Friday update

I've just realised I haven't posted since Monday. Sorry to make you wait so long! When I started this blog, I was posting nearly every day - now, I find I'm spending less time on the computer, sometimes only using it in the evening rather than morning and evening.

I was "on the go" all day today, except for a small window of opportunity for half an hour before Taekwondo, when I picked up my knitting and did a few rows. We don't usually go to TKD on a Friday, but the September schedule has started and there are lots of new classes. Apart from our main classes, which are for red and black belts on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7.30, we now have lots of other choices to make. Do we go to an extra sparring class? A self defence class? A kickboxing class? The young man who's running the club these days is very motivated and an excellent teacher and is committed to four hours a night, five nights a week, at the dojang - in addition to his full-time day job.

I decided to freeze some of the tomatoes that we bought last weekend. I used 12 wide-mouth Mason jars, just washing them and pouring in the tomatoes that I had chopped up in the food processor. I did this last year and used them instead of canned and they tasted way better in recipes. We still have a pile of them left on the kitchen counter, but they are keeping well and we are doing our best to eat some at every meal!

I now have three trays of peaches in the cold store room. During the last week, I have been going down to the peach tree every other day and checking every single peach for a bit of "give". If it seems a little soft, I pick it. The first batch still looks good and I am hoping that they will store for long enough that I can enjoy eating some of them without actually having to live on them for a week. I don't want to freeze or can them - my freezer is full enough already.

Don't tell my kids but I have simplified my bread recipe down to the absolute basics. Tonight's pizza dough was just spelt flour, salt and yeast. I cut out the sugar, the kids haven't noticed, and the dough still rises, so that's great!


I finished the knitting part of my Brea Bag and found a boring black handbag at the thrift store for $2 which has a boring handle I can cut off and use for my Brea. If I find something better later on, I can always switch it. Really, I think I should have just continued knitting the gusset strip in the moss stitch until it was long enough to make a handle, as a knitted matching handle would be much nicer. I played with the kids' Sculpey today and made some buttons. Not sure which one I'll use, but one of them should work for my bag. (The thing with fangs and the stick-man-type character on the left belong to Ninja Boy, not me!)



And my latest project: a baby blanket. On Wednesday night, my Taekwondo instructor revealed that his girlfriend is expecting in January. Very exciting news....so what does a knitter do at the first sign of a new baby on the way? Yes, of course, I went to buy more Lion Brand Homespun the very next day in a lovely shade of blue (I don't know if the baby is a boy or girl, but the blue was the nicest colour). I have knitted about 6 inches of the blanket so far. The photo doesn't really show it well, but there are three big cables and a garter stitch border. I made up the pattern. Two strands of yarn, #15 needles (that's 10mm I think), and 2 stitches to the inch.


I think we're all caught up. Back soon!