Wanna date?

My decision to stop eating sugar last month [38 straight sugar-free days, but who's counting?] didn't eliminate my sweet tooth. I suppose humans are born with one, which sometimes makes me wish I were a cat. I've never seen a cat rummage around the pantry looking for lemon drops or chocolate kisses.

Anyway.

In my quest to find something sweet to eat that isn't also loaded with artificial sweeteners [which I think tend to reinforce the desire to eat sugar, but that's just my wacky opinion], I've found dried fruit.

I started with a simple package of apricots. I expanded my selection when I made the Mincemeat Log Rolls for Thanksgiving. [A link to the recipe is in this post.] Last week I bought a package of dates.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Do you have any idea how sweet dates are? Dates are extremely satisfying, have fewer than 20 calories each and are very portable. They're not particularly low-carb, though, if that's your thing. But the best part is, the list of ingredients on the package is one word: Dates.

The simpler the food I eat, the better I feel. I'm sure you can do some fun things to jazz dates up [I've heard that wrapping them in bacon and broiling them produces a tasty cocktail-party snack], but so far I'm pretty happy with just plain dates.

I wet-blocked the pink sweater; the wool relaxed to the point that the sleeves were six inches too long and if I were Twiggy-shaped [which is to say, no shape at all] I could have worn it as a mini-dress. So I had to soak it again and then I – gasp! – put it in the dryer. I have a knits cycle and I watched it carefully but it was still too big. So I did it again. I finally have a sweater I can wear, but it's going to have to be an awfully cold day. I literally had to full it a bit to get it the right size. Next time I use good old Patons wool, I'll be sure to make the item a size or two smaller. I will confess right here and right now that I didn't block my swatch, so it's my own darned fault. But the resulting sweater is nice and I'll certainly wear it. Maybe even on Christmas Eve.

I'm not going to go on and on about how fat I look or what a bad photo it is. It's both of those, but there's nothing I can do about it this very minute. The nice thing about sweaters is that they really do look good when they're a little roomy. Next year I'll take a better photo – I'll be smaller, it'll be bigger and I will have figured out how to focus my camera.

Maybe.