Cat Sculptures

A friend sent me the link to images of cats sculptured out of wool in a method called needlefelting!  You really must go look.

Adventures in Knitting – shhhh – it’s a secret!

The focus of the latest adventure is not for public consumption yet.  I’m knitting a small tote for a Ravelry Group Swap and don’t want to give too many details in case my victim/swappee reads this.

It is an adventure, though.  I was planning on knitting something in my beloved cotton yarn, but it wasn’t speaking to me and didn’t feel right.  So that went back in the barn for the next project.  I carpool to knitting group and my buddy S wanted a chart keeper for her new lace project.  We stopped at Michaels and she picked out a cute mini-lunchbox tin big enough to keep her yarn.  Of course we couldn’t leave without checking the yarn.  Still no update to the yarn section, but there are some additional yarns on 99 cent special – including Lion Brand Feltable Wool.

Ping!  My inner designer liked the thought of a brilliant eye-knocking color felted bag.  A few skeins jumped into my cart – I wish I had glommed more and off we went to knitting.

I enjoy reading patterns and then winging it, especially when it is a simple idea.  A rectangle for the bottom, pick up stitches and knit around and around.  But how many stitches?  Hmmmm… 47 was the last cast on I did on a dishcloth.  So I did 50.  Like round numbers.

It grew.  And grew.  It got wider and wider, almost like magic.  I didn’t take into account I had switched from 4 mm to 9 mm needles.  Ooops.  Big isn’t a problem with bags, but it was too narrow and I didn’t like the proportions.

Rip

Returned home and located the pattern.  Only 25 stitches??? That would be wayyyy tooo small.  I want the bag to be big enough to actually use; a paperback book, an apple, and a sandwich should fit.  Or a small knitting project.  So I cast on 35 stitches and like the size.  I’ll felt carefully so it doesn’t shrink to nothing.

The pattern strap may be changed too.  I’ll have to think about that.  I like smaller handles on small bags as I usually stuff them down a larger bag.

Yes, I have Too Much Stuff.  How did you guess?

Got lots to do…better get this proof read, posted and move along.

Biscuits

A good friend of mine has a daughter with the “touch.”  This is a precious and valued commodity for a southern family as it means pastry and biscuits made by this person will be light, fluffy, edible, and have no relationship to a hockey puck.

It isn’t me.  My mother’s mother was said to make the best and lightest biscuits, and she taught my mother.  They both had the same size hands so could measure the appropriate amount of flour, salt, and baking powder.  I have much bigger hands than my mother and didn’t have biscuit lessons.  We used either whomp biscuits or Bisquick.

If you don’t know about whomp biscuits – they come in a can from the grocery store.  You unwind a trapezoid shape of paper from the outside of the cylinder and if you don’t hear a “whompf” sound of the biscuits opening, you whomp them on the edge of the counter.  Whomp biscuits.

I can make a delicious whomp biscuit – first you melt half a stick of margarine in the pyrex pie plate…then dip the biscuits in the “butter”.  Put the dough circles back in the oven to bubble and fry in the excess margarine.

Bisquick was just about the same, but we made drop biscuits and although they were OK, they weren’t Biscuits.

After growing to the appropriate age where they let you live on your own, I ventured into baking.   I was thorough – the Crisco was evenly blended into the dry mixture so every lump was pea-sized.  The delicate dough was overworked and biscuits were tough.

Then came the diet years.  Bread was carefully dolled out and hot breads were just too tempting to eat outside of restaurant settings.

Followed by years of barely cooking.  I called the creations casseroles.  It is amazing how many ways you can mix up a batch of something, toss it in the microwave and get something edible out of it.

Now I am once again interested in biscuits.  Partly because of my venture into the Amish Friendship Bread (AFB, see previous posts for details) and I ran out of bread.  Both flour and oil were in the house for the AFB and I thought to give it another try.  I found a recipe for Wesson Oil Biscuits at Cooks.com and wondered how bad could they be, considering what I’ve eaten in the past.

I had pulled out the Oster Sandwich toaster (OST) that makes neat triangle pockets out of sandwiches.  I ran out of bread because I had fresh tomatoes and a fresh tomato, cheddar cheese, and onion toasted sandwich is quite tasty.  I had also used the OST to make triangle shaped pancake AFB, also good.

Why not biscuits?  It worked!  They were not too bad, but not too light.  Allowing the dough to rest a few minutes did give lighter biscuits but it is hard to wait.  Of course enough butter covers a multitude of biscuit errors.   But too much butter = too many more calories and expensive.  Cheese biscuits were still kind of bland.  Then I thought of Red Lobster biscuits and started adding garlic powder, seasoned salt (Everglades seasoning is my favorite), onion flakes and pepper.  That was GREAT.  I made those quite a bit and then wanted something sweet.  Hmmm… so then added sugar and cinnamon instead of the savory things.  Also good. All adaptations are for ease of a lazy efficient baker.

Wesson Oil biscuits copied from Cooks.com adapted by Dustbunnys

1 c. flour
1/2 Tbs. baking powder (I have a 1/2 Tbs measure which is easier than measuring one and one half tsp or 3 one half tsp, just how my mind works)
1/4 tsp. salt

1 oz Wesson oil
3 oz milk (now if I’ve run out of bread, I’ve probably run out of milk.  Substitute 3 oz of water and add 2 Tbs of milk powder to the dry ingredients)

mix all dry ingredients thoroughly.

measure water/milk and oil in the same measuring cup.  Pour all at once into the flour mixture. Stir with a fork/spoon (whatever) until mixture clears sides of bowl and rounds up into a ball.

Plug in OST and let dough rest while it comes to temp.  When the little light shuts off, it is hot and ready to bake biscuits.  The ball of dough makes 8 nice biscuits so scoop about 1/8 of the dough into one of the triangle wells.  Add a tiny bit of butter (or more) to the top of the dough.  When all the wells are filled and buttered, close the lid.

Depends on how much butter you put in…you may hear sizzling right away.  Maybe not.  Watch the light go back on, reheat the griddle and then turn off again.  Do not open!  When the light comes on a second time, lift the lid and admire the toasty golden brown biscuits.

Remove and replace with more lumps of raw dough and butter.  Try not to eat too many biscuits waiting on the second batch to cook.

I haven’t measured the savory ingredients – I pretty much substitute seasoning salt for the table salt, add garlic powder, onion flakes, and pepper.  How much depends on you.  I’ll measure next time I make them.  If I can find the herb mix for olive oil dipping I plan to make an olive oil batch.  Those should be VERY good.

Sweet biscuits – I did measure and write down:

add to dry mixture 1/4 tsp cinnamon and 2 Tbs sugar

Almost like a scone, but a bit more moist and softer.

Night all!

My Knitting Adventures – Socks 3B

Sock 3B is progressing quite nicely, considering I am about to go bonkers from trying to juggle size 00 dpns.  How can you all do this?  Knit socks on purpose with dpns?  I’ve seen video of the Yarn Harlot doing it and sit amazed.  The awkwardness is lessening just a bit, but not much and it is taking me about 20 mins to do ONE ROUND.  One measly round.  The first few rounds took about an hour each of torment, so it is clear that I am getting better at this. 

I did Fuzzy Feet for my first knitting project and remember flying right along on the dpns.  I did have a bit of a problem hanging onto the left needle that had given up its last stitch.  It dived for the floor and wanted nothing more to do with me.  One of my knitting group buddies was on the side the needles kept leaping so she was kind enough to fetch them from the floor, but did ask me if I was throwing them at her. 

As much as I hate to admit it, I do like the look of the ribbing with the smaller needles.  It really does look tidier.  This last few rows is going sooooo slow I can barely stand it.  BUT am I going to rip the first sock and redo with the 00’s??  NOPE.  Not unless when I wear them the ribbing is so loose the sock creeps down into my shoe. 

What to do for my next socks?  I have mostly self-striping yarn and all the patterns I really like look great in non-striping yarn.  Of course.  My pattern requirements are something I can do toe up, alter for my poor footsies that are long, normal size at the toes and then widen to accomodate my cankles.  You know – when there is no graceful merging of the leg into a neat, trim ankle and the calf of the leg appears to slam into the the foot?

I have Charlene Schurch’s and Wendy Johnson’s sock books along with all of Ravelry to choose from.  A Ravelry friend has figured out a modification of Monkeys for wider ankles, and I am thinking of trying that. I wonder how it will look in the vibrant purple and yellow Opal yarn a friend gave me?

If anyone has a suggestion, please feel free to speak up!  Either of you!  LOL…

Peg Looms

I was innocently trolling around the internet and ran across this idea for peg looms.

OH MY this would be fun!  ALL I NEED is ANOTHER interest.  EEP.