Experimentation

Last week, I was watching the show Jamie at Home on the Food Network. The episode was "Peas and Broad Beans." Peas are my favorite vegetable, but I had never tried broad beans, or, as we know them here in the United States, fava beans. I mentioned this to my mother-in-law, who is wonderful and has been doing our grocery shopping for me while I've been house bound following my surgery. She dropped by today, and guess what she brought me?



Fava beans, along with some fresh mint and watercress from her garden! Based on some of the flavors that Jamie Oliver was combining on the show, I set to work on a dinner of pasta with fava beans, mint, watercress and parmesan. First, I shelled the beans, then I blanched them for three to four minutes to cook them and help to remove the tough skins surrounding the beans.



I tossed the pasta with a little bit of butter, some pasta water, salt and pepper and the fresh mint. I added the skinned beans and topped the whole thing with freshly grated parmesan and watercress. Yum!



Since this is a knitting blog, though, I guess I should actually show some knitting! The knitting on the first of the twins' sweaters is finished, but I'm going to wait until both are finished to soak and block them and sew the buttons on.



I had ordered some green yarn for the second sweater, since we weren't sure if the second baby was a girl or not. We had another ultrasound yesterday, and the technician (a different one than at our last ultrasound) also thinks that we have a boy and a girl! Of course, I couldn't resist ordering pink yarn for that second sweater, so I'll be starting on that one once it gets here. Hopefully the technicians are correct! :)

I'm back, babies!

Whew! Now that was a long hiatus. Really, I haven't been knitting much at all over the past few months, so really, there's been nothing to blog about anyway. I have been busy, however:



I'm 20 weeks pregnant, with twins! I haven't been knitting much, because I was sleeping virtually all of the time that I wasn't working during my first trimester. I know it's scandalous, but in the time that I was awake, I didn't feel like knitting or spinning at all. After my first trimester ended, and I left my job, I was looking forward to getting back into it. Of course, life intervened. I spent last Monday, my very first day off, at the ER with horrible back and abdominal pain. By Thursday, I was admitted to the hospital and was having emergency surgery (thankfully, the babies are okay, as far as we know, and I am well on my way to a full recovery now). What an exciting week!

I did manage to start a small project, though. The first of two sweaters for the twins:



We're fairly sure that one twin is a boy and the other is a girl, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that! The pattern is Carole Barenys' Top Down Baby Sweater (Ravelry link), which hopefully is just the thing to ease me back in to my knitting addiction. The yarn is Falk by Dale of Norway, color 5813. Like so many other Ravelers, I am using seed stitch for the button bands instead of garter. It's slow going so far, but I hope that I'll get back into the swing of knitting soon, because I have lots to do with two on the way!