Year of Projects: Week 9

     I actually had a fairly productive week.  Not so much on the crafting front as the cooking and baking one.  But that's okay.  Saturday I stopped and did my grocery shopping at my halfway point.  I even remembered to get most of the things my husband had mentioned throughout the week.  I came home to squishy mail.  I started acquiring the yarn for my next long term project.  I got two skeins of Wool-Ease from a Rav destash.  I think half the fun of these long projects is getting the yarn.  This will be for that modular hexagon blanket I have on my list.

  

When I got up Sunday morning I went about using some things in the fridge.  I had some potatoes left over from the get together we did a few weeks back, so I made Cheeseburger Soup.  I made it once before, or something really similar.  It a good one that reheats well.  I keep "better than bouillon" in my fridge so I don't have to keep broth in my pantry.  I used beef for this one.  I also just used whatever cheese I had in the fridge which was monterey jack and some pre-shredded "Mexican blend".  I wanted to use up all the potatoes so I made way too much soup.  I ended up sending a large portion over to my parents and I froze three "lunch" containers of it one top of the three I brought with me to work all week.  I also made another loaf of bread to go with the soup.  I tried a new recipe and I really like it.  I made Bread Machine Zopf.  Its really similar to Challah.  It's supposed to be braided just like Challah too.  I let my bread machine do the whole loaf.  My husband said he didn't care for it, but he only likes two of the breads I make, so whatever, more for me.  I've been having a chunk of it with my soup all week and its kept surprisingly well.  I usually try to eat the homemade breads in only two maybe three days because they just don't stay fresh like store bought bread does.  I do have this loaf double bagged as the first zip lock zipper broke so I just put that bag in another bag.  (Maybe I've accidently stumbled on something.)

  

    Early Monday we realized that the youngest of our 4 cats had escaped.  We've been keeping the screen off one of the garage windows so the outdoor cat we feed can come into the garage to eat.  One of the kids left the basement door ajar and out Jangles went.  We live out in the countryside and have a whole posse of wild animals around, including some black bears that we've seen a few times.  Hubby and I worried about this cat all day.  He talked with our neighbor across the road and he informed my husband that he had found the remnants of three cats that a fox or foxes had gotten overnight.  At that point we both figured Jangles was a goner.  Well, don't worry, luckily this story has a happy ending.  She ended up spending about 24 hours outside somewhere, but she came back very early Tuesday morning.

    Tuesday I made coffee cake.  I had some buttermilk I needed to use up so I found a recipe that took a good amount.  It was not great.  The texture was about right but the flavor was not.  I won't be trying that one again.  Since I hadn't gotten any knitting done yet I was tooling around on my phone and stumbled on a pattern I hadn't seen before.  It looked interesting so instead of finishing those mitts like I probably should have I made myself a Sunburst Pot Holder.  Do I need another pot holder?  Nope, I literally have a whole bin full of them.  I whipped this up in one sitting, used up the last of some of my original Elmore-Pisgah Peaches and Cream and did a 3-needle bind-off for the first time.  I'm not sure how I've been knitting for over a decade and not managed to do a 3-needle BO before; I've just never done a pattern that called for it, I guess.

                          

I ran out of Fiesta close to the end.  It was when I went to my dishcloth cotton bin, to get more, that I realized I didn't have any more.  It was sort-of bittersweet.  Spinrite, the company that bought out Elmore Pisgah and kept the brand of Peaches and Cream does make the Fiesta colorway still, they just call it Psychedelic, I think.  I'm fairly certain I wrote a lengthy blog post about the changes Peaches and Cream went through, several years ago now, when they were sold to Spinrite and production of the yarn was no longer done in the US.  I like this pattern a lot.  Its a good size and is double thick, which is how I like my pot holders.  Also, I don't have to tuck in ends as much since they wind up on the inside.  Huge bonus for the non-finisher in me.

    I have more cooking plans this week.  My folks are raising a pig for us, so we need to make some freezer room.  We have one of those RonCo "set it, and forget it!" rotisseries, so hubby got a whole chicken out to thaw.  I also haven't made homemade pizza in a bit and that sounds really good to me, so I'll be doing one or both of those things this week.  I got a package while I was gone.  It's from the Project Bag swap.  I do swaps with the Nerdy Swaps group on Ravelry.  I just signed up for another one the Halloween swap.  We've done Halloween before and it's always a fun one.  Liara goes back to school this week.  She got to meet her teacher on Wednesday at the open house.  She's back into a "normal" sized class this year and I'm really relieved about that.  Last year she was in the joined two teacher class which made her class just over 30 students.  I think she was too overwhelmed to focus most of the time.  She did so well in kindergarten with a normal for our district class size of around 15.  The next few weeks are going to be busy.

Until later.  Happy crafting!

-Q