Bread, again.

 Mmmmm, tasty and delicious!

 

Lately my loaves have been so big that it's hard to cut them.  If I put the dough into a normal size bread pan, it just mushrooms out of the pan.  So, the genius Hubbo suggested that I make 2 small loaves instead of one enormous one.  Smart guy.  The last couple of weeks I've been doing exactly this and it's a great idea.

Now I freeze one and we eat the other.   I wrap up the loaf in aluminum foil, and then pop it into a zip lock bag and toss it into the freezer.  And when I want fresh bread, it's waiting for me.  At this point I have 3 frozen loaves and one from today.  Last Friday I made challah, and tossed in dried cranberries, pieces of dried apricot and golden raisins.  I braided 2 small loaves.  We scarfed down the first one, and now the second way is waiting for this Friday to be eaten.

Today I made 2 rye loaves.  About 3/4 cup of rye flour, and the rest bread flour.  I tossed in tons of caraway seeds since I love them, and then some ground-up flax seeds.   I've developed a thing about ground flax seeds; I now put them into everything from bread to soup to my yogurt lunch.  You can see the caraway seeds and the flax if you embiggen the picture.  We are talking one tasty loaf of bread here.

Aren't those slashes cute?  I used to use a lame, but it got dull, so I use a little wavy edge paring knife from Victorinox (the people who make Swiss Army Knives).

Wall-to-wall books - We ate up the first loaf by breakfast this morning.

Scrabblequeen - It's been cold and snowy here, and just perfect bread-baking weather.

Henya - So what did you bake?

merrilymarylee - I buy them whole at Whole Foods, and then grind them up in my little coffee grinder that I use just for seeds and spices.

The Yarnarian Chats.

I haven't been blogging much the last few weeks, but I have been busy.  Lots of dyeing for the Light & Dark Lace Club, pattern revision and such, working out some ideas for Roxanne's shipment way off in April, etc, etc.

I decided that I needed to somehow get my sweater mojo back, so I started playing with ideas by making outfits for the American Girl Doll.  These are not the nicest knits, far from it, but they have become a great place to noodle around with ideas.   So here's a mini-dress/tunic/skating dress that I did the other day.  When you look at it, you'll see immediately a major design flaw.  I wanted to decrease the skirt between lace patterns, so I did a bit of k1,p1 ribbing and then decreased within it.  Bad move.  I should have done either reverse stockinette or garter and decreased within it.  So now I know.  And the dopey thing is that I knew it was wrong as I was doing it, but I just wanted to keep going and see what happens and after blocking whether it would improve.  Nope.  Ah well, Miss P won't care, and I do love the shaping of the little tunic.  I particularly like the garter border on the skirt and the waviness of the edge.  Cute.  I also like the square neck.  It goes over the doll's head very easily.  I used Knit Picks Palette which knits and blocks so nicely, and it softens up considerable after washing.  I will do another one, only top down, and longer.

The tunic is totally without seams.  The shoulders use a 3 needle bind-off and the sleeves are picked up and knit downwards.  I used garter stitch to set off various design components.  I do this a lot because I really like it.  I used on ball, and have plenty left over.  How can you go wrong with a tunic that costs $1.99?

So now I've started a sweater for me.  Gasp!  Shock!  Amazement!  This is also out of Palette.  It will not be very warm because it's loosely knitted and Palette is a 2-ply fingering wt. yarn, but it's so easy on my hands and it just zooms along.  I can actually knit this much faster than a heavier wt yarn.  Lots of lace and I may change the lace pattern as i go up the sweater.  I'm going to do a square neckline and pick up the sleeves and work downward as usual.  Because the body of the sweater goes up, and the sleeves go down, I may use a different sleeve pattern.  I'm very used to this, and I like it.  By the time I get to the sleeves, I'll be so bored with the pattern that I will be happy to do something else.  Or maybe whatever I do further up the sweater body, I'll also do on the sleeves.  If it doesn't look dopey. 

A bit of note on the yarn:  This is how yarn used to feel before merino got into our hands:  woolly and not as soft as merino.  I love this kind of yarn; it's what I've knit with all my life.  It washes well, wears like iron, doesn't itch me, although I do wear a turtleneck or a blouse underneath sweaters.  Not to say anything at all against merino.  I love merino, but it's nice to work on something else for a change.  This yarn is not Shetland, which is probably my all-time favorite yarn, but it's very pleasant, unbelievably cheap, and good quality and yardage.  Now I want to dig through my stock of Shetland and see if I have enough of any one color for a sweater.  Wool!  The best fiber out there.

I'm thinking.

Always a dangerous pursuit.  All those thoughts going through my head.  So here is my latest mind moment.

I want to change how I present yarns on Etsy.  My model up until August of 2010 was to show one-of-a-kind colorways.  It worked beautifully for almost 3 years.  And then bam!  It all slowed down to a crawl.  And to tell the truth, I am kind of tired of dyeing this way.  Don't get me wrong; it's a lot of fun, but I like a new challenge now and then, and also, I'm now seriously into almost solids.  So what to do?  That is where all my new thoughts are going.

I'm thinking of doing seasonal colorways.  Maybe a new colorway series every 2-3 months.  So I would present 5 new colorways and people could order more than one skein for larger projects.  What do you think?

Initially I did OOAK colorways because I was constantly knitting socks.  But I'm over my sock craze, and am now into shawls and scarves and possibly sweaters (!), and I need more skeins for larger shawls and sweaters.  So if people want to knit bigger shawls, they would need more yardage.  Hence buying more skeins.  Yes?  Does this make sense?

I'm not in competition with any of my fellow dyers here; I'm a low-volume gal, and like a small business, but this would suit me just fine.  I realized the other day now much I like dyeing up multiples of the same colorways.  I've been doing that for a few lace KALs and now especially for the Light & Dark Lace Club, and it's fun for me to do. 

Do you think this is a viable idea?  Got any better ideas?

Speaking of the Light & Dark Lace Club, it's a roaring success!  I'm so happy about it.  The biggies in the indie dyer field are probably howling with laughter, but I have gone way beyond what I expected in responses.  Such a delight!  If you are interested in joining, registration is going to close on Fri.  I have so many orders, that I need a chunk of time to get all the dyeing done.  All the details are right here, and you can buy through my Etsy shop.


Sharon - I like your idea.  The more I think about this, the better it gets.  I think I'll gradually list a large number of regular colorways, and of course, I do need to toss in the weird and wacky and fun.  After all, a girl's gotta play, no?

Malka

Malka is now available for purchase.  Thanks to a group of wonderful test knitters from the Sock Madness Forever forum on Ravelry, she's ready to go.  I knit the shawl in my Heather yarn, which is a 3-ply skinny fingering yarn, approx 400 yards.  You can easily do this in any sock yarn.  The shawl is knitted top-down with a center pattern and 2 wings.  The wings mirror each other, and the outside is increased on every row, giving it that nice shape and drape.  This is an intermediate pattern.

And now I'm off to do a gazillion things.

Wall-to-wall books - OK a gazillion and one things to do.

merrilymarylee - Thanks.  I just had a major giggle at your squirrels. We're blessed with a rotten groundhog.

She knits!

Betcha thought that I wouldn't carry out my plan from Tues post, but I did.  I started that cute zigzag scarf and here's a pic to prove it.  Yep, it will need blocking, but it's fun to do, and really auto-pilot. Yarn is Knit Picks Palette and very pleasantly woolly.  The way wool used to feel before we all got into merino mode.

Here's an outfit that I did on the fly for Miss P's AG doll:  The colored yarn is one of mine, and the white is an undyed ball of my Benji yarn (100% SW merino; 3 ply).  I did a slap/dash bit of knitting here.  The white top neckline is a bit off balance, but Miss P won't care, and the skirt closure isn't great, but it fits, and if you don't look, then you won't tell.

And here's a blankie for one of her dolls.  My Diamond Modular pattern worked in a ball of JoJo Land something or other.   The safety pin is to tell me how many modules I do this week.  I love to keep track of progress.

Light & Dark Lace Club :  Wow, are we ever getting customers!  People are signing up like crazy, some ordering more than one colorway.  I'm stunned, and very, very happy!  Good thing I found 20 more skeins of the yarn hiding in a tub!  I'm going to close down the sign-ups on Jan 15, or whenever I run out of yarn!  I really am stunned! 

Oh, dear!

This morning I decided to go through my knitting and crochet book collection. Oh, dear, what have I gotten myself in for? So far, I've checked out 8 books and one magazine, and can't toss any of them. Each one seems to contain at least one project that I need to knit! Or ideas for projects that I want to play with! What's a woman to do? This is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm too embarrassed to count up just how many books and mags I own. Suffice it to say that I have way, way too many.

So, here's my solution: I'm going to bookmark one book/mag at the beginning of each month. Work on a project and then move on to the next one. Right. Sure. The world's most disorganized human being is organizing her knitting. I don't dare call it a New Year's Resolution because that's the kiss of death. I never keep any resolutions. Why bother to make them when I'm setting myself up for failure.

Feel free to call me on this. Sit on my head; yell at me; call me bad names; force me at needle point to actually do this.

Here's the first book: Schreier, Iris - Reversible knits

There's a cute little scarf called Dangerously Chic, and it's a sawtooth scarf. I have a bunch of Knit Picks Palette yarn, totally irresistible because it's pretty, cheap and in lovely colors. 

Here's the deal: If I hate knitting it, or it looks ugly, I reserve the right to frog it and go on to the next project.



Do you think I can actually carry out this plan? Snort. Laugh. Giggle. Snort some more. But at least it's a plan.

In the meantime, I'm accomplishing nothing whatsoever in getting rid of books. They are all so tempting. The trouble is that I can't resist buying them. I've gotten much better; I now reserve at the library and check them out first. Just about all of those books I do not buy. The problem is with the ones that I do buy. Sigh.

So what are you planning to do with all your yarn/books/magazines in the coming year?

Yarn news:  I've put every single yarn in the Etsy shop on sale.  I'm tired of looking at them.  That's it.  Get 'em out of my house.  I love each one, but I have way too much of my own stash.  So, each one is a couple of bucks off.  You get a good deal, I make room and a little bit of profit (to buy more knitting books!), and that's not half bad!  http://fritzl.etsy.com

Kitten With a Whiplash - I have no more room for shelves, bookcases or anything else.  It's an epidemic of books, yarn, and the Hubbo's garage sale treasures.  HELP!

CarolynJean - I've decided it's a benign disease!

Scrabblequeen - I saw that.  It's a great colorway.  And now I have room for more yarn.  uh huh. 

KV - You know me far too well! 

Henya - Oh, do I ever hear you!  How can we part with books that have lived with us so long?   

White Stuff

Need I say anything more?