A happy, lonely coffee (and bagels!)

I'm all alone this morning! At 8 am, I dropped all three of my children off at daycare (provided for free on post for a certain number of hours per month for families with deployed spouses). I cannot tell you how strange it felt to just walk away, and get in my car by myself.

I went to the gas station and vacuumed out my car, went to the bank, got some groceries, picked up the mail...and now I'm sitting by myself in an Internet cafe on post, just waiting until 12 noon to pick my kids back up. Just me, my knitting and my laptop. All by myself. I feel like I'm 18 again (in a good way).



For real. (And before someone asks, no, that's just the light hitting my hair funny, not purple dye.)

So, about the bagels! Living in a tiny town in Germany, it's impossible to find a bagel. The bakeries are wonderful, but bagels are just something that German's don't do. Now, I did have a pretty rockin' bagel in Berlin, but as far as I know, that's the only place in the entire country where you can get one (unless Munich has them too?)

Anyway, I'm a New Jersey girl. A New Jersey girl needs a bagel from time to time. I'd given up on ever having one while living here, but then when I was on the phone with my mom the other day, she told me about the recipe in America's Test Kitchen "The New Best Recipe", which she's already baked several times. I had to try it!


Seriously, if you don't bake at home, you can only imagine the smell of fresh baked goods coming out of your very own oven.

My little people inhaled them. Thumbs up all around.


I was very happy with these, and was going to post the recipe straight from the cookbook, but then found a blog post at Falling Rock Central, who tweaked it slightly. I agree that the bagels were just a touch dry (although, smothered in butter or cream cheese, who can tell?), so check out his version if you want to bake yourself up a batch.

I finished a pair of socks! I actually completed these a few weeks ago, just before my husband left, but just haven't gotten a chance to show them to you all yet:



I knit these two at a time, 64 stitches, toe-up, using a cast-on technique that my friend Dina taught me...maybe she can be persuaded to create a tutorial for it, because it's pretty cool, and makes a nice wide, rounded toe.

PROJECT SPECS

Yarn: Regia Nation Color (I call them retro rainbow, but I'm pretty sure that's not what the label says)
Needles: KnitPicks Classic Circular size 1 (knit 2-at-a-time, magic-loop technique)
Pattern: My own improvisation.
Notes: 64 stitch sock, toe up, Kitchener bind-off, peasant/afterthought heel.



I'm wearing them right now. They're so cheerful!

I also just finished a pair of Mother's Day socks for my mom, which I'll show you in my next post.

Oh, the fiber collage that I posted yesterday was the result of one day last week when my hands were sore from knitting, so I photographed most of my stash and posted them on Ravelry. I thought I'd put them together in a little collage for yesterday's post as a kind of "palate cleanser" after the unpleasant paragraph preceding it.

For details on exactly what all of the yummy fibers are, click on the collage, which will take you to the Flick page. Check the description there for what everything is.

Also -- Maple cream? It's stuff you spread on toast. Amazing stuff. I'll post a link for where to get some of your own tomorrow (or whenever I find it.)