Seven pounds.

Seven. Seven pounds.

Seven pounds of white, undyed wool. I organized my fiber stash yesterday and found that I have seven pounds, JUST of white, undyed wool. Doesn't count non-animal fiber, certainly doesn't count dyed fiber.



I am not a production dyer, and I'm not the type to spin up enough wool for a sweater (spinning up 4oz of the same stuff is borderline too much, I need novelty), I've just somehow accumulated seven pounds of white fiber.

I think I should get to work on dying it in 4oz increments (28 4oz increments- that's 56 PAIRS of socks). Hell, I could open an Etsy shop if it turns out I have any talent in dying (which, who knows?) I can't buy any more fiber, though. Holy lordisa wowie.

totally uninteresting post

about comments. I have confusion. I have not set anything to need to be moderated, but I stumbled upon the fact that I had four random comments that needed to be moderated before they were published. Usually, comments just appear, but these four for some reason needed my approval. Not sure why...

Also, I have a friend who can't leave comments on my blog. I don't know why not, or what happens when she tries, so I'm really thinking there's something I'm missing here.

Any blogspot owners who know more than I do and can shed some light on this, your comments (ha! possibly counterproductive) would be appreciated. :)

Love,
Jenny ;)

a quick bit of awesome before I scoot to yoga

This is my husband and I:





This evokes a magical autumnal/academic feeling and I desperately want that skirt (and the narrow hips that would look awesome in it):





Um.




All images from hitchcockblonde

crunchy granola

I've never made homemade granola. I wanted to try.

So, last night I grabbed these ingredients (whoops, vanilla got cut off):



and the end result was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. For this batch I didn't want any dried fruit or anything, just the basic oats and nuts, and it's perfect.



It doesn't take an overly pretty picture, but it's proving to pose a MASSIVE problem for me, in that when I walk by it, if I take a small handful, I seem to lose time and then awake 15 minutes later to find myself still standing there, with crumbs all over my breastal shelf and a significantly smaller amount left in the container.

I used about a third cup honey, a quarter cup each syrup and veggie oil, 2 T water, some salt, vanilla, cinnamon and brown sugar, and mixed it together to cover about 4 cups of rolled oats and a cup of crushed pecans. Baked it for about 35 minutes, stirring it every 10 or so.

This is basically the recipe in my new favorite book, Artisan Breads (the link is in a post below. Granola makes me lazy) with a few small mods.

I also had some temporary blue streaks in my hair last night, given to me by our friends' 12 year old daughter, so perhaps that helped to inject some awesome into the granola, but I don't think the blue streaks are necessary.

my little fambly

said the devil to the jenny "is it cold in here?"

Two things I really Just Don't Knit- sweaters and scarves. I'm a socks, hats, cowls, mittens, gloves, fingerless mitts kind of knitter. The occasional lacy shawl or something. I like bitesized projects that have lots of variety within them. If I get too deep into lace or colorwork and I'm desperate for some plain ol' stockinette, I'll do a simple pair of basic socks.

I've started a few sweaters. I've finished a couple too, but they're all too short because I have NO patience for MILES of stockinette. Being a chesty little somebody (I use the word "little" euphemistically here. "Little" in this case actually means "XL"), it's hard to find sweater patterns that fit well, plus it takes a lot longer to knit them. I get really bored and end up binding off way too soon and have something that stops at about waist level. While, sure, I have a pretty hourglassy shape, it is, ahem, a "little" hourglass, and no sweater is going to look good stopping at the narrowest part of, ahem, a "little" hourglass. Emphasizing my big squishy belly by having a sweater that stops just above it is really NOT the head-turning, show stopping look you might think it is. I just can't seem to keep knitting until I get to an appropriate length, it just gets boring and the sweaters end up lost in my pile of UFOs forever (see: CPH.) Even an interesting lace or cable pattern will probably drive me crazy, and in all honesty, if I can't finish a project in a pretty short amount of time, I'm going to lose interest. I lose interest in things pretty quickly. I've been married for about three and a half months and frankly I'm shocked we aren't divorced yet.

As you might imagine, things like scarves drive me SUPER CRAZY. Ugh! I HATE SCARVES! EVIL scarfy fuckers! Like all new knitters I started with a scarf. It's currently on the needles buried somewhere deep in my mom's house. I gave up on knitting. Years later I tried a new one. Also on the needles buried deep in my mom's house. I gave up again. I tried a third and just frogged it. Forget it. I just can't do the same thing over and over and over and over again. Fortunately at that point I made a hat and had the delight of FINISHING a project, which gave me just the taste I needed to become an addict. That's what scarves are, though. Just boring repetitions. There aren't any heels or toes or increasing or decreasing in scarves, or even any sleeves or buttonholes or anything. Even the pretty lacy ones, it's just the same damn thing over and over. When I'm teaching people to knit they always say they should probably start with a scarf, but I am of the belief that scarves are TERRIBLE projects to begin on. If you're learning a new skill, you want to have something to show for it pretty quickly. You don't want to pick up your needles for the first time and then NEVER GET TO THE END. Start with a hat. Or a dishtowel if you seriously need to do something square. Do something that makes you feel smart, because we seasoned knitters know, it's all just the same two stitches over and over again, and nothing is ever as complicated as it seems.

Anyway. So it goes. I hate scarves.

Well lo and behold, look at what I just finished:



It's a scarf. It's a fucking scarf! Not only is it a scarf it's a LONG scarf. It's probably about 10 feet long? It's two ENTIRE skeins of Blue Moon Socks that Rock in Jade and, um, I... don't know. Something darker that goes with Jade. That's about 700 yards, Kyle. I knit the Chevron Scarf from LMKG. I was INTERESTED in this scarf THE ENTIRE WAY DOWN. In fact, I was sad to cast off! WTH!!!

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ELSE???!??!



WHAT?!?!!????

I KNIT A SWEATER! It FITS me, and is long enough and actually looks awesome. I freakin' LOVE it and am totally not treating it as delicately as I should, but instead wearing it whenever I possibly can. The yarn is a gorgeous, amazingly soft superwash wool DK weight and was bought on our honeymoon to Prince Edward Island at an AWESOME place called Belfast Mini-Mills, which was about a 5 minute drive from the beach house we rented. I loved this burnt orange color they had, but this blue just kind of caught my eye. It was the color of the island, it reminded me of the Northumberland Strait, so I just had to get it. So this is my honeymoon sweater. :) The pattern is Wicked, the worsted weight version, and it was cardiganized based on FlintKnit's awesome instructions. I made the sleeves a lot longer and used coconut buttons. (If I had to do it over again I'd cast on way fewer stitches and just allot more of them for the body, which turned out fine, and fewer for the sleeves, which were FRICKIN' HUGE. I ended up just tapering them down, which works well enough. The sweater is built a little more like a sweatshirt because of those arms, but that's okay with me.)

So there it is. My last two projects. A sweater and a scarf. Will wonders never cease...

1 + 1 = Crusty, Awesome Bread

Last Christmas, as in, Christmas 2008, I asked for and received a book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day.



I was so excited, but in reading it I realized that I apparently needed a pizza stone or dutch oven to bake the bread in, neither of which I had. A regular loaf pan wouldn't work. I put that feather in my cap, put the book on the shelf for when I could get me a pizza stone, then somewhere around 2 months later decided to plan a wedding and forgot entirely about the whole thing.

Last weekend, as in, January 10, I bought a pizza stone, having forgotten all about the book.



Yesterday I realized that I have everything I need to make 5 minute Artisan Bread, so this morning, I woke up, took the dog for a snowy, haily, slushy walk, then came in and mixed up the dough. It rose for 3 hours and it is now in the fridge, hopefully getting MUCH less sticky. In a few hours I will bake some bread! :)

ETA: I would have taken a picture to post here, but I sliced into it too fast, and now there's only crumbs. :D