Hump Day, As Always.

Coming to the middle of the week, I'm also getting over the hardest part of the shawl and am well into the third and last repeat. I'm really anxious to have this completed by Saturday, which I'm confident will happen; I'm also really anxious to have this finished today, which I'd give a 50/50 chance of actually happening. Then, I'm moving on to other stuff. I'm being sorely tempted to start more new projects but I do need to clear these items to the left off the list.

Thanksgiving Dinner came off really well. Everyone had a good time, and the food came out just fine. I contributed two pies - Pumpkin and Buttermilk Chess, and my sister left behind half of the Ginger Cheesecake before heading over to her in-laws.

Left to right: Pumpkin, Ginger Cheesecake, and Buttermilk Chess. The recipes for Pumpkin and Buttermilk can be obtained from The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. This is a great cookbook, put out by the folks from Cook's Illustrated (a great magazine in and of itself). Yes, I made Pumpkin Pie from scratch. None of that canned pumpkin crap for me. Preparing the pie pumpkin may be messy, but the reward is great, and once pureed, it freezes great. Now that these pumpkins are back to a reasonable $1.99 per pound (Safeway was so nice to jack the price up to $3.99 just before Thanksgiving . . . good thing I had got two couple weeks prior to T-Day), I've picked up more to process and stash away in the freezer.

Mother really wants more pumpkin pie. I tried to put her off by saying that I could fix another one before Christmas. But you all know how mothers are good at guilting you into doing stuff. So I'm gong to have to whip up another one within the next two weeks or so.

While I was out shopping, I came across this truly lovely pullover. I really like the construction, the way it is fitted by having the sleeves set into the shoulders. One can also detect a slight nipping in around the waist (although there might be a clothespin behind - I forgot to check this out). Also, I like the zippered neck. Great for ventilation when you're coming in from the cold and the room gets too toasty for comfort. This would make for a great steeked project (yes, one can do a steeked set-in sweater - there's a project in one of the early Knitters issue that explained how to do this). OTOH, I just may do it piece by piece. Just need to figure out the construction.

So why don't I just go ahead and buy it? For one, I really don't have $$ to throw around at this point, not unless I can get a company to hire me without having to go through a recruiter. And for another thing, the quality of mass-produced sweaters leave much to be desired. When factories can crank out $50 sweaters by the dozen, the quality inevitably deteriorate and worksmanship can suffer. I like my sweaters to be classical and last a good long while. So I'm going to stick this in my mile-long list of projects to do.