Friday Fluff

 

Woo hoo...I retired one stitch marker this week. 10 more to go. 

Like the Olympics themselves, my Olympic spin is coming to an end. I've got a handful of fiber left. 

The whole time I've been re-knitting this section of the Garter Squish I've been thinking about how nice this would be as a sweater. As soon as this is finished I am going to dig through the handspun stash and see if I can come up with enough of the same fiber for a simple, cozy pullover. 

And I owe Betty an apology. She did come through after all. The Blueberry Lemon loaf didn't rise a whole lot on the counter but it did have a decent rise in the oven.

It was yummy but it was the lemon doing all the heavy lifting. The blueberries are just there for their looks I suppose. 

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....

Flour Power

 

My crafting life has been suffering because the Olympics has me enthralled. I'm not sure why I like to watch perfect strangers sliding down snow covered hills so much but I do so you'll find me glued to the TV all day right now. Only if something's sitting near the TV might it get picked up and worked on. Hearts and Flowers is there so it got a new purplish flower and some stems this week. I spent more time on Etsy buying more colors of wool for the other flowers than I did working on this one.

When the live events are done for the day I've been in the kitchen making bread almost every night trying out new techniques. Sourdough is a two step process. First you have to figure out the starter thing and then you have to figure out how to make a proper loaf out of it. My last loaf is getting closer but it's still not right.

Unlike yeast bread that needs kneading, the less you handle sourdough, the better.  You can't knock all the air out of it. I'm getting some bubbles but those holes should be bigger meaning this loaf was underproofed. I'm going to have to work on that. 

In spite of making all this bread, I've still got a lot of discard left over at the end of the day. Most is turned into waffles for the freezer but I also tried out a recipe for sourdough chocolate chip cookies and....

...these Parmesan Rosemary crackers. Both of these were awfully good. Too good to have around for long. I need to stop all this baking stuff and go back to just making soap. Soap doesn't pack on the pounds.

Wednesday WIPs: Melt the Ice

 

I've got whiplash. The weather just took a drastic turn for the better but it's still a mess out there. We ventured out for the first time in ages and it was iffy. Apparently, there wasn't much clearing of sidewalks happening over the past two weeks. 

The bay was filled with broken sheets of ice. I don't think I've ever seen that before. 

Speaking of melting ice, I finished my hat. Ha ha ha...it might fit my youngest Grand. It sure doesn't fit me but it is cute and the money I spent on the pattern went for a good cause. Those of you who are knitting along in bulky weight had the right idea. I wish I had. 

The only other WIP that got attention this week was The Mister's Riddari. It would be finished if I hadn't goofed up the neck. I was two inches in to what I thought it should be when I realized not only had I not changed needles but I also forgot to do the decreases. Rip, rip, rip. I'm also playing yarn chicken with that little ball of black I have left. I'd hate to buy another big skein of this yarn for just a few inches but I guess if I have to, I have to. 

TNT: Frozen

 

As I mentioned yesterday it's been so cold here that my hands have given up on me. All they want to do is hide under my shawl or work on a big pile of wool. Tiny needles are not happening much right now. I did take advantage of a sunny afternoon and finished that last big snowflake motif so Christmas Quaker is now officially packed away for the year. 

I haven't touched my official February stitching project but I did get this out again. This is my punishment project after I cut the original wrong. All that's left are the borders and I hated doing the borders on the first one so I've been putting off finishing it. It would be nice to have this done by spring so I could start something new. Ah, spring. I hate warm weather but I'm not really liking living in this land of ice either. 

Brrrr.......

 

It's been so cold here that walking around in the house is too chilly for my blood. Just the air moving around you creates a draft. The wind isn't helping. It's been howling. I tried to go downstairs and work on some Valentines on Saturday but couldn't get my hands to work for long. I gave up.

Even with the sun streaming in the windows it was still too cold on Sunday so I dug an old radiator out of storage. It warmed the room up just enough to get those Valentines finished. Even before the cold set in our electric bill was sky high so I didn't want to keep it running for long. 

I honestly don't get why the downstairs is always so cold when we have one of these and more wood than you can imagine. When I ask The Mister why he doesn't start a fire during the day to take the chill off he mumbles something about running out of wood. As if we could. 

And....with a group of 50 people who have been in a football pool all season I (as in me) was this year's winner. I ended up with an impressive 129 wins and 155 points (playoffs are scored separately) primarily by picking the same teams every week. I don't know a thing about football. I've only ever watched a couple of games in my life and they all involved Taylor Swift and what she was wearing. Now I'm in the money. $400 to be exact thanks to nothing but dumb luck. 

In the Kitchen with Betty

 

Betty and I have had some ups and downs lately. This loaf was a down. I tried a 24 hour cold proofing for the first time and ouf...all that extra fermentation made a very sour loaf. I won't be doing that again. 12 hours is the limit for me. 

Straight off that fail Betty and I tried making a few bagels. 

I was rather intimidated by all the steps you have to take. I've never boiled bread dough.

Whoops...I was caught up in something that was going on with the Olympics and let them get a little too brown in the oven.

So I split one right after taking it out to see how bad it might be and it was so good that even after protesting he was full from dinner, The Mister ate an entire half covered in blueberry jam. For the record, I did not cold proof these at all. They went in for the boil right after their second rise. 

Let the Games Begin!

 

My Olympic spin got underway yesterday while I was watching the Opening Ceremony.

I didn't get very far because this particular fiber put up a real fight. It's a very old braid and it's going to take a lot of pre-drafting to get it into spinning condition and I didn't have the patience for it yesterday. 

I was still in recovery mode from my latest Grand sitting adventure and was more interested in knitting and watching this than fighting with fiber. I love the opening and closing ceremonies and watched the live stream all day which included a lot of weird behind the scenes craziness in the morning. 

It was also another Happy Taylor Swift day as she premiered her latest music video yesterday morning. She also popped up in the Opening Ceremony wishing all the athletes good luck. 

And here we come. Love the hats....

 

..but I'm going to put this in the category of "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything" but I will say there's an awful lot going on there. 

It was a long wait to get to the big finish....

...but it was worth it. Ben fatto, Italia!