Strawberries Overflow!

So what do you do when you have too many strawberries on your hand?

Strawberry cupcakes!

I went to Big Y last week and saw that they have buy 1 get 2 free on strawberries - how could I say no? But now I have way too much strawberries! Granted I already finished the ones I picked from Lyman's, but still, I have 3 quart of strawberries sitting in the fridge staring at me!

I followed the recipe from Vanilla Garlic to a T and the strawberry sauce and strawberry frosting recipe makes a lot more than I needed, so I put them in the fridge for another batch later this week.

Besides working on the cupcakes, I also worked on the invitation a bit.

I know, not much to see, but it's getting there. I also worked on the wording a bit and coming up with some dilemma on how I want to lay it out, but I'll wait till David comes home this weekend and ask his opinion.

I'm gonna go eat cupcakes now.

A Weekend Of Fun

What did you do this weekend?

Saturday morning, our new lawn guy came, and he did an AMAZING job cleaning up the yard.

Even the dogs didn't know what to do with it!

I went to my weekly farmer's market with Archiknist and we came back to the house waiting for a few others to show so we can go try on my wedding gown. Now, I was too excited to see my gown and didn't take ANY pictures!!!!! But no fear, my readers, I'm going back on Thursday to do my first fitting so I will make sure I take a picture then.

While I was there, I was tying out different veils. The one I liked was $195!!!! WTF??? So I looked online and found this - yup, only $63!! I'm pretty sure I'll be getting that. At first I didn't want to have a veil, but I saw a very similar one on a magazine and just loved it.

We came back to my house for some BBQ and crafting. It was too bad that the weather wasn't so great so we couldn't be out to enjoy my new swing:

We are going to use it for our "altar" area. We will take out the awning part, and the swing, and I'll decorate it with some fabric and ask my florist to get some hanging plants for the four corners. I really like the look of this when I first saw it during my research, so I'll do something similar, minus the crazy flower on the top.

Today I went with Beth and Ola to Lyman's Orchard for some strawberry picking. It was a lot of fun looking for those ripen red, juicy berries.

Afterwards we went to the Apple Barrel to see what's in season and what they got. There are lots of canning stuff for sale (mmm... jam...) and pies. But I came home with these:

YUM. Can't wait for mid-July for the other berries to be ready.

On other news, I worked on my invitations, and here is what I got:

Yeah, the outer pockets are finally done! I can finally move on into the inside of the invitations. Speaking of that, I got these in the mail:

I'm going to use these vintage postcards as the response card. I think it would make a cool scrapbook when it is all over. I just hope everyone will actually return the response card!

Oh, and it's 97 days till the big day! :)

As far as gardening, I've been kinda on hold since I couldn't move all the blocks needed to do the raise garden and David is away for work, all the seedlings have been just staying in their starter container and waiting. Hopefully it's not too late. So without further ado, here are some pictures of the herbs:

See how awesome those herbs look? And I use some for dinner tonight:

I had some Greek pasta salad at Ola's house not too long ago, so I decided to try my hands in it with some of my herbs.

jennsquared's Greek Pasta Salad

1 box of pasta of any kind
1 small can of chopped olives
1 and half cup of corn (I grilled some corn last night so I used that)
1 shallots, finely chopped
1 scallion, finely sliced
some parsley, finely chopped
some thyme, finely chopped
1 tsp dry basil (use fresh ones if you have any)
some garlic pepper seasoning
salt
olive oil
basil pesto grapeseed oil (just use more olive oil)
apple cider vinegar (use whatever light vinegar you have on hand)
crumbled feta cheese

1. Boil a pot of water and cook the pasta until al dente
2. While the pasta is cooking, chopped up all the herbs
3. When pasta is ready, drain well and let it cool a little bit before mixing everything together
4. Serve slightly warm

Hope you all enjoy it as much as I do. And feel free to leave a comment on your variation!

Where Did The Socks Go?

And you say whaaaaaat?

Well... Let me back track a bit. Last Thursday, work sent me to NYC for East Pack Expo. With such a short notice, I decided to cast on a pair of easy socks to knit while I am walking around in the expo. I started them while i was on the train, and once I got out of Grand Central (no photo there... DOH!) I started walking towards to Freefoods for breakfast. While walking, I show my pair of socks around town:

Time Square was a little dark due to the clouds. Oh well. While I was at Freefoods, I had a hard time choosing what I want to eat since there were so many different awesome organic foods there, but I settle for these:

My melon smoothie and mango. The smoothie is made with honeydew, goats milk yogurt, honey and mint, and the mango was infused with agave syrup and mint. I also got an organic bagel with organic cream cheese - SO YUMMY.

Sadly, I would say that's about the highlight of my expo trip, since the trade show isn't THAT exciting. I did have one person come up to me while knitting and asked me if my needles were "medical devices". HUH? Yeah...

Saturday I went to Dream Come True Farm with Archiknist. I swear I thought we were going to melt while we were there - it was SO. HOT. And it still is! While we were there, we saw two Nigerian goats. They were so tiny and cute!

That's a mama goat!!! Isn't she cute and tiny? :) She actually provides the milk that makes the soaps the farm sells! So awesome. There are also llamas, alpacas and sheep on site. I was so good and didn't buy anything!!!

Speaking of anything, a box showed up in my house few days ago:

A drop spindle and lots of rovings! When I went to MDS&W last month, I went to the ravelry party, but due to time constraint, I didn't stay for the raffle and gave my ticket to Anarchy, who I met during the party. Apparently my ticket won, and instead of keeping the drop spindle, she messaged me in ravelry and sent me the spindle, and threw in some roving for me to try too! Knitters are SO generous! I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I'm thinking of doing that this weekend.

Another thing I received this past week was this:

It's the Amish Friendship Bread from Knitsheady. Today is day 9, and tomorrow, I need to split it and bake it and give four of the starters to four friends. It's a good thing I'm going to SnB tomorrow :) I saw this on the internet a lot, and apparently it's quite a popular thing to do - although it is my first one ever.

So no knitting to show this post due to these:

I've been busy making my wedding invitations. I decided that I really like the one I saw online but didn't want to pay the hefty price, so I bought whole sheet paper and am making them myself! I want to mail them up at the 1000 Islands so I got less than a month to finish them. I better hurry! It's a good thing I'm almost done with the cover :).

Well, I'm off cutting more paper. Maybe next time, there will be some knitting to show, or maybe even garden stuff! :)

MDS&W & Sock Pentathlon Sock #2

In case you are wondering, that's "Maryland Sheep and Wool". I wasn't able to go last year, but this year, I was SOOOOO there.

I took a half day on Friday and took the train down to Baltimore. I've never taken Amtrak before and I have to say I had quite a pleasant experience. And I met a couple of nice people too! Once I got there, I took a taxi and went to MamaE's Party! Sadly, I didn't take ANY picture! I was too excited to meet E and SweetSheep!!! But I did get a photo with them the next day!

Sneaksleep came and meet me up at the party, and after the party, I went back with her to her house for a nap cap and got up for the big day.

And see who we saw!!! :)

Zarzuela!!! She had move to Jersey a couple of years back and I haven't seen her since then! It was so great to see her there!

There were lots of sheep, llamas, alpacas, angora bunnies, and of course, there were food, yarn, and people spinning.

And while I was eating lunch, I noticed quite a bit of buttercup:

After the first day, Sneaksleep and I went to the Ravelry party - it was fun, and a lot less people than I expected. We stayed for a little while before we went and met up with the rest of the New Haven gang for some fondue at Melting Pot.

That was the first time I've been to a Melting Pot and it was so much fun! Although a little on the pricey side, but it was totally worth it, especially the chocolate fondue!

Yum. (that was the s'mores fondue, you should try it if you go!)

Sunday was a lot less intense, even the traffic was a lot less. Sneaksleep and I say goodbye after an hour in the fairground, and I left with Sami, Karen, Brenda and Beth around noon. While I was in the car, I was busy working on the Sock Pentathlon Sock #2 - Berlin Muster. I finished first sock while in the car on the way home, but the sewing needles were in the trunk with my overnight bag, so I couldn't finish the grafting, so what is a girl to do?

Use the buttons I got from the festival and parties! (and you call me crazy, collecting pins and all!) And since I couldn't knit while I'm at work, slowly, I finally finished the pair this morning, although, not without a hitch - again, that stupid little sewing needle. So the engineer in me took over, and fond something to use:

Twisty-tie!!! Yes, you read that right! And a few minutes after, I have these:

Pattern - Berlin Muster by Kristin Benecken
Yarn Used - 0.56 skein of Valley Yarn Franklin
Needles - Harmony size 1
Gauge - 8 sts per inch
Knit - May 01, 08 to May 07, 2008
Modification - I reduced the purl stitch so it's only 56 stitches, although I probably could still go down a bit since the lace is quite stretchy.

The pattern was fairly easy, although everyone had a hard time to get it started due to various reasons. The yarn was wonderful. I love it so much I want to get more of it! I have plenty of it left to do another pair of socks! You can read my full review here.

Well, now both of that are blogged and in the bag, it is time for me to rest my eyes. Good Night.

Some Progress

So I suppose I should update the knitting first -

Let me present you... The Kiri blob! I figure I should keep going on the lace thing so I can keep up with 2klace! It's getting longer and longer to complete each row, but I suppose that's the trade back with an easy start right?

Next up, some knitting books!

I pre-ordered Shear Spirit awhile ago and it finally came on the day of the release. Gale and Joan did an awesome job with this book and I can't wait to see Gale to congratulate her! And in order to get the free shipping, I ordered the 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders. I already flipped through this one before, but I really liked it so I couldn't live without it. The third book is Knitting from the British Islands by Alice Starmore and Anne Matheson. I swapped this book with three pair of sock yarn from Ravelry. It's an older book so it has some very interesting garment (if you can even call it that).

So now I'm done updating the knitting related topics, on to FOOD! :) I saw this recipe on Barefoot Contessa so I decided to try it:

I got the fresh noodles from the farmer's market. I also got a pint of chocolate milk, a parsley plant, and some bread. All I can say is YUM.

I started reading a new blog - Vanilla Garlic. I know, it's not knitting related. But who can say no to food? I found him in my search of cupcakes, and this one captured me. The only thing I needed was an orange to make it!!!! Tada!

I haven't try it yet, but I should go now to try it... I'll let you know in the next post!

Needham, MA

Oh boy was I busy this weekend!!! It all started off from a phone call from Andrea, the SWE New England Region Treasurer, at 10:30 Friday morning. The vendor where we got the conference bags from made a mistake and shipped the products to her house, instead of Olin School of Engineering in Needham, MA. And not all the bags fit in the car! Jenn to the rescue! I drove up to meet Andrea at her work around 11:30, pick up a few boxes, and drove down to Jen's house to wait for her to come home and carpool to go up to Olin. While I was waiting, I was busy writing all the Thank You cards for the speakers and eat sushi -

YUM. Although I didn't get a lot of cards done, I had a wonderful lunch.

After I picked up Jen, we drove up to Olin, checked into our hotel, and I went to the school to help set up things, and drop off the boxes, leaving Jen in the hotel doing what she needs to do for the next day. If my prof was there from RPI, he would be very proud of our little assembly line with Just In Time feed!

After finishing the prep for the conference, Jen and I went to Somerville and met up with Mer, Adam, and Adam's roommate AJ for dinner.

Aren't we cute!? :)

We went to this sandwich place - the place was completely packed, just people who wants a great sandwich, which is what we all got! I also tried out a local dark beer which was just excellent. We bid the gang goodbye with some ice cream and headed out back to Needham.

Saturday morning came all too fast. Jen and I got up at 6 to make sure we got time to get some things done prior to the conference start - such as those darn Thank You cards.

Oh, I should mention at this point that Jen and I had another roommate, April. April traveled to our region from Illinois to help out with Collegiate Leadership Coaching Committee (CLCC) since the lady who usually comes is currently out of country for work. And April is a KNITTER!!!! :) (everyone wave hi to April!) She is very sweet and nice. Too bad we didn't have a lot of time to hang out with each other.

So April helped me with some of the Thank You cards (I told you she was nice!) and I got them finished on time! (I still can't believe it!) We had our CLCC meeting in our room (two other girls had showed up at this point) and we all went to the conference right after.

The conference itself was a lot of fun. The morning and dinner keynote speakers were both excellent and untraditional, which made it even better. I got to go to a few sessions, but not all. Why? You asked. Because I was speaking in two sessions! ME! SPEAKING! Yeah I know, I can't believe it either. One of them is "Work/Life Balance Panel" (What balance?) and one of them is the CLCC module.

I certainly am no Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee, however, this is almost like a dream come true. Once upon a time, I was the one sitting down, listening to all the speakers of their wisdoms and advice, thinking to myself, wouldn't it be so cool if I can be the one sharing those wisdoms and advice? My day had come, and it was VERY COOL. And to prove it to you that I really was speaking, Trish had taken a picture of me in the panel:

See! I wasn't lying. And yes, I was wearing Rusted Root underneath my jacket. :)

The conference ended around 9pm (including dinner) and I headed back to the hotel exhausted. I knitted a little, and chatted with April until we both fell asleep.

Sunday was the business meeting till 1pm, and I drove home with Jen, which concluded the 2008 Region Conference. I got home exhausted still, and passed out as soon as I was able.

I did knit a little, but not enough to show any progress. But I do have to say Kiri is pretty easy. Hopefully soon, I can show some progress. So how was your weekend?

Pasta with Broccoli and Sausage

I had a stroke of inspiration when I took out the sausage this morning and here is the result. And now I am shamelessly putting it on my blog for you to try. If you do, please leave a comment and let me know how it turned out!

Pasta with Broccoli and Sausage

6 slices of bacon - roughly chopped (I used maple bacon) [optional]
2 tbsp olive oil
4 links of Italian sausage - casings removed (I used sweet sausage, but feel free to use the spicy stuff!)
1/2 tsp of chopped garlic
3 crowns of broccoli
1 lb of pasta (I used Trader Joe's Brown Rice Pasta in Ziti form, but feel free to use anything you have)
1/2 tsp of dried thyme or 1/2 tbsp of fresh thyme
Enough salt for the pasta water
Grated Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano to top the pasta

Cook the pasta in a pot of salted boiling water according to the directions.

In a saute pan (I used a French style saute pan - the kind that has a little bit of the sides) on medium low heat, add the bacon and cook it until the fat has render a bit (about 5 mins). If omitting the bacon, use olive oil instead. In the mean time, remove the casing from the sausage and stir it in the pan with the bacon. Add in the garlic. Continue to saute the mixture and add in the thyme.

When the pasta is almost done (about 7 mins in), put the broccoli in the water with the pasta to cook. Cook until the pasta is done. Use 1 cup of pasta water and put it in the sausage mixture, turn the heat up high to get it boiling. Drain the pasta and broccoli and add it into the sausage mixture. If your pan is not big enough, then after draining the pasta and broccoli, put the sausage mixture into the pasta pot instead.

Top the pasta with grated cheese and black pepper if you choose. Enjoy!

Note: This is a very quick dish, everything happens simultaneously. Feel free to improvise with different things, such as add in saute onions, peppers, etc. If you like garlic, put more in, if not, don't put it in at all! No thyme? No problem, add some oregano instead! Experiment and have fun!

Tomorrow, we will get back to the regular knitting programing.

Dumplings, Anyone? And More!

This past Saturday, CostumeChick, WifeMomKnitter and I went to Anphoe's for some knitting and chatting, and also for some dumplings!

Anphoe made the pork filling and I made the tofu one. They were YUMMY! After that, we knitted and played some Wii. Well, let me just put this out there first - I'm not big about playing video games, because 1) I'm not very good, 2) I'm not a good sport about losing. But this Wii thing... It's addicting! And so much fun! You can see pictures and video on Anphoe's blog.

So besides playing video games and eat, I did make some progress on the MoonDance:

Chart B is almost done!!! Which means this stole is almost done! :) You can't see the edging in the pictures, but I can assure you they are all there.

On the other news, I bought a scratch ticket and the result:

I won $25.00!!!!!!! The biggest one I've ever got!!! I think before that, the most money I won was ten bucks! Well, I'm one step towards winning big, right? ;) A lady I worked with won $200,000 on a scratch ticket not too long ago. Yeah, you read that right. Then shortly after, she won over $8,000 at Mohegan Sun... Only if I have her luck! But I think my risk taking level is too small to win that level. I guess that's why I'm an engineer.

So I bought couple of Alice Starmore books from amazon not too long ago and they finally arrived, along with Beyond Wool with a trade from Ravelry.

Only if I can find a copy of Aran Knitting, there are so many patterns I want to knit but I just can't afford the book! Too rare. ::sigh::

Speaking of books, I have a duplicate copy of this one:

I posted this on Destash book forum on Ravelry, but I figure I will offer this to my friends as well - I''m willing to part with it for $8.00 + actual shipping (if required).

Well, I'm off to go over the new books and complaint about no progress made on MoonDance to the dogs.