Fried Chicken = Family Reunion

Wherever there’s vast amounts of fried chicken, there’s bound to be a family reunion or at the very least, some sort of family gathering.  You see it sitting out on the table in the boxes or buckets so everyone knows where it came from, the local grocery store, KFC, or Jack’s Hamburger’s.  That way everyone can pick their favorite.  Crispy?  Extra crispy?  Spicy?  Sadly though, it’s mostly bought chicken now.  Rarely do you see real homemade chicken.  Most “homemade” are breaded frozen chicken fingers that someone cooked.  I can remember the time when my Mother would fry chicken all morning for a family gathering.  My cousin asked at a recent family gathering what happened to my Mother’s chicken and I told him in the kindest way possible, “it’s a fond memory”. 

All this talk of fried chicken means that I’ve been to family reunions, two in the past two weeks and both on my Mother’s side.  Two weeks ago, I went Welti, up in Cullman County.  The reunion there was held at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, founded by my great-great-great (I think that’s enough greats) grandfather.  Many of his decedents still go to church there. 

Last week, I was off to Kimberly with yet more covered dishes, including this strawberry cake, a family recipe from my Dad’s side of the family.  When I got there, the cake looked like this: 

Here’s what I brought home:

Scarf Knitting

All of this shopping for food, cooking, and reunioning hasn’t left me as much time to knit as I would have liked but I’ve been cruising right along on my Koigu Linen Stitch Scarf, a fine pattern from Churchmouse Yarns and Teas.  I’m past the 4” mark now. 

I’ve read how some folks don’t particularly care for the linen stitch because it’s time consuming and it is.  I didn’t care for doing the gauge, and not because I was eager to get started, but because just about the time I got into a rhythm, I was at the end of the row.  With 450 stitches on the needles for the scarf, there’s plenty of time to get into a rhythm.  Having stitch markers every 50 stitches is a lifesaver – you goof up and you know you only have 50 stitches to deal with.  And, I have discovered a few things while working on this scarf:

1.  I can’t carry on an involved conversation while knitting it

2.  I have to count the end stitches to make sure I still have 50 stitches since this is where I tend to lose one or two.

3.  Ripping out 450 stitches is painful and putting them back on the needles is time consuming

4.  Since you cut the yarn at the end of the row, you can’t tell if you need to knit or purl the next row and where to even start if you do figure it out so different color markers to designate knit and purl sides are a must.  Oh, and as insurance, a sticky note as to which is which stuck on the pattern.

Last week at Knit Night, I found myself standing in front of the KPPPM and thinking about another Koigu Linen Stitch Scarf, in blues or purples.