Knitting Set Up, Upstairs and Down

As I have aged I have found that there are some things that make my hobbies more enjoyable and productive.  One thing that has really helped is a metal music stand with magnetic strips. I can put pattern pages on the music stand and place the magnetic strips strategically to keep track of my place in the pattern or on the chart.  Works like a charm...unless I have several pages then the magnetic connection is tenuous and can fall off.  This always aggravates me and reminds me to "just do it right"!  Which means have only the one sheet of the pattern on the music stand and everything else organized elsewhere.

This is the set up!  The music stand is to my right with my headset waiting for me to use listening to an audio book if Dear One is watching something on the television.  I have my pattern for the mug rugs there with the line magnet at the top. (Hopefully I was successful in blanking out that pattern since it was a paid for pattern. I do not ever want to violate copyright.  People work very hard to create and if they want to be paid, far be it from me to take away their remuneration.)  There are stitch markers on the little wire arms that help hold the pattern pages to the stand.  The aqua lanyard has a small pair of very sharp scissors  attached and a little bottle which has a set of large tapestry needles for weaving in ends. (I feel very smart about that bottle--it is an empty pill bottle.  I got out the Dremel tool and drilled two tiny holes in the top of the cover then inserted some yarn in and made a loop to hang up the bottle.  Works great.).   There is also a pencil which I use for making a little chit sheet when I am making things like the purple periwinkle flower that is going on the front door wreath soon. You can see the chit marks for two different periwinkles. You can also see the television in the upper left.  When Dear One is not watching something, I use my phone to "cast" YouTube videos up there to keep me company and teach me stuff.  I love to learn new useful things.  

Speaking of learning useful stuff--I think I heard through the grapevine that a dear old lady friend in town is getting one or more sheep!  Yay!  I am looking forward to finding someone local who will give or sell me a fleece from time to time after they shear.  I am hoping she wants sheep to graze her lawn, and not necessarily for their fleeces....Does that sound bad?  I want to become a good enough spinner that I can  consistently spin yarn worthy of  knitting into useful garments.

Also in this photo you can see a new book that arrived this weekend:  Teach Yourself Visually -Sock Knitting.  I just saw yesterday that the deadline for Sock Madness was two weeks ago.  Probably just as well I missed it. I used to participate every March or at least for a couple or three years. I did a lot of sock knitting and learned a lot.  Eventually I gave those socks away.  Now I have sock yarn again and have socks on the needles all the time, ready to put in a few rounds at the drop of a hat.  I would REALLY be happy if I could spin reliable sock yarn!  But I don't expect that will happen.

Also in the photo you see a nice orange sunflower-y project bag. I "designed" my own zippered project bag.  I made about a dozen of them in different colors.  I do love them.  They are all filled with projects. This is in an effort to organize myself and prepare every needful thing.  Does it count if the bags are all full?!

So that is it for today.  One day I will put up the pattern instructions for the project bags.  You need one yard of cotton fabric and one 22' plastic teeth zipper.

Sewing Failure

 Today was a pretty good day.  Until I started a sewing project.  It was still a good day, but the sewing project failed.  That does not mean that I will throw it away.  Far from it!  I worked hard.  It is actually usable but just not right.

The plan was to make a new knitting tools bag with a zipper and a flat boxed bottom.

To prepare for this, I watched several of Christine's Home Affairs YouTube posts.  She has a very large play list of mostly sewing "affairs", many of which I have watched.  What is that scripture--"Pride goeth before a fall"?  Well, it is not that I am so proud but I did think I had caught on to what needed to be done.

So I went for it.

Actually I tried to combine several of Christine's tutorials into one project.  Not a great idea, if I do say so myself.

Here the straps are being installed while I am on the telephone. Not the best idea to multi-task, I guess...though I did get them on.  Just not nicely.

Here is the bag finished.  You can more or less see the zipper and the "quilting" that I did to hold the Pellon fleece to the fabric.

This is the bottom of the bag which the biggest fail.  It failed because:  1.  I made the bag too big.  Yes, it is possible to make too big of a bag and 2. After boxing it the first time, also WAY TOO BIG, I boxed it the other direction which is just ghastly. The first boxing was the correct direction but should have been perhaps 1.5 inches instead of 4.5 inches,  After changing the direction to see if it would be better, I decided I had had enough of the bag for today.  This one I will leave as is.  Tomorrow I hope to make a few more.  We shall see.  Maybe they will be better, but I am not counting on it.

So, even though the end of the day's work failed, I still feel fairly good about the day over all. 

One of the biggest wins of the day was that I was able to keep my consumption way under control and also, by a fluke, I saw something about how good celery is for our bodies and since I like celery, I am choosing to believe celery is the magic drug.  At least for now!  I am getting sick of the side effects from pharmaceuticals which promise the world and give no satisfaction.  Not even doing what they swear they will do.

Munchie Monday: Two Ingredient "English Muffins"

 Here is another recipe from YouTube.  I did not really trust it but I had ingredients I wanted to use up so I gave it a try.

This recipe is called Two Ingredient English Muffins.  I spoke with our daughter about it and she said it sounded like biscuits to her.  It did to me, too, but still, I had ingredients to use so I tried them.

In the recipe the lady uses:

2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup Greek yogurt

We did not any Greek yogurt (earlier in the week I had put a container of furry stuff in the bin...) but we DID have an abundance of homemade milk kefir that I was needing to use up.  The lady also used cornmeal on her counter but I did not.

What I did was sift 2 cups self-rising store brand flour into a big glass bowl. I added the kefir that I had in a pint jar which, when I measured it, was just over 1 cup. Score! So I mixed with a sturdy wooden spoon until the dough came together.

It seems to me that I let it sit covered for a few minutes. (I had stayed home from church due to a VERY unpleasant intestinal problem and though it was only yesterday, I have forgotten that "waiting" point.  I don't think it can hurt.)

After flouring the counter well, I poured the dough out and gave it a few turns of kneading then divided into six pieces.  Each piece was rolled into a ball in my hands then patted flat to about 1/2 inch thick circles.

The cast iron skillet was ready to cook the muffins.  Well, actually it was MORE than ready! I had washed the pan before starting the dough then put it on the stove to dry out over medium heat.  You will notice that the YouTube lady said to put the muffins into a pan that was on the very lowest heat.  I turned the burner down to that BUT as you can see from the picture, it was a mite too hot!

When I was making these muffins, I did not go back and check the directions.  I thought I remembered that she put some oil in the frying pan, so I did that.  After putting all six muffins in the pan--it is a 12-inch Lodge cast iron skillet-I put the cover on and set the timer for 20 minutes.  I feel sure she said to cook for 20 minutes ON EACH SIDE.  After about ten minutes I checked.  Yikes!  They were really cooking so I checked to be sure the heat was on the lowest setting and let them cook a little more. 

 About two minutes later I decided I needed to flip them so I did. Three of them were pretty chocolate-y, so to speak.  I let them cook, covered until 20 minutes was up.  They were nice and puffy and looked like English muffins so I pulled them off the heat and out of the pan to cool.  I took the most-burned-looking one, split it in half, buttered it, put on some Smuckers Natural Triple Berry Jam (this is good stuff with NO high fructose corn syrup.  Yes, I buy into the idea that high fructose corn syrup is the devil and do my best  to avoid it...), and ate it.  It did NOT taste burned.  It really did remind me strongly of English muffins.

Dear One had no trouble scarfing down three of them!  That did make me happy.  Of course, it was his first food after fasting twenty-four hours...so almost anything would taste pretty good.

The next day I split the last two and "toasted" them in the air fryer.  They were still pretty good, more English muffin-y than biscuit, but heading in that direction.  I will certainly make them again when the kefir gets ahead of us.  (You can only drink so much kefir smoothie stuff.  At least, there is a limit to what I can drink.  Dear One might be a different matter.  If I make it for him, he is all in. At least for a while.)

Possible New Knitting Project

Recently I have been enjoying Arne and Carlos and their Daily Quarantine Knitting KAL.  (They also have a great YouTube channel). Some years ago I found their book 55 Christmas Balls.  It is filled with beautiful Christmas balls.  I think I started to knit a ball at one point. Well, now I have thought about that again.  I ordered some white and some red yarn online.

This is the ball I knit this week.  It is ready to duplicate stitch a design in red onto the ball. You can also actually knit in the design, which I would probably do the next time... The ball is way bigger than I imagined. I used worsted weight yarn and US 4 double pointed needles.  I have to say that I will not be making these balls.

 

As you can tell, this is a VERY large ball.  That is one reason I won't be knitting a ton of them.  The  other reason I won't be knitting these balls, or at least, not with this yarn, is I don't like the way the yarn feels on my fingers.  I will need the actual wool that Arne and Carlos recommend.  I have not found the yarn they suggest.  However, I should be able to find a similar yarn. I believe it is a fingering weight.  Well, it seems to be a 4-ply European wool.   

 Maybe someone knows a shop that sells this kind of yarn.  If so, I would like the information.  I expect it will be pricey so I want to see it in person before laying down the cash!

Food Friday: Broccoli Bisque, Maybe

Today I watched an episode of Chef AJ's Healthy Living on YouTube. Dr. Joel Kahn was her guest. She made some broccoli bisque. 

This is how I made it, but watch the video to see how to really make it.


Into the Instant Pot I put:

8 ounces broccoli
2 small potatoes-12 ounces
1 sweet onion chopped
1 cup water
1 Tablespoon dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
1 Tablespoon granulated garlic.

Put on the lid and cooked on high pressure for 6 minutes then let it cool down naturally for about 8 minutes but wanted to hurry things along so I quick-released the rest of the pressure.

Added in:
1 cup unsweetened Almond Milk
4 Tablespoons nutritional yeast.


With a fork I then mushed everything up until it was more or less smooth.  You are supposed to use an immersion blender but we don't have one and I don't want to buy one.  (I may buy one more kitchen tool, but I will tell you when I decide...). If you have an immersion blender the soup will be lovely and smooth and look lovely.

Broccoli Bisque ready to store.

This made about four servings.  Not that large servings, either.  I thought is was nice.  Not great, but perfectly edible.  Dear One said it was bland and added a lot of salt.  Well, that was the point:  this was a no-oil, no-salt soup to try to clear out the arteries of bad stuff.  He did eat nearly all his bowl of soup, though.  I put much of the rest of it in the refrigerator to lunch some day, then ate the rest!