Summer Salad Sampler

I really wanted bread salad for dinner tonight so I stopped at the store on the way home. I saw some nice fruit and decided to make a few different salads for dinner tonight and tomorrow night.

Here's the bread salad, modeled after Panera's - good bread chunked up (this one is called Peasant bread), fresh mozzarella, good tomatoes (from the garden/farmers market when its that time, these are $4 a pint "Splendido" extra sweet grape tomatoes), and honey balsamic dressing It turned out great, yum!

My favorite summer salad is a green salad with lots of fruit on top - whatever your favorites are - my standard is a melon (watermelon), berry, and one or more of: peach, nectarine, plum. This time there is a bit more with: peach, apricot, red grapes, cherries, and plum along with the romaine, mushrooms, tomato, and european cucumber. I like this one with a balsamic dressing too, or, raspberry vinaigrette or something of the sort.

And I also whipped up a macaroni salad.

elbow macaroni with ranch dressing, baco bits, and burgundy olives. Not too attractive since the baco bits and burgundy olives are the same color basically so it is monochromatic, but it tastes great! I was going to use green olives but the jar didn't pop right when I opened it so... I've never bought these burgundy olives before but they grabbed my attention in the store a few weeks ago and I picked them up. They're good! The flavor is different than a plain black olive, and the color is... a bit off putting actually. According to the can they have olive oil and vinegar in them (Burgundy wine vinegar apparently) and according to the website, they come in flavors as well. These were Classic Italian which is the "plain" variety it seems.

And... another baby hat. I finished the Pink Petal hat (Upside-Down Daisy), now hopefully somebody has a girl!

note: In case anyone was unclear, I'm only obsessed with baby hats, not babies. None of these baby hats are for me. ;-)

Even more baby hats

and I'm not done yet, people. Don't try to stop me!

Olive You! This one has a flat square kind of shape, and is kind of fez-like with the braid and pom poms. I loves it. I think I'll make the same shape with different appliqués on it...

And this is Chocolate Blues, a bonnet style. The shape is off a bit because it is once again being modeled by my blown glass vase, which isn't exactly the right shape. Both from Itty-Bitty Hats of course.

I changed this one up a little bit - the pom poms are all one color instead of alternating because I was out of yellow; I shortened the "scarf" into just being a tie - just guessed at how many stitches to cast on for the scarf, this was 100 I think; and there aren't any pom poms on the bottom of the tie either.

Squee worthy baby hats...

I'm only half way through the first one, but I think I might be addicted to baby hats. I first fell in love with the cutest baby hats ever, from reading the blue blog. Alison (author of Charmed Knits) has knit a bunch of Susan B. Anderson's baby hats (and other projects) and I really fell in love with them. I bought Itty-Bitty Hats (just look at the cutie on the cover!) when it wasn't available from the local libraries and I just knew I'd want to make at least a few of them over the next couple of years (with the baby boom going on between friends and family...). When I was at WEBS in March I picked up yarn for Rainbow Marley (ravelry link) and bunny tails (ravelry). I should be able to get more than one Rainbow from the yarn I have since you use bits of so many colors.
I'm calling mine a Not-Quite-Rainbow Marley because I couldn't get all the rainbow colors in the yarn I was buying... so it is a semi-muted rainbow. I'm using an 8 instead of a 7 because I didn't have a 7 in the right length. It's a bit loose, I'll use the 7 next time. I was just too anxious to start it last night to wait for a trip to the store. You can't see the pattern that well in this photo, laying down like that, but the different stripes use different patterns - most are knit, some are garter, and then a few wild cards are thrown in like seed stitch. The yarn is Valley Yarns Goshen (cotton, modal, silk) it is a little splitty but soft. I like it. This hat is for my soon-be-born nephew, my brother went through a reggae Bob Marley phase so I'm hoping he'll like it. :-) I haven't gotten to the cool part yet, with the squiggles on top, that will liven it up.

The other thing I like about this book is that for each pattern, there's a little box listing every technique/stitch you need for the pattern. Then it tells you what page each is explained on in the book! Not only does she give you all the info you need but she tells you which page so you aren't flipping all over looking for the stinking seed stitch if you can't remember which one it is! Each stitch also lists how to do it for both straight and circular knitting which is a bonus to not even have to think it out at all.