Rainy Tuesday

I'm loving the weather today! The overcast skies normally make me cranky but today is different. I can go outside without a winter coat, gloves, hat, scarf, and thick socks. My face is not cramped because of the icy wind beating against it. I actually had the word balmy come into mind when I was just out on the porch! Imagine, balmy on December 9!!

I completed one sock last night while hanging out in the new sitting room. I found the room to be much cozier at night. The dark outside makes the room feel more closed in. That doesn't sound like a pleasant thing but in reality it is. Maybe it is this getting closer to the shortest day of the year that is making me feel dark and closed in spaces are good. Anyway the sock, I completed one. I love the color. The pattern is beautiful. Broadripple from Knitty's Summer '03. This is the second pair I've made using this pattern. Love the way I can memorize the counts. Almost like using a simple Calculus formula, almost. (Maybe that is where I went wrong. Maybe I should have created knitting patterns out of my formulas to memorize them for the exams!) Curious what the sock looks like?
If you click on the picture it gets bigger. The lace is subtle in this yarn. I'm fascinated with the pattern in a solid color. Hopefully the new owner will love these as much as I do. They are not for exercising in even though they are shown on the ball. This grey day does not lend itself well to picture taking.

One other event of last weekend was a trip to Denton to see Kam's parents. I learned to always take the camera where ever we go. We decided to go out for a meal and a mini adventure. On the side of the road was a man selling collard greens. The temperature that day was 35 and windy. If it weren't for the upcoming holiday I doubt many people would have been out of their warm homes. But this guy was in his truck selling collards at a very busy stop light. The pick up truck was loaded. Trust me, I know it is hard without photo proof, this was a full size pickup loaded above the bed and covered with a tarp. The beautiful greens were cut at the base just above ground where they grew in the fields. As we drove by it looked like he was selling giant green flowers! They were gorgeous! I wanted lots of them because they were so pretty! We limited ourselves to three.
That is what my kitchen sink looks like right now! I have all three heads in the sink. The flower is still beautifully evident.

Make it bigger, you can see how wonderful it is! The question now is how many pots will it take to cook these suckers up? The one I have is huge. No really this is huge!

It looks small there on the counter. It is a 16 quart stock pot. When I bought it I thought it would be a nice soup pot. I was working in a kitchen store. The pot looked small in the big store. I was very excited about it. A large heavy stock pot all shiny and only $20 after my discount. The intention here was turkey soup after Thanksgiving. Turns out this pot is big enough to make stock out of two turkeys at one time! Now you have an idea of the immensity of the pot, and a visual on how enormous the collards are. Do you think I can get at least two of them into the pot to cook? It would make me so very happy to only have to keep track of one huge pot of greens but that is stretching the point beyond the laws of physics. I have a little sister pot that is only 12 quarts. She may just end up helping out.

Best get off to cleaning, cutting, and cooking that mess of greens. Perfect timing too, the house is very dry and can use the extra humidity that will come from hours of boiling greens!