General Yammering. Not Much Knitting.

Moved house this past weekend; lots of knitting and blogging were accomplished thought about. Moving actually not finished; the movers are coming back this coming weekend to bring the furniture that was in storage to the new digs. There is a Christmas tree outside; my family is going to decorate it on Christmas Eve. I'm making Beef Wellington for dinner, with garlic mashed potatoes and glazed carrots. The Beef Wellington is my brother's special request--one that I usually ignore, since it's so labor-intensive, but now I have this wonderful 48" Wolf range to cook on, so I figured I had better make use of it. If you are a serious cook, you will love a Wolf range. It really is that much better.

• I spent the past few nights doing this: Behold, the dutch oven full of chicken corn chowder with andouille sausage. Are you imagining it? Good. Now it's at a simmer. I turn the knob to high and in less than 2 seconds, it's at a full boil. I turn the knob down to low, and it stops simmering. Boil. Simmer. Stop. Boil. Simmer. Stop. Repeat until the novelty wears off, or someone yells that at this rate, we're never going to eat dinner.
  
• I roasted a pork loin, and used the integrated probe. It's genius, albeit a little fiddly to plug in when you're trying to lift the probe flap thing with an oven mitt.
  
• It has a setting for proofing dough. It will keep the oven at 80°F. No more worrying about finding the right temperature spot in the house to put your bowl of dough.
  
• After flipping through the instruction manual, I'm pretty sure that there isn't much this thing can't do.
  

Anyway, I was thinking about finishing up the sweater I was knitting for my mom (as a non-specific present) for a Christmas present. It's the "Belled-Sleeved Cardigan" I have on my Ravelry projects page. The trouble now is I have to figure out where I left off. I think it was on the armhole decreases on one of the front sections. What this really means is: An adventure awaits! That, and I will learn to mark on the pattern where I stop working the next time I'm planning on putting a project down.

I'm also trying to finish the second of the pair of "Spawn of Thrummed Mittens" for mom for an Xmas gift. I'm almost to the part where I hold stitches for the thumb. Should be no problem to finish these up.

Just finished up some online Christmas shopping for dad. I bought an assortment of things from Gardener's supply, including some composting accessories, a plastic mulch mat for increasing tomato yield, and a "Summer of Salads" lettuce seed mix.

My spinning buddy Anne (hi Anne!) came up with the brilliant idea to have a yarn/roving crawl in the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's like a bar crawl, but infinitely better, because being drunk on fiber involves far more giddiness and far less hangover than the alcoholic variety--for about the same economic impact, with lasting satisfaction. We're still working out the details, but I will be sure to post pictures of the adventure.