Fiber Fool

It is that time of year again where the garden is producing in abundance and finally the weather is temperate enough that turning the oven on doesn’t make you faint with the thought of the extra heat you are dumping into the house. In fact, there may be an occasional day where you purposefully look for a reason to the run the oven for a while so you can take the chill off without having to resort to turning the furnace on in September. Not only will roasted veggie ragu take the chill off of the house, but it will fill the house with a fantastic aroma sure to stir up appetites.

We used nearly all locally produced items in our ragu and a fair bit was even grown in our garden. The only exception was the large can of organic tomato sauce. I filled a jelly roll pan with zucchini, onion, garlic, tomatoes (yellow pear from our garden and 3 romas from the farmer’s market), and peppers which were generously coated in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted them for about an hour at 350 degrees, stirring every 20 minutes or so. Once I removed it from the oven put the tomato sauce in a medium sauce pan. I added some red pepper flakes to taste, a pinch of dried thyme, about 1/2 t each of oregano and marjoram and 2 t sugar. Then I added about 2/3 of the roasted veggies and blended until nearly smooth with am immersion blender. Once blended I added the remaining 1/3 of roasted veggies to the sauce and let simmer for about an hour. Just before serving I added about 3 T thinly sliced fresh basil. We served it over penne and garnished with freshly grated parmesean and some more fresh basil. A few nights later we had it over mushroom ravioli and it was fantastic that way as well.

This isn’t a real recipe where you need to follow line by line. Substitute whatever vegetables are in abundance where you live. I had originally planned to put eggplant in it, but ours had gone bad. For those who like meat, it would be great served with grilled chicken. This is also one of those recipes where it gets even better when used as leftovers. Though I do have to confess, after roasting and simmering I recommend pureeing the leftovers as many of the vegetables won’t withstand another heating after all that cooking, but the flavor will have deepened. You could turn it into a meat sauce as leftovers if you were so inclined or add a new batch of sauteed veggies to add texture back to the sauce.

The yarn shops in my area have had the 2008 edition of IK Felt available for almost two weeks now. But, today is the official newsstand date so the magazine should be found at most bookstores that carry Interweave Knits and Spin Off for those without a nearby LYS. Last year this special issue sold out quite quickly.

As I had posted earlier, I have a pattern in this issue. On page 20 is the Mitered Diamond Bag. In looking through my copy of the magazine it came to my attention that there is a small error that was introduced during the editing process. It is minor and some may or may not notice it. The fifth line down on page 22 is the start of a sentence that should not be there - “Seam all corresponding edges tog - A edge to A edge, G edge to G edge, and so on.” The bag is constructed in such a way to minimize seaming and there are only two short seams to complete which were in the instructions prior to this extra sentence. Felt staff have had this brought to their attention and there should be an official errata posted on the page for this issue soon.

If you are in northern Colorado I will be teaching two sessions of classes at My Sister Knits in Fort Collins. The weekend class starts this Saturday, September 13th. There will be a second weekday session in later October. Sign ups for both sessions are currently open. Please call My Sister Knits at at (970) 407-1461 to reserve your space. Once the issue is sold out, due to contractual agreements, I will be unable to teach the class again until this time next year, so don’t put off signing up or you could wait a long time. For more info on my classes at any time, check out the Fiber Arts Classes link in the upper right of any blog page. There is also a mailing list that sends out reminders usually no more than once a month.

I know you wouldn’t believe it from looking at the blog (then again, maybe you would) but I am knitting like a crazy person! I just can’t show it to you. I’m sneaking you a peak at what I started on Saturday night. I can’t really tell you much more about it than what you can guess from looking at the picture.

Maybe that isn’t quite true. The yarn - the yarn is a lovely fingering weight 2-ply superwash merino. It has great stitch definition. And while I’m not really a red person, this is my kind of red if I’m going to be working with red! The yarn has just enough give to be easy on the hands, but not so much that it is difficult to tension evenly. I’ve put it through some pretty rigorous challenges during this knit and it has stood up admirably. Are you on the edge of your seat in anticipation of what the yarn is yet? Do you want to know?

I’m knitting this design from Miss Babs “Yummy” sock in Sandi’s Red monochrome (a semi-solid). You may have seen her yarn in the latest KnitScene. Why do I like this red? Because it is a red red. No orange tones to it. I’d say it is about as neutral as reds get, but it is probably ever so slightly tilted towards a cool red. Despite my love of orange I dislike my reds to be very warm. On my monitor the photo is just a little warmer than the color appears in real life, but it is probably closer than the photo on Miss Bab’s web site of the color. If you like red (or aren’t a fan but need to knit for someone who is), I’d give it a try.

I’ll get to finally reveal this project come the new year. But stay tuned, because I have many other skeins of Miss Bab’s fingering and sport yarn to work with in the coming months.