Friday Favorites

Happy Friday!  Here are some of my favorite knitting and cooking-related things this week:

Fiber

• Spotlight Sweater.  Tin Can Knits released a new book this week.  It’s filled with great patterns, but I especially love the bold, graphic design of the Spotlight sweater.  It’s going in my (very long) fall sweater queue … at this rate, I think it might have to wait until next year!
• This little post on “the solace of hats.”  Short and sweet, but spot on: hats are my go to when I want to feel like I’ve accomplished something. Reading it made me want to pick up my neglected Tom and Jerry Hat or cast on for Newhaven.  Or stash dive (not buy yarn, not buy yarn, even though I reallllly want to try the yarn the pattern suggests) for this hat, which I’ve wanted to make since it first came out.  But I recognize that, at this moment, with everything I have on the needles, another project — even a hat — would be too much for me!
• The perfect rug for knitters.  I made the totally predictable IKEA trip when I first moved into my apartment and fell in love with this rug.  It’s made of wool!  It’s design is made up of little v’s that look like stockinette stitches!  It has some of my favorite colors!  Was a new area rug strictly necessary for the new apartment? No.  But I caved and got it.  If I were more organized than I am at the moment, I’d share a picture of mine in it’s new home.   But for now, check it out on IKEA’s website and make sure to zoom in for those stockinette v’s.
• This beautiful, tailored knitted skirt.  Knitting a skirt has never been high on my list of priorities … but this, this skirt is really special.  Wouldn’t it be a wonderful wardrobe staple?

Sustenance

• This beautiful plum cake from Kate Davies’ website.  I’m hoping to stock up on plums at tomorrow’s farmer’s market and make it this weekend.  Just because it looks delicious.
• This quick and simple dal recipe.  I made this for dinner last night on Mr. N’s suggestion, and I was pretty skeptical.  And then it was amazingly delicious.  It was super fast, even though I skipped the soaking step.  For the green chile, I used a jalapeno as that’s what I had on hand, and I omitted the hing as I didn’t have any.  I cooked the whole thing in a covered saucepan (again, out of necessity: I don’t have a pressure cooker) with about 4.5 cups of water at a vigorous boil, and just checked it every now and then to see if the rice and lentils were soft — I think it took somewhere in the ballpark of 20 minutes, maybe a bit more.  Topped with some plain yogurt mixed with salt and lemon juice, this was a tasty, super fast, one pot dinner, that’s equally good as leftovers, as I found today when I had it for lunch!
• This article on the Great British Bake Off.  I’ve loved the show since I saw it three seasons ago when I was in the UK for research.  I was gutted (as they so frequently say on the show) when I heard that it was moving off the BBC and that Mel and Sue would not be going with the show.  This article at least brought me a few giggles … small comfort though, when I think that the GBBO will never be the same! (If you want more Bake Off-related reading, this is also a great piece about why Mel and Sue are so important to the show — and confirms what I’ve long suspected .. they are really decent people!)

Well, that about does it for me this week!  As always, I’d love to hear what knitting and food-related fodder has you excited as you head into the weekend.  If you want more Friday Favorites, you can find previous ones here.  Have a great weekend!