Yarny Purchases

After the wedding, I wanted to get something that both Tim and I would use, kind of a luxury item.  We decided to get a Swift and ball winder from Webs.  I’m not sure why we put it off for so long.  Up to this point, we had wound all the yarn by hand into balls.  When it took me 2 hours to wind the 420 yards of lace weight for the shawl, I decided enough was enough.

At first, I had Tim hold the skein across his hands, like you see people do in the movies, but he didn’t do it right!  I'm not sure what the right way would be, I just know that his way wasn't it.  I rejected his help on future winding and used my knees to hold the skein.  That didn’t work very well either, which is why it took me hours to get the yarn into a ball.  The yarn always ended up in a knot. 

After the winding, the yarn was in a ball that rolled around everywhere, not very convenient. 

We placed our order and in a few weeks we had out items.  I also ordered some undyed sock weight yarn to experiment with more dying.  I was sworn to wait until Tim got home to try out our new purchases.  The yarn I had dyed was still in a skein, this would work perfectly as our first center pull ball. It was a success!  We are very happy with our purchase.  

How did we ever survive before?  Tim is now turning everything into center pull cakes, whether they need to be or not.  

Rib Fest

Rib Fest has now come and gone on Sparks Street in Ottawa.  Rib Fest is always a big deal in our household, Tim’s second favorite time of year.  Tim has the advantage of working downtown, so he can go over for lunch, which he does, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  In addition to that, I met Tim downtown on Wednesday after work for dinner.  I parked a few streets away and you can tell you’re getting close to the main event.  The smell of the barbeque comes first, then you can see the smoke from all the grills.  Then you see the people, all lined up to get their meal.  Our goal is to try as many stands as possible in the 5 day span.  To accomplish this, I go to one stand, Tim goes to another to cover more ground.  We are serious about our barbeque.  Sparks Street is closed to cars it’s like an outdoor mall with many shops and restaurants. The barbequer-s set up right in the middle of the street.  The restaurants open their patios to people with Rib Fest food and will let them sit at a table as long as they order drinks, which is a pretty good trade off.  My first food at rib fest was a pulled pork sandwich, Tim had ribs.  The portion sizes are huge, a half rack was all Tim needed.  My sandwich must have had a pound of pork in it, definitely eaten with a fork to make it a more manageable size.

 The next day, Tim had the great idea to bring home pulled pork from Rib Fest, so we had that for dinner.  Then on Friday night, Tim brought home pulled pork again, but this time we made it into nachos, it was really delicious.

We got together with friends and went again on Saturday for dinner.  Tim and I had ribs, really good.  It’s amazing how big the ribs are.  We take note of the smoke ring, and how well the meat comes off the bone, all signs of good barbeque.  When you go to a booth, the displays are over the top.  Above the grill, they have posters of all the awards they have won over the years and there is usually a table displaying all their trophies.  You can see each grill master cooking the food over the method they choose, different types of wood, or charcoal. 

I enjoyed everything I had this year, Tim had one bad lunch experience, but all and all, pretty good.  There were a few new things this year, and depending what booth you go to.  One of our friends on Saturday night had hash, potatoes and corn mixed in with pulled pork.  There was a booth that was selling a potato cut into a spiral, fried and put on a stick.  There were more beef ribs this year than I saw last year, and certain booths sold grilled corn.  The weather was great for it, no rain, but tremendously hot.  That didn’t stop the people from coming to enjoy really great barbeque.  We will wait with anticipation for next year’s event.  

Super Mario Blanket

Now that the shawl is done, the next project on the needles is a Super Mario blanket.  Tim’s brother and sister-in-law are expecting a second baby boy, so Tim wanted to knit them a blanket, I said I would help. 

This project had Tim’s brother in mind, he would get the inherent geekiness and love it.  We, of a certain age, all played Super Mario Brothers, for many of us it was our first video game, if you don’t count Pong or Centipede.  Has anyone noticed that all us 30 something-s out there, our toys are coming back?  It’s very smart marketing tool, we must be a sentimental generation.  We want to buy the toys we played with for our children (or nieces and nephews).  Tim and I bought a Wii a few years ago and have played the newest version of Mario.  Now, Mario and Luigi are in 3D, and can play together, at the same time.  I love the collaborative aspect of it as compared to before, waiting around for the other player to finish so you could have a turn.  Tim and I share in the geeky, that’s one of the many reasons why we make a great couple. 

Tim doesn’t crochet, so that was out, that’s usually my go to for blankets.  Since two people were going to knit it, it had to be in squares that are sewn together.  We couldn’t find a pattern for this, so we decided to make our own by searching for the 8-bit images on line.  The images are boxy and pixilated which made them easy to chart for knitting.  We discussed a few ideas from knitting a scene, like the iconic opening World one Level one, but breaking that into squares was problematic.  Tim wanted to be authentic to the original game, so we had to go another direction.  We decided to knit characters in a blue square, then sew a row of bricks around each square.  

We had a few discussions about the brick orientation and how we would sew them on.  We decided no mitre corners, knitting the strip of bricks separately rather than picking up stitches. 

Tim chose the characters he wanted, then charted them out in Excel, which worked out very well.  We made sure to buy the correct colours of yarn, and off we went. 

We decided to use acrylic yarn so the new mom could machine wash it.  The squares knit up fabulously.  

All the characters are finished, we are down to the two side strips of bricks, then the sewing together.

She just had the new baby yesterday, so we need to get sewing!

Orchid Thief

I have just finished knitting The Orchid Thief by YsoldaTegue.  I knit it for my friend who is getting married (on my birthday!)  She admired the shawl I knit for myself for my wedding, so I thought knitting her one would be a good wedding gift.  My shawl was more for warmth, it was knit out of worsted weight wool in a cable pattern.  Since she was getting married in July, she would need a shawl that was more light weight, probably only used in the evening after the sun went down and it got colder.  I also didn’t give myself a lot of time to do this, so I let her choose from a few different shawlettes on Ravelry, some with a plain garter stitch top and a lace border, but she chose the Orchid thief. 

The months leading up to my wedding I went into knitting overdrive.  I bought bunches of yarns in our wedding colours, with grand plans on what they were for which never came to life.  I did knit myself thigh highstockings , then embroidered them, the cabled shawl and a pink shrug.  We had a warm spell here in March, they had it in Ireland too, so I started knitting a lace shawl, just incase it was too warm to wear the cabled shawl.  When I first got the idea of another shawl, I searched Ravelry for the perfect one.  I narrowed it down to about 6 shawls, then I had Tim be the tie breaker.  He picked the Orchid Thief and he was very enthusiastic about it.  I had never knit lace before, I figured what was the big deal, I could read a pattern, it was just YO and K2tog right?  Oh, and I’m not a chart reader either.  Again, not a big deal I thought, there is a legend to tell you what all the symbols mean.  This pattern was only available in a book, I checked it out from the library, no time to order it.   By this point, I only had a few weeks left before the wedding.  Not a great time to try something I had never done before with my stress level getting higher and higher.  Luckily, I had the yarn I wanted to use already.  I read the posts on Ravelry, people had some problems with this pattern and there was errata, I printed that out.  I saw that someone on Ravelry had used beads.  I had beads! What the heck, let’s add those in too. ( I had never knit with beads before either).    Ysolda has a very different style, she constructs things differently than standard, which is neat, put you really have to let go of everything you know or think you know and follow the instructions.  The problem I had with this pattern is the instructions weren’t there.  Everything had been abbreviated, I’m guessing because of the book printer, but still, some sections were very hard to follow, especially chart 4.  I went merrily along with chart 4, and I ended up with half a motif.  Why was there half a motif?  What do you mean, you can’t fudge lace knitting?  Who has the time to knit it properly?  I was running out of time and I’m sure when we got to Ireland this shawl would make all the difference between a good wedding and a great wedding.  If I didn’t have this shawl, my wedding just wouldn’t be good enough.  I needed to have choices!  Who just has one wedding shawl?  Choices are key!  Tim came home and found me frustrated and freaking out.  We had a discussion.  Yes, the other shawl I had already knit would be great.  No, I didn’t really need this lace one.  Put. The. Knitting. Down.  It we had a week before we left for Ireland, and the knitting had to stop.  I moved on to prep for the party when we got back.  That’s a whole other land of crazy for another day. 

The Orchid Thief, round 2.  I had the yarn already, different from the failed attempt, so time to go again.  I had given myself more time this time, but since the wedding was not in town, I had to make sure I had it done before she left.  I decided no beads, and off I went.  The first chart is really no problem, it’s very small at this point.  You start with a motif at the base of the neck and work outwards.  

The 2^nd and 3^rd charts are basically a grid, so as long as you stay on grid, it’s fine.  I used lots of stitch markers, and once I figured out where are the spines were and what was supposed to line up with what I was fine.  It’s  a repeat of the same concept over and over.  I do think it’s cool that while you are repeating, the shawl is growing longer and wider, like magic.  Then the dreaded chart 4.  I had put in a life line at this point, thank goodness I did.  I had to rip this out several times.  I tried to follow the chart, didn’t work.  I tried to follow other peoples notes on Ravelry, didn’t work.  I didn’t really understand how the spines lined up with what was in the chart.  I was worried that if I just merrily went along, the spines weren’t going to line up with the flower motif like they were supposed to.  With lace, I can’t really tell if I had done things right until it’s finished and blocking, which was scary.  I finally figured it out, hoping for the best and finished.  The bride had asked for some of her wedding colour incorporated in.  I decided to bind off in the purple and crochet a chain ruffle edge. 

When I blocked it, I could tell the spots that I fudged.  On chart 4, I kept ending up with one stitch too many, so instead of a SK2p, I just did a K2tog.  This didn’t give the motif a nice, crisp edge that it should have, but I was too far gone to fix it. 

I gave it to the bride last night, and she loved it.  I look forward to seeing the wedding pictures.  I can’t believe I mastered it.  

Made from Scratch

I have had the urge to make things from scratch lately.  I have a bread machine, I use it a lot, but I found I was only making the same things over and over.  So, I decided, since I have the time, to do something different, something that we normally buy in the store.  Isn’t it healthier to make it from scratch?  Then you can pronounce all the ingredients that went in it.  Tim asked for French bread, to go with a meal he was making, so I made that, but I had done that many times before.  Then I had an urge to make pretzels.  That was one of the things we made in grade 8 family studies class, and I had a craving.  In class, we didn’t do the boiling stage, but I was up for a challenge, so I thought I would try it.  No, that’s not true.  I had already had the dough in the machine, then read the recipe, and to my shock, this one had boiling as a step, so I thought I would try it and see what happened.  It went pretty well.  I’m glad I had all day, because it took forever, boiling them, then baking them. 

Then, the next day, I decided to make bagels.  That is something that we normally buy, so why not make them from scratch?  I had already conquered the boiling thing, so why not.  The dough was different from the pretzel dough.  It puffed up way more than the pretzels did.  With the recipe I was following you make the dough in the bread machine, then roll them into the bagel shape.  Then you broil them in the oven for a few minutes, to set them?  They were not supposed to brown at this point, but one of my batches did before I caught it.  Then you boil them in sugared water.  I just did this in a pot on the stove, I suppose to make things go faster, I should have done two pots.  The boiling made the bagels rise significantly, I was not expecting this.  To the point where I had too many bagels in the pot, so instead of round bagels, I had triangles.  The next step is to bake them.  Some of my bagels didn’t get long enough at one of the steps along the way, so they didn’t get cooked all the way through.  I think they might have absorbed the water in the boiling stage too, so they did not look like bagels are supposed to.  Then, I didn’t weigh each bagel to make sure I had the same size, I thought I could just eye ball it, but no, I had some super huge bagels, then some mini bagels.  All in all, a learning experience. Tim asked for time to eat the baking before more baking occurred, so I had to move on to something else. 

We just happened to be out of ice cream, since I was on this make stuff from scratch kick, I thought we should make some.  Tim was involved with this one, we used his Kitchen Aid with the ice cream making frozen bowl.  We still had left over wedding cake, so we thought it would be a good idea to add it in to the vanilla ice cream.  I added the sprinkles. 

It turned out really well!  Ice cream takes a while to prepare, you have to cook and mix up the ingredients the day before and let it refrigerate overnight, then it has to freeze, which takes about a day. 

I used to make ice cream all the time with my family out in our back yard with an ice cream maker that was one step up from a hand crank machine, this one was electric, but same principal.  There was a big wooden tub that we filled with snow and a small canister where the ice cream ingredients went.  We plugged it in to the outlet outside and it churned and churned.  Our job as kids was to keep adding the snow around the canister.   If I remember right, this took a few hours, then it went into the freezer and we would have ice cream for Sunday night dessert.  The churning in our Kitchen Aid for Tim and I was only about half an hour, how times have changed.

All this making from scratch makes me think of a time where that’s all there was, no one bought anything premade from the grocery store.  I think of all the preservatives we consume now, and I would like to make more things from scratch, things that we eat every day.  I would like to think this makes them healthier, even if what I’m making is bread and ice cream.  I’m not sure how I could keep this up with a full time job, I’m not sure if I would have 3 hours to make fresh, homemade bagels.  It does make one appreciate the convenience of the grocery store for the modern way of life, where things are moving so fast, working is such a big part of everyone’s day.  It’s nice to slow things down every once and a while to appreciate simple things like food more.   

Lemon Pie Soap

I made a batch of soap on Friday.  I have been drinking lemon water, fresh sliced lemon smelled so good, I thought I would make some lemon scented soap.  I thought it would be cool to add the zest to try and get some of the lemon freshness I was experiencing.  I picked the basic recipe from the Natural Soapmaker.  I mix the lye first, to let it cool, then I melt the hard waxes.  It was after I had weighed these ingredients that I noticed that I didn’t have enough olive oil.  I know, you’re supposed to gather all your ingredients first, but I was excited to try out this soap.  I added Sunflower oil to make up for the olive oil I was missing.  I tried to work out the SAP values, but since everything else was already fixed, it was hard to reverse engineer the recipe. 

 I split the batch in two, added Lemon Essential oil, the lemon zest, and yellow oxide for colour to one and Sugar cookie scent, no colour to the other.  I’m going for Lemon Meringue scent.  I poured each into a juice jug and poured at the same time into an orange juice can.

I learned some new techniques at the Soap conference, one of which was things still go OK if you pour into the molds at the first sign of trace.  I had always thought that one had to mix longer, I usually mixed until my soap was like pudding, but it can get thicker so fast that it causes air pockets that are difficult to get out.  I have tried this technique, poring two soaps from opposite sides of the can, once before with the Lime Coconut soap.  I had waited until the Lime Coconut  soap was thinker so I got different results.  This soap was very liquid, the two colours mixed with each other more, rather than stay on one side. 

I thought using orange juice cans was a good way to get a nice size, the circle fits nicely in your hand.  It’s a way of recycling and it’s easy to get the soap out as opposed to other methods.  This way, you just peel off the can.  

Then I cut it into 1.25” sections with a soap cutter.   

Then I put the finished soap in the soap rack to dry.  It will stay there until it gets hard, about 4 weeks. 

This soap has started off softer than I’m sued too, I’m sure it’s the combination of the sunflower oil and the pouring at light trace.  I left it in the molds for 2 days, usually I only leave it for one, I thought this would have some effect, but it didn’t.  All in all, I think it turned out OK, I will see how long it takes to harden on the rack.  

Vacation soaps

Along with buying vacation yarn, I also buy vacation soaps.  In Ireland we saw this in a souvenir shop, and thought it was very appropriate.  Sheep hold a special place in knitters hearts.  

Then, at a souvenir shop at the Cliff of Moher, of all places, my father found this.  I love getting vacation soaps that use local materials, Wild Irish seaweed seemed cool and interesting.  

The only problem with vacation soaps is I never want to use them.  

Speaking about soaps that are wedding related, after we came back from our wedding trip, we had a party here in Ottawa.  So, of course I had to make soap as a wedding favor.  

We had a castle theme for our wedding reception, so I made a castle out of card stock.  each one had a roof that had our names and the date.  These soaps are saponified olive, coconut and palm oil.  The green ones are Bamboo scented and the pink ones are Berry.  I ended up with a lot left over from the party, so they will be for sale in my Etsy shop.  

I made a new batch of soap a few days ago, I will show you that tomorrow.