Slicing and Dicing

 

Look what I bought. That wicked looking thing is a bread slicer.

It does this to my little loaves of sourdough. I had been throwing a lot of it away because we can't eat all of my experiments before they go stale. Now I can slice it up and put it in the freezer for toast. Sourdough defies cutting with a bread knife. It just ends up tearing or so misshapen it won't fit in the toaster.  

As for dicing, I bought one of these doohickeys a while back. I make a lot of soup, bean soup mostly, and this makes very short work of the vegetables and aromatics. I thought these might me a viral scam but they do indeed do what you see them doing online. It makes chopping fun.

Getting back to Betty, I thought I would try the popular blueberry lemon sourdough recipe that everyone seems to be making. I bought the expensive dried blueberries. I zested a bunch of lemons. I watched the videos a million times and followed everything as closely as possible and.....

....it's 8:00 at night and I'm still sitting here 5 hours later waiting for it to rise. It's still sitting in the exact same spot like some petulant ball of goop. Shame on you Betty. I coddled you all-day to get a good peak rise and this is how you repay me? It's going to be a long night.

Wednesday WIPs

 

Let's start out with the FOs today shall we? Riddari #2 is in the history books. 

The Mister hounded me until I made him a sweater and thankfully it fit. I'm predicting it will live in a drawer for the rest of its life but at least I don't have to listen to..."you never knit me anything" anymore. 

The Holm mittens are done and they are very pretty but I'm not a fan. I wore them out yesterday to walk Pup and my hands got cold in them. They never got cold in my Mosi mittens which are knit in skinny mini Palette. I'm going to have to make myself another pair of those this summer I guess. The Holms were knit in Knit Picks Hawthorne Tonal and Stroll which I guess were not the best choice for mittens.

I've still got socks going on. The pair on the left are at the toe. The pair on right are about an inch away from the toe. They are not getting much attention right now.

During this last gasp of winter I've been trying to get the warmer things finished. Right now it's the Ski Sweater that is getting all the attention while I'm watching the last week of the Olympics. Those lice will be the end of me. I'm so bored with them but I've got twelve more of them to do. It takes four rows to make one lice so that means I've still got 48 more rows to go. Ouf....

TNT: Loose Ends

 

This is not what you usually see here on Tiny Needle Tuesday but this is what my tiny needle has been working on this week. The Mister's Riddari is done. Now I'm weaving in all those ends. 

Ditto for the Holt mittens. I'm the world's worst end weaver so this always takes some time.

I did get one motif finished on the Folklore sampler. It's the round floral one on the right of the girl. Next week I hope to put the same thing on the boy's side and then I'm packing it away. I'll be getting out something for spring and I've got a lot to choose from back in the stash. I was tempted to buy something new but I came to my senses. 

 

Hay Now

 

True Story: Last week Valerie posted about spotting one of her feral kitties after spending some time worrying about them during the brutal cold we've all been experiencing. I was sitting here typing up a comment to her about how glad I was my feral days were behind me. We were running as many as four heated huts there for a while but all of those ladies and gentlemen have now gone over the bridge....I thought. Just as I was to hit send The Mister said....."hey, there's a cat on the porch and it looks familiar".

It was Smooshie. Years ago he was a regular member of the feral gang. My lady cats loved him but they were all spayed so he didn't stay around long. He was such a handsome boy. He came and went and then one day disappeared. We could never catch him. This photo was taken in 2017. We haven't seen him in many years but there he was beat to hell on the front porch. Wherever he's been, he's had a very rough time of it. It pained me to see him like that. There were a lot of tears. He was never one I could get close to so there's not much I can do. He did remember how to get food and has shown up many times since at the front door for a hot meal. I cleaned out one of our old cat huts and filled it with hay in case he needed a place to hang out but so far he hasn't used it. 

The good news is while I was working on making him a home under the eaves of the house, I found this...

....and this. My narcissus are coming up as are my crocus. The weather is going to be much milder this week. Maybe the old guy will get a break and have his time in the sun. I can only hope. 

Stash Building

 

Getting wool in the mail is not quite as exciting as getting yarn but I was tickled to find these in my mailbox yesterday. The last thing I need is another stash but when you need wool, you need wool.

Happy Heart Day!

 

No big plans here today just hopefully sitting and knitting.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Friday Fluff

 

I've made peace with my Olympic spin. How could you not with those colors? I just have to spend a little time sorting out the fiber before spinning which is a nice relaxing thing to be doing anyway. 

The handspun Garter Squish is back in production. After all the ripping, I had to put it in time out for a while but now I'm working with some handspun that I think will work better with what's come before. 

I've managed to do one pattern repeat on the Pi Shawl everyday. All those stitch markers count out 20 stitches which is how many edge stitches I use up with the border if I do one pattern repeat 5 times a week which might be manageable. There are 11 sections so at this rate it will take me 11 more weeks to finish this thing. Ouf....