Live. Laugh. Love.

I have never been one to collect knick-knacks of any sort (Pyrex does NOT count as a knick-knack)... I'm talking about little figurines that don't have much use except to sit around and collect dust on shelves. 

During the years onboard the Love Boat, I had to secure the shelf above my bed (I don't ever remember having more than one) whenever we sailed in case of rough seas. I would keep a book or journal there in port, but nothing that could shatter if it hit the floor while we sailed. 

And as a professional nomad, I usually didn't have a lot of patience for packing knick-knacks and carting them around the world -- particularly breakable ones. 

I've made an exception though -- my wedding cake-topper.

The Sailor and I have never really had a 'traditional' marriage -- with him being gone so often. We certainly didn't have the most traditional wedding (check out our handmade invitations here). We got married in South Africa on a farm with only a small number of people present. I was already living there and had yet to find a suitable cake topper, so I enlisted my mother's help from the other side of the world several months before. Our wedding may have been small, but we would certainly be sticking to the cake tradition -- even if it was Black Forrest.

My mom managed to procure a cake topper for us -- as close as she could get to something sailor-like. She put it in the mail a good two months before the wedding.

The cake topper, however, never made it to the ceremony. United States to South African post can be sketchy on the best of days, so we figured it had just been stuck in the mail and would arrive eventually. 

Several months later, the cake topper was still missing. I'm still not sure what the happy couple was doing in the meantime... but they eventually turned back up, in America. If they were ever in South Africa, they never told us.

Ever since then, I haven't let them out of my sight. 

They show up at photo shoots. 

 They like the outdoors, too. 

Sometimes they hang around next to a wedding photo in the living room -- most recently they've been leading the procession near a photo on my nightstand of the Sailor and me that says 'live, laugh, love'.

This week, I looked at the ceramic couple (I tried to ignore the dust on them -- I implore you to do the same) and the words on that photo frame, and I realized how much more I laugh when the Sailor is around. I'm not talking about a chuckle every now and again... I'm talking about the kind of laughter that makes your stomach ache and mascara run down your face. This week, I pointed out to the Sailor that I seem to have more wrinkles all of a sudden around my mascara-smeared eyes. 

He simply shrugged and said it was from too much laughing. Then his own eyes squinted and he burst out laughing.

So much has happened this year that has made us cry... but I am grateful for the fact that we are still living, loving and most of all, laughing. I'm grateful for the Sailor, who like the happy ceramic couple, goes away for months at a time, but always find his way home again.

Seed Stitch

Lately I've been a little obsessed with knitting seed stitch (and stripes -- can you tell?!)

I realized a few months ago while showing off a few of my hand knits to a friend, that I tend to stick with good old garter stitch and stocking stitch. I've also thrown cables in the mix, like with the Central Park Hoodie. But beyond the occasional ribbing for a sock cuff, I haven't really done too much knitting and purling in the same row.

I love the look of simple garter and stocking stitch and of course cables... but I decided I needed to start venturing into more textured items.  

Seed stitch proved a perfect start.

I started off by making my friend (the one who received the Sheep for her baby shower), a cute cardigan for her wee lamb. I thought the cardigan reminded me a little of the sheep in any case. 

The pattern is from the august edition of British magazine Craftseller.  

I also have a slight magazine obsession. It started when I was a teenager and it's never really slowed down. Besides Artful Blogging, I regularly scour the newsstands looking for all kinds of other magazines. A trip overseas? Don't even get me started. The Sailor is even in on the game. He recently brought home a three-month-old issue of FairLady (my favorite South African magazine) that had to travel through West African waters and then Paris before it finally made it to me.

I do on occasion have to restrain myself. But lately I've been splurging on Craftseller.  

For the cardigan, it only seemed right that I used a British ball of yarn I procured in England several years ago. I carefully calculated the yardage and set off making my cute cream cardi. 

Imagine my surprise when I ran out of yarn at the back of the hood -- I ended up using a bit of brown from my stash (you can kind of see the weird brown splotch at the back of the hood) and then I crocheted trim on the bottom and the cuffs and along the rest of the hood, to try to balance the whole thing out.

Despite my poor math calculations -- I still found the seed stitch super easy. 

However, like all kinds of British versus American terms, seed stitch* is actually referred to as moss stitch in the UK. (American Moss Stitch is something different -- of course.) 

Now that the shawl is finally complete, I'm whipping up a little autumn inspired something... in seed stitch, naturally.

* American Seed stitch or British Moss Stitch: Knit 1, Purl 1 on an even number of stitches on the first row, then Purl 1, Knit 1 on the next row. Repeat these two rows to form seed stitch. There is also an American Moss Stitch, but let's worry about that later, shall we?

Shawl Season

Eight months to the day that I started Citron Grand, I finally finished it. I'm still laughing when I think about how the Sailor and I wound ALL of the yarn as we were about to leave for the airport for our cruise. 

I naively thought that I would finish this ENTIRE shawl on the ship.  In SEVEN days.

What was I thinking?! 

A month after the cruise, I hadn't gotten very far (you can see just how far here.) I blame all of the other projects I had going at the same time.

I really had no idea how long knitting a shawl with lace-weight yarn would take. Clearly I had some very high ambitions. (I also had no idea how long it would take to fix a serious mistake. Because of my debacle, I renamed this the Patient Shawl.)

But now it's done. Off the needles, blocked and ready to wear in time for today's day full of sunshine and fresh chilly air. 

The photo in the Ravelry pattern shows only seven sections (the original free Citron is much smaller -- only five pattern repeats). I wanted to go all out and make a BIG shawl with all 10 pattern repeats in Citron Grand. 

Go big or go home, I say.  

In the end, I luckily estimated that I was about to run out of yarn, before it was too late, so I only made it to level 9 of the repeat section. I'm not sure if my gauge was off, or if I lost quite a bit of yarn when I had to rip out an entire section, but I'm glad I caught it before I had to rip out 1000 stitches at a time.

Even though I cut it extraordinarily close, I managed to finish my shawl with just enough yarn to spare. 

THIS is all I had leftover: 

Just enough yarn to keep in case I need to patch a hole years from now. The yarn is Malabrigo Lace in Verde Esperanza.  

And the shawl is definitely big enough to keep me warm. Shawl season is finally here.

Artful Blogging

Ever since my first story got published, I've always been a little giddy when I see something of mine in print. 

Some things never change. 

This time, I'm even more excited than usual. 

A little over a year after I started this blog, I'm now featured in the winter edition of Artful Blogging from Stampington & Company!

This magazine has inspired me on so many levels -- and it was one of the very things that prompted me to start this blog in the first place. I'm thrilled to be featured in their pages -- and I can't wait to sit down and read the rest of the stories of fellow bloggers, inside. 

If you've stumbled upon Typing Sunflowers as a result of reading Artful Blogging, then a very special welcome to you! 

Dried Apples

The Sailor arrived home this weekend and as soon as he walked into the apartment, he immediately noticed the enormous quantity of apples, apples and more apples, adorning the table. 

I remembered I wanted to do something with all of those apples... 

I made an apple cake, but that barely made a dent in one of the bowls. 

I needed another solution before these fantastically fresh apples straight from the orchard would start rotting. 

A few years ago, my mom and I were out shopping, and she bought me a food dehydrator on a whim. I had mentioned that I wanted to experiment with beef jerky for the Sailor. The jerky process still needs some work. (In the meantime, the Sailor has built his own contraption to make South African biltong that I promise to feature later.)

In any case, we seemed to go through dried fruit like crazy in our house and I figured there must be a cheaper way to keep it in stock. I also didn't like that a lot of dried food products contained a ton of preservatives. 

I wanted to keep things simple, even if it meant we had to eat the dried stuff faster than the purchased preserved kind. Over the years, I've experimented on a lot of fruit, but apples are some of the fastest and easiest to dehydrate.

I simply core them, peel them by hand, slice them fairly thin, and then give them a good dip in lemon water to help preserve them. 

Sometimes my timing isn't great. I got a little over ambitious this time and I cored a dozen apples before I started peeling them. I'm a fairly fast peeler, but the cores were already turning brown in the meantime before I could get them in the lemon water. 

Make sure you also get cut off any bruised bits. 

You don't have to peel them in any case. It's perfectly acceptable to leave apple skins on the apples. Unless you don't like apple skins. I do like apple skins though, so I'm not sure why I've always peeled them when dehydrating. (I'm thinking the Sailor had a say in the process at some point...) 

Then, I let them dry out in the dehydrator. It usually takes about five hours depending on the type of apple and thickness, until they're the right consistency. If I'm ever in doubt about whether they've dried out enough, I just keep the stash in the fridge (many dried fruits in packages advise you to store the stuff in the fridge after opening in any case!) 

Cost-wise, I have calculated that it is usually cheaper to dry out my own stuff, depending on where and when I buy the fruit. In this case, it worked out about the same price -- but I can eat my dehydrated apples knowing they came straight off the tree and were dried out with only lemon water as an additive.

Plus, how fun is it to just watch fruit shrivel up in a matter of hours? 

If you don't have a dehydrator, you can get the same effects as one by simply using your oven on a very low temperature. You'll need to experiment as to how long it takes -- best done on a day where you don't have to leave the house! 

* I have this dehydrator. It was definitely on sale when my mom and I found it. I'm sure that's why it got purchased on a whim. I liked this one because you can purchase more racks to dehydrate more food at one time.