A gory little Halloween recipe just for you and taken from The Frugal American Housewife by Mrs. Child.

Roast Pig

"Strew fine salt over it an hour before it is put down.* It should not be cut entirely open; fill it up plump with thick slices of buttered bread, salt, sweet-marjoram and sage. Spit it with the head next the point of the spit; with a little whole pepper, allspice, and salt, for gravy sauce. The upper part of the legs must be braced down with skewers. Shake on flour. Put a little water in the dripping-pan, and stir it often. When the eyes drop out, ** the pig is half done. When it is nearly done, baste it with butter. Cut off the head, split it open between the eyes. Take out the brains, and chop them fine with the liver and some sweet-marjoram and sage; put this into melted butter, and when it has boiled a few minutes, add it to the gravy in the dripping-pan. When your pig is cut open, lay it with the back to the edge of the dish; half a head to be placed at each end. A good sized pig needs to be roasted three hours. "

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* "Put down"......hmmmm, does this mean I need to take my jar of salt out the the barnyard and throw it at the pig and hope I get some to stick?

**I say put them in the gravy for a nice garnish.

I've hit upon another way to get my kids to wear the crazy things I knit for them--threaten to auction them off (no, not the kids, the sweaters!) at their school's fundraising auction.

I wasn't even bluffing. Honest.

Hey, thanks for all the nice birthday wishes!

I am working on some socks using some icelandic yarn from Tongue River Farm.

Click for a close up.

You can see in the main picture that I started out carrying the white yarn in my right hand and the grey in my left. and as a result the white design is not showing up very well. After the first repeat, I switched hands and it is showing up much better.

Also, I couldn't wait to see if my stranding would block out well (because it basically looked like crap and why continue if it is going to always look like crap?), so I dunked 4 inches of work still on the needles in a bowl of water and then stuck it on an old jar to stretch out and dry to shape. I am very happy with how it turned out.

The last bit by the needles is not blocked.

It wasn't me. I've been here all day.

It wasn't me. I've been here since you threw this on the floor.

My 3rd cat was unavailable for comment as she is too quick for the digital camera. Or feeling guilty.

A hole! This was most definitely not there when I was pinning it out.

Hazel Carter's Legend of the Shetland Seas

I knit this back in December 1998 and it was my 3rd knitting project. (My first was a sad little scarf that turned out pretty wide, like baby blanket wide and even my mom said flatly, "Oh.... that's niiiiceeee, Leigh.")

Anyway, I digress. I remember vividly knitting this because it was right after we moved into our first house and I was always losing where I put it down because we were basically living amongst boxes and boxes of crap, which we eventually moved up into the attic and concerned ourselves with no longer.

This reminds me, I cannot find the pattern. I bet it is in one of those boxes in the attic.

Some yarn I spun from some Wensleydale top bought in Rhinebeck:

Click for a close up.

I think I might live on the edge and make a hat out of this, instead of some fingerless mittens.

Some woven tapes. The top one was woven by Eric Weit and the bottom 3 were woven by me.

I have been learning to weave and so far what I've been doing is weaving thin bands of cotton tape. I like weaving tape because it allows me to experiment and combine colors without a big commitment.

Combining colors in weaving is a lot different from combing colors in knitting. I can really use the colors I like when weaving. I like to work with lots of bright colors and colors that normally might not go together, but in knitting this is not for me. I don't wear colors like that in a sweater. Hell, I don't really wear sweaters all that much either for that matter.

But I like rugs and tape and quilts that are colorful. And socks.
Maybe this is why I am finding that I am knitting only socks lately.

Oh, and don't forget the fingerless mittens. I like those colorful.

The socks and mittens are the pepper of my winter clothes I suppose.

The sides of the woven tape.

A demonstration on weaving tape on a tape loom and tape looms. I am not using a tape loom for my tape though, but I hope to someday soon!