Knitter in the Kitchen

I had a great time with my friends on the Stitch ‘n Ride train from Sacramento to Santa Clara. This was my first time going to Stitches, and I think a big part of the fun was chatting and knitting together during the trip. I didn’t take any photos at Stitches, so all I have to show are my purchases.

My Ravelry t-shirt and sticker!

Claudia Hand Painted Fingering in Oops

Claudia Hand Painted Fingering in Cabin Fever

Koigu KPPPM in P430

Claudia Hand Painted Fingering 55 (55% silk and 45% merino!) in Just Plum

Malabrigo Silky Merino in Stonechat

All the yarn together

As you can see, I am a huge fan of Claudia Hand Painted Yarns. I usually purchase it online but sometimes the colors don’t turn out to be what I anticipated so it was wonderful to see so many colorways in person! I definitely had to exercise some restraint with my purchases…otherwise you would see even more sock yarn here.

In knitting news — I finished the Chevron Scarf and I am 99% done with the Central Park Hoodie, so I should have a couple of FO posts soon!

One thing I learned while baking Hazelnut Nutella Sandwich Cookies is that I could definitely use some practice at rolling out dough evenly. After refrigerating it for two hours as directed, it was so hard that I couldn’t roll it out at all. So I let it rest at room temp for a few minutes until it was more malleable. But by the time I got it rolled out and cut, the dough was much too soft and the cookies wouldn’t hold their shape when I transferred them to the baking sheet! On my third attempt, I finally had a lightbulb moment: roll out the dough to the desired thickness, refrigerate for 10 minutes, then cut and bake. This was the only way I could roll to 1/16″-ish successfully. What are some of your tips and tricks for rolling out cookie dough?

These cookies were quite yummy and were the perfect excuse for me to buy my very first jar of Nutella. I would certainly make them again!

Polpette and Quick Marinara Sauce recipes both from Giada’s Family Dinners. We made this a couple of weeks ago and liked it quite a bit.

I feel like I’m on sleeve island with the Central Park Hoodie. I finished the first sleeve over two weeks ago and immediately cast on for the second one (seen above), but I’m still only about 40% through. Part of the problem is that I got distracted by a couple of other projects. I knit another pair of Irish Hiking Wrist Warmers for a friend, and then another Noro Hat (Ravelry link) for my supervisor because she really liked mine. And I keep wanting to start new projects — like the Linen Stitch Scarflet, Foliage, and Mabel’s Scarf, just to name a few. Originally I was trying to get Central Park Hoodie and the Chevron Scarf off the needles before casting on for anything new, but I’m just tired of my current projects and am pretty much ready to be done with them.  Instead of being fun, I feel like I’m slogging through them.  But I have to fight this startitis in order to make any progress!  Ugh…definitely not one of my best knitting moments right now…