Learning new things.....

I am a sponge. Whenever I have dove head first into a craft - which has been often throughout my life, though never as completely as the current knitting obsession - I can't get enough. I want to read about it, try new things with it, and basically wrap myself up in it.

For past few years I've been completely obsessed with knitting. Needles, yarn, patterns - you name it I've bought and used it. This may have something to do with the fact that this is the first knitting phase that I learned you could buy knitting supplies somewhere other than a big box craft store. The difference in quality is astounding and once you've found the good stuff, you'll never want to go back!

So much of knitting is old hat for me, I learned the basics from my mom and the knitting magazines she had when I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old. Knit, purl, rib, decrease, increase, I've got it. But the great thing I've found is that there are always new and different ways to do some of the same things. There are books out now completely dedicated to hundreds of different ways to cast on and bind off, hundreds!

I took a chance to try something new while I was knitting on my current project (Ease). I had found information about the tubular bind off and decided I could use it on the bottom hem of this sweater. It is not a quick process. At all.

Okay, I take that back. It wouldn't have been nearly so time consuming if I hadn't decided to try this out on a hem that consisted of 200 stitches. I tend to jump into things instead of trying them out on somethings small and safe. It's a sickness, but I'm dealing with it.

Back to the bind off - it is worth it. This is the blog post by TECHknitter which explains it step by step. (If you check out that post, poke around on her blog for other topics, she's a knitting savant with a gift for explaining things to the rest of us). So, I sat down and went to work. The set up rows went pretty quickly, the separating of the stitches was a bit tedious, but I kept at it. The kitchenering took an entire episode of Downton Abbey. Still worth it.

After the 4 setup rows, the sts are separated onto two separate needles

A neat edge. Or non-edge almost, it's like the knitting just wraps over the bottom.

As you can see from the pictures, I change from 'daytime yoga pants' to 'sleeping yoga pants'. I love these pants.

Yumminess!

A friend of mine pointed me to this recipe for homemade graham crackers yesterday and I had to try it - I LOVE graham crackers. A lot.

Learn a few things from me:
1. Do not ignore that little voice that tells you maybe you should buy more parchment when you are at Target.

If you do, you will have enough for one cookie sheet only and will have to figure out another solution. For the record, these bake perfectly on stoneware.

2. Do not try to use your Vitamix to mix the dough. Don't do it. Seriously.

I was trying to avoid dirtying my mixer bowl since I wanted to make bread later and thought 'Hey, I always hear that the Vitamix can do whatever a food processor can do, I should use that'. The motor started smoking. This is actually impressive considering how powerful the motors are, I may deserve an award. It is also possible that there is a special way to mix stiff doughs that I don't know about - I used the regular canister, not the dry blade one. Not sure if I'm brave enough to try it.

3. Don't let your dogs taste these. They will become obsessed.

I would like to say, in my meager defense, that I did not purposefully give these to the dogs. One fell off my cooling rack as I moved it from the stove area to the island and dog #1 got one. Dog #2 got part of one when tiny boy had one in his hand and I couldn't tell if she licked it or not. When in doubt, I always get the kid a new one!

4. If you want these really crispy, roll the dough out closer to 1/8" than 1/4".

My thinner ones have a nice crunch, the thicker ones are chewy. I never thought of my inability to roll dough out evenly as an asset, but look what I learned without even trying!

Homemade Granola Bars

I originally found the base recipe for these on Money Saving Mom, but I am having a hard time finding the original link, so here is the version I make (this is double of what the original called for since the original was pretty thin, the picture above is actually quadruple - everyone in my house LOVES these).

1c. Peanut Butter
2/3c. Honey
1/2c Coconut oil
2c Oatmeal (I've been using old fashioned, but any kind should do)
1c Sunflower seeds
1c Raisins
1/4c mini chocolate chips

(you can use any mix-ins you like, you will just want it to add up to 2c.)

To save time and cleanup, I usually heat the jar of coconut oil in the microwave to liquify it and then pour it into my liquid measuring cup. Then, once you have that poured into your pot, you can reuse the measuring cup for the honey and it will slide out nicely instead of being a sticky mess.

In a medium pot over medium heat, melt honey, peanut butter, and coconut oil until everything is all melty and combined.

Take it off the stove and stir in oatmeal and your mix-ins.

Spray a 8x8 pan with cooking spray or grease it with butter and then spread your granola bar mixture in it with a spatula. Sprinkle the mini chocolate chips on top and press them in gently so they adhere nicely (the back of a spoon works well for this).

Cover and place in the fridge for a couple of hours until firm. Cut into squares and enjoy :).

Chicken Wild Rice Soup - Mmmmmmmm!

So I had some wild rice and I wanted to make some soup. I searched for recipes and found one as a good starting off point here. I then proceeded to follow basically none of the directions and alter amounts and add ingredients.

Here is my version:

1/2c butter
1c diced onion (more or less, dice up a small one and call it good)
1c diced carrots (again, more or less, not exact - I used 4 mediumish carrots)
1t salt
1/2t pepper
1/2c flour
4c chicken stock (I used a box of broth from Trader Joe's, I love that stuff)
2 c water
1/2c wild rice, rinsed
2c cooked chicken, diced
1/2c cream
1/2c milk
more salt and pepper if desired.

Heat a large pot over medium heat and melt butter. Add onions and carrots and cook for a few minutes until the veggies are beginning to soften. Stir in flour, salt and pepper and cook for about a minute to cook the roux (butter/flour mixture) and keep it from having a raw floury taste.

Slowly pour in  broth, stirring while you do it to help incorporate the broth into the flour/veggie mix (a whisk can be handy for this, but isn't necessary). Pour in the 2 c water and the wild rice. Turn up the heat to bring the soup to a boil, then turn it down to low and simmer for about an hour. You want to simmer it until the wild rice grains have softened and started to open up.

When the rice is cooked enough, stir in the chicken and the milk and cream. Take a taste and add salt and pepper if you'd like. I  added about another teaspoon of salt here, but my broth was low sodium (not sure why I had that kind on hand, but I digress).

Serve and make lots of yummy noises as you eat it. This soup would be out of this world with some homemade bread.

Next up.....

So, I have two designs squared away and just waiting to be published with Three Irish Girls. It actually feels odd to not have something in the works with them now.

Fortunately, I happen to have a little stash of TIG yarn here and some ideas of what to do with it :). My daughter's birthday is coming up in a month and I owe her a sweater. I have some ideas in mind, now I just need to pick my yarn. I have some pretty Adorn Sock (Roisin, a deep burgundyish color) and some pretty Glenhaven Cashmerino Fingering (Curiouser and Curiouser, a light/medium turquoise) .

I don't know that my soon to be 10 year old will fully appreciate the cashmere. Maybe I should save that for me, you know, since I get it.

I also need to frog a sweater to reclaim the cashmere, so that's another reason to use the Adorn for her. My design attempt there didn't go as well as I had hoped, the whole 'I'll just start knitting and figure it out as I go along' approach isn't really the best. Lesson learned, I know better now. I still love the concept of that sweater though, and I think I will do a child's version of it sometime this year.

It's a zipper. And it's not the boss of me.

My oldest son is very patient. Very, very patient. He turned 8 in November and one of the gifts he received was a bag of yarn with the promise that I would knit him a sweater.

He was very excited and started thinking about what kind of sweater he wanted. He didn't want a pullover, had to be a cardigan - easy. Had to have a hood - okay. I had to make it up instead of following a pattern (he had seen me go through the whole pattern process with my first design) - more work, but well worth it. It had to zip, no buttons - aaaaaahhhh!

I have sewn zippers into garments before, it's not that big of a deal. It's not my favorite, but I can do it and do it decently. the though of putting a zipper into my knitting makes me hyperventilate. What if I mess up and need to rip it out and try again? With fabric, that's a pain, but not a huge deal. With a handknit, I have visions of it taking me days to pick all the thread out of the knitting.

One possible solution was this idea, where you create live loops of yarn on the zipper tape and then work it into your knitting. Awesome! I love this idea and it makes perfect sense - up until the part where it tells you to work it into your knitting. How? I poked around the internet and found some vague answers, but if I am going to spend hours doing this, I want some step by step instructions to hold my hand all the way through.

So I find myself back at square one. I'm still scared to pull out the sewing machine and have a go, but this zipper will not beat me.  I will sew it in.

By hand.

Cleaning - a.k.a my nemesis

I love lots of things. You could probably guess some of them, like knitting and baking, but I also love warm socks, reading, Downton Abbey, and baby snuggling. I had to borrow a baby to snuggle today since mine is closing in on two fast.

There is something that I spend a lot of time doing that keeps me from all of those things. That is cleaning. It's no fun, has too be repeated all too often, and I never feel like it's done. Probably because it isn't, at least not at my house. I claim victory if the dishes are semi caught up and there are less than two loads of laundry either waiting to go into the washer or waiting to be folded and put away. Since that constitutes victory, and I swear that takes way too much time to achieve, you could assume (correctly) that I don't often get past the point of victory to do things like super duper scrub the tub or the baseboards or anything. I actually never knew that I was supposed to clean baseboards until I followed (okay, followed may not be entirely accurate, but I did the first day and diligently read all the others) a series on Money Saving Mom.

I would love it if those things were done. A lot. But I don't want to be the one to do them and we aren't in the position to hire someone to do it, so here I sit, with everything a fraction of the clean I would like it to be. Someday I would love to have the time and energy to tackle it. That day is not today.

 I cleaned my kitchen counter very nicely today (as it always is whenever I bake, that always provides a good incentive to clean the kitchen) and there is bread waiting to go into the oven. My latest sweater is waiting patiently in a bag next to my knitting chair for whenever I get a chance to work on it. Most likely that won't be until after the kids are in bed, but I'll get there.

Knitting? Check. Baking? Check? *LOVE*

Today has been good and bad. The bad would be a dog managing to track in something unpleasant from outside on her paw(despite it being about 10 degrees BELOW 0, it was impressive). That was no fun to discover or to clean up.

The good? The knitting and baking of course :)! I just started a new sweater the other day and I am really looking forward to having it done so I can wear it every day. Seriously, I think I will live in this sweater. For one thing, it is knit in Three Irish Girls Glenhaven Cashmerino - which might just be heaven in yarn form. For another it is a super pretty purple - Enna. To top off the awesomeness, I give you the pattern - Ease by Alicia Plummer. It is the ultimate comfy everyday sweater. I feel warm just looking at it!

Up for baking today is bread. Well, bread and rolls. Or maybe just rolls, I haven't totally decided yet. My kids have a love for rolls that seems to know no bounds. I have an hour or so before I need to shape the dough for it's second rise, so I can still be indecisive. I am tweaking a recipe that I've adapted from Peter Reinhart from his book Bread Baker's Apprentice . I've got it at 50/50 white and white whole wheat right now and it's yummy. Once I have it all figured out, I will share it.  Until then, I will have to sacrifice and continually test fresh homemade bread. Someone has to, right? The link above for the cookbook is a referral link.