FO: Guy Next Door Cowl

* Side

* Front

* Front 2

Pattern: Guy Next Door Cowl
Yarn: Ella Rae Classic in Colorway 33

Needles: US 8

It seems like it's been forever since I've had a FO! I know I certainly haven't been knitting as quickly as I used to, but I've been so busy lately. However, I did finish a little gift today for my Dad's birthday next week. The pattern is pretty easy, and yet not boring. I loved that I was able to whip it up in 3 days. It probably would only take 2 days if I had spent more time on it yesterday.

A happy Saturday

So I decided to make pot stickers this weekend. Hehe. At the rate I'm going, I think I'm going to aim for learning a new recipe every Saturday.

I'm so excited because I've never made pot stickers from scratch. When I was a kid, I helped my mother fold pot stickers from time to time but I never paid attention to how the filling was made. Looking back, I realized my parents really made practically everything as homemade as they could. For a time, they even made their own wrappers! :-O

Here they are freshly folded. I made 52 total!

But ended up gobbling down 6 for dinner.

The recipe is from Steamy Kitchen. I love her picture tutorial that shows you how to fold them too. My mods were added chopped onions, garlic, and pepper. I made them all with pork and omitted the shrimp. I just realized I'm now talking about food as if they're FO's.

On the knitting front, I'm still letting Henley Perfected sit. But in the meantime, Shalom Cardigan II is going really quickly and hopefully it will be done in another week.

Che Dau Trang

So recently I've been getting into food blogs. It kinda just came to me one day while I was checking out knitting blogs that there must be food blogs out there too. So I decided to start with Asian food blogs and found some really good ones. Next goal is to find some good American ones. If you know any, let me know.

I have a potluck at work tomorrow, and I decided to make something a bit non-traditional.

Behold, Che Dau Trang!


I made a test batch last night, and I'm so glad I did because I was able to make tonight's official batch much better. The first batch was still good, but it was bit thick for me.

Basically, Che Dau Trang is a Vietnamese dessert. It's a thick, sweet bean pudding. This is what it looks like if you were to buy it at a Vietnamese market.

When I had posted my name on the sign-up sheet with the dish name while also putting in parentheses "Vietnamese" dessert, one of my co-workers actually had the gall to approach me and ask if there will be blood and guts in my dish. I thought she was joking, but she actually looked pretty serious. I found that highly offensive. I'm sure that if I had put up "Zucchini Bread" or "Blueberry Cobbler" nobody would have questioned whether there would be chopped guts. Besides, what practical person would mix blood in a dessert? (Okay, maybe a vampire, but I can't think of anybody else.) I held my tongue, but secretly I really wanted to ask her for a blood sample to see how she would react. Grr. Ignorant people.

If you're interested in trying this, I got the recipe here. My mods were to add more water, more sugar, and less glutinous rice. :-)

FO: Fetching

Pattern: Fetching

Yarn: Chuckanut Bay Yarns 10 Ply

Amount: probably 100 yds or so

Needles: US 6

Mods: Did an extra cable repeat at the wrist, long-tail cast on, regular bind-off

I wanted to do a photoshoot with my gloved hand in my coat pocket like the model in the Knitty picture, but it's too hot here to model with a wool coat. Therefore, my left hand will suffice. ;-)

I have had this yarn for a while now. It was a souveneir from my bf when he went home to visit his parents. See this post to refresh about our experience winding it up. He was always sad I didn't make anything from it, and that it had been languishing in my closet for a year now. (Obviously, he doesn't know how stashes work.) So I decided to make Fetching and still have enough left over for a matching hat later.