Elf Business…

This is ‘Fern Glade’ from the new Knitty by Megan Marshall. It was a beautiful knit – fun to make and fairly quick too! I used two strands of Jaggerspun lace weight in boysenberry and columbine. It’s in my projects on ravelry.

I’ve also been working on some TOP SECRET elf business, whenever the kid’s aren’t home. Can’t show you yet – in case they decide to read the blog (unlikely but you know). They are beautiful and I’ll post pics on Christmas!

I’ve started playing around, trying to design a scarf – not worth sharing yet but I’ll let you know – maybe I’ll have something to take a picture of by this evening 🙂

We’re having an entirely homemade Christmas this year, by the looks of it. Later this weekend I’m planning to put it all in one place and see where I’m at. For sure I’m behind a few pairs of those felted ribby slippers!

Right now I’m totally supposed to be baking a birthday cake! Chocolate, in the shape of a football and iced accordingly, lol. My little guy is now 11 — they grow up quickly 🙂

Have a great day 🙂 I’ll be the lady in the kitchen, desperately knitting and baking chocolate cake!

Beautiful Sun!

The sun is shining and the rain is gone…for now 🙂 I love a sunny day…it revives me.

I’m going to do a ton of laundry, I love hanging it out to dry. It began because I don’t have my dryer yet – still in ‘storage’ – I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever see it again! – but I really like it. I know I’m not wasting power and I like the way the laundry feels and smells 🙂 Even the jeans and towels!

Baked some beautiful muffins yesterday…raspberry lemon…

They are fantastic…the recipe was originally for a cranberry muffin but I had frozen raspberries and I thought the lemon and raspberry would go well together, which they DID! The icing is just a glaze of icing sugar and lemon juice.

I’m almost done spinning the yarn for my son…I am so pleased too! I am sure I’ll get at least another 350 metres out of this last bit, maybe even 400 🙂 That should give me enough to make him a nice cabled sweater…

I’m hoping to finish spinning it while the kids are at school today. I’d like to clean up our deck and get outside for a while. It’s definitely a spin-friendly deck – covered concrete front porch that spans the front of the house, actually. An excellent place to shelter the baby plants now that I’ve moved them outside. I forgot about them last night!!! Thank goodness there wasn’t frost here like they said might happen.

My husband is broken…well, slightly damaged – we’re going with that – he tore his main muscle in his right arm (is a construction foreman in the concrete business) and now can hardly move his arm at all. He’s gotten a sling to wear and spent yesterday sleeping because he got so little rest the night before. They say he needs to keep from using the arm for about a week…he’s going to have to actually supervise instead of jumping in and doing the work for a while.

The dogs spent yesterday comforting him 🙂 They like to keep him company…

Have an excellent day!

Good Morning :)

I made bread yesterday…it’s delicious! I’ve been making it a lot lately — with store brand white bread going for almost $3 a loaf, it makes sense and in terms of minimal preservatives and chemicals, it also makes sense! I figure it’s foolish to assume the ingredients don’t have preservatives…the flour, yeast, etc but at least there aren’t the added ‘extras’ that you get at the store.

Took a picture of the rising loaves…ok…lol…I’m easily amused 🙂

I love the recipes at breadworld. I downloaded some and printed them out a long time ago. The bread I make day to day is the Top Choice White Bread. Quite simple to make, uses quick rise yeast and a mixer with a dough hook and takes about half an hour to make plus 45 minutes rising and 30 minutes in the oven. I think the whole trick to bread is kneading it the full ten minutes at the end…even IF your arms are falling off after five. 😉

I’m 24/85 rows into knitting Ice Queen with my handspun laceweight and I LOVE how the colours are changing in a regular way in the yarn. It’s very very nice – earthy tones, so soft and the beads are pretty!