vegan knitters avoid. One just posted a fabulous tutorial for making DPN holders out of rubber pencil toppers! (As you can see, we non-meat-eaters have no problem stabbing holes in plastic ducks.) I just hope all the back-to-school shoppers don’t deplete the local supply of these things before I get to the store…

More hats! Over at Men Who Knit you’ll find a pattern for a cute little baby hat. It’s not earth-shatteringly original (as the author himself points out), but it’s a nice write up, and it uses sock yarn. In fact, it uses the same sock yarn that I’ve twice used to knit socks. The pair I’m working on now is barely underway, and I’m just not feeling excited about it. So maybe I’ll frog it and whip up some of these hats.

I’m a geek, and I knit. So you can imagine my job when I stumbled across Thomasina’s Guide to Geeky Knitting, a incredible compendium of links to science- and math-related knitting projects. Here you’ll find all sorts of gifts to knit for the geneticists (double-helix scarf), topologists (Klein-bottle hat), and paleontologists (dinosaurs), among others.

More geeky knitting: a Space Invaders Hat for babies!