In which knitting, one-eyed frogs and banana pudding happen in the same week...

Yep you read it right. Knitting, one-eyed frogs, and banana pudding.

First the knitting. The Andes Mint sweater is getting there. I finished the body ribbing and have started the first sleeve. The sweater looks decidedly like arse on me, but it will be warm and as a friend said the other day, I can always wear it while doing yard work. (You'll have to wait to the end of this entry to see the pic though.)

After a big rain this week, I spied what we later learned to be not only an American Bullfrog but a one-eyed bullfrog. We thought the suburbs of Oklahoma City weren't the best place for him to be when we knew of a pond that he would just love:



Sure enough, he seemed to jump right into his new habitat (OH I kill myself...jump right in)!



See the absence of one eye on the right? Wild, huh? We named him Cyclops. We sang Born Free (okay, I thought it but didn't sing it), and we thought how happy would be.

Then I went inside and cooked one of our family recipes, Grandmother Hall's Banana Pudding:



Don't tell anyone in the family, but it's probably a recipe off the side of a box somewhere, but my aunt Sue got Grandmother's recipe by following her around the kitchen and measuring as she cooked. NOW, being a sucker for tradition and history, one of the fun parts for me is that I make her banana pudding using the exact same pans she used. They are around 50-60 years old. Word on the family tree is that Grandaddy bought them from a door-to-door salesman in Odessa, TX for what was a small fortune on their teacher salaries.



Here's Grandmother's double-boiler with my double batch of banana pudding thickening away. Note the butter melting away into rich sugary goodness:



Here's the finished product ready to go in the fridge (half uncovered so the Nilla Wafers don't get soggy).



And here's one naked boy (who just finished swimming in the pond) in deep negotiations with his papa hoping he'll share some warm banana pudding with him:



The cute naked boy won.

See I'll take a million pictures and do most anything to avoid facing 18 more inches of ribbing.

Hello Victoria. Remember me?

I got reacquainted with my old friend over the weekend.






This is what I did Friday evening with some of Gwen-the-Enabler's beautiful roving and a glass of wine. Despite what the picture shows, I DID spin some fine yarn, but it wasn't all fine. In fact, I am decidedly out of practice. I put her away with promises that we would get together again very very soon.

Gwen is on the road to distant knitterly and fiber-enhanced lands. Travel safely dear friend and fondle some wool for me!

I worked on the Cozy V-Neck Pullover and reasonably close to finishing the body. Remember that I'm using clearance Berocco Ultra Alpaca on this project, which shall henceforth be nicknamed my Andes Mint sweater.

See what I mean? Looks like an Andes Mint -- or mint chocolate chip ice cream.

It's a fundamentally busy piece for a sweater that looks best in one solid color. But we must remember, clearance yarn + lots of it = sweater. Must destash. Must destash.

The pattern is from Stehanie Japel's book Fitted Knits and this is the second pattern I've knit from it (the first being the doomed Bluebell Boatneck that was accidentally felted). I will next make her dropped-stitch lace tunic from the book in some lovely jewel-toned blue cotton stash. That is my reward for pushing through 30 in. of ribbing on the Andes Mint sweater. ;-)

Off to K2 P2...

Summer so far...

School's out. We've had a HUGE garage sale. We've had a lemonade stand. We've been swimming. We've been biking (Boomer Sooner!).



After biking, there was snack -- complete with "bwain fweeze" by Seth.



There have been knitted socks.



Miss Bab's Midnight colorway.



Miss Bab's Terracotta Tile colorway.

And two other pair on the needles -- one in Jitterbug and the other in Regia National.

The biggest knitting news is that my Ultra Alpaca copulated today. Maybe the early summer heat is melting my brain, but I found myself thinking less of color blocks and more of mint chocolate chip. THEN I swatched and got this:



I originally thought I'd hold two of the colors together and swatch for an Adult Surprise Jacket, but when I swatched, I realized that the colors work best in stockinette. So I'm using the green and chocolate brown and making Stephanie Japel's Cozy V-Neck Pullover. I'll save the taupe for another day.

In between it all is work, cooking, cleaning, knitting, and reading (just finished this, and going back to this.)

And at the end of the day, we peek into our children's rooms, and if we're lucky, we get a glimpse of this.