Battle Sour Dough, continued

Well, last night's sour dough did not rise, but I went ahead and tossed it in the oven anyway.  I think its gonna be two squat loaves.  I pulled out the stuff the start another batch, made sure to put the correct amount of yeast and honey, and then fed my started.  I noticed that when I fed the starter it was too thick to stir so I added a few extra teaspoons full of water.  I decided that this would be a good time to check the recipe again to be sure it was 1C flour and 1/2C water instead of the other way around (cause that would be my luck).  I was okay on that part, but discovered that I was supposed to leave the starter out for 12 hours before putting it back in the fridge.  I've 'fed' the starter three times in three days and haven't done that step yet...so I think this starter might be a lost cause and I may have to start over from scratch.  sigh!  Well, I've got enough flour so I'm going to press onward and see what happens, and if it doesn't work out I'll toss the starter and start again.  Maybe I'll just google sour dough starter and see if I can buy some and have it shipped.  Maybe I'll just say 'forget it!' and buy my sour dough from the market...but not before I master this recipe.  I'm past the point of no return on this endeavor. 

Oh, and my ice-cream?  Yeah, that failed too.  Fruit wasn't frozen enough and the substitutions for the heavy cream were too wet for it to set up.  I tried to put it in the freezer last night to see if that would make a difference.  It's frozen solid now.  I'll be starting on that as well.  And at some point today, I'm supposed to bake muffins.  Yes folks, the batting average has fallen even lower.  Maybe I should just go knit something...this IS a knitting blog after all.

Loss of kitchen mojo

 This is my Effortless Cardigan by Hannah Fettig of Knitbot fame.  It's my first sweater of the year and I've worn it consistent since it came off the needles.  I think this is going to replace my Emerald cardigan because it's thin enough that I can fit it under my new gray coat (the other one bunches under the arms and restricts movement in the smaller coat).  Please forgive these lousy photos.  They're just another example of the loss of Mojo that I'm experiencing around here this week.

 Where am I hit the hardest by the Mojo loss??  In the kitchen.  According to Aaron (who helped me figure out this analogy) if I were a major league baseball player, I'd be batting about 175 right now.  The buffalo wings came out great, as did the blue-cheese dressing.  The waffles from last night tasted good, but I missed a crucial step that affected the overall texture (they should have been crisper on the outside and fluffier on the inside).  The home made ice-cream I tried tonight turned out like a milk shake instead of ice-cream, so into the freezer it went (at least it tasted good).  The sour dough bread?  Don't even ask about the sour dough bread.  It was supposed to be so easy, but I've screwed it up for the last two straight days, and the started was off at first too but I think I've worked that out.

 Turns out that after waiting for 2-5 days for the starter to be ready, then 1 hour for the wet ingredients to sit and rise, then 1 1/2 hours for the dough to rise, you have to prep the loaves and then put them into the fridge for ANOTHER 8-12 HOURS!!  Really.  I knew I was gonna have problems when I discovered that I'd only put 1 tsp of honey into the wet ingredients instead of the 1 Tbs, but I hoped I could work past that.  Then I mixed the flour into the wet ingredients, all the while wondering when the butter and eggs was supposed to go in, and put it in the oven to rise.  This friends, is what happens when one is tired and lack of a printer necessitates copying the recipe by hand...I missed a critical step.  At about this point, I called several friends hoping to ask if I should even bother to proceed to baking...after all, I had no eggs or butter or salt, but I've made other bread recipes that didn't call for eggs (it could work, right?).  No one answered.  Next step: call Mom.  Her advice: bake it anyway and see what happens...after all, it could work, right?  So I go in and get ready to bake the bread, and scroll down the recipe looking for the temperature, and that's when I see that I can't even bake these blasted loaves till tomorrow morning at the earliest!  I mean, really!  So they're in the fridge doing what ever the heck it is that they need 12 hours to do, and tomorrow I'll start all over with fresh flour and stuff and try again.  I'll bake these and if they don't work out, I'll have properly prepared dough waiting in the wings.  That's the plan anyway.

At least the Swedish meatballs & rice worked out.  Probably because it was store-bought, packaged gravy.

Will he or won't he?!...

Come on everyone!  Join me in watching the latest episode of Bones on Fox tonight to see if Booth proposes to Hannah (boo!) or if they break up and he starts laying the foundation of a realtionship with Bones (yay!).  To celebrate, I've put my Cocky pattern on sale from 9pm EST through next week ending at 9pm EST.  Come on, you know you wanna!

Super Bowl Sunday

It's Super Bowl Sunday, and look what I made!!  Buffalo wings and blue cheese dressing, courtesy of the latest edition of Cook Illustrated's America's Best Test Kitchens.  Both the dressing, the wings, and the buffalo sauce are made from scratch.  It's by far the best blue cheese dressing I've ever had...and it's good that the recipe was in there because Shaw's had one (1) bottle of blue cheese dressing left, and it was low-fat, lol.  So I just bought the stuff I needed to make my own, and the boys are super happy with it. 

Now I know that this is in no way a food blog, but it isn't often that I make something completely from scratch and I get super excited when I do, so this time I took a picture and put it here for proof of my kitchen-awesomeness.

I'm knitting slowly but surely on the Effortless Cardigan and it's coming along nicely.  I'm knitting on the ribbing for the body right now, and then I'll be working on the sleeves.  Then there's a good amount of ribbing along the fronts and the collar, so I'm not out of the woods but I hope that when I finish I'll still have some Month-of-February left so I can try to get back on schedule for my IntSweMoDo2011 (did I get that abbreviation correct??  I always screw it up).  Now, back to knitting and watching Super Bowl commercials.

Introducing the Brambles Mittens (to match your beret).

Mittens were inspired by the Brambles beret pattern from Knitty by Amanda Muscha. With her permission, I have released this pattern for matching mittens. The pattern features the cable found on the body of the beret (I have not included this chart…you can get it from the original beret pattern) with the addition of a right-side cable, and a new chart for the upper-mitten that is designed to mirror the decrease section of the beret. The mittens designed with the cable pattern on the back and stockinette stitch on the palms. The upper-mitten chart only shows the patterned side, so you will need to remember to decrease the stockinette side when you work a decrease row on the patterned side. I used less than two skeins of Cascade 220 superwash to knit the beret and mittens, with about half a skein left-over yarn.
Materials: Ideally you would use exactly the same size yarn and needles that you knit the beret from, but if not…here goes:

• Yarn: 1/2 of a skein of Cascade 220 superwash handpaint in #9867 (baby pink).
  
• Needles: for magic loop: one US 4 (3.5mm) circular at least 24” long for ribbing, and one US 6 (4.0mm) at least 24” long for body; or 2 US 4 (3.5mm) circulars for ribbing and 2 US 6 (4.0mm) circulars if you prefer using two circular needles.  pattern is written for two circular method…you could knit the cuff and the body with the larger needles and eliminate the smaller ones if necessary
  
• 3 stitch markers: one in a different color to denote the thumb gusset.
  
• scrap yarn and darning needle.
  
• gauge of 6 sts and 8 rows per inch.
  

Block lightly to bring out the cable details, and enjoy with your matching hat! 

Update: as of yesterday (2/4/11), 96 knitters have downloaded this pattern...join the masses, lol.


download now

Cocky Socks on sale from 2/10/11 through 2/17/11

After some gentle reminding, I finally got off my bottom and released the Cocky Sock pattern to the general public on Ravelry.   

To celebrate Valentines day, and the possibility that Booth will finally kick Hannah to the curb and get with Bones, the pattern is on sale for 35% off starting 2/10/11 at 9pm Eastern during the show and running all week until the start of the following episode on 2/17/11.

Pattern details are as follows:

Size: Woman’s M/L (8.5” circumference), or Man’s L. (10-10.5” circumference): Chart A is designed to fit a woman’s foot, and Chart C is designed to fit a man’s foot (2 repeats in DK weight yarn, or 3 repeats in fingering weight yarn).
To get started, you’ll need:
Yarn: 1 skein of any sock yarn in red for the main color (mc); 1 skein of any fingering weight sock yarn in white (cc). if knitting a man’s sock, you’ll need the same amounts of fingering weight yarn or approx 300 yds of each color in DK weight yarn.
Needles:

• fingering yarn: 2.75mm double-pointed needles; OR two sets of 2.75mm circular needles; OR one 2.75mm circular needles at least 24” long (or what ever size is necessary to hit gauge); OR
• DK yarn: 3.75mm double-pointed needles; OR two sets of 3.75mm circular needles; OR one 3.75mm circular needles at least 24” long (or what ever size is necessary to hit gauge).

Gauge:

• Fingering: 8 sts per inch in stranded pattern; OR
  
• DK: 5.5 sts per inch in stranded pattern.
  

To ensure that you hit gauge, be sure to knit your swatch in the round. Stranding can tighten your gauge so be sure to do a stranded swatch as well. Chart B would be perfect to swatch with.

Stitch markers: 2 to divide the pattern repeats, 1 in a different color for the end of the round.
Size Notes: If your foot circumference is wider, you can add additional stitches between the chickens, or knit with a slightly larger needle to increase your gauge. Pattern provides two different charts to fit a man’s and woman’s foot circumference.

pattern cost: $6.00

Success... I think.

Well, I've been working on my sweater and it's now February...and I'm not finished with it.  It was the need to knit a new pair of mittens with detachable i-cord, and a pair of gloves for Dante (and a pair of socks for each of the boys) that took up all of my knitting time in January...oh, and the final projects.  Can't forget about the final projects.  I got 100% on each of those papers, by the way ;)


Anyway, my friend Heather came over on Saturday night and we followed the instructions in Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard (of Knit and Tonic fame) to make a dress-form out of duct tape.  There's a part in the directions where she tells you that you'll have to get over the shock of seeing what your body actually looks like, and she's not kidding!  We were successful in creating the form, and then I took a look at my own upper body and was genuinely depressed.  It's just sad.  So sad that I complained about it for most of the rest of the night.  I complained do much that my poor husband went out and bought me a fat-burner for when I return to the gym.  I'd been kicking the idea around, but I hadn't done anything about it yet.  He went out and read every single label to make sure there wasn't anything I was allergic to in the ingredients, and then came home with one, because he's a sweet man and men like to fix things when we get upset.  If I hadn't been bitterly lamenting my waste-line, and I didn't understand the need for a man to fix things instead of just listening, I might have been offended but I wasn't.  Because that's how bad my body really looks when it's wrapped in duct tape!

Yesterday we ran some errands and for the up-teenth time I thought to myself that my fingering weight, lace tam just isn't warm enough for the days when the wind really blows and I need to knit a heavier hat.  I decided yesterday that it was time to do something about it, and I took out my pretty, girl-y pink Cascade 220 superwash handpaint yarn and cast on for Brambles.  I wasn't sure about cables and variegated yarn, but I think that the colors are so subtle that it'll work out just fine.  I'm going to use the cable to knit matching mittens and then if I have any yarn left over, I'll look at a neck warmer too.  I guess that'll be more time off of my sweater knitting, but I'm hoping to make up for some of that by knitting a few with some of my Cascade Eco wool and Eco +, which should knit up pretty fast (and should fit pretty darn well now that I've got this dress form that shows where all my important measurements are).

Oh, and lastly (and totally off topic), I went to the new LDS.org website (thanks to the tutorial by a member of our ward on Sunday), and bought myself a subscription to the Ensign magazine...finally!  Who else is proud of me?... lol.