So. Close.

When you’re trying to use up all the yarn in your stash, the potential for playing yarn chicken is high. Note the nine unbound stitches remaining. NINE. Ugh! I do not want one pattern repeat of yarn left over AGAIN in the stash. 

By some miracle, I had leftover yarn from my Shalom Cardigan (2009) that was a precise match, though not quite the right thickness.

The yarn substitution worked out perfectly, and after a nice wash, I have a cozy, squishy new lap blanket. 

And I can’t tell which corner has the substitute yarn for the last 9 stitches!!

Yarn is hand-spun by Anne Cohee for the 1990 Maryland Wool Show. The sheep was a brown Romney named Helga. I had 10.5 skeins of yarn, which was held double for this project.

So, the sixth Done by Monday blanket, the “Basketweave,” is ready for someone’s lap. Finally cut the ends off today, but the knitting has been complete for a month… 

These blankets have a true and recorded legacy. So fun!

And finally, a few baking projects. These sourdough rolls are wonderful, and I keep losing the recipe. So here is the LINK. I reduce the sugar to 1-2 Tablespoons. 

And for Easter I finally baked the gluten free Hungarian Hazelnut Cake. Prepare to drool and fantasize eating a slice every day! I took some suggestions from the comments and wrapped/refrigerated the baked cake over night. The apricot jam in the middle and whipped cream (with a little added powdered sugar) on top is also very good. I decided to freeze a few slices, and there was not harm done to taste or texture when I ate them a week later. I do think that I will split the layers next time and try the cake with whipped cream in the middle. Other suggestions were to add vanilla to the cake batter and some flavored liquor such as Frangelico to the whipped cream. 

Syzygy

SYZYGY: noun, a conjunction or opposition, especially the moon with the sun. "The planets were aligned in syzygy."

April 8, 2024, a day I had been eagerly awaiting for several years, came together most beautifully: e-learning day at school, three day visit from two besties from my Colorado years, and the perfect weather for a total solar eclipse!

The weekend started with two airport runs (thanks, airline screw-ups), and so we started the weekend in Indianapolis at the the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art and wandering around downtown and along the canal. 

This incredible carving of a bird in the museum was made out of a musk ox horn. 

And the musk ox carved out of stone. 

And incredible paintings! This one called Stillwater Crossing by Daniel Smith was so unbelievably life-like. What a treasure!

Sunday started with a huge risk: baking popovers with and without gluten. Boy, did they pop!! The secret - don’t open the oven door… They we delicious!

Alpaca visits after breakfast! They weren’t quite as hungry, but we all had patience to hand feed them until they slowly finished all their grain. 

On Monday, the weather looked great for viewing in the neighborhood, but the continuous eye on the NYT up-to-the-second weather map around lunch indicated that we were better off going with the original plan A to avoid slight cloud cover at the house. We raced to the Cardinal Greenway bike trail and hiked to the center of totality near Losantville. 

We set up next to the road and waited, enjoyed, and were awed by the changes we experienced. The light started to get very weird the closer we got to totality. It felt like something was on my glasses and needed to be wiped away. 

The air cooled significantly. I was hot in the sweater initially, but almost wished for a jacket the darker it got. The wind picked up a bit. We started hearing bugs get more active in the grass and peepers in a pond started chirping. The following images were taken on a phone with eclipse glasses in front of the lens. 

And then it got truly DARK 360° around us! Twilight was on every horizon all around the edges of the fields. We were super close to the road, and traffic stopped for the duration of darkness. I caught the light disappearing in a 360 video I took. The phone camera lightened everything, so the feeling of the darkness was not caught completely. It was amazing to see the solar flares on the edges of the sun, a complete surprise! The whole experience was magical and difficult to capture in words and images. It was awe-inspiring and beautiful! My whole school was elated for the rest of the week. Remarkable and special!

And just as soon as the sun came out on the other side of the moon, daylight was once again super bright. The change was immediate, even getting dark featured a longer time with the murky light. 

Small joke! 😉

And a few maps. The small purple “x” shows where we watched the eclipse. 

And the years each part of Indiana had seen a total eclipse before April 8:

Finally, a video of the totality by the Ball State Planetarium.

Several photos are the works of EB and NW. Thanks for sharing the best weekend with me!
 

December Comfort Knitting

December was crazy this year: 4 personal gigs and 4 school concerts. I decompressed by baking cookies, gifting, and knitting. 

Anise cookies!! This was one of seven recipes I made: anise cookies, Honigkuchen, Spritz, Sunflower macaroons, Basler Brunsli, and vanilla puffs. 

I put together some final exam care packages for my nephews and niece with the help of colleagues who recently graduated from college. I included popcorn, hot cocoa mix, pencils, a squish mallow, and a book/package of dad jokes. So fun!

Finally, there were was daily mindless knitting. Another sofa throw is in the making. Grateful for handspan yarn that is still plentiful in boxes. I think there may be two to three more blankets before I run out.

The cat matches and is a big fan of napping on or under while I’m working on it. We are both looking forward to napping underneath the finished project!

Merry Christmas! 🎄🎁 

May your holidays be relaxing and peaceful!

 

Fall Treats

The past week provided friends and rare produce, so naturally I needed to bake a few treats! Last weekend two dear friends spent the night between orchestra rehearsals. We spent Friday evening talking late into the night. One friend had recently moved and gotten rid of 2 of 3 popover pans… that she had never used. 

Which got me thinking about the last time we used our pan. I think it was close to 10 years. So in the morning (with some trepidation) I decided to make popovers for breakfast! You never know if they will turn out correctly, so it’s a gamble trying these with an audience. I used this recipe from King Arthur’s Flour. It does not require preheating the pan, which was interesting. The most important step might be not opening the oven door after putting the popovers in. My oven door window is super dirty, so I couldn’t see when they looked done. They’re a bit brown. The recipe also makes more batter, so I filled an additional 5 muffin cups that also turned out beautifully, if slightly over-baked.

Add homemade jams and tea, and you’re all set to serve at your B and B! They were delicious!

On Monday I found 20 perfect apples from my wild trees on the ground. We haven’t had a good apple year for several years in a row, so there were almost zero worms in the fruit! If we have another apple year next year, I’m sure the insects will make a comeback!

I used a boxed pie crust mix that worked well, and the filling and streusel from this recipe. It’s not too sweet, but I think I would still use less sugar. Though the wild apples are always on the tart side, this year they seem to be a lot sweeter.

My music colleagues at school demolished one pie, and I shared the other with neighbors. Happy Fall!

 

Sourdough Side Quest

A few weeks ago I was tasked with baking bread for a large family gathering. I had not fed the sourdough starter for many months, and after its first meal, it gave a decidedly understated one-bubble burp. So I was forced to look up a bread machine recipe that would allow for discard starter while rehabilitating. 

I ended up using THIS recipe and immediately started experimenting. I used one cup of whole wheat and two cups of white flour. The bread turned out well. The second time I used one cup of white, one cup of whole wheat, and one cup of rye flour and also added sunflower and flax seeds when the knead cycle beeped. It turns out I flew too close to the sun. The bread was very dense and moist. Still edible, just not my favorite. The third version I made, I put all of the ingredients except the yeast and salt into the baking pan and stirred it to combine. Then I let the dough rest overnight before adding the last two ingredients and starting the bread maker. The loaf turned out tall and fluffy, but with plenty of structure to handle cold butter. Now, I’ll just see if I can add more whole wheat and some seeds. That loaf is pictured below in the bottom left corner. I also think THIS bread recipe might have some merit as it uses more sourdough starter. 

 

After the starter had refreshed itself, the fourth discard was ready to be used in my mom’s famous recipe. It was the first time I tried making bread with my new KitchenAid, and the size of the bowl was perfect for handling the half recipe. I can use the paddle for the first stirring since it is a very wet dough, and then the dough hook for the second knead. Because I was able to use the machine, the dough was able to “show” me that I needed to add another half cup of flour. I usually bake a very dense and moist loaf using this bread recipe, and this time it turned out much better. After trying the overnight sourdough resting with the bread machine dough, I think I will try the same with this recipe and see if there is a lighter texture as a result. The three loaves were delightful!

Finally, since this is an early spring, I just want to mark the dates the crocus and daffodils first bloomed: March 1 and March 19 respectively. It’s a gorgeous day today, so I’m off into the yard to get some gardening started!

The Garden Awakens

*garter snake alert - 9 photos down. Some find them alarming; I think garter snakes are cute and helpful.

Spending Memorial Day weekend at my mom’s house means that you get to take home “all the plants.” This year, the Lady with the Greenest Thumbs” planted extra pepper and tomato seeds, “just in case some don’t come up.” 

They all came up!!! And the majority got put into the entire back of the Subaru. It’s becoming quite the Farm Car.

I thought it would be a good idea to freshen up the garden beds with not one, but TWO yards of compost/topsoil mix. I may have overestimated my dirt needs.

Some of the first butterflies to visit the newly added soil.

Garden bed number 1 finally ridded of weeds, aerated, new soil added, and ready for planting. Look at those amazing roots on those tomato plants!

20 minutes later…

20 minutes after that…

Round 2…

A third bed of tomato plants…

Garden friends! Someone had babies, and there were at least 5 cute garter snakes that I saw this week. Go eat those insects!

Fourth bed with peppers! Sadly I didn’t get a fifth bed finished before leaving the Farm for a spell. But my neighbor took the remaining 20 pepper plants to his church and gave them away. Looking forward to harvest and lots of tomato sauce!