It’s been awhile (my apologies). Life events and situations keep me from blogging, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been knitting/cooking/sewing! A couple projects in the kitchen ended up pretty successful (hubby was happily eating my experiments).

Sweet Chili Glazed Chicken Wings - Got the recipe from a friend. Talk about YUM!! Sweet, asian flavors, with a slight chili kick, and tender chicken meat. I have been requested by the hubby to keep this recipe on a regular dinner rotation. And yep, they are as juicy as they look:

Broiled Oysters on the half shell - This one I sort of made up. Pretty good for someone who has a bit of a cooking phobia with shellfish (there’s something gruesome about purchasing your dinner “live” and killing them in the cooking process). However, this does not deter me from my love of EATING shellfish or any type of seafood for that matter. Raw, cooked, I love them all. In anycase, I looked up some recipes online, did some research on oyster shucking, and this came out:

Pretty much I added a tab of butter/mustard mixture with a breadcrumb/dried herbs/cheese mixture, and broiled them on the half shell. What a cinch. (Except for the shucking part, those little suckers are strong!) They came out piping hot, crispy bubby tops, with tender soft insides.

And from the sewing room, an Amy Butler bag! This is one of her Madison bags. Sewing it was pretty fun. I’m a bit rusty, so her bag projects have been good at getting my gears back into sewing. I also added some pockets to the lining, as I remember some of my friends mentioning that she didn’t have any pockets in her pattern. Overall, it was a fun project - this bag isn’t particularly my personal style, but I loved the process of making it, plus the freedom to choose my own fun fabrics.

Lastly, a knitting project. I can safely say, this is my first pair of socks that I was ESTATIC about finishing. I liked the fit, the feel, and the overall simpleness of it. I used Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn, and the pattern was a very basic sock pattern from the inside label. The downside was the handpainted “stripes”. I loved the colorway, but the thing with handpainted yarns, you never know how they’ll knit up. There’s a bit of pooling, and some striping, but not as uniform as I normally like. But those that like the slight pooling effect, it works out.

I also think that my feet probably work best with a short-row heel rather than a traditional heel flap. But that’s okay. These socks totally work for me, plus, the yarn is superwash. I threw it in the washer, then tossed it in the dryer for delicate cycle, and ta-da! Nice, clean, soft, funky, wearable socks. =)