a lovely time was had by all

david says “thank you everyone” for the many birthday greetings sent his way yesterday. i took most of the day off from work to cook our annual “david and beckie” birthday dinner, which our friends beckie an mark celebrate with us each year.

it was an altogether cold and dreary week around here, weather wise—we had just one sunny day on thursday—so i was looking forward to this start-of-the-weekend event. on thursday afternoon, i scoured the garden for the last of the summer vegetables—cold temperatures (40 degrees a couple of nights) have brought the garden life nearly to a halt, except for some greens, peppers, and cherry tomatoes. i had a bin of baby eggplant and a few summer squash from earlier in the week; i pulled a celeriac root and some scallions

cleaned everything up and stored it away for friday.
thursday evening i used a somewhat overgrown zucchini we happened to have on hand to bake a zucchini fudge cake.

mmmm. nothing like a chilly house filled with baking smells and a warm kitchen to escape into. heh. it was late when i got done baking, but worth it. i left off frosting it til morning and went upstairs to watch TV and knit.

i decided to go with a short-row heel for this sock because i want to keep the sleek look going and take the eye right past the heel. this type of heel fits david really well, actually, so i can use it interchangeably for his socks. i got the heel all done once and realized i worked it over the wrong number of stitches (once again, foiled by my own inattention), so i had to do it again. i really could have left it as is, but i wanted it to be right. so that’s all i accomplished that night. the partial foot you see there was done last night after dinner.

for friday’s dinner, i decided to try my hand at a thai yellow curry, something i hadn’t attempted before at home. i googled around and found this recipe, complete with photo story, for the curry paste. it sounded easy enough, providing we could find all the ingredients. a few of them were not available in our area, or available only in a not-very-fresh state, but still, the results smelled and tasted pretty close to what i’ve eaten in good thai restaurants.

i cut the miniature eggplants in half and roasted them

but i think i’d actually prefer this dish with raw eggplant next time; the roasting backfired a bit in this case because it made the flavor a little heavy, when i was aiming for lighter, fresher flavors.

i chopped everything else into shapes, to stir-fry a bit at a high temperature before adding the curry paste. i let that simmer for a bit

while i cooked some noodles and the greens as a side dish. everything goes so fast once you start cooking; it’s the prep work that takes the most time. in fact, the curry cooked a few minutes longer than was optimal, so the veggies lost some of their crunch. this is the one thing that’s so hard for me to gauge with asian cooking—i think it’ll take a lifetime to master the timing. i came close to getting the texture just right . . . but not quite.
no worries—we all enjoyed our dinner nonetheless.

after we ate, beckie and i got our knitting out while mark and david wandered off to look at saw motors and parts catalogs. we reconvened for cake and espresso once we had a break and, of course, presents

beckie got roger socks and pine cones socks; it was fun to be able to give her the socks she modeled so beautifully for the website. david is getting a playstation3 so he can keep up with the other men in the family and he’s choosing that for himself (something about this model vs that model . . . i’d be lost). we had a nice phone call from our little pal in las vegas, singing happy birthday—i just about swooned from a cuteness overload.

i worked some more on my sock projects after we cleaned up and retired to watch TV

i am getting pretty close to toe shaping on this first cabled sock—it won’t be long til it’s done.
i’m still not sure it’s going to fit david but i’ll tell you what—for a cabled fabric, it’s a lot more stretchy and flexible than i expected, probably due to the lacy insets inside the cables (which you haven’t seen much of because they are always contracted). soon we should be able to see modeling shots where it’s opened up a lot more . . .

somewhere in the last few days, i also got the left front of my green cardigan done and began working on the right front. this knit goes so quickly once i actually sit down to work on it—it reminds me of ondulé that way, only faster, even.

i started a new neckwarmer with the great northern cashmere/mink yarn, but just barely—still, you can see how fetching it’s going to be. the yarn is simply darling—doesn’t it look like it wants to kiss you?

the knitting isn’t as lame as it looks; i spent a couple of hours the other night finding just the right stitch to show off the yarn’s softness. i had just cast on for the bottom edge when david poked his head in to ask if i wanted to watch a movie. so i grabbed a sock with a pattern i have memorized and headed off.

let me just say how impressed i am with the yarn—of course it’s as soft as it sounds; it knits up with a gorgeous halo of yumminess surrounding every stitch. but what’s really impressive to me is the lack of shedding. even good-quality yarns spun from luxury fibers will shed some, but with this one, i see remarkably little of that. i wear a lot of black fleece pants, so i’d be aware of it.

i think i’ll work some more on this piece once i finish up here, actually—or maybe i’ll take a nap first; i could use one of those today . . .