The Hunter's Journal

I usually only post here with success stories, but today, I realized that doing that, I cheated myself out of looking at how much I've learned over the year. So, this is about a failure.

For whatever reason, this shawl and I did not work well together. I just could not get it to work. Not even with the lifeline helping me, was I able to make this shawl work.

So, for now, that one's on the shelf. Now, it doesn't mean I'll never do it. Or that I "failed" at anything, really, it just means that my mind was not able to parse something about it, and if I stop trying to force myself to get it done, maybe it will get done at another time.

I move don to a different pattern that seems to be coming along a lot better than Black Death was. Let's hope it continues to do so.

Also, for anyone on Ravelry: Here is a large list of shawls. (Most are free, a few probably were at one time and no longer are.) I downloaded like... all of them. Whoops.

My first time ever knitting a shawl and it's done and came out not too badly! I'm so proud, actually.

Abyssal was recommended to me by a friend, as a good shawl to start with. After I ripped it out (twice) I finally got the hang of the new stitches and the way it worked.

Pictures under the cut!

( Pictures! )

Honestly, it was a good shawl to start with and get me familiar with using a few new stitches and things like stitch markers, and I really like the way it turned out!

So, today, despite the cold, I had to go to the store. I needed something for dinner, and I looked around. There weren't a lot of options (because this wasn't the big store with more options) but it's a regular store, so enough.

Anyway, here are your ingredients:

About 2lbs Chicken tender loins. (It was on sale)
Kale
Shredded carrots
1 apple
Olive oil
Spices
Rice (I used white, brown can also be used)

Heat olive oil (1tablespoon maybe?) in your pan on medium heat. Chop your chicken into bite sized pieces. Once the oil is popping just a little, add your chicken. Stir it to coat the chicken and then go through your spices.

I used: chopped onion, garlic powder, pepper, Italian seasoning, and cumin.

Stir everything together and make sure the seasonings distribute over the chicken. Cover and let simmer on a lower heat.

Chop up an apple. I used golden delicious. Chop it into pretty small chunks. Add to the pot and stir. Then add shredded carrots. (I used a small handful? Use whatever looks right for you.)

Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes or so. (I read Tumblr/answered an email)

Come back and rough chop some kale. This, I really did not measure at all. So, add what you'd like. It needs stirred in. I hovered over it because kale (something I've never used before) looks horrible when overcooked (I looked things up on the internet).

Once your rice is done (I have a rice cooker, so it's literally, thrown it in and set to cook!) serve your chicken and veggies over the rice. Salt and pepper to taste.

Some notes:

I want to try, next time, with pineapple, instead of apple. The apple flavor got lost in everything else, but I think the pineapple would give it a nice bite.

Ginger is one spice I don't use much but would probably go in this dish very, very nicely. It's very open to experimentation which is nice.

If I do use apple again, I'm going to try something with a bit more bite. The golden delicious just didn't cut it.

I would not recommend putting salt in this. I think it would destroy the rest of the recipe. I was going to at first, but the other spices/flavors really said that salt wouldn't go well, when I tried it.

( Picture of food )

So, I've recently taken up knitting again. As this post showed, I did a lot of it at the end of the year.

Right now, I am working on another hat. But, I've been changing the pattern a little, because, well, I wanted to.

This post is going to be about that project. So, I'm making this hat that I've made twice before.

Except, I've changed the pattern. I was doing the striped one that's the second one down. Son wanted a green hat, but I don't have enough yarn to make a fully green hat, so I had to change colors. I'm going to be adding a couple other colors too, just because. It's good practice for me to learn a new method, and it gives my son an awesome hat!

Under the cut is my pattern that I'm using, and the video that taught me to change colors.

( Pattern and video )

So, yes. Here we go.