I hear patience is a virtue...

...but I'm having a very hard time being virtuous!

I subscribed, I paid online, and I'm trying to be patient, but I STILL haven't received my Spring '08 Interweave Knits! It's been below zero for days on end and I need my dose of spring, people!


I'm slowly making my way through the sleeves for Oblique. She isn't making quite the progress I'd hoped for, but my distractions have been many. I've had this rotten flu, which sank in my lungs over the weekend. Luckily my most excellent asthma doc is kind enough to give me an emergency course of prednisone to keep on hand for these very situations. I'm finally starting to feel like myself again.

Another distraction, in a good way, is my girlfriend's baby boy due in April. I had the gift-knitting withdrawals so I'm very pleased to be making things for little Will. Not to mention the serious stash-busting potential. I have enough 100% cotton to make several burp cloths and bibs without ever setting foot in a store. So far I've finished one of each.

I really like this color combo. My next set is going to be even better. I started this one late last night so I haven't had much time with it, but it's looking so great!

I also found out that a cousin of mine is expecting in July...yay! Another baby to knit for - and it's even spaced out enough so that I won't have to knit for two babies at the same time! How thoughtful of them!

Remember I mentioned the mindless knitting I started while watching Lord of the Rings over the weekend? Here's my progress on it. Yep, it's another Mr. Greenjeans.

This time I'm using Patons Decor in First Spring from my stash (there's a theme here...). I had bought 4 skeins for a Clapotis, but made a pair of socks instead and the rest has been sitting here. After seeing a couple Greenjeans in variegated Patons, I got going. I think I will need one more skein to make it all the way through, but that's not so bad.

Lastly, along the same vein of trying to create spring when spring is not even remotely in sight, I've begun my semi-annual kitchen overhaul. The cupboards with dishes were the easy part. I loaded a box full of stuff that I haven't used in at least a year, wiped them down, replaced everything and that was that. The pantry cupboard is another story.

We all know I have a boy with autism. One of the ways we treat this is with the gluten-free/casein-free diet (GFCF diet). I'm also allergic to dairy. We've been doing the diet now for almost 5 years so the cooking part isn't the problem...it's the sheer number of products I need to have on hand. Check out the upper half of my pantry cupboard, which is devoted to all things flour, plus a few cans of chips. It's a deep cabinet, and it's stuffed.

In my former life, these shelves would have been nearly empty. Canisters of white sugar, brown sugar, and wheat flour would have been the only things there. Ok, perhaps also whole wheat flour and bread flour, but big deal.

Now, however, I have the who's who of alternative flours: white rice, brown rice, sweet rice, potato, sorghum, garbanzo, garfava, potato/corn/tapioca starches, and don't forget xanthan and guar gums. Then there's the larger canisters of premixed (by me) Featherlight Flour Blend (Bette Hagman), GF Flour Blend (Carol Fenster), and Quickie Baking Mix (Special Diets for Special Kids 2). Oh yeah, and two kinds of pasta two: rice and wheat.

Yesterday, my kitchen was a cloud of fine GF flour powder as I mixed up fresh batches of all these mixes and tried to make some sense of what I already have. Oye! I gladly put up with the powdery mess of some of these flours, though, because the ladies who developed them have made my life so much easier. These are my favorite flour blends and they are perfect for all my baking. Casein (dairy) free is like tiddly winks compared to the transition to gluten-free, and these flours are fantastic.

I'd love to go more into the GFCF diet, but that will be for another day. Work is beckoning and this post is already far longer than I'd expected. I like doing it though, even if nobody is reading it! Stay warm everyone and have a great day!