i got to choose

my cute husband and kids are involved with the ymca youth & government program. after 5 months of practicing state government their big weekend of taking over the state capital building is always around valentines day; this year it just happened that valentines day and the first day of y&g were the same. they are going to take over the state capital for five days and i get to stay home to do whatever i want. not a bad trade off.

for valentines day supper i decided i wanted pink food. really i just wanted salmon. the fam isn't fond of me making salmon because of the "fishy" smell. but they are not here and the dog doesn't mind if the house smells of salmon. i had this idea i wanted to have pasta with the salmon. then i decided to mix the salmon with the pasta.

so on the way home from work i stopped at the local market, got salmon, lemons, thyme, chives, italian flat leaf parsley and asparagas. i put water on for pasta and asparagas; made a poaching broth of water, lemon slices, parsley, shallots and garlic; poached the salmon; drained the pasta; sauted garlic and shallots in the pan with some olive oil and lemon juice; added the pasta; sprinkled it with minced chives and parsley; added the salmon and asparagas, which, in the meantime had been sliced into thirds; mixed them all together until everything was warm and served it with a sprinkle of some lovely, fresh parmesean cheese in one of my favorite bowls.

it was perfect. it was just what i wanted. and, there are leftovers. not to bad for being alone on valentines day! hope yours was wonderful, too!

it was just an afternoon

i squeaked into the LYS yesterday afternoon with hopes of sitting and knitting. a handful of the usuals were there, so after a quick turn around the store to make sure i wasn't missing any thing new, i settled in to knit. and knit i did. i had taken my sari ribbon scarf with hopes of getting closer to the finish. after staying late with socializing, i knew i was close to finishing but still had a way to go.

i finished my errands to the market and trader joe's; landed at home for making supper, coordinating teenage activities and make peach preserves. in that order. now i haven't made preserves in quite a while. i just happened to come across two bags of close to overripe peaches that someone didn't know what to do with and all i could think of was preserves.

in the hierarchy of preserves, peach is up there because they need to be blanched for their skins to peel off with minimal loss of fruit. so there i was up to my ankles in boiling pots and peach juice. after a few hours of chopping, stirring and steaming, these were produced...

...and they taste great. there is nothing like fresh, warm preserves on toast. my cute husband immediately got a spoon and started to eat the bit that could not fill a jar (there is a sentimental story about that which i won't bore you with now).

after cleaning the sticky utensils, pots and counters, i felt like sitting and knitting. so i picked up the sari scarf just to see how far i would get. and lo and behold, this happened...

i really like it. the ribbon needs to relax, so before going to bed i hung it over a hanger just to let it drape.

one of the challenges of working with ribbon yarn is that it twists and turns on itself so rarely lays flat. this was difficult for me with this yarn because the sparkles would get lost and it just looked better if knitted with the ribbon as flat as possible. another challenge was weaving in the ends because the tapestry needle kept poking through the ribbon. i had to make sure the needle followed the stitch not poke through the ribbon itself.

but i love the yarn. if i were to use it again, i think i would make an oversize kerchief type wrap. i think it may get more use. but that is a future project.