Soup and Socks Already!

Thanksgiving went over just fine, with HS arriving complete with appetizers, desserts and goodwill, and I did the main course, very trad turkey,gravy, cranberry sauce (always try to get NJ cranberries in loyal support of our cranberry farmers) squash, baked potatoes, corn, mushrooms. Red wine, white wine, ginger ale, fake beer for them as can't do alcohol because of medical conditions. I use just a turkey breast now, which is terrific. It looks nice on the dish, easy to carve, and lasts long enough to enjoy but not get us all bored with turkey.

Today we're already down to turkey/barley/bean soup, made with homemade turkey broth, and some chunks of turkey in the broth. Just enough left over for a couple of sandwiches, and the thankfulness can be discontinued after that. HS is expected over for lunch so he'll be hugely amused at the rapid disappearance of the Tgiving turkey, a big chunk of which went home with him to cook into something exotic, I think jamabalaya or something furrin like that...

I remembered everything for the table, most unusual for me, since there's usually a forlorn little dish of mushrooms or onions or something waiting in vain to go to the ball, and discovered the next day....but I forgot to light the fire!!!! log already set up, everything ready, but the mild weather put it out of my head.

This is the first Tgiving we've had where HS was in a wheelchair, so not able to do like last year. But we pressed furniture into service as serving buffets, had all the meal at the table instead of different areas as we used to, and it went just fine. Including my falling dead asleep sitting up later in the afternoon, from the turkey...

And since I had to sit down and rest now and then from all this frantic cooking stuff, I turned out a pair of fingerless gloves for HS, which HP models here for your viewing pleasure,







and got the first of a pair of socks made, spiral design which I love, and fancy toe in same self striping yarn as the gloves.




The blue wool is perfectly beautiful gift merino, enough for a pair of socks and I added the toe touch! with huge thanks to the giver, generous lady in Montreal, she knows who she is!

This spiral design is very pleasing to them as likes math, since it's an even number of stitch pattern executed on an odd number of stitches, thus: knit 6, purl 2. Forever and ever or unless your blue yarn runs out...and because you've cast on 57 stitches (size 3 needles, dpns, and I've used size 2 for snugger socks for someone with smaller feet than mine) what happens is that the purls fall in an ascending spiral, very pleasing, and very easy to work without the pattern once established.

And the spiral means that you don't shape a heel, since it shapes itself to your personal foot after a wearing or two, so you just knit and knit until you fancy stopping. Well, there are decreases to do at the toe part, and the spiral stops short of your toes, so that you have a comfortable smooth finish there. But that's all there is to it. So here are the gloves and the solitary sock, whose mate will be along in a day or so.

Meanwhile, here are a few things I'm thankful for: that we all made it to another Thanksgiving, that we had many lovely greetings from friends over the holiday, including hilarious electronic cards which we played over and over like kids, that we were warm and fed and housed, that I had enough yarn to satisfy my urgent need to knit....and several thousand other things, too.

Life is good!