A New Hampshire Knitter

So, a year ago September I did something I swore I would never do again. A swap. To be fair to this one, this one seemed pretty straight forward. You take a single piece of fabric, cut 50 6 inch squares, send them to the organizer with a self addressed stamped envelope, and you get back 50 6 inch squares of varying prints. Even though I had jumped in feet first, I was a little worried about coming up with my initial fabric. I didn't want to feel as though I had sent in a sub-par fabric, and I was trying to tighten up the budget. (I had just started using YNAB and using that software had shown me just how broke I was.) After about twenty minutes passed before I remembered I had 4 yards of a lovely red plaid buried in stash closet that was just not selling on eBay. Seemed like a perfect opportunity to get rid of it pass on the love. My initial plan was to use the blocks in a disappearing 9 patch- one of my favorite charm pack blocks. I had spent over an hour (before cof

About two weeks ago, a turkey breast jumped into my cart while at BJs. I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea; I've never made a turkey before. I don't even own a roasting pan. But I had this six pound turkey breast, and decided to make something of it, and cooked it in the Instant Pot.  (Seriously. I love that thing so much.) I decided to coat the bird using poultry seasoning, no real measurements were taken, just sprinkled the spices on and rubbed it in. I put it on high pressure for 35 minutes (using the rule of thumb of 5 minutes per pound plus 5 minutes. It took 15 minutes to come to pressure, then the 35 minutes at pressure. and then between 12 and 17 minutes at NPR. I believe it was closer to the 17 minute mark. But, all in all. 70 minutes to cook a bird, and I didn't have to watch it every five minutes.*   (For those of you without an Instant Pot, a Natural Pressure Release is when you let the device come down from it's high pre

Every year, I say to myself that I'm going to commit to the Tour de Fleece- a challenge hosted by Ravelry to coincide with the Tour de France that happens in July... every year? Wikipedia says it happens every year, so that's what we'll go with. Not unpredictably, however, within a day or two, I give up. Although, "give up" denotes a conscious decision to do so. Usually I forget that I'm doing said challenge. This year was not so different. I joined a challenge through a Ravelry group for a local yarn shop, and I actually kept to it for longer than usual- 10 days! Here's some pictures of the beauties I've spun in the meantime...  These two were my first attempt at plying. You really can't tell from the photos, but they were rather horrible. This is a single ply, from the same braid as the plying attempts. (It was the braid that would not quit.) These pinks are not as eye-searing as the photo would make it look. This is, I thin