being a diva is great…except for the mostly negative connotation

No I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth.  And yes, I remember I owe you prizes!  So without further ado, the winners of the Diva Knitting 5th Anniversary contest are LizzieK8 and Auburnchick.  Contact me and I’ll get your prizes out just as soon as I’m back from AZ.

I made one of my favorite summer dishes the other night.  It’s simple, beautiful and delicious.  Recipe:  1 can black beans, 1 can corn, both rinsed and drained, 2 zucchini chopped and 2 red bell pepper chopped.  Add a couple of tablespoons apple cider vinegar, chili powder and salt and pepper to taste.  This would also be great with fresh roasted corn but using canned makes it ridiculously easy.  We had it with Boca patties and mango jalapeno salsa (recipe:  mangos and jalapenos diced, lol).  I hope to have more time to write from Arizona later in the week.  Lots of updates!

I seem to be on a roll with the posts this week.  I’m sure it’s because I hate packing soooooo much, any distraction is welcome!  This is not one of my original recipes.  It came to me though the Vegetarian Times newsletter in April…sorry I’ve been holding it back for so long.  Even if you’re not vegetarian/vegan it’s worth signing up.  The recipes always look delicious and they have dairy and gluten free recipes too.  I’ve made this twice now and love it (obviously Jim does too or it wouldn’t be made again) !  The tempeh makes it a little different from the usual vegan chili and the vegetables give it a nice sweetness.  Give it a try and let me know what you think!  Recipe here.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be at the Menla Retreat and Conference Center learning to teach yoga.  The format is a week long, 100 hour teacher training “bootcamp.” (Does that bother anyone else, I mean, does the US always have to be different ie  imperial measurement AND weird period/comma rules?)  I’m very excited but also nervous.  The attendees will be a mix of brand new yoga teachers along with experienced ones and practice teaching will be done in front of both types!  Given the type of people that are generally drawn to teach yoga I can only hope the criticism is constructive and not too harsh.  There is no cell service and little free time so I’m not sure yet how much I’ll be online.  Regardless of whether I’m actually able to post while I’m there, I plan to do some writing each night while the experience of my day is still fresh.

While packing I was looking for this hat (still haven’t found it) and instead found a hat I don’t think I’ve shared on the blog before.  I can’t believe that EVER happens but I know it does, especially with smaller projects.  I tracked down the yarn to this post, merino I spun in the Pansy colorway from BeeMiceElf.   I’m guessing I knit the hat shortly afterwards so that narrows it down to a period of about a year since I made it.  It’s cute but I really prefer the other one.  Apparently, it can get pretty chilly on top of the mountain even in June so it’ll have to do if I can’t find the blue one.  Looking at this hat I realize just how much work my spinning needs.  I’m sure it’s even worse than I imagine now that it’s been eons since I’ve touched the wheel.

If you don’t hear from me for a while now you know why.  Please send some good vibes my way, particularly ones of confidence, healing and support!  Oh, and don’t forget about the giveaway!  You have up to 8 chances to win yarn and other fiber related goodies.

My first post at Diva Knitting was May 24, 2005! I’m a little late but to mark my five year blogiversary, I’m doing a giveaway. You’ve seen some of the stuff I’ve gifted in the past so you know it will be something good! I’ll be giving some lucky winner a handmade Diva Knitting project bag and of course, at least one person will get some awesome yarn.  The more people that enter, the more prizes there will be so please help spread the word!

How do you enter?  You can get multiple entries to the drawing by (use this link back to Diva Knitting for entries unless otherwise noted:  http://www.divaknitting.com/blog/2010/06/03/giveaway-5-years-of-diva-knitting):

• Blog about the giveaway
• Link to Diva Knitting using this link: http://www.divaknitting.com/blog in your blogroll
• Tweet about the giveaway
• Post about the giveaway in your Facebook status
• Post about the giveaway in an appropriate venue (Ravelry, Knittinghelp.com etc.) be sure to follow any forum rules please
• Subscribe to the blog at http://feeds.feedburner.com/divaknitting clicking that link will allow you to subscribe via any of the popular readers
• Subscribe to the blog on your Kindle
• Follow the blog through your facebook account:  http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/diva_knitting/

That’s 8 chances to win per person!  All you have to do is complete the above before you comment, then all at once provide links to the tweet, blog post, etc.  If you already subscribe or have me on your blogroll you can count those as an entry, just provide a link when appropriate.  The deadline for your comment here is June 15, 2010 at midnight EDT.  I’ll use a random number generator to choose the winners and begin sending out yarny goodness!  With all these links your comment may go into moderation (if you’ve commented here before that probably won’t happen).  Please be patient and I will approve your comment as soon as possible.  I’m going to yoga teacher bootcamp in New York on Saturday (EEK!) and will have limited internet access for the week.

You may notice I’m using a new comment client, Intense Debate. Unfortunately, all of the comments from my previous posts have yet to populate but when I did this for last year’s blogiversary I had 73 comments.  Let’s try to bring some new people here and double that number.  If I get over 146 comments from unique users I’ll be giving away a Boye Needlemaster!

It can be difficult to maintain a knitting blog when one hasn’t been doing much knitting!  I’ve had a problem with my right shoulder/arm/wrist the last 5 weeks that I’ve been trying to rest, as least somewhat.  Some of you may remember I had surgery on my LEFT shoulder a few years ago so having any kind of ongoing pain is worrisome.  I haven’t been to the doctor yet since I am going to a yoga teacher training intensive on the 5th for a week (and I’ve been out of town so much I didn’t have time).  No matter what is wrong with my arm, I know the initial course of action will be rest and rehab…neither of which I can afford to do at the moment!  I can’t very well show up at a teacher training bootcamp with half the strength it has taken me months to build.  On the other hand, I won’t get much out of it either if I can’t do anything because I’ve injured myself further.  I’ve laid of the knitting which seems to aggravate the wrist and I’ve only been doing my asana practice every other day or every two days for the last two weeks.  I wouldn’t be a very good yogi if I didn’t practice ahimsa (non-violence) towards myself…pushing too much through pain definitely comes under that category.  Being me, it’s difficult to back off when I need to and find balance since I tend to be kind of a “type A” personality.  That’s why it’s called a practice!  I’m just going to do the best I can with all of it given what I’m experiencing right now and I’m fine with that.

I have been gone quite a bit this spring so I haven’t gotten nearly as much done as I’d like, in multiple aspects of my life!  Since knitting has been bothersome, I got my craft on with some sewing instead.  I decided to make a table runner for my mother in law for mother’s day.  I chose this cute pattern several weeks prior but only got down to business three days before mother’s day which had me finishing it right down to the wire.  I began with the applique squares.  I’m not even sure if there is a correct method to applique, but what I did was use the same spray adhesive I use for embroidery to hold the pieces in place then used multiple colors of coordinating thread and a small zigzag stitch around the edges.  I was pretty pleased with myself at this point since the flowers were so stinkin’ cute.

Since I was in such a rush, I completely dismissed the issues I had with the last quilting project.  I meant to check the quarter inch foot to make sure it was actually a quarter inch using the tip I got from Mehitabel after posting about my first quilt; ”A good thing to remember is that your 1/4″ foot is only a guide: cut yourself a strip of fabric 1.5″ wide, cut it into three pieces, and then sew them together. Measure the middle piece and it should come out exactly 1″–if it doesn’t then you need to adjust the position of your fabric under the foot to make it come out right!”  But I didn’t.  In fact, it wasn’t until I had the middle square pieced it came out to 10″ instead of 10.5″ that I realized I had made the mistake yet again.  Since I didn’t really have time at this point to start over (and the applique was done with no room to reduce them to 10″), I used the great “fudge” method I learned last time which is to fiddle with the seams enough to sort of make it come out and then square the whole thing up again at the end.

Once I finished, I cut two 1.75″ strips and seamed them together with my quarter inch foot.  It should have measured 3 inches across but was only 2.5!  No wonder I have been so off on the pieced squares.  Right then, I noticed something.  I mean, really…how could I have been so dumb?!?  If you look closely at the foot you’ll notice there is a handy, dandy, BOLD, RED, center line where the needle should line up.  Yep.  Look at how off it is!  Fortuantely, my machine allows side to side adjustment of the needle so you can bet my next quilting project will not have these problems.  If only I had noticed this sooner, heavy sigh.  Hopefully next time my biggest challenge will be improving the binding.

Mothers being mothers, Jane of course loved it and swore that it looked perfect despite my insistence that she see how much I messed it up.  Plus, it really went well with her casual dining area which is just what I hoped.  Isn’t always such FUN learning new crafting lessons?

I hope you’ll forgive my lame post title when you’re dazzled by the beauty of Arizona.  I took a boatload of pictures this time and was lucky enough to get several good ones. Crafty update soon!

Every time we’re in Arizona, I’m amazed by the fresh produce.  It is infinitely fresher, tastier and better looking than anything we get in Ohio (at least in the grocery store).  I’m pretty sure it has to do with the proximity to California…less travel time to destination and all.  Just look at this beautiful bowl of fruit we got the other day at the regular old Fry’s grocery.  It sure makes it easy to eat healthy!

Inspired by a recent meal out, I made a batch of fresh salsa for last night’s meal:  Roasted Corn, Mango and Black bean salsa.  Original, I know but extremely tasty so I hope you’ll forgive me for the lame title.

Roasted Corn, Mango and Black Bean Salsa

2 ears sweet corn
1 15 oz can black beans or equivalent dry, soaked and cooked
4 roma tomatoes or 1 15 oz can whole peeled tomatoes, drained
2 jalapenos
1 mango
1/2 medium red onion
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Cut corn from cob.  Slice roma tomatoes in half lengthwise (or drain canned tomatoes).  Combine in a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil, salt an pepper.  Roast at 400 degrees until the corn is lightly browned.  Drain and rinse black beans.

Dice onion, jalapenos and mango.  Mix everything together and allow to sit so flavors can combine.  Personally, I would have added an avocado too, but Jim isn’t a big fan so I left it out.  We’re having this as sort of a chutney on top of veggie burgers but you can of course use it as any salsa.

I have a couple more food related things I’ve been meaning to share. Right before we left I made two fantastic new recipes that I found in Food TV magazine.  The first was Polenta with Roasted Tomatoes.  It was absolutely delicious and I would hardly change a thing.  My only modification was to save the drained tomato juice which I used in the water to cook the polenta.  I figured why waste that great tomato taste?  It also made the polenta a very pretty orange color.  I’m glad polenta is back on my radar since it’s so quick and easy to cook.  I also made Cauliflower Tabouli.  It’s a great twist on the original and had a great light, fresh taste.

The other food thing I have to tell you is I found a fantastic blog yesterday called Foods For Long Life.  The photography is so good it makes me want to try every recepie there.  Last night I made the Raw Zucchini Soup with Crushed Pistachios.  I loved it.  Jim liked it but had to heat his up.  It was interesting to taste it heated as well as room temperature…cooking changed the flavor from the raw which was good for Jim since his complaint was “tastes too green”.  After heating it was still good but the lemon flavor was much more pronounced.

My breakfast this morning was inspired by the same blog.  Organic blackberries and strawberries, an Arizona grown Tangelo, raw walnuts raw shredded coconut…might be one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.  Not being big on seeds, Jim got a smoothie instead of some frozen organic mango, strawberry and banana along with the strawberry tops leftover from mine and some vanilla yogurt, soy milk and orange mango juice.  Absolutely decadent and almost made me wish I wasn’t trying to give up dairy. I thought the idea of using the strawberry tops was a great one. I usually just throw those away but I’ll be saving them from now on, especially when they’re organic.

I hope you’re tempted to try some of these recipes. I can promise you won’t regret it!

I was reading a newly discovered blog, Namaste, Bitches (just the title alone was enough to make me HAVE to explore it) and came up with a great question. What is yoga? Or more specifically, what do people who don’t really know much about yoga think it is?  In the post “Takin’ It To The Street“, Holly goes to a Philadelphia construction site to expose workers to yoga.  What a cool (and possibly brave) idea!  She made a comment about the disconnect between yoga teachers/studios and the “real” people out there who could most benefit from the practice, which I think is right on target.

I know there are many misconceptions out there about what yoga is and is not.  I figure since I’m training to teach I should probably explore just what some of those ideas are (I’ve heard some interesting ones over the years).  This is when it is really handy to have a knitting blog as opposed to a yoga blog and I hope you’ll humor me.  Many of you have nothing to do with yoga and thus are just the people to ask!  When you hear that someone is “doing yoga” what is it exactly you think they’re doing?  What kind of imagery and ideas come to mind when you think about yoga?

My very first quilt is now at it’s permanent home with a new baby!  My closest friend from high school was blessed with a second child and I really wanted to do something special since this was a particularly difficult pregnancy.  I “cheated” a little…I bought a kit for the Baby Buggies pattern from Clothworks.  I just didn’t feel comfortable working with a pattern for which I would have to choose the fabric.  No confidence in that yet!

In fact, I had to “cheat” on this quilt a lot!  Despite the use of a good ruler and a rotary cutter my pieced squares turned out a little off from the measurements.  I’m not sure if this was due to my ineptitude at cutting or my ineptitude at sewing a quarter inch seam (despite having a handy dandy quarter inch foot) or both.  When it came to sewing the larger squares together, I sometimes had to fudge the seam a bit to get it to work.  In retrospect, I probably should have squared up all of the larger pieces to the same size then sewed them together but it eventually worked out.  I did have to trim the main quilt a bit before adding the striped edging but overall it wasn’t too bad.

I thought I had a brilliant idea with the binding after reading how to avoid sewing it by hand.  You simply sew the binding to the back then fold over and use a decorative stitch that shows on the front.  Voila!  Or in my case not so Voila!  Now that I’ve done it once I realize at least as a beginner the hand sewn finishing would have created a much neater edge.  Instead I ended up with one that was quite wobbly.

The actual quilting was an adventure too.  Another “brilliant” idea I had was to try to use the embroidery machine to quilt a block after the entire quilt was sandwiched together.  Embroidery machines come with quilt like patterns so this must be what they are used for?  I don’t think so.  Trying to put the whole quilt in there was just so unwieldy.  I think it must be used for quilting much smaller projects or individual squares.  Fortunately my machine has quite a few quilting stitches, one of which was a wide squiggly pattern I seem to see on at lot of quilts.  I switched to that and just randomly went over the rest of the pain squares.  At any rate, I learned a lot and it is still precious since it was my first one.

I’d love to hear any advice or tips from quilters!  I enjoyed it so much I’m definitely planning more projects just as soon as I can figure out how to get better results.

It sure took a long time to complete what were supposed to have been Olympic socks!  Even though I hate knitting socks on size 0 needles, I must’ve thought this Crystal Palace Panda Silk required it.  It’s the first time I tried this yarn and it really has a great feel.  The blend is 5% silk, 43% merino and 52% bamboo.  I’m interested to to see how well it wears.  My only complaint is that the yardage doesn’t produce very long socks.  I wear a 8.5-9 shoe and most sock yarn yardage is for knee highs or close to it.  Maybe that was a good thing though because they’re off the needles sooner and I can move on to the next pair!  I used the Snake River pattern and itwas relatively mindless.  I especially like the way the heels came out.  Anyone notice the pattern on the bottom?  I wish I could say this was on purpose but I have to admit I got into some kind of trance and had knit the pattern all the way around for about two inches without even realizing it.  It does make for a much narrower fit, but the smoothness of the pattern works fine on the bottom of the foot.  I actually kind of like it and might even do it on purpose in the future!

A long overdue public thank you to Kimberly.  She had a contest a while back and for being a Princess Bride freak I won some lovely sock yarn. Thanks again Kimberly!