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Remember when I blogged about making a felted purse from scratch, way back when? Well, I finished it when I had to fly back to my grandpa's deathbed in October and never got around to posting it. E and I went out to dinner with some old friends Friday night and it seemed a good night to give the little wool purse a try, what with it being freezing-ass cold (still), so I had E shoot a quick picture. I don't know whose veiny, bony hands those are in the picture, though. Maybe a raptor's?

I knit it first, following the instructions in the beautiful book Alterknits Felt, using yarn sent to me by E's mom. Then I felted it in the washer and cut out the holes for the handles (the design is asymmetrical, in case you're wondering. Sometimes my stuff is asymmetrical because I screw up, but not in this case). Cute, huh? The colors are really beautiful, and remind me of a summer river.

I also recently ordered the Pioneer Woman's Cookbook, on Dandelion Bones's recommendation (whose taste I trust implicitly) and because, as I stated earlier, I am on a mission to learn how to cook better. Of course, every recipe in the book is chock-full of meat. But my goal is to figure out how to adapt great recipes with meat into vegan recipes (the vegan cookbook is also on its way). So, I'm pleased to announce that Pioneer Woman's chili recipe can easily be made vegetarian by substituting Morning Star's ground fakey-fake "beef" for the real thing. The chili's good. I told Eric that if I could learn one good recipe every week for a year (which gives me lots of margin for error if I try a few every week), then by the end of the year I'll be able to make 52 new things.

We'll see. And yes, I realize Chili's not exactly the most challenging thing in the world to make. But you gotta start somewhere.

So, I got to make chili and my monthly batch of homemade bread while E watched the playoffs and played Candy Land with the girls. Addie has a little fever today, poor thing, so we're all just hunkering down and waiting for the snow to melt. What a perfect Sunday.