Tomatoes with Salt And Pepper

There is not much better than that. It's what makes any sandwich great. The tomatoes don't even have to be perfect-summer-ripe, they can be whitish winter tomatoes, and it's still delicious. Although there's not much better than a sandwich with nice cheese, slices of tomato, salt, pepper, and basil. I went to Albertson's (the grocery store) for lunch today and got a sub - roast beef with mayo and mustard, lettuce and tomato, salt and pepper. On wheat. with munster. Delicious.

And now for something completely different.

I decided to frog the bell sleeve shrug back to where I split it from being in the round to back and forth. I see the merits of the super long sleeve. And, sadly, after seeing the striping change of switching to back-and-forth, I can see the merits of doing the whole thing in back and forth stockinette. However, life is too short for that kind of nonsense. So, my advice if you're considering this kind of pattern variation? Go with a solid, or at the most a heathered, tweed or handpainted monochrome, not a (what's the technical term?) ombre/varigated/colorway. I think it'll still be neat to wear over t-shirts at work.

DH's scarf is coming along. It's now longer than my wing span. The game plan is to knit til I run out of yarn. He has a method of wearing the scarf that he wants to do, that calls for a super-long scarf. It's where you fold it in half, wrap it around your neck, then pull the two ends through the loop. I don't know what that is called, and living in Florida, only saw it on TV recently. He is not from "up north" (Vietnam is not up north.) and I moved to Florida when I was 5, and my parents swore off snow when I was 6.

I started a pinwheel blanket for my nephew to be. I decided that the bright yellow and orange wouldn't suit my sister, even if I thought it was great for a baby. And. I wasn't sure how to work it into the pinwheel idea without it looking like a bullseye. So I bought some beautiful pale silvery-blue Caron Simply Soft and am using #10 needles. It's very hard to resist the temptation to turn what I have into a hat. I had to order some more #10 circs, so that's on hold for the moment. I did the math to figure out the circumfrence of a 30 or 36" diameter pinwheel would be, and I started to seize up, thinking about the super long rounds. I think I'm going to have to put in a stitch marker before every pie-slice where the increase goes so I don't have to count so much. Otherwise this won't be TV knitting but too boring to do on it's own.

Something happened and a half done mitten fell out of my works pile. It was a mitten in progress that I had gotten from my aunt when she went through my grandmother's stash and WIP. At the time I had never made a mitten, so I just threw it in a big ziplock and stuck it in my to do pile. But now I'm a mitten "veteran" (chuckle). So, I took it to the Boy Scout meeting and worked on it. Now it just needs a thumb - and I even made a note of where I started the decreases! It looks like it was cast on using a crochet chain and then you pick up the little loops on the side that doesn't look like a braid. I made some attempts at it last night, but I think I'm going to have to do some research and figure that out. Grandma's knitting is so tidy and nice. Here's the other part that made it call to me - my cousin is studying abroad in Paris. Her brother and mom went to join her for Christmas and looking through the slide show of pictures, she only had a nice jacket - no winter woolens, no scarf, no mittens. I really want to make her a "ruffles" scarf (from Scarf Style) (the Potato Chip scarf from KnitPicks is similar looking). Or a pretty eyelet lace one. But these mittens looked like a good color for her (she has my grandmother's coloring, or close to it) and these would be from her grandma too. They're just junky acrylic, but I think after they get washed they'll be softer, and they should hold up to regular care pretty well, and they're from Grandma! So figuring out the cast on is my next project.