John’s scarf is really coming along, as you can see in the following video:
t/w motion sickness
It’s getting loooooong
So we skipped green. Just cut that right out of the middle of the first skein. Luckily there was only one section that was green.
I took this video right before I started on the second skein and I’m coming up on green again. The things I do for my man!
About Flicking
I’ve been trying to perfect my flicking. This is a technique that allows you to wrap the yarn around the needle without letting go of your work, which allows you to knit faster.
Bad news: I keep dropping stitches purlwise.
Good news: I taught myself how to pick up dropped stitches.
Either way I’m back to throwing the yarn because it’s faster than flicking, then dropping stitches, then having to fix the dropped stitches. Anecdotally, at least.
Planning on practicing on some scrap yarn soon.
Socks
All the stuff came for my first pair of socks. I can’t wait! Hoping to start on them this week. As a reminder – gorgeous yarn.
After the horror that was Strom-pizza, John suggested that I try again with instant yeast, so I did. And woo-eeeee! The dough turned out great!
The recipe I used said it makes 4 dough balls. We used two for making our pizzas and froze the other two. Once we tried it, we thought maybe we should split the recipe into 3 dough balls instead so the crust would be a little thicker in the middle.
And all this time, the garden has been doing its thing.
Gardening might be my favorite kind of magic because you do all the work up front. Then, one day, you go outside to enjoy the nice weather and surprise! You have veggies.
It’s been raining a lot where we are, and the weather turned cooler than normal, so even though it’s already September, we have a bajillion green tomatoes and only occasional red ones.
So many green cherry toms
We need a little heat wave please! Or at least a string of sunny days.
Meanwhile, we have beans! Remember those?
I was so excited when these guys sprouted!
And here they are!
Get in my belly, magic beans
The zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers are also doing well. Hoping for a harvest in the next few weeks.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Our beautiful disaster.
I give you the strom-pizza:
The horror
It started this morning with a cheery, “Let’s make pizza for lunch!”
John looked dubious, but I was already measuring the flour.
I had a funny feeling that I interpreted as, “I used the wrong yeast.” But my main concern was that we’d be slicing our delicious pizza a little later than I expected.
The dough rose, and I flopped it out onto the counter. John was now 100% committed and had gone downstairs to find his pizza slider. “Why is it so sticky?” he asked.
“It’s fine!” I said, shaping the dough into a rough circle on the pizza slider.
Satisfied with my crust, I stepped back and implored John to make it pretty:
Which he did
Then it happened.
Me: “You don’t think that’s going to slide off of there and into the oven, do you?
Him: “I hope so. We can’t cook it on this.”
Oh. no.
It wasn’t sliding anywhere. John wrestled with it valiantly, going to unreasonable lengths to keep our pizza pizza-shaped. In the end he had to fold it and cut it in half just to get it in the oven.
Order up!
I added a sprig of basil. Presentation is very important.
We took our strom-pizza to the couch so we could eat while watching football.
“I don’t like this restaurant,” I said. “We shouldn’t come back.”
On Saturday, John and I headed out to a nearby State park for some R&R.
They have a waterfall there, accessible via an easy 1/2 mile hike that is very popular. We knew it would be popular (read: people-y) and decided to go anyway, because even though we prefer solitude it seemed wrong somehow to never have seen the falls that the park is named after.
When we arrived at the falls, we were dismayed, yet not at all surprised, that literally everyone had ignored copious posted warnings about slippery rocks and falling to one’s death to climb over the railing and stick their smelly feet in the pool at the bottom of the falls.
Not shown: the idiots thumbing their noses at death from the top of the falls.
Disappointed, we decided to salvage the trip by hiking back via the Cliff Trail.
The Cliff Trail is much less people-y because it’s fairly strenuous, and I guess the falls people don’t do strenuous. John and I aren’t in the best shape of our lives either, but I told him that the trail would be “mostly downhill,” since we had climbed mostly uphill to reach the falls.
That was a bold-faced lie, but he fell for it.
So we huffed and puffed and saw some really beautiful vistas and generally didn’t die on our way back from the falls.
Green, empty nature. Just the way we like it.
For the second half of our adventure, we traipsed down a short trail to the edge of the lake, where we picnicked and held fishing poles in our hands for no apparent reason since I only caught one tiny fish and threw it back. Pretty though!
Hello mountain!
Are you ready for the best part? John was sitting by the bank, not catching fish, when a furry friend climbed up right between his feet!
Me: “John, there’s a racoon…”
John: “Wha’? Oh [expletives deleted]
John leapt back, cursing, and the racoon leapt back, hissing, then scampered off along the bank.
By this point I had managed to grab my phone to capture the moment in this National Geographic-quality photo:
Do you see him? No? Let me help you out:Close up of scary and totally adorable raccoon friend.
Did I mention I absolutely love racoons? Here’s one wearing a tutu:
So stuck, in fact, that in one short week I have used up these kitchen staples:
Flour
Salt
Chocolate Chips
And before you say anything, chocolate chips *are too* a staple.
I used them today when I decided to bake cookies.
These cookies are my jam
I’ve been making a lot of new-to-me stuff this week (beginner’s mind!). But this is different. I’ve been baking chocolate chip cookies FOREVER. They were basically my specialty as a teen. (I do cookies! If cookies aren’t appropriate, you’re out of luck!)
To point is, I have a lot of nostalgia around making chocolate chip cookies.
That said, here’s my setup:
Tiny kitchen, big heart
Enter feels, stage left
So, the mixer.
This was my mother’s mixer.
It wasn’t the mixer I used when I was a teenager. She got it much later. I don’t know exactly when, but she was very proud of it. After she died, it came to me.
I mean, it’s a mixer. But also, it’s THE mixer.
So I’m in the kitchen measuring chocolate chips, swirling in late 80s nostalgia and a growing amount of anxiety at using my mother’s mixer.
Even though she’s dead.
WTF.
By the way, I didn’t technically have enough chocolate chips and had to halve a recipe I’ve followed 5,000 times on the fly. There’s nothing like trying to measure 9/8 cups of flour to give a girl confidence in the kitchen.
For all these reasons, the one baking project that should have been the easiest for me…wasn’t.
Anyway…
I made cookies!
Mmm delish
They turned out okay. They’re a little flatter and browner than they were in 1987. Probably because of all the math.
This morning I made sandwich rolls. They are the simplest thing in the world and they’re SO much better than anything I’ve ever found in a plastic bag.
My sandwich rolls call all the boys to the yard, including Jacques and Beau. Woof.
They didn’t get as brown as the photo in the recipe, but they are twice as delicious.
How do I know? It’s magic!
This recipe calls for instant yeast, which I learned is not the same as active dry yeast, so I had to proof mine. But it went totally fine. The little yeasties got all hot and bothered right on schedule.
I was surprised that these only took a total of about two hours to make, including the rising. Only 20 minutes in the oven, which was a lot faster than I expected.
