OK, it’s high time I wrote something new & exciting.  Hmmm…!

First, let me tell you that the site has gotten just a teensy bit better, with the addition of two new pages:  look up at the top, on the navigation bar, and you’ll see "Site Map" as well as "Knit Links".

The former will give you a listing of what’s available here – sort of like what was on the previous incarnation of tessknits.com.

The latter includes various links to (mostly) knitting-related sites — which allows me to move them out of the sidebar and keep things a bit cleaner up front.

Well, that WAS exciting, wasn’t it?

What else is new?  Well, DH’s new dark green socks are coming along nicely.  That’s one finished sock lying underneath, and one half-way finished on top (heel has been turned).  I tried to get a better view of the stitch pattern this time, although I am not sure I succeeded in that.

The other night, while resting my poor little aching hands in between pattern repeats — you DO all know to take a break when your hands start hurting, right? — I did something rash.

I won’t bore you with the whole calculation, but I figured out that at about 20 minutes per pattern repeat (plus heel & toe), it will take me about 16 hours of knitting time to make this pair of mighty fabulous socks.  Well, 16 hours of my leisure time is not too much to devote to my sweetie, is it now?

Then (this is the rash part) I went further and calculated that in those 16 hours, I would be knitting some 21,800 stitches.

Ye gods!  No wonder my hands hurt.  I reckon I’m at about 15,000 currently.

Here are some nice wrist and hand exercises though, which you can also access from that new "Knitting Links" page.

If you read The Pats’ blog, you’ll see that she hasn’t been knitting so much lately — instead she’s been using my Xmas present.  Very gratifying.

Of course, the best presents are often those that you yourself would like to receive, so naturally, I bought two copies of the book and kept one:   "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" by Hertzberg and Francois.  (see the website at www.artisanbreadinfive.com.)

Believe it or not, it works.  And it’s easy.

My father grew up working in his uncle’s bakery in Marshalltown, IA, and worked in the industry all his life — as a teacher, salesman, and executive — and I think I saw him bake a loaf of bread at home exactly once.

In contrast, I have made 2 batches of dough, which equates to 6 loaves so far.  HA! The first batch of dough and the first couple of loaves had some issues, of course, but all have been perfectly edible.  DH has been quite complimentary, and I swear to you that even the cat went nuts and ate several morsels of one of the first loaves.

I plan to perfect my technique over the next few months, and then astound my siblings at our reunion in August with the "easy-to-memorize" recipe given in the book.

I think my dad would have thoroughly enjoyed grousing about what he would have considered the "shortcut" method employed in this book.  He might also have admitted (perhaps a bit grudgingly) that the authors do use some quite proper industry jargon, such as "oven spring" and "proofing", that I grew up hearing.  It was fun to see those terms in print.

And, to go along with The Pats’ latest loaf, here is mine!