Look what I got today!

I'm almost out of my favorite sock yarn, Trekking Hand Art (and besides, is it just me or are they phasing it out?), so aside from ordering the pink colorway I hadn't tried yet, I also ended up buying a bunch of Cascade Heritage 150 Paints that were on sale at WEBS. I bought two of the pink because I knew SweetTart would like it and that way I wouldn't have to worry about stretching a skein to make both of us pairs of socks.

The yarn came today!

It's beautiful and so very squishy. The skeins being 150 grams instead of 100, I should be able to squeeze two pairs of socks out of each skein (either both for myself, or a big pair for myself and smaller pair for one of the kids). They're on sale (sadly on closeout) for $12.99, so it was a fantastic bargain, I only wish I'd caught the sale earlier when they presumably had more colors to choose from. But, this should tide me over for quite awhile.

Coming to a Costco near you. . .

Did anyone else read the stories from NPR about eating duck eggs? Well it seems our local Costco did, because they now sell duck eggs:

 Normally, to hard cook an egg, I put the egg into the pot, cover with water, set to boil, then turn off as soon as it starts to boil. It stays in, covered, for seven minutes for a soft, runny egg, and nine minutes for a hard, fully-cooked egg. I did the duck egg for 12 minutes and it seems to have turned out all right.

The egg was a bit more flavorful, and the egg white was firmer, but it was still pretty similar to a chicken egg. Overall, I was glad to satisfy my curiosity.

DIY body moisturizer/child's hair detangler

I've seen lots of DIY recipes for leave-in conditioner/detangler, but all of them had required putting some of the store-bought conditioner you use into it and adding other ingredients. That wasn't what I wanted. Also, I've been wanting to phase out my store-bought lotions. Then a few days ago, I found a recipe that was originally a skin moisturizer, but apparently can also be used as a hair detangler. (This was discovered by a mother whose daughter had long, tangly hair and eczema.) It's just glycerin and distilled water in a proportion of 1:4, with some essential oil if you want to add a fragrance.

So far, it's been fantastic. I just spray a little into my hand after a shower, apply, and dry off. I've started spraying it on the kids, so far with no adverse effects. Normally my skin dries out on my legs within about 12 hours, but with the glycerin moisturizer, they stay smooth and supple all day. It also works as a phenomenal (if scentless) hair detangler for SweetTart (my Itty Bitty is no longer so itty bitty so a new nickname was in order). I know I could add some essential oil, but SweetTart and I do not really agree on fragrances (I like lavender oil, she likes artificial strawberry) and I want to minimize bottles, so unscented it is.

FOs--ankle socks and baby cocoon

I haven't been knitting as much as normal, but I have a few FOs to share. The first is a pair of anklet socks, with short-row toes and heels, knit with Briggs & Little Durasport and finished with Jeny's Interlock Bind-off:

This bind-off is actually a revelation for me. While I find it annoying that I have to use a needle and haven't figured out exactly how much yarn I need for the bind-off, I don't find it as fiddly as EZ's sewn bind-off. I typically use Jeny's Incredibly Stretchy Bind-off for my socks, but for ankle socks they ended up flared/bagging out, so I had to go out of my comfort zone and learn something new.

The second is not a giant hat, believe it or not (I suppose I should have added something to the picture for scale). It's a baby cocoon, because I'm expecting, and I thought this might be cute for baby pictures. Basically, I tried to reverse engineer this pattern, because it basically looked like a giant hat and I figured I could save myself the $4 and put it towards diapers.

Any forthcoming projects will be just as boring, because I can't seem to knit lace when I'm pregnant. My mind just doesn't follow it.