Bread Weather

It felt like baking weather today, and operating under the influence of having read through most of Historical Foods last night (a great site - I kind of want to make some of the Medieval recipes for our next D&D night), I decided on the Dyett Bread  - a fennel seed/sage bread recipe from the Tudor period.  It occurred to me as the bread was baking that while I bake a fair amount, it's usually buns or cupcakes or cookies - I'd never actually made a loaf of bread before. He came out quite nicely, I think.

I ended up using regular white flour since I wasn't of a mind to run out to the store (and had soup going while I was baking), but I think I'd like to try this again with some stoneground or whole wheat flour.  With the sage and fennel seed in there, I think this might work well with spelt flour as well.

I'm looking forward to using the leftovers for some Welsh rabbit tomorrow (though it was pointed out that the sagey-ness would make for some beautiful dressing...) 

Of Mittens and Kittens

I'm terrible about knitting things for other people but never making anything for myself.  Somehow, I never feel justified buying yarn for something that isn't going to be a gift or for sale.  So, when I got a gift certificate for Christmas, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to get yarn for a little something for myself.

The crazy amount of snow we've been getting lately has just been too much for my usual gloves, so I figured mittens would be a good idea. Handily enough, I'd just made a pair of mittens as a shop sample before the holidays, and I freaking loved the yarn - it's the chunky version of Berroco Vintage.  One skein was more than enough for a pair (and I even made them a little on the large side).  The pattern...well, the less said the better. It ended up being a 'Pirate's Code' kind of situation.

I managed to get them done just in time for (what will hopefully be) the last round of snow.

And here we have them after shoveling (and in better light - this is closer to the color in person):

I'm very pleased with how they held up - I was out in the snow for somewhere between and hour and a half and an hour and a quarter, mittens covered in snow, using one of those snowshovels with the 'grippy' handle that's like a ginger grater (and my hands stayed so warm!).  There's really not much fuzzing or pilling, and what there is looks like a good run through the washer and dryer will clear up.

And in the world of cats, poor Miss Minerva's been frustrated lately. We have an obvious mouse in the basement chewing insulation off of pipes, but it seems to be keeping up out of her reach.  We've given her free run of the basement for the last few days, and she's spent most of her time there, coming up only to lie around the house sighing heavily (seriously - you've never heard a cat sigh so much in your life) and occasionally take out her frustrations on her toys.  I feel bad for her, since despite usually being a bit of a dim bulb, she's really an excellent mouser (very good about just catching them without eating them) and she's being denied her chance to shine.  At this rate, we're just going to have to wait until payday and spring for a mousetrap.

Would you look at that f-ing snow?

I could've sworn I saw the snowplow go by a few hours ago...

Fortunately, with my Lent resolution to only work on finishing projects that I've already started (don't ask how many things I started on Pancake Tuesday...), a little enforced crafting time was not a bad thing.  I've already knocked a nice grey/black/white striped scarf off my Ravelry list (and into my Etsy shop, in all likelyhood), and I've really been going to town on my 'Ravelympics' (Ravelry Olympics) project.

I'm kind of keeping the Ravelympics project under wraps for a bit, because it was based in a comic idea and I don't want to spoil the comic - I plan on unveiling it when that particular strip goes live. I'm really enjoying it, though.  I'm more of a knitter than a crocheter, so it's a nice change of pace and a little bit of a challenge to myself, which was the point of the Ravelympics.  It's also nice to have a deadline to keep myself on target, or I think I would have already set it aside once I started to embroider the little accessory bits.

I've also got a few half-finished plushies I need to get finished up as well - besides wanting to put some up on Etsy, I also really want to submit something to Stuffed.  There's a couple of pincushions that just need to be stuffed and sewn shut, too. And two rooms I've started painting. And one room I'm in the middle of plastering the walls. And then there's the fabric that I just pinned to the moulding around the window for a bit until I had time to sew it into proper curtains...

Meanwhile, I've already got a list of five project ideas to start in on come Easter...better get back to clearing out some of this crafting backlog!

A White Freaking Christmas

So...this is my mom's neighbor's mailbox...

We got just a little snow for Christmas.  Fortunately, we'd thought to bring overnight bags and the cat with us, so we've just been having something of a Christmas sleepover party.  I felt bad about having to call out from work because of the weather, but when I saw the mail truck start up the hill, then give up and turn around I felt a bit less wussy.

Fall Cleaning

I've never quite understood the point of 'spring' cleaning. I mean, spring rolls around and you want to go out and do stuff (in theory). You're not really going to be inside that much for a while (again, in theory).

Fall, on the other hand...it starts getting cooler, and you sort of look around and go "I'm going to be in here a while - better clear some of this crap out of the way." There's also that whole keeping the creepy-crawlies from trying to get into the house for warmth as the weather gets colder to keep in mind. Not to mention holidays coming up that require other people to actually have to see the inside of your house (you can't get most of them to agree to blindfolds - I've tried).

Hello, Winter!

Yay!  First snow of the season.

Looked very crisp and snuggly this morning, too bad I had to go to work.  Fortunately, the pavement was warm enough that the roads were just wet rather than icy.  Meant a nice slow day with plenty of time to work on the store samples, at least.

Got some pickles started, as well.  They were the leftover radishes from the Thanksgiving relish tray, and I'm hoping to have the pickles done in time for the Christmas relish tray.  I'm doing tsukemono-style pickles, sliced thinly and pressed with salt.  If everyone likes them well enough, I may be able to get a bit of a subsidy to buy a proper tsukemono press instead of using two stacking tupperware containers with weights in one.  

The Triumph of Planned Obsolescence

Last week we were getting ready to leave the house, and the garage door opener wouldn't work. This has happened before, and turned out to be a broken spring that time, but we could tell all the springs were intact this time. So, we tried running it again, paying closer attention to the actual opener, and found that while the motor was running and the chain was hooked in properly, the chain was not moving. A few days later when we had the time, we opened the opener up and had my dad take a look at it, thinking that it was just a gear not catching...


And by 'not catching', of course, we mean 'made of nylon and shredded to bits where it rubs against the metal gear'. There is no way to fix this gear, and replacing it would be exceptionally awkward - assuming we could find or fabricate the right gear to begin with.

The next step, then, was to look up the model and see what sort of warranty it might have had on it. As it turns out, this model is no longer made, so no one would have been able to do anything for us even if the warranty still applied, but here's the kicker - the opener originally came with a ten-year warranty....

Ten years exactly. On the one hand, I am incredibly pissed off because we have had rain every day but one since this happened . On the other hand, somewhere out there is an engineer/industrial designer who really knows their estimated material lives.

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Now playing: Jonathan Coulton (Portal) - Still Alive
via FoxyTunes

"Get your car in the basement..."

I kid you not, the weather girl honestly just said this. I mean, there's a big storm, hail, gas storage facility hit by lightning and on fire (which is why I just came back from running out into the storm to fill my gas tank up), and this weather girl is currently in the process of warning people on the OTHER SIDE OF THE STATE about their weather. I know damn well and good that none of them get this station. And she always makes a point of breaking in on CSI, too.

And don't think I'm being condescending referring to her as the weather girl. I looked up her qualifications once, she's not actually a meteorologist. I've actually signed a petition to get this woman pulled off the air.

Up yours, global warming

Yesterday was beautiful, sunny and 60 degrees. Today, it suddenly snowed about an inch.

And here I sit, icing my rotator cuff.

On the bright side, got my sewing machine safely home and all set up. I'm going to do a few tests with my chosen fabric tonight to check my thread choice, maybe work on a mini version out of muslin to test the pattern I've worked out. I'm seriously pumped - I've got the book, the bookmark is just drying, all that's left is the bag, and that's maybe two days of work all together.

Hooray for early sending!