Pesto

I think one of my all time favorite dishes ever in the history of the world is spaghetti wish pesto. And by pesto I mean basil, garlic, parmesan, olive oil and pine nuts - none of this water crest walnut stuff for me!

I'll go to Trader Joe's and buy two packages of the basil and a container for freshly grated parmesan cheese. Then head home to make my pesto

Get out the food processor and blend together the two packages of basil leaves (takeing the stems off and removing and bad looking leaves.) with about a 3/4 of a cup of parmesan, 1/4 cup of pine nuts and two cloves of garlic. I blitz that until it's well chopped then start to slowly add olive oil until it looks like a good consistency to me.

What I love about my recipe is that it's a little different every time. Sometimes there's more cheese sometimes there's more garlic but always it's super yummy. There's really no "right" way to do this except for trying it a few times to see just exactly what combo of the yummy ingredients work best for you.

However you might be thinking "that's great knitting duck but seriously I cant eat all of that yummy yummy pesto at once!"

You could cut the recipe in half OR you could do what I do.

Set out 5 or 6 plastic freezer bags with the tops folded back and spoon in two spoonfuls of pesto into each bag, un-curl the top, squeeze out the air and seal them shut. They are then ready for the freezer.

Then when ever you have the craving for pesto or something home-made with out all the work you just pull one out of the freezer and rest it in a bowl of warm water. And by the time your pasta is ready so is your pesto.

Yes, I am eating pesto right now. Why do you ask?

12 in 12

Yeah you are probably seeing a lot of variations of 12 in 12 around the knitting/crocheting/crafting interwebs but the one I committed to is an intimidating one at least by my standards

I plan to design and/or publish twelve knitting patterns in 2012.

That's right! 12 designs in 2012. 12. TWELVE!

what was I thinking you ask? That's something I've been asking my self the past couple days but this is how it went down

See I saw all my friends over in the Amiras group talking about stash-busting for the year 2012. This is something I am VERY familiar with. Some years I'm great at it (2010) some years I suck at it (2011) but this year I figure it's time to get back on the wagon and knit down some stash!

Joining in the fun I started a new thread in the group just to talk about stash reducing. We all started with where we are at and how we are going to stash down. My good friend Jocelyn talked about all the groups she has joined such as 12 shawls in 12 and there were socks and projects and more knitting that I could ever commit to! But it got me to thinking - What would I want to knit 12 of. Well I would like to knit 12 of my own patterns!

So I quietly whispered (which is hard to do in text) that I was thinking about designing 12 in 12. Well the outpouring of encouragement from my friends was amazing. They were telling me I could do it and volunteering to test patterns! Patterns that don't even exist yet!

I couldn't very well back down then could I? Nope! So here I am. Gearing up to design 12 patterns in 2012

Here are my self imposed ground rules:

• Any patterns in progress but not published yet are fair game - come on! It's 12 patterns in 12 months for the year 2012. I'm going to take a win where I can get one!
• The patterns can be of any type (hats, gloves, blankets, sweaters, etc), size, or difficulty. Whateves as long as I knit it and write a pattern for it
• All patterns will become available on Ravelry - some will be free some will not. That's just the way I roll.
• The patterns will be available to the Amiras for testing - so if you want in on that go join the group (it doesn't matter if haven't ever, don't now or don't plan to live in UAE we like everyone!)
• All patterns must be knit from stash. This is the whole point to the stash-down portion of the challenge
• Did I miss anything?

Now let's get this party started!