Keeping busy

This weekend I kept myself busy knitting, canning, and shopping for books. I went shopping on Saturday for Red Scarf 2008 yarn and some old books on canning. I ended up with a Ball Blue Book from 1969 and 1979 and a U.S. Department of Agriculture pamphlet on canning from 1971. I ended up with two different yarns for the Red Scarf 2008 project: Encore knitting worsted weight color 174 and Cascade 220 superwash color 809. I decided to use the knitting of five scarves as a chance to try five different yarns so that I can expand my fiber knowledge a bit. I also ended up getting a skein Noro Silk Garden in color 252 and color 243 after running across a pattern for a cute hat in the Yarn Harlot's archived blog entries. I was catching up on all of the old entries that I had missed since I didn't start reading her blog until late 2006. I am really anxious to try the hat pattern but I am making myself wait until I have all 5 scarves knit since they have a due date!

On Sunday I went to my parents house to put up more tomato juice. We have now put up over 70 pints of juice and eaten about a bazillion tomatoes this summer and that is off of 7 plants. Dad said that by the middle of the week there will be more tomatoes ready but Mom had excused me from helping since I will be working and/or sleeping getting ready for my night shift. After Mom and Dad cooked a delicious meal of hamburgers on the grill, tomatoes, cottage cheese, potatoes, and gravy [for the tomatoes--if you haven't tried the combination I would highly recommend it]. Yum! Having a home-cooked meal definitely makes all of the hot sweaty canning worth it.

When I got home I cast on with the Encore using the Yarn Harlot's one row scarf pattern which I also found in one of her archived posts. I really like the pattern and it knits up fairly quickly, at least it seems like it. Maybe it just feels like it is going fast because it is such a nice break from the Broken Muppet shawl. I had convinced myself that I liked the Suri Dreams but after working with the Encore I know that I do not enjoy Suri Dreams! It feels sticky when I knit with it so I will be taking a break from it while I work on the scarves for Red Scarf 2008. Here are some photos; the first is my progress on the Broken Muppet and the second is the Red Scarf that I started. I am a lot farther along on the Red Scarf than the photo shows...I actually have about 8 1/2 inches done.