Year-End Trash

I was doing a little clean-up today and ran across a bag of "mending" items. After looking them over, I decided to take a few photos and ... throw them out!

This was my first attempt at sock knitting.

I used Mistake Rib - one of my favorite rib patterns. I like how it gives depth to the rib pattern.

But didn't use sock yarn ...

(I think this is the second set of holes in these socks.)

Here's another early sock-knitting effort.

I used a triangle rib pattern and a little cuff decoration

And the same yarn as the first pair ...

This sock was one of a pair I knit for my brother-in-law ...

I used Mistake Rib again and learned how to get a clean color-change in ribbing (knit all stitches in the first round with the new color).

These were sleep socks, so I knew I didn't have to worry about wear-and-tear. But their wool-loving puppy got hold of this one ...

Next were a pair of felted slippers ...

They were nice and think and were well worn. Eventually, all the way through the sole of one slipper.

My final trash items was these socks.

These were fun. I worked them toe-up and started by knitting and felting the toe sections ...

worked to the heel and inserted felted heels ...

I thought I was on to something - felted toes and heels would add durability to the 2 most common failure points. However, the failure point on these was the sole/heel join ...

All of these have been in my mending bag for more than a year and I figured the likelihood that I would ever mend them was pretty slim. So with that bit of honest assessment, I put them in the trash (before I could change my mind).

Pesto 2015

Today was the first round of 2015 pesto making. On Thursday, I picked up 2 lbs of basil at Horse Drawn Farms. Yesterday afternoon, I toasted sunflower seeds before cranking up the oven for Fridat night pizza. This morning, I stopped at Blossom for garlic (and a few other things) and this afternoon I got started making pesto.

I've been using toasted sunflower seeds for a couple years now. When the price of pine nuts skyrocketed, I experimented with a few different nut options. At this point, my favorite is sunflower seeds. Toasting them yesterday really gave me a leg up on today's pesto processing. Here I am ready to go with the first batch.

I've learned to start with the sunflower seeds (or other nut). Pine nuts are soft enough that you can add them later and still puree them into the pesto. Not so with any of the other nuts/seeds that I've tried. It works better to grind them up first.

(Note for next time. Grind up all the sunflower seeds first. After the first batch, there's too much wet residue to get this nice dry grind.)

Other than substituting sunflower seeds for nuts, my recipe is the same as before. Here's the first batch ...

Yum! Summer in a jar.

Four hours and 2 lbs of basil, 2 quarts of olive oil, 20 ounces of sunflower seeds, 10 ounces of parmesan cheese and 6 ounces of garlic later, I had 9 pints of pesto.

All set to place in the freezer ...

Well, except for one jar. We've been out of pesto for over a month now, so I put one jar in the fridge ... where it stayed for, oh, I'd say, less than 30 minutes.