Most Eggcelent

I have been seeing this on Pinterest for a while now and thought I would give it a go. I am still on Weight Watchers and a hard boiled egg is only 2 points +, so they make a nice snack food. But the thought of boiling them and then peeling them only to get a mess of egg was holding me back.

I took a dozen fresh eggs and grabbed a mini-muffin pan. The eggs sat nicely in the mini pan, so I went with it. 

Preheated the over set at 330° and then put the eggs in the over for 30 minutes. There is no water in the muffin tin - just the eggs.

 When the eggs came out I placed them into an bowl filled with ice water to stop the cooking. I left them in the bath for 10 minutes. I had to grab a thick washcloth to grab the eggs out of the pan so I didn't burn my fingers. The pot holder I had was too thick and bare hands = burned hands.

After the 10 minute ice bath I pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl to go in the fridge. According to the Incredible Egg website, you can keep a hard boiled egg in the refrigerator for up to a week safely.  Raw eggs keep longer than hard boiled eggs. (You can read about that HERE if you are interested.)

I had to try one right a way of course. The shell peeled very easily - taking almost none of the egg with it. I sliced it in half and the yolk was cooked perfectly all the way through. I sprinkled a little salt on it and gobbled it up. Delicious!

I am a convert!

Strawberry Goodness!

 

I am off from work today so I can take both my cat and my dog to the vet. I woke early and went out to my strawberry bed and weeded a ton and then pulled a bunch of Strawberries for snacking on today. There is something about eating strawberries while standing over the bed. So fresh and so juicy! Ended up with quite a haul. Num num num!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Several of the blogs I read recently posted about Google reader going away on July 1st and how they are switching to Bloglovin'. I decided to join the bandwagon! If you want to see a wonderful tutorial on Bloglovin', I recommend heading over to this post on "Sew Many Ways". It's a great tutorial with screen shots, and just in general a great blog to look at.

Afterthought Heel in Progress

It's WIP Wednesday and I am making progress on my 2nd sock. Today I picked up stitches along my waste yarn and then yanked out that waste yarn. It's as close to steeking as I have come and it's kind of thrilling!

I am still hoping to finish these by the 30th - which would have them completed in 1 month. Exciting!

WIP Wednesdays With Tami's Amis

Getting there is half the fun

We had a family picnic yesterday and I was able to spend about 5 hours knitting on my sock. A lot of progress this weekend! The white colored thread is where the heel will be going in. I will probably be doing that pretty soon so I can try it on and see how the fit is before I start the toe decrease. I am really excited to almost have these done!

WIP Wednesday - Rainbow! Rainbow!

WIP Wednesday with Tami Amis

I have decided to start participating in WIP Wednesday and FO Friday. Which means an update on my Rainbow! Rainbow! Socks.

Pattern: AfterThought Heel Socks by Laura Linneman  (Free pattern on Ravelry)
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici Sport Self Striping in colorway Southwest
Needle: Size 2 (2.75 mm) double points and circular needles in the same size for the heel and toe

 

I struggled with getting the ribbing on the needles this time for some reason. Then I remembered the trick of casting on, then knitting back and forth once on a single needle and THEN joining in the round. I pretty much flew after that and I will use the waste yarn to neaten up those two rows I knit flat when I am done with the socks.

I am not a matchy matchy girl, so I am fine with the stripes not matching. Although I would have preferred the ribbing ended at a color change rather than a little way into a color. Not a biggy, but I really liked that about the first sock.

I have really been enjoying this project. I have never made anything on needles this small and I am in awe of the stitches. Having knit a lot of bulky and super bulky items, I find this fabric so delicate and pretty. And I am loving the afterthought heels. Picking up the stitches is a little rough (those holes at the edges! Argh!) but the learning process had been really fun and I am already dreaming of my next socks.

Health and Happy things

My smurfy nail polish looks awesome next to the first Snapdragon to open in my garden this year

I weight in every Saturday and am still a member of Weight Watchers on-line. I still have work to do in the health and fitness arena, and I am just going to keep plugging away at it. I find myself bouncing between eating in a way that will help me loose weight and then giving up on other days and doing whatever I want. The yo-yo between being "good" and being "bad" is stressful, and I find the scale hasn't impressed me in months as a result.

Yesterday I found myself pretty crabby and feeling a little soul crushed after my weigh in. I had been "good" for two or three days before my weight in so I felt like I should have seen a drop in the scale - not a gain. Thinking back I realized I had been very NOT good the weekend before, drinking high calorie coffee's at Caribou and snacks (brownie and cookie) to go with them. Camping almost always means straying from my diet. And it often takes a couple days to reel myself in from a camping weekend. I wonder what the scale would have read if I hadn't worked harder the days leading up to it. Probably it would have been worse.

So I find myself spending time on the weekends reevaluating how I am eating and exercising, and this weekend has been no exception. I decided to do some pampering things to make myself happy, I puttered in my gardens and I have newly polished toes and fingers. I almost never polish my fingernails as my job wears nail polish off in minutes, but I just really wanted to gussy up my fingers and I went for it! It was fun and it makes me happy to see this vaguely smurfy nail polish on my fingers as I knit or type.

Sometimes little things like polishing your nails or playing with your dog can really make you feel better. Also, it's hard to snack with wet nails!

OH We are half way there.....

 

My first afterthought heel sock is off the needles and done! 

WOOT!

I am knitting this with a Knit Picks Felici Sport Self-Striping yarn on size 2 (2.75) needles. Cuff down and double points except for the heel and the toe which I knit magic loop. I think it's ♥!

 

The heel is knit almost exactly the same as the toe. It looks really weird when you are making it, but the fit is really nice actually. I still had the problem of holes where I picked up stitches, but I just wove ends into them. (You can only master so many things at a time, right?)

I am really happy with how my first sock turned out and am anxious to get cranking on sock #2. I tried casting on Magic Loop for sock number 2 already and found my gauge is much different with magic loop - so I will be sticking with double point needles again.

The yarn is really nice. Pity Knit Picks discontinued it, but I got a bunch on clearance super cheap, so I guess it's a win! 

Camping trip

We finally got out on a camping trip this past weekend. We went back to Myre -  Big Island State Park in Southern Minnesota. The photo above I snapped while we were walking the paved trail through the woods into the prairie area.

The park is really nice and the campsite was great, (we were in site 89) but I pulled soooooo many ticks off my dog Emma and several off myself and my hubby had a couple too. Three days later and I am still itching and checking to make sure that the slight wiggle feeling I had was a hair and not a tick. Ish. Ticks are gross.

We ended up leaving a day early as the rains came back and it was already so wet and muddy to tromp around in that we decided to just head home instead of dealing with it. It was a nice 24 hour respite though and I am happy to have gotten some hiking and campfire time.

Sock Progress

Knit for hours last night and made some progress on my sock. I am still on the first sock and researching like mad as I knit. I am thinking I will want to place the heel before I get too much further so I can try it on and get the toe just right. Would really like these socks to fit after the hours I have put into them already. ☺

Stay tuned!

Sock ♥

I guess I cannot kid myself anymore. I have become just a little bit bonkers for Sock Knitting. I knew it was just a matter of time before it happened. About two years ago I found myself going to the sock yarn display before any other section of the store. Flirting if you will. Balls started to find there way home with me. No big deal. You can knit sock yarn into things that are not socks. But soon I found myself spending hours on Ravelry looking at sock patterns. Flirty little half-assed attempts at slipper socks on bulky yarn started happening. And then finally, I cast on a pair of beginner socks.

My first attempt left a sinister taste in my mouth and I set them down for over a month after turning my first heel. Then something caused me to finish the first sock and plow through the second. 24 hours later I was casting on these socks. These are the AfterThought Heel Socks by Laura Linneman.  You pretty much knit a tube with some waste yarn in the heel position as a place holder. Then after you finish the sock you go back and pick up stitches on either side of the waste yarn, and add the heel. This makes so much sense to me as it's awfully close to how you make a mitten. 

So I have been working like a crazed squirrel on these socks. Last night I placed my heel  waste yarn and figured out how much further I needed to knit before decreasing for the toe. Knit knit knit!

 

For more details on this project go to my Ravelry project page. I need to go knit!