Baked dinners and the first knitting of the year

I love baked dinners and it took me many, many years to get them on the table with ease in the manner of my mum, but now it all runs like clockwork and is the easiest meal to create for guests and they think I have gone to so much effort LOL!

I am roasting a chook tonight, with baked veggies of sweet potato, pumpkin, potatoes, onions and carrots that have marinated in lemon, fresh herbs, garlic and olive oil, we'll have peas cooked with mint as well. The chook has a rice stuffing as one of the guests is a coeliac and we are also having gluten free bread and butter pudding for 'afters' - yum! For a good 'how to' roast chicken and veg visit the The Canberra Cook for Cath's post on her Classic Roast Chook with Stuffing and Gravy.

J-L has the knitting out, the drop in temperature has got her fingers itching for yarn and needles and the lounge room resonates with the gentle click of her needles and her counting under her breath. I love it, I feel nurtured and full of the feeling of love and home when she knits. She's starting a fair isle vest, if I get around to it I'll take some piccies eventually.

I'm going to start some sox, I'm not really a knitter, mum never was and I learnt as an adult (well we did it at primary school, but that was a rather non-event learning skills wise). I have absorbed knitting from J-L, 12 years of watching her do it very winter has rubbed off and I have made myself two lovely jumpers using 1940's patterns and I got into sox two years ago when I slipped my disk, I taught myself from a book, J-L has never knitted sox so I feel very chuffed that I have, not that I'm competitive or anything.