Biscotti

This week's bake-along is biscotti. This is my first time making biscotti, and I used a recipe from Cooking for Engineers which I choose because it goes into more detail than other recipes.





It was all going pretty well until this point. And then I realized that I didn't have almond extract. This made me a bit flustered and not too happy because I was so close to buying it at the store, but didn't because it wasn't on my list of ingredients which I had written down from "prepare these ingredients" part of the directions, and not from the actual ingredient list on the bottom of the page.

And then I put the vanilla extract in with the flour mixture, not the egg mixture. Arg.
And then I started to worry that I had overmixed since it seemed a little "stringy".

It's a wonder I do any baking at all with all this worrying.

But it ended up becoming a normal batter, of course.


Waiting for it's time in the oven.




And it's done!


I really like the texture of the biscotti, but sadly, and I'm pretty sure it's just because of my almond extract stupidity, it didn't taste like very much. That didn't stop us from eating piece after piece after piece of it though.

Days 15 - 16 of Hadrian's Wall walk.

Last weekend we continued with our coast-to-coast walk. We were out of shape, and I think spent more time in cafes and restaurants than walking, and I'm pretty sure I gained some weight, but as a result I had a very nice few days.

I'm a city girl, so I took a lot of pictures of animals on Friday.

The first lambs we saw that day.


And the first cows



And the first horses



On Saturday our feet hurt, so we took a very short walk, most of which was along the river Eden.

Because there was some light rain and because buses didn't run into or out of Carlisle on Sundays we spent some time looking around the city.

The organ at Carlisle Cathedral.

This is the guildhall museum, a very tiny, free museum in a wonderfully crooked 500 year old building. The museum is mainly about the history of Carlisle's trade guilds.


Carlisle Castle.


Part of the castle is over 900 years old, some of it being altered in the 14th and 19th century.

During Monday's walk, starting from where the river Eden runs along the city, ...




Mud! As Jessamy was trying to find the least muddy part to cross I decided to just walk through it as quickly as possible.

Big mistake. I took a few tentative steps. Then put my right foot into the dirt. As my foot was sinking into the mud I quickly took a step with my left foot. It too sank. As I tried to take my third step my foot came completely out of the shoe. I was going to ask Jessamy for help, but when I looked over she was already bent over, laughing hysterically. After some awkward balancing and one sock in the mud I managed to force both shoes out of the mud.

Fortunately we only had a few minutes walk to the bus stop.


A little church in the town of Beaumont, where we waited for the bus.

And lastly one of my favorite pictures of the trip.

It totally does your head in ...

J and I are finishing our cross-country walk this weekend, so my next post won't be until Tuesday. Until then enjoy this very funny video from Pringle, a Scottish company that makes jumpers.

A day trip to Glasgow aka a shopping trip for a new ukulele

Yesterday I took a day trip to Glasgow.

I took the bus, about an hour and a half ride, but fortunately I had my knitting and an iPod with Aesop Fables in Spanish.

The first thing I did was walk a few blocks to the city chambers and took their free tour.

It's a very fancy building and a lot of it is built with marble.



The tour included sitting in the council chambers where they hold their city meetings.

And here I am sitting in the Lord Provost's chair.
Right in front of the chair is where the gold-plated silver "municipal mace" sits during their meetings. We didn't get to see the mace in person, but we did see the glow of light reflected from it through the glass door of the Lord Provost's room. I happen to think it's pretty cool that they have a scary and intimidating weapon in their government chambers.

After the tour I walked to Glasgow Cathedral.




It never occurred to me that the church needs to be vacuumed frequently.


And then to CC Music store, the actual reason why I took the day trip.
A new ukulele! I've been borrowing my brother's for the past few months, and it's a really cheap one. I haven't really been practicing on it much lately, it sounds that bad. So I bought my own! It's a Lanikai LU 21 soprano.

With my new uke in tow I went to the Kelvingrove Museum. It's a strange museum, aimed at children I'm assuming because the description posted next to their art, etc., is in very large type and written in simple words.


Now most of the time when I need to catch a bus, train, or plane I get really paranoid about missing whatever I need to catch and get to the station with way too much time to spare. I decided that this time, since I didn't have that much time in the city anyway, that I'd try to get get there right on time. Well, of course I couldn't find the subway stop, just missed the subway and had to wait 6 minutes, then I had to walk many more blocks to the bus station from the subway than I had anticipated. In other words, I missed my bus. Fortunately they run frequently, and although the driver of the next bus grumbled, he didn't charge me extra.

In other words, it was a nice day.

Have my cheesecake, and sunshine too

After writing yesterday's post about the make-along I made a cheesecake. It was about 1 am when it was done but still had to set, so I couldn't try it until this morning. Oh the anticipation!



It's my best cheesecake yet! Which isn't really saying much because I only really remember baking one other one, but it is saying ... something.

It's Lemon Ginger Cheesecake. I put a little less ginger than they called for on the topping since I'm not a big ginger fan (it reminds me of being woozy on long car rides) so it came out gingery, but fortunately not too overpowering.

It was a lovely day today so we went into the city centre where we saw some Japanese tourists taking lots of photos of fancy cars. You know, like you do.


Proof that it was so warm that I took my coat off, that I wore my scarf out, and that I pet a metal pig:


And look! People lounging on Calton Hill.

Make-along Day 1

So you know how I said I was going to make a shirt for J?

Didn't happen.

After a not so pleasant morning, and as I was planning my measurements J bluntly informed me that since I wouldn't be working with a stretchy fabric I would have to either make the shirt with buttons or a zipper. (I had a project fail a year ago and blamed it on the stretchy fabric, and have refused to work with a similarly stretchy fabric to this day. I'm still not sure if it was the fabric or my nearly non-existent sewing skills, but it made me feel better to blame it on the fabric.)

I've never sewn button holes in fabric, and I certainly did not have fun the last time I sewed a zipper on something. So, after a not so great morning, all I needed was the feeling of being overwhelmed and the sense of impending failure to make me throw in the towel.

So instead I felted my first nuno scarf.

Iused some of the linen fabric that was to be made into the shirt (there's still enough for the shirt, I think, when (not if) I do actually make it).

The first thing I did was watch an excellent video on nuno felting on feltinglessons.com.

Then I layed down a long piece of bubble wrap (it couldn't all fit on my short counter space), and then saran wrap. I put down some red and blue wool, then two thin layers of green wool, and then bits of yarn. I couldn't fit the whole scarf on my counter space, so I just layed down wool for the length of my counter space.


I put some of the fabric on top, and two layers of green wool, yarn, and bits of red and blue wool. Since I didn't hem the sides I made sure that there was wool wrapped around the sides.



I put the nylon netting on top of the wool and fabric that I just completed, wet it with cold water and smoothed it down, then rolled it around a rolling pin until I hit the next chunk of blank fabric. I applied wool, etc. to that next length of fabric, and repeated until all the fabric was covered.

Then I tied it and rolled it back and forth until my arms were tired. I took a long break.



When I went back to the package it didn't seem like it had felted very much, with a lot of the fibers sticking to the nylon and not to the linen. So I spent a long time manually rubbing it with a bit of bubble wrap. When I could see signs of felting I wrapped it in the bubble wrap again, and started rolling it until I was sick of the monotony.

Even though it seemed like the wool hadn't felted completely to the linen I decided to walk on the wild side and started felting it with warm water. Eventually, when I was once again sick of the monotony I wrapped it lengthwise in the nylon mesh, put it in some pantyhose, and threw it in the washing machine (on a quick cycle).

The result:

Can I make it?

I'm going to try and sew J a shirt tomorrow as part of the make-along. I've never sewn a shirt, I can't even sew in a straight line, and I'm fully expecting to ruin the semi-expensive cloth J bought for it yesterday. And although I know I'll look at my crumpled, lopsided attempt at this time tomorrow and feel disappointed that it's not perfect, I also know I'll be another step closer to being a decent sewer.

Are you going to joining the make-along? Making something crazy ambitious is not a requirement by the way.

Supply list for the beginning felter

You may have already noticed that I really enjoy felting, and one of the things I like about the craft is that you don't need very many tools to do it.

If you'd like to start felting here's my recommendations on what supplies you'll need.

If you just want to experiment and see if felting is your thing, but don't want to invest much money into it, all you really need is a towel, bowl, dish washing soap (an apron for your washingup liquid is purely optional), and fiber.


But, tools are meant to make your life easier, and I'd recommend you add to your shopping list vinegar for rinsing, bubble wrap, nylon fabric, flexible hard bubble shelf liner, and a container to sprinkle water/soap mixture with. You can use a spray bottle for that, but an empty bottle of laundry detergent with holes poked through the top works just fine for me.


And if you want to get really crazy with the supplies you can also use gloves, a bamboo mat, more fiber (and more, and more...), two rubber bands (wrap them around the shelf liner or bamboo mat to keep it from unrolling), and olive oil soap, which is supposed to be the best kind for your felting hands.

And that's pretty much all I've needed. Have fun!

Fiber Soap

I hope you had a lovely Easter!

I had a cold, and spent much of the weekend on the couch or in bed looking and feeling miserable. I'm feeling much better this morning, well enough at least to post on the blog and take a shower, and yes, I do know that last fact is far too much information, but I actually have a good reason for sharing. Last week I covered a bar of soap in fibre, and I used it for the first time today.

I had followed the tutorial from Mielke's Fiber Arts. But I knew before I started that I wanted to make one modification to the instructions, so I took some of my own pictures.

Here's my supplies.The fibre is North Ronaldsay, which is a sheep from Scotland that lives mainly on seaweed. Postmodern, don't you think?

I put down the lengthwise layer of roving on the fabricfolded it
and then placed down the width wise layer, and made a little fiber pillow.And then, right after I took this picture, I realized I didn't have any hot water for the next step.

I can't remember what I did as I was waiting for the water to boil, but I can assure you it wasn't interesting.

So my main mod from the tutorial was that I used some loose-weave polyester fabric around the bar of soap for the initial felting, and speaking from experience it works much better than working with it by hand. If I don't use the fabric the fibres usually stick to my hands, which is a bit too chaotic for me. I've seen videos where someone puts soap all over her hands first, then rubs the fibres, but seeing as the fibre is wrapped in soap that just seems wasteful and weird.

The soap was very floppy floppy (technical felting term) to begin with.

And then it started going crazy with the suds, and I was feeling like I was in that soap car in Charlie and the chocolate factory. Here it is just starting to go sudsy, but unfortunately I don't have any other pictures of the chaos after this because my hands were wet and covered in soap and suds, and I didn't want to damage the camera. It was around this time that I just used my hands and took the fabric off.

Towards the very end, when it was almost totally felted, I did rub it on a harder surface on (some plastic bubble shelving from IKEA) to speed up the process, as the instructions suggested.

The finished product after drying. And in case you're wondering, no I don't smell like wet sheep right now.

Chocolate

Happy Easter!
I hope you're having a nice Easter, whether it's at church, an egg hunt with the kids, or a nice day with a favorite movie and eating copious amounts of chocolate.

I unfortunately have a cold, and have spent most of the day feeling, or at least looking, not so great. And unfortunately it's also meant less chocolate than other years. But I'm hoping to make up for it next week when I get better, and when the Easter candy goes on sale.

I'm not sure where I got this cold from, but it might have been from staying in the time vortex for longer than I should have.
The 11th doctor has made his TV appearance yesterday in England, but don't worry, I won't ruin it for you. But of course if you want me to just drop me an email.

April, no fooling

Happy April!

You won't get any "happy April Fools" from me though, it's been on my my personal holiday (bad word) list since I was ten or so, when my mom approached me with a pack of gum, and me in my gullibleness, in sheer delight that mom was giving me something sugary, put my fingers in the wrapper only for there to be a little snap, a spring snapping on my finger instead of a stick of gum in my hand. I know I insisted afterwords, my cheeks streaked with the tears, that my fingers had been pinched, but I can't say now whether that was true, or whether I was just shocked, hurt, and crying from the realization that the world can be a cruel place. Oh, and hi mom, I look forward to getting your email where you tell me that was nearly 20 years ago and I should just get over it.

I'm a bit relieved it's now April, and that I no longer have the dead weight of the National Crochet Month Freeform-Along riding on my back, weighing me down with the sour anticipation of having to catch up with the project and continue creating useless ugliness. I suppose I am just hamming it up a bit, but really, I prefer my projects to be useful and pretty, thank you very much. I did however like learning new crochet stitches, so I might just do my own little one-person useful-project-with-lots-of-new-stitches crochet along.
At least I didn't bother weaving in most of the ends.
I did wake up yesterday with the intention of finishing it, but I felted around a bar of soap instead (I'll post pictures when it dries).

I've gotten a teeny bit further into J's gloves, and nearly finished knitting another finger. A few days ago I also pulled out of the closet my mostly done Twist and Shout sweater, the only long-standing UFO left of the ones I brought to England. The body is finished, but I've ripped out the (fortunately) not yet attached sleeves which weren't done very well, and they are now drying and hopefully unkinking.
The freeform along hasn't put me off crochet though. I really want to make this Super Mario Brothers Blanket. My sister says she wouldn't mind a blanket (didn't tell her what it'd look like though), so I'll be making it for her as a Christmas present. Is anyone else thinking of making it? We can have our own little crochet along...

Speaking of alongs, I'm still doing the bakealong. Last week was jam-filled baked goods, so I made vampire cookies (if you make it, don't forget to flour the rolling pin as well, the dough is very sticky, and leave plenty of room in between each cookie, they spread). This week is something with lemon. Not sure what I'm making this week ... maybe a cake? Feel free to join the bake-along thread on ravelry, you don't have to a group member or anything like that.