Author Archives: atangledyarn84

Clearing The Deck

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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:

  1. A tote of WIPs I hadn’t looked at in at least two years or more
  2. My ginormous mitred square memory blanket and project bag
  3. 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?

Happy Knitting!!

Date Knitting

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The COVID situation isn’t really getting any better in my region of Kansas so my family and I are really limited in what we feel safe doing. And that has led us all to feel a little cooped up and grumpy. But I was able to find a great babysitter inside our “bubble” and I convinced the hubby to drive me out to my favorite local winery, Prairie Fire Winery, for our first outside the house date in 6 months.

The owners are extremely careful with sanitation and social distancing so I feel safe there. And on weekends they have live music outdoors. We grabbed our masks, my knitting and had some wine in the shade while we listened to a couple of very talented local musicians. I tasted some very yummy Traminette and a semi dry Vignoles varietal.

There was something very soothing about watching the prairie grass wave in the wind and knit round and round on my Retro Rainbow vanilla sock. Also, the hubby got pooped on by a bird….twice…I couldn’t stop laughing. May have lost some wife points over that one, oh well!

Happy Knitting!!

Tequila Sunrise Singles Progress

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I have done a major pivot on my Tequila Sunrise spinning project. I initially split the braid in half by weight and then started big thick singles. But I kinda hated it. So I redesigned my spin.

I took both of my halves and pulled out all the yellow sections and put them in a ball. Then I pulled out all the yellow-orange and orange fiber and made that a ball. And finally I grouped all the pink. I’m spinning each color section on to it’s own bobbin.

Then I have big dreams of learning how to andean 3-ply on my spinning wheel. I have kid free weekend coming up and this feels like the right space to learn that. But first I need to spin up all this fiber!!

Happy Spinning

WIP Wednesday: DK Ripple Bralet

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My DK Ripple Bralet grows apace. I have completed the main body section and working what I think will become the top band?

I have to be honest, I only skimmed through the pattern before starting. So I really don’t know what is happening. I’m just blissfully doing what the pattern tells me. And right now that is 1.5 inches two different kinds of ribbing, one for the front and one for the back.

Surely this will end well right?

A Retro Rainbow Heel

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I’ve been plugging away at my Retro Rainbow socks as my go-to “waiting” project. I finally got a tube tall enough that I decided to thread in some needles for my afterthought heel.

I’m going to use yarn from the inside of the cake to make the heel. I want to see how much yarn I have left the cuff after that point. I want to make good sized socks. But I’m not going to lie…I also want this beautiful MustStash yarn in my memories blanket. So it’s all about yarn management over here!

Happy Knitting

P.S. This is the Retro Rainbow colorway on MustStash standard sock 😉