Recipes - cooking and knitting

Mr Knits and I have been so busy this past holiday season. As he would say, "We've had more company than you can shake a stick at!" But, it was fun! His son Dan and his wife, Kiwi moved back to Taiwan on Thursday, so we had a lot of visiting to do while they stayed at our house for a week. What fun we had! We taught Kiwi how to play euchre (she is a card shark, I'll have you know) and she taught me how to cook some Taiwanese dishes. My favourite, phonetically spelled "Fanstia Chow Dan" is so easy to make, but oh so tasty. Chop up a tomato, and pan fry it in a bit of butter until it's limp, whisk together some eggs (2 per person) and pour it over the tomato. Cook the egg until it is almost done, then drizzle some soy sauce and Thai chili sauce over the egg/tomato mixture, scramble slightly, and finish cooking - about another minute. Done! Fabuous! Must make some - now!

I did a bit of knitting while they were here, and I'll share this quick neckwarmer recipe pattern with you.

It's made from one skein of Teva Durham's River - a lovely blend of 90% cotton and 10% cashmere. the colours I have available are:

The neckwarmer is a very soft and stretchy bit of fabric, knit in a very uncomplicated pattern stitch which Dan said looks like chainmaille, so here goes...

With size 8 mm needles, loosely cast on 28 stitches, and knit one row. Now, begin the pattern stitch which is simply *knit 1, knit 1 in the row below. Repeat this row until you have about 3 feet of yarn left, and bind off. Sew the cast on edge to the bind of edge, weave in the two ends, and you're done.

close up of the stitch pattern

If you want to get fancy, you can provisionally cast on the 28 stitches, and then graft the two ends together. I choose not to be fancy, and you can hardly tell where the seam is. You can also use this as a super soft and warm headband if your ears are too cold. It looks great all sparkled up with a rhinestone brooch too. The best part? Right now, the yarn is on sale for only $5.49 per ball! Three balls would make a great inifinity loop scarf. You know, it's never to early to get started knitting for next Christmas. It's only 349 days away!

finished neckwarmer