Warming Up My Crochet Muscles

Posted on August 31, 2020 by atangledyarn84

After my craft project purge, I found the inspiration to keep picking up this long languishing blanket project.

I am having to warm up my crochet muscles a bit. This is super bulky yarn and a big hook so I have to take breaks to avoid soreness and injury. But so far I have crocheted through the first skein of Bernat Blanket and I’m starting the second.

I’m having a little trouble maintaining good edges. One side is okay and the other is a bit wonky. But I’m going to keep moving forward and it will be blanket-like in the end. I have no recipient in mind, I’m just enjoying getting this yarn out of my stash and having a “new to me” project to work on.

Happy Crafting!!

Culinary Adventures

Posted on August 28, 2020 by atangledyarn84

This week in Green Chef adventures was the Italian Sausage Puttanesca and spicy roasted broccoli. It plated up very well and looked great. But the results were mixed in my opinion.

The flavor was good and recipe was super easy. I loved the broccoli but I could have taken or left the pasta sauce. The hubby and I decided we don’t like olives and if we make this again we would keep the capers and leave off the olives. And then I don’t really care for sausage in the first place so its not my favorite. But the hubby really enjoyed the sausage.

It was a nice a change of pace and stretched my comfort zone. Which is exactly what I was looking for to shake up our mealtimes. I think we are going to do one more delivery from this company and then maybe try a different service.

Happy Cooking!!

Long Languishing Blanket

Posted on August 27, 2020 by atangledyarn84

This was a blanket that Ravelry tells me I started in May 2016 and frogged in September 2017. But I didn’t actually rip it out so I’m just going to keep going. I unearthed it during my craft room organization. This makes this project older than PB….

Back in 2016/2017 I was big into crocheting these super bulky blankets for gifts and presents. They are quick to work up and make nice cozy blankets. If memory serves this was going to be for my friend’s baby boy but I didn’t get it done in time so he just got a onsie and some diapers. So the blanket didn’t have a deadline anymore and was resigned to the long term storage tote. I then promptly forgot about it.

I think I am going to see if I can finish this blanket to put in my gift bin or perhaps let PB and Jellybean have it for their dolls and monsters to swaddle them?

Happy Crafting!!

Radiate Ribbing

Posted on August 26, 2020 by atangledyarn84

Can I get a hallelujah and an amen? I have finished the body of my Radiate and i’m starting the hem ribbing.

I added an extra inch and a half to the body length than the pattern asked for. I know I want to block the body out a bit wider for a nice sweatshirt style fit. So that means I am going to eat into the length a bit even with super wash yarn that is likely to grow. I want my finished sweater to fall at my hip line

One other modification I made is to turn the hem into a split hem. Being a women with robust hips and waist I really like how the split hem allows a garment to stretch and lay nicely on my body. I think I am close to finishing the back hem. My plan is to knit the front hem to be a bit shorter to create a mild high/low effect.

Fingers crossed this goes quickly! Happy Knitting!!

Clearing The Deck

Posted on August 25, 2020 by atangledyarn84

Also on a quarantine reaction front, I decided to use some of my kid free time last weekend to do a little “crafting round-up” to see if I could clear the decks a little. I just had the urge to organize and get rid of projects that don’t make me happy. I ended up cleaning my craft room bookshelf and the crafting corner where I dump all my projects. I came up with the following:

A tote of WIPs I hadn’t looked at in at least two years or more
My ginormous mitred square memory blanket and project bag
Two giant knitting bags with many many project bags in them

Y’all, I dumped the whole shooting match out on the living room floor and just started sorting. I managed to empty three project bags and reclaim the yarn and needles for projects I just didn’t want to do anymore. I repacked my tote with three projects I still want to have on hold and organized my scraps for my memory blanket into one place.

That let me with one bag/pile of WIPs I actually feel like I want to work on. Including a blanket project that I forgot I had from….ahem….four years ago?

I’m hoping the revs up my mojo a little bit. But at the very least I feel a little less burdened with “to-dos” and projects. There is a lot of potential in that bag I just need to realize a little of it maybe.

Happy Knitting!!

Cheesecake Experiment

Posted on August 24, 2020 by atangledyarn84

Quarantine life is really starting to have an effect on me. I got a wild hair at 7 pm on a weeknight that I wanted to see if I could actually make cheesecake in my instant pot like I keep seeing on social media. I just so happened to have all the ingredients, so in the midst of bedtime preparation for the littles I pulled a recipe off the internet and got to work. It mixed up well and was super easy to get in the cooker.

What I didn’t expect was how “poofy” the cake was when I pulled it out of the cooker. I thought for sure I ruined it. The filling had over spilled and made a cheesy volcano. But I set it out to cool and walked away.

When I came back an hour later I noticed it had receded into something more resembling an actual cheesecake. We let it rest overnight in the fridge and then the family promptly DEVOURED the entire thing. The flavor was very good. I think I need to work on my filling texture and how much to fill the pan. We all voted that this was something we would do again.

PB didn’t much care for the filling and just liked the crust. But Jellybean had a ball experimenting with different toppings. He settled on caramel sauce as the best option. I can’t blame him!

What would you put on top of cheesecake?

FO Friday: New Meal Experiences

Posted on August 21, 2020 by atangledyarn84

As I usually am, I’m late to the quarantine meal deliver service party. I just got a wild hair to spice up our dinner time meals and on a whim I signed up for Green Chef when someone passed me their coupon code. I do a pretty good job mixing up the recipes I cook on a regular basis but I find myself wanting to try new things more now than ever.

Our first meal was rosemary roasted chicken with a kale, potato and fig “salad”. It was tasty but even more fun to stretch my culinary brain a bit. My husband and I both agreed the salad was a hit and would definitely make again. Maybe just not with figs.

I even did my best to plate the food in an appealing manner. I think it ended up pretty darn cute. The salad was even better the next day after the potatoes had absorbed the vinaigrette flavor. I think we may stick this out for a couple of months to see if we can put some new flavors and techniques into our routine.

Happy Friday!!

About Half Done

Posted on August 20, 2020 by atangledyarn84

My spinning mojo has been even lower than my knitting mojo. But I did manage to get the second set of colors spun of my Tequila Sunrise corriedale project.

The first bobbin on the left is all pure yellow and the bobbin on the right is the where the pink and yellows mixed and it is more orange. I figure I have spun roughly half the braid. A large portion of this braid is all pink.

I think my plan is to spin the pile in the top right first as it is the lighter pink and then spin the ball of darkest pink last. I would hope to teach myself how to andean ply so I can make a gradient of all this yarn. But that might necessitate more brain power and mojo than I can seem to muster right now. Time will tell!

A Half Finished Rainbow

Posted on August 19, 2020 by atangledyarn84

Thanks to slow and steady progress I have my first finished Retro Rainbow vanilla socks made from MustStash self striping yarn.

I finished the afterthought heel. I have a pretty deep instep so I modify the afterthought heel to fit. If anyone is interested the recipe I use is on this Ravelry page. This go around wasn’t my neatest pick up and some of the stitches are stretched pretty hard. I may have to do some rearranging or reinforcing after I block these socks.

I avoided second sock syndrome my immediately casting on the second one. I knit about three or four stripes on the winery date with my husband. So I have a good start on the second sock.

Starting Over

Posted on August 18, 2020 by atangledyarn84

Even with my decreased knitting mojo, I have been making decent progress on my DK Ripple Bralet. I completed the body and the shaping for the first strap. The pattern specifically tells you to knit with negative ease. So I chose an appropriate pattern size for my bust measurement BUT I didn’t gauge swatch. That was a poor choice.

When I slipped this sweater on to see how long I needed the straps to be….it was beyond sausage casing tight. It was completely unwearable. Even my husband could tell and raised an eyebrow at me, sigh.

Cue the sad violins…because this is what my bralet looks like now. I ripped that sucker right out. The good news was that I hadn’t gotten far enough to wear I needed to cut the yarn. So I still have one full complete skein.

I did measure my gauge before ripping so now I know I need to go up two full pattern sizes to get a fitting garment. So I’m choosing to think of that first attempt as a REALLY complicated swatch. I haven’t gotten around to re-casting on again. I hope that isn’t a bad sign. Maybe this project just needed a good cooling off period?