Ikat Warp shifter!!! Komebukuro, and some cooking

Warp shifter? More info in a later post

I asked DH to make an ikat warp shifter for me: I'm currently trying to learn how to use it. Here's a teaser photo! And when I'm weaving I'll publish a review and some notes. I suspect this won't be a good test as the warp was poorly dyed (by me)... but weaving it anyways.

The October cookbook was Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean... I choose a baked fish dish, covered with a tahini sauce and chopped hazelnuts; I'd cook that again. Paula suggested to eat it with pickled veggies, and yep, that's the right side dish. This cookbook is organized differently than most modern cookbooks, and may not appeal to everyone, and I enjoyed the stories about where she found the recipes... And the Eastern Med covers a HUGE area, which was fascinating as well. 

Pasta wanna-be

For DH's birthday, I made cheese canneloni and a salad with the last tomatoes from the garden... I took a photo at the start but failed to take one of the finished dish! I made a pan of 3 servings, and yep, they were all gone... but there are 2 smaller pans in the freezer to eat later.  We opened a bottle of 2007 Castello di Ama Chianti Classico that we bought at the winery on our 25th anniversary trip... it needed some time to open up and in act was a lot better on the 2nd day. We've noted that for the other bottle we have.

P. and I picked up a pattern and fabric kit for Komebukuro at Sew Creative in Ashland; awesome shop!!! Komebukuro are Japanese Rice bags, used to carry offering of rice to the temple... these bags are super popular for project bags or lunch bags right now. I bought a fabric kit for it but can easily see using leftover fabrics; these bags are embellished with applique, and sashiko and boro stitching.  So far I've sewn together the sides of two bags; the kit is supposed to have enough for three. I'll use scrap fabric for the lining and maybe get a couple more bags from the nice thickish fabric in the kit... (What am I going to do with a bunch of bags? Hmmm...)

On the weaving front, I'm working very slowly through warping with the warp shifter. I don't know what I'm doing and that makes me hesitate. I will likely warp up a runner on the other empty loom.

The beginnings of my komebukuro

Sewing wise, I have nothing currently planned other than the rice bags. 

I cast on the April Cardigan (a v-necked cardigan in blue cashmere) for travel knitting, repeatedly. I finally got the hang of the right facing and left facing increases and am knitting away. It's a simple top down cardi and it's going pretty fast in the DK weight cashmere.

Still working on the Modular Color Vest version 2, since I screwed up version 1 pretty badly. I'd unraveled it and cast it on a while ago. I'm about 2/3 complete.