OK, I’ll admit it. I’ve hit the wall with the Vera socks. I’m about 1/2 way up the ankles, so there’s not that far to go. And I love the way they’re knitting up. I really do. And I can’t wait to wear them.

I had hopes of actually finishing them this weekend. Instead I did things like cooking an omelet inside a Ziploc bag. That took precedence over knitting.

I have promised myself that I won’t cast on any of the other sock yarn I have in my stash (lots) or go to work on any of my other UFOs until the Vera socks are off the needles.

Must… slog… on…

A friend sent me an interesting recipe the other day: boiling an omelet in a Ziploc bag. I like omelets. I happen to think that making an omelet the old-fashioned way isn’t that big a deal. It takes maybe 5 minutes, and gets a pan, a bowl and a plate dirty. But it’s a slow Saturday night, so what the heck. At the very worst, it should be good for some blog fodder, right?

So here we have a little tableau I think I’ll call Still Life With Eggs And Ziploc. This is the assembled ingredients for my little experiment: eggs, a couple of kinds of cheese, salt and pepper (not shown).

No, the pear doesn’t go in the omelet. It’s there to look pretty and balance the plate. OK?

(Note: the thumbnails are smaller than usual, but, as always, click on the pic for the bigger versions in a pop-up.)

The first step in our breakfast-for-dinner adventure is to break the eggs into the Ziploc bag.

The recipe calls for a freezer Ziploc, I assume so that it will stand up during boiling. Poached eggs a la melted plastic. Blech. I decided to follow the suggestion.

Once in the bag, the eggs are shaken and smooshed until basically scrambled. I then added the cheese and some salt and freshly ground pepper.

Because two eggs didn’t look like much in a quart sized Ziploc, I threw in a third egg and smooshed that up with the rest.

I squeezed the air out of the bag and sealed it, and then dropped it into rapidly boiling water. Once the bag was boiling away, I concentrated on cutting up my pear and getting the rest of my little dinner ready.

The recipe states that the bag should be boiled for exactly 13 minutes. Because of the extra egg, my omelet was still gooshy at that point.

I boiled the bag for an extra 3 minutes. That did the trick nicely.

And here is the Ziploc out of its boiling water bath.

The omelet is supposed to slide right out. That didn’t happen. I had to sort of tease it away from the sides of the bag with my fork.

It was mostly the cheese that stuck. I perhaps should have used less cheese, or maybe a different kind of cheese.

And breakfast is served.

Do you think this thing looks like an omelet? More like scrambled eggs, eh? Congealed scrambled eggs.

It didn’t taste too bad. Not really like an omelet, but not horrible. (Let’s face it — it’s the butter that I fry my omelets in that adds that yum factor.) It reminded me of microwaved scrambled eggs.

The recipe suggests that this would be fun at a party, or if you have a bunch of guests for breakfast. You can turn out several omelets at once by boiling them in a big pot. I can see that it would be a lot of fun if you had a bunch of kids around at breakfast who all liked different stuff in their omelets. Each guest should, of course, use a permanent marker to sign their Ziploc.

I’m not sure that I will repeat this particular experiment. I have to admit the clean-up was easy, but I don’t know that the result was really that great.

Mom’s take on Ziploc omelets:

I always fly coach. Always. Mostly because, as a single mom, I’m just not made of money and there are other things I’d prefer to spend the limited harvest from the money tree on. In other words, I’m cheap.

This year I procrastinated a bit before booking the yearly Vegas trip, so there were few options available. If I wanted the flights that #1 Son and I had already picked out as being ideal, I would have to go first class. But the good fortune that usually escapes me prevailed, and the last two round-trip first class seats were on extreme special and within my budget.

I’ve found out that there are a lot of advantages to flying first class. First and foremost, you get your own line going through security, and it’s never busy. I carried the TSA statement that knitting needles and scissors were OK, but I didn’t need them. Nothing that I had was even looked at twice. I’ve written about some of the fun times #1 Son and I have had with airport security here and here and here. It was refreshing to breeze right through.

At the gate, of course, you get to board first. The seats are huge, relatively speaking, and comfortable. There’s lots of leg room. And all of the drinks are free. And you get real food served on real plates with real silverware and cloth napkins! Even the coffee comes in a real mug. And the food is good. Since there is one attendant for the 8 or 10 people in first class, versus two attendants for everyone in coach, you get a lot more one-on-one personal service. And nobody complained that I knit during take off.

And knit I did, all the down to Vegas. By the time we landed, I was through most of the gusset increases and just about ready to turn the heels on the Gold Hill socks.

Mom’s take on flying first class: (1/2 because of the cost, even on special)

Next up: Knitting Through Death Valley

There might be a bit of down time tonight around 5:00 PM PT while PI’s host, successfulhosting.com does a little maintenance. It’s all good.

The downtime should be only a few minutes. But if you notice anything weird (weirder than usual) or not working after 7:00 PM or so, please email me at .

Yes, the Vera socks still fit! Yea! And, as promised, here is an update.

It’s hard at this time of year to get a decent pic anywhere in my house under natural light. Since I’m on the north side of a hill, I get direct natural light for only a little while in the late afternoon during the winter months. This first picture of the tops of both socks is a bit dark.

You can see that, even though the colors tried valiantly to pool over the instep, there’s still enough variation in the shades and in the stitch pattern to lend interest and keep it from being one big glob of the exact same tint. That makes this what might be the quintessential Lorna’s Laces pattern!

I decided that an Eye Of Partridge heel would look best with this pattern. The colors in the yarn made a nice sort of checked or speckled look that fits in well with the “grandma’s old afghan” look of the wavy stitch pattern.

This side view is the top sock from the picture above. This gives you a closer look at the pseudo-pooling on the instep.

As always, click on the pictures to get a bigger view in a pop-up.

Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in colorway Vera. Inox size US#2 needles (double circs).

The 20,000th visit to PI occurred this morning. Someone from right here in Portland popped in for an early-morning look-see.

I know… I’m easily amused.