Lacy Socks 1.5

So, now that my senior project is done, and I felt like having a day to procrastinate, I made a huge amount of sock progress! Woo! As of right now I have one and a half socks:

1.5 socks 

I'm excited that this project is going by so quickly as I have a bunch of projects in my queue that I'm eager to get a start on. I'm also glad that this second sock seems to be coming out the same gauge as the first sock, which people have commented is sometimes hard to do with this yarn.

1/2 of my second sock

Hopefully I'll have this pair done by the end of this weekend and will have pictures to show of me wearing them, since the lace looks much cooler when it's stretched out and you can see the details of it.

Return after a short hiatus

Well, I wanted to update this every day or every other day, and after only a few entries I failed at that. But, on the upside it was because a lot of things were happening, so this entry should be a fun read.

First things first: last Monday, (April 18th), I got engaged! Hooray! such exciting news! Look at my ring :D

The lighting is kind of funny on my hand because I took the picture with my phone, but I think it gets the point across. 

After the engagement, I've been so happy/excited, it's been hard to focus on anything....especially my homework. But, fear not! Today my group turned in our final draft to our advisor, which I'm relieved and happy about. Hopefully we'll get a good grade on it!

Now, for the crafting update, the main point of this blog in the first place.
Sock 1 of my lacy socks is complete!

First completed lace sock

It fits perfectly and it looks just like the picture that came with the pattern. I'm glad it worked out so well since I measured my foot with a regular ruler and then just hoped for the best when I knit the sock up. The lace is really pretty up close too:

close-up of the lace

I'm hoping to finish these socks within the next week or so. I'm almost finished the heel flap of the second sock already, so hopefully I can stay motivated through the rest of this project.

In anticipation of my next project I headed over to A.C. Moore since I had a gift card. I picked up some crochet thread and the right size hook to make some lace fingerless tea time gloves for a friend of the family.

With this week's 50% off coupon and my gift card I got my supplies for free! I really hope these come out well, since they are going to be a gift. But, if they don't I can always pick up some more thread and try again. 

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll have some more sock progress to report over the next couple of days, since I'm hoping to get motivated to knit a lot this week. 

As for bread baking, I made a double batch of dough for easter and made 7 loaves of bread on Sunday. I still have some dough that I made last week, so I can make a couple loaves to last the rest of this week. I'm hoping that the loaves will come out tasting like sour dough since it's had some time to age. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to take a picture of my massive batch of dough...(it was huge! ~10 quarts when it rose!)

A Day to Catch Up

Well today I finally had time to catch up with my knitting. Of course that means I'll have a stack of papers to grade tomorrow, but it was well worth it.

I finished up Laurel's hat a few days later than I anticipated, but it's finished! Hooray!

It came out great and she loves the color! Now I just have to pack it up and mail it out. Success!

I also took the time to retake pictures of my hats on the hat stand for Etsy. So check out my updates! I also finished sewing the handle and clasp onto the purse I knit over break. Now I can finally list that on Etsy too, I'm pretty excited about it.

Now, just to find myself some customers...If you know anyone send them my way ;)

I also baked a loaf of bread today, and each day I make it, the process gets easier.

This loaf got an even crispier crust than the last 2. I'm very pleased with this  baking project so far. I'm hoping to try out fun variations on plain bread in the future. (I'll post pictures when it happens!)

Well, now that all of my projects in waiting are done, it's time for me to get back to my lacy socks. Hopefully I'll have pictures to post of those soon, though it's looking like a busy week so no guarantees... 

BREAD!!

Well, yesterday was a long and tiring day and I wanted to make sure that I had time to talk about my bread experience in detail.

Yesterday:
Yesterday morning, was, like most of my life, filled with me struggling. I got my loaf shaped into a somewhat circular shape and got it down onto the pan:

After that simple task I thought to myself "wow, this couldn't be any easier! I can't believe I never tried this before" however this statement seems to work like the one "hey, at least it's not raining..." Being tired and it being Sunday morning I wasn't fully paying attention when I turned the oven on to preheat and then waited 10 minutes to warm up the glass dish I was going to make steam in. I sadly, forgot to take into account that the oven was at 450deg not 350 like I'm accustomed to, and that because of this, the dish would be much hotter than I expected... well you can probably guess what happened from here, yes that's right folks... I caused a perfectly good Pyrex dish to explode violently in the oven. It all thankfully stayed in the oven so was pretty easy to clean up, but boy did it startle me! Part of me suspected it would happen, but I poured the hot water right on in there anyway. I was hoping that the temp of the water would be close enough to the temp of the dish, it was not.

Anyway after that fiasco (which Danica, my roommate, magically slept through) I thought, well the worst is over, it must be smooth sailing from here on out. Now I'm wondering why I ever say such things. Because I was nervous about the bread sticking to the pan, I dusted it very liberally with flour. However, because there was so much flour and the oven was so hot the flour on the edges started to brown/burn and caused the fire alarm to go off... 3 times... yep that's right I had to run around waving my arms for about 15 minutes because I can't reach the fire alarms to shut them off, even with our little stepping stool.

Well, lets just say I'm glad the bread came out tasting good otherwise I might have just cried right there. Actually it even ended up being the shape of a heart:

We knew the bread would be good once we cut into it (Danica and Lane came to witness the bread out of the oven)

We ate the bread with olive oil that had Parmesan and cracked black pepper in it. Delicious!

After my bread making adventures of the morning I was pretty pooped, but that didn't stop me from heading up the hill to help out with decorations for the upcoming play this week so I could get "lab" hours for my theater workshop class. After 4 hours of that I had my chapter meeting until 8 and then went to bed early.

Today:

Today was a busy day. I had class at 9, a teeter totter shift at 10, a group meeting at 12 and then office hours from 1-3pm. Lucky for me there was a break between my office hours and my next meeting at 5:30. This left time to bake, read some of my textbook for personal finance, and write this blog entry.

I'm happy to say today's baking was much less painless than yesterday's. I made sure there wasn't too much flour in the pan and I made steam by putting water in pie tins and putting them in the oven 5 minutes before the bread. I also turned the vent fan on over the stove just in case. And here was the result!

This loaf came out round and the crust got a little darker than the last one. It's delicious and it took very little effort. I read for my class the whole time the bread was sitting out and then baking. I'm very glad I invested in this book. 

Well, that's all for now. I'm hoping to have more to report on the knitting front tomorrow once I get past this test for personal finance. Sadly I can't really read and knit at the same time, otherwise I definitely would!

Artisan Bread-The Beginning

Well today was the day I decided to make the dough for this week's supply of artisan bread. And so begin my new bread-making ventures! The dough was easier to mix than I thought. I just had to mix water, salt, yeast and flour together and let it rise for 2 hours. I even got to use the dough hook attachments on my hand mixer for the first time!
And it rose a lot! Here it was before it rose:

After only an hour the dough rose up to the 3Qt line!

Now that it's done rising the dough is up the the 4Qt line. I decided not to include another picture since it looks almost the same as the other ones. Tomorrow morning I'll make the first loaf and hopefully have a success story to report! 

Today I picked up some more of the essentials I think I'll need to make good bread. I already have a cookie sheet and non stick baking mat but I decided to pick up a cooling rack and bread knife in preparation for my baking tomorrow. 

That was all I got in today since I have work from 6pm-1am but hopefully I'll have more to report tomorrow!

Oatmeal Rolls-Round 2

So, I've decided that rolls come out best once you've made them more than once. Today's batch rose to the size I expected and were extra light and delicious.

I also decided to put the rolls into a bowl with a towel wrapped around them so they stayed warm longer and didn't get soggy on the bottom. This seemed to be the best option as I have yet to purchase a wire cooling rack. I think this new recipe will definitely be my go to from now on, they are definitely worth the extra rising time. 

The good thing about rolls taking so long to rise is that I can do other things while they are sitting around getting fluffy. Today I painted my nails a great blue color that I got as a gift in my mailbox today. (It's senior week for Alpha Gam so I get small daily gifts, hooray!) I'm really liking this gift thing, I've gotten candy, nail polish, bubbles and my favorite so far, an A.C. Moore gift card! Woo! Check out this great color:

I also had time to start working on Laurel's hat! I think I'm right on schedule to finish it either tomorrow or Saturday depending on how much reading I decide to do for Personal Finance. (which isn't needed until Tuesday).  Anyway, the yarn color is defining the cable pattern really well and I think the hat is coming along nicely:

I really enjoy making hats for the instant gratification. I started this one just this afternoon and it's already almost halfway done! Also, the yarntainer is fantastic, definitely worth the investment. I haven't had to deal with the frustration of tangled yarn at all, it's become something I don't even have to think about. (Finally!)

And that was it for today, a pretty short entry, but still interesting I think. The countdown to the weekend has started! Only one more day! 

Necessity Breeds Creativity

Well today was as crafty a weekday as I could have ever hoped. I started the day by getting my bread making book in the mail: "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" The basic Idea is that you make enough dough to last a week and then take off a chunk to bake each day or every other day as you so desire. I think I know what my weekend project is going to be! I also got a beautiful hat display stand in the mail from Nancy today and just couldn't resist taking some pictures with one of my slouchy berets on it.

Isn't it great? I think I'm going to have to update my listings on Etsy to include new pictures of my hats. 

Once I got such a great start in crafting just from checking my mail, I decided to keep with the trend and bought the necessary ingredients to try out the new oatmeal roll recipe I got from Mrs. Thornton. It worked great! The rolls I made were kind of small, but were very delicious. I think I might need to put them in a warmer spot for the second rising during my next batch, since they didn't rise as much as I expected, and that was the problem with my other roll recipe.

This recipe even called for a punching of the dough after the first rising which I wasn't sure how to do without messing up, so I let Lane take over and give it a nice punch. It even left a cool fist print:

While the rolls were rising and baking I had to fill my time with something, so of course knitting came into the picture (after I graded a stack of homeworks). I wound the ball of yarn I'm going to use for Laurel's hat into a ball and loaded it into my yarntainer:

I'm super excited to use this thing! I plan on starting the hat tomorrow so it can be finished by either Friday or Saturday. I've decided it's better to prioritize requests rather than my own projects, so my lacy socks are on hold for a couple days. 

Winding the yarn into the ball was the farthest I got with Laurel's hat though. And, as the title of this entry suggests: necessity lead to creativity (kind of in the same way that hunger is the best gravy). I recently obtained my own private stash of toilet paper for use in my apartment (since the main stash seems to be declining rapidly) and realized I wanted a way to conveniently transport and store my extra roll. And so my toilet paper handle was born!

I made this out of one of the partial leftover yarn balls I had laying around in my closet, so I made something cool and used up some of my extra yarn (nice!). I knit the handle long enough that I can hang the toilet paper on my door handle for convenience and hang it on the handle or TP holder in the bathroom. I even made a button closure by making button holes using 3 yarn-overs. That way it will be easy to transfer the handle to the next roll once this one runs out.

And let me tell you, I'm pretty proud of this little piece of knitting improvisation. It's things like this that I like to refer to as engineering in real life: Manipulating something I already had into something that I needed. Woo! 

And that was all for today, and I'm pleased with all I got done. Hopefully there will be progress to report tomorrow as far as Laurel's Beret. Also, keep an eye on my etsy shop, hopefully there will be updated beret pictures within the next day or so!

More Things, Less Knitting

Well, over the past 2 days more life things than knitting have happened. I've been busy with homework and our project report, which as of today reached a length of almost 80 pages! Hopefully our group can finish a first draft tonight and pass it in to our advisor tomorrow morning. If all goes well we could be done within the next week or so, which would be ideal.

Because of all the work I've had to get done in such a short amount of time there hasn't been much time in the way of knitting. However the sock I've been working on is now almost 5" long. I only need it to be 7" long before I start shaping the toe (I measured my food with a ruler so hopefully I picked the correct length). I decided not to add a progress picture until the length change is more obvious since it looks pretty much the same as the last picture I posted.

Because of the lack of news on the current project front I decided it would be a good time to post about some past projects that I've been happy with.

Over Christmas break my friend Rachel sent me a link to a scarf she found online. It was a crocheted bacon and eggs scarf. After looking over the pictures I decided it was something I could tackle, and from there I improvised a project for the first time. I used a basic chevron stitch for the bacon and single crochets in the round to make the eggs. I even attached buttons to the back of the eggs so that they could be moved around or removed all together.

Bacon Scarf

There was also my first cable project. Some arm warmers my sister requested for Christmas. They were elbow length and had a half cable. They came out great and she wears them all the time!

Ceara's Arm Warmers

After seeing such success with my first cable project I dove right into a project involving a huge amount of cables. My Christmas Time Cabled mittens (It was a very productive month)

I even made a pair in blue for my friend Melissa. They were fun to make and the cables really kept the knitting interesting. 

Anyway, I think 3 previous projects are enough for now. Hopefully tomorrow will yield a more interesting entry as I plan on both baking and knitting since I don't have any classes scheduled for tomorrow. Hooray! 

An Action Filled Weekend

Well, this weekend sure was eventful. Sadly that means I didn't get much in the way of homework done... but I did get to hang out with my family a lot, which I'm glad about.

Saturday morning started off right with a delicious pancake breakfast at the Jericho Congregational Church. Apparently I chose a good time to go home because I got a delicious breakfast that I didn't have to make or clean up after. After breakfast and some errands it was time for the Saturday matinee showing of Grease. Ceara did a great job as Patty Simcox! She even got a mic so we could hear her the whole time.

Of course we finished up the play by congratulating her and bringing her a bouquet of flowers.

I even ended up getting to see the show a second time since my mom had an extra ticket for the Sunday matinee showing. I'm glad I decided to go since the second performance had less technical difficulties than the first one. I definitely got in my full share of the Grease experience this weekend!

Along with all of this I also attended Anna's Pop Star birthday party last night. This was one of the only times I've ever dressed up for a party theme and I think I did a good job dressing up as Haley Williams from Paramore:

However, I will point out that $6 will not get you a realistic colored wig. I think I ended up with more of a Wilma Flintstone hairstyle than a Paramore one... but, hey, it got the point across right? I got to end my fun filled Saturday by enjoying some delicious cupcakes (who knew a pineapple cupcake would be so delicious?) and a cool colored ring pop (which turned my mouth green and stuck to my wig...)

On the knitting front I only got a couple more rows of sock knitted since I spent most of the weekend running around. But I did finally get a picture of my mom wearing her fingerless mitts which I sent her a couple of weeks ago in the mail.

I'm so glad they fit since I used a pattern designed to fit 5-6yr old girls. When they were done they looked so ridiculously small I was worried they wouldn't fit. But they came out the perfect size! My mom says she loves them because she can keep her hands warm in the office and still type. 

And that's all for this weekend! All that's left is to drive back to Worcester and get to work on all the homework I have due tomorrow and Tuesday. 

April Fool's

Well as anyone in New England knows, Mother Nature pulled the king of all April Fool's pranks and covered the ground with cold wet snow. The forecast was for snow, but a part of me hoped I wouldn't have to get up to this:

I mean really it's April now! Shouldn't it be sunny and warm? A time to break out the shorts and the flip flops? Apparently not... 

Other than the snow it was still a pretty good day. As I don't pull pranks on others I didn't have to worry about anyone sneaking up on me. Sadly I didn't get much done in the way of knitting because I drove home to VT from Worcester today and that really does just suck up an afternoon. But I know the trip will be worth it since tomorrow afternoon I get to see my sister Ceara  play Patty Simcox in the MMU production of Grease. 

On the upside I did make some progress on the lacy sock I started a couple days ago and it's really starting to look like what I would expect a sock to start looking like:

I'm really enjoying making a successful lace project. It's great to know that lace can be easy and still come out so pretty. Hopefully I can get a move on and finish this sock. 

My plan is to then take a short break from my sock project and knit up a slouchy hat for Laurel who requested one from me a couple of days ago. Lucky for me she gave me a list of colors to choose from, which I took as an excuse to go yarn shopping! So off I went to A.C. Moore. I ended up deciding to get a ball of Vanna's Choice baby yarn in a really pretty light Periwinkle. 

Also lucky for me I had a 50% of coupon, which meant I could finally afford a cool yarn container I've been wanting for a while.

Yarn inside yarn container

And I can't wait to try it out. The container has a little hole in the top so you can load the ball of yarn in and thread the strand you're working with out the top. Then when you tug on the yarn as you work it stays inside and doesn't roll around or fall off the couch and roll across the living room (which happens more often than you'd think).

On a different note, I've been knitting longer than since just yesterday so I figure at the end of each entry for the next few days I'll put in a picture or two of past projects for you to check out. (That way even if the day is boring there will still be some pretty pictures for you to look at.) 

I think the best place to start is the felted slippers I made my dad for Christmas. I basically knit some GIANT socks and then shrank them down. 

My Dad trying on his slippers pre-felt

However, my knowledge of sock construction was (and still is) very limited, so I ended up making slippers with wide square toes. However, my dad still loves them and wears them all the time and refers to them as his "Hobbit Slippers"

The ever so lovely Hobbit Slippers