Happy Things

Happy New Year's Eve! Here are my last two Finished Objects from 2008. Can you believe it will be 2009 tomorrow? I sure can't. I've been knitting for only one and a half years now, but it's really only this last half of 2008 that I've learned the bulk of my knitting knowledge.

Here is a calorimetry that I finished for a friend. I used Noro Silk Garden #255. I've made several of these but this colorway is my favorite so far. And Silk Garden is so much softer than Kureyon, although it seems to have more sheep things in it (hay, stray fibers, etc), so I just pick those out as I go.



Another project I just finished is an Earflap Hat and mittens for my friend Kristen's daughter Elise. I used my new pom-pom maker that I got for Christmas, which is made by Clover and it works really well! It came with two sizes, and I used the smaller size.

Some really beautiful yarn that Jeremy got me for Christmas... I can't decide what I want to make with it! Any suggestions are appreciated :o). Manos Del Uruguay yarn:


Three other great items I received for Christmas:

Handmade Nation
Handmade Nation profiles DIY people all over the country, what they make and sell, where they are from. It's really neat because I even recognized some of these people and their websites, just from browsing the crafting community on the internet.

Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines
This book is awesome, just because! But also, there are some great patterns in here and some cute stories and such. It's full of so many ideas and information, I could seriously sit down for at least an hour (if not more) and just flip through it's pages.

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
I'm so happy I got this book. Any recipes or information that you'd ever want or need to know about canning will be in this book. I'm excited to try some ideas out, and may not even be able to wait until my garden is ready next year. I might just run out to the store and buy produce off the shelves to try out some recipes! They all sound so good.

Next: A tutorial on how to hand-paint your own yarn, using acid dyes.

Things to Come...

I've been neglecting my blog for over a week now. The kids are home until January 5th and I'm also off of work, so we've been doing projects and visiting family and going fun places.
Here are a few things that I'll be blogging about in the next several days or so:

• Hand-painted yarn tutorial
• Isabel tye-dying her t-shirt & socks
• A couple FOs: Earflap hat & mittens, a beautiful calorimetry, a 6-pack of cupcakes with tin.
• HAPPY NEW YEAR banana cake - Yumm!
• Etc.

The Etc. is because I know I'll squeeze more in, but those last-minute ideas for blogging come...uh, at the last minute! I have lots of pictures on my camera, including Christmas morning chaos, so I'll probably share some of those as well.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!!

Caramel tutorial

I love homemade caramels, and I usually make them every Christmas because they are a great gift to give, easy to bring on road trips (if you wrap them in papers) and are a great snacking item when you get tired of cookies. This is a recipe that I make after the kids are asleep because the caramel gets VERY hot and I spend at least a half hour standing by the stove stirring the mixture. If you have kids at home that are awake you definitely need someone else around to watch them.

I cannot remember where I got the recipe from so instead of scouring the internet I'll just post the recipe here:
Caramels

• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup corn syrup
• 1 cup EVAPORATED milk
• 1 pint heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Grease a 12x15 (jellyroll) pan, or line with parchment, foil, wax paper, and grease that. In a large pot combine all of the ingredients except the vanilla. Monitor the heat of the mixture with a candy thermometer while stirring. When the temperature reaches 250 degrees, remove the pot from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour immediately into your prepared pan. Cool overnight. Cut into small squares and wrap in waxed paper or candy papers.

Now, I have a lot of tips for this recipe, so I will share those as I share the photos. I tried to take pictures of the mixture as it reached certain temperatures because this takes a long time to reach 250 and you will probably second guess yourself while heating this thinking "Ok, this must be done by now" but believe me, it's not done...so be patient.

Make sure you have a candy thermometer or you know how to do the "ball" method of temp checking. I'm more of a thermometer girl, personally.

Here is all of the ingredients just starting to warm up. Make sure your thermometer is NOT touching the side of the pot or the bottom. This is very important, because otherwise your temperature reading will be way off.

Here the mixture is at 100 degrees. The butter still hasn't melted. Make sure you are stirring, stirring, stirring!

Just above 150 degrees. The caramel is starting to bubble a bit around the edges.

200 degrees. And it will stay at 200 for a long time. You don't want to crank your heat up to high because you will scour the mixture. Keep it at medium heat and just be patient, you will get there!

Almost to 225. It will be thicker at this point and bubbling constantly. This is also around the time where the caramel will double in size, it will bubble really high if you don't keep stirring. Make sure your pot has ample room for this bubbling effect. Once it's bubbled enough, it will go back down but you need a big pot so it doesn't boil over.

The temp is around 230-235 here. You can see on the thermometer where the mixture boiled up to at one point.

250 degrees! Yay!! This entire process takes between 30-40 minutes. You'll feel like you were standing there, stirring, forever! Remove from heat and pour your vanilla in. It will make a sizzling sound when you do this. Mix it in well.

Pour immediately into a greased pan. I lined mine with foil because once it's set I like to turn it out onto a piece of waxed paper and cut the squares that way. One year I poured it directly into the pan and even though it was greased it didn't come out that well. Let this cool overnight.

If using this method, hold a piece of waxed paper over the caramel and flip it upside down. Peel the foil or paper off the back of the caramel.

Cut your caramels into squares. Here I cut a lot at once, but it works better if you cut just one row at a time because they start to stick back together if they sit there too long. The best knife to use, amazingly, is a plastic knife or the tiny $1.50 Pampered Chef knife. A bigger knife tends to stick pretty bad. If your plastic knife isn't cutting smoothly, spray it with non-stick cooking spray.

They should come off the paper easily.

Cut waxed paper into rectangles and wrap them up.

Enjoy!! These are so yummy.

Knit One Save One

A friend of mine who knits (yay!) told me about Knit One Save One. I wish I had known about it sooner because I would have had time to knit more hats. Basically, you knit as many hats as you want, attach the tag on the PDF that is downloaded from this site. The hats get sent to a third world country for a baby in need. The hats protect from hypothermia and protects a babies head who might not otherwise have protection. There are other things that SaveTheChildren do, but I know this is one area that I can help out with. The deadline is December 31st. I started and finished my hat yesterday and is an improvisation of a hat I saw on display at The Knitting Room.
If you'd like my made-up pattern, let me know and I can share it here. Isn't is cute? And, do you recognize this yarn?

Tomorrow I'm blogging about caramels - or maybe later today if I have any ambition.

FO: Mittens

I am one of those people that is sort of oblivious to etiquette. I try to be 'in the know' but it was several years (like, at least ten!) before I realized that I should tip my hair stylist. And that's only because I saw it on Oprah. Of course the next time I went to get a highlight, I apologized profusely because I sincerely had no idea, and she just laughed and said I wasn't the only one.

The same goes for daycare & school teachers. When my daughter was 2, I noticed parents bringing the teachers gifts right around Christmas and this terrifying lightbulb went off in my head -- "Hey! I should be doing this too!" and so I ran out and got the teacher something. I can't remember what it was, but at least it was something, and it made them not despise me or pinch my child when no one was looking. So now of course I know that daycare and school teachers get a gift, I plan ahead and bake them something and include a gift card as well. Isabel's teacher this year is a male, and so I bought him a stamp with his name on it, and an inking pad, and we'll be making chocolate covered pretzels and peanuts for him, and truffles for Avery's teachers, along with a gift card.

So when one of the mom's at figure skating mentioned what they were getting as a "coach's gift" I once again felt that lump in my throat because I didn't know that we did gifts for coaches. Thank goodness I still had plenty of time to figure something out. And so I decided to knit some mittens for her. These are the Easy Mittens from the OneSkeinWonders book. They are really nice, have a decent cuff length and they took me less than 2 days of occasional knitting to complete. I used Araucania Nature Wool Chunky and I really like this yarn! I completed them with a flower from here. A simple flower with a beautiful result. And if her coach doesn't like the flower, it's easy to snip off. I'll understand. ; )

Hot chocolate and knitting. Can it get better?
(I'm finishing up the thumb here)

Hot chocolate now cold chocolate. But at least the mittens are done!

Finished!

Tomorrow the kids and I are going to my step-mom's house to make cut out cookies. The kids and I mixed up some dough last night and some frosting, so we're all ready. It was fun making the dough this year because Avery is older and can stand on a chair and help dump the ingredients into the mixer. So now I have two kids helping and we have to devise a plan ahead of time so everything is equal and fair. My step-mom called me today to tell me that she made a double batch of dough, so we'll be there all night making cookies!

I'll probably never want to look at another cookie again.

Gift Idea: Craft Jar

My daughter is 8 years old. Most of the time she is a bit tomboyish, but lately (maybe because it's so cold out!) she is digging into all of her crafty items. She finished a calendar project from last year, a looped hot pad that she started two YEARS ago, and recently dug out the canvas and paints we bought her last Christmas to finally finish her painting!
A lot of her craft supplies is older, and for a much younger Isabel. Her brother is now having fun with her old plastic beads, foam stickers, and popsicle sticks. I thought this would be a good time to revamp her stash, so I decided to make it a Christmas present for her.

I remember being young and getting crafty things for Christmas. I was an artistic child and loved to just dig through my things and look at everything I had. I know that Christmas can be a letdown when that last gift is opened and the tree no longer has gifts underneath it. So I thought of an idea: A big, messy craft jar.
And so here is my process for finding things (some even from my own stash) to put inside this jar...

~~~CRAFT JAR~~~

Step 1: Buy the supplies you want to put into the jar.

Step 1a: Buy the jar. I bought this one at Target. It's pretty big and cost less than $6.00.

Step 2: Rummage through your own things that your child has been using for awhile and get those items out that you are willing to part with. You must realize at this point that your nice fabric, 100% cotton batting, puffy paints, and expensive scrapbooking supplies will likely be used to make a sleeping bag for a piece of tree bark from Old Oakey (true story). If you aren't willing to accept this, then you should just hide it away and use something less valuable. ; )

Old scraps of fabric, felt, and batting
Cut and fold them into usable pieces and tie them nicely with ribbon or yarn.
Cotton batting.
Felt

Felt letters and numbers, and scrapbook stickers from my stash.
Embroidery floss and a grid ruler.
Gold and silver puffy fabric paint and some thread.
Pinking shears and a very nice pair of fabric cutting scissors. These were both my grandmothers.

Step 3: Don't be afraid to take things out of their wrappers to fit them into the jar. This is the fun part, and it makes a nice presentation.
Here I took out the pom-poms and feathers and put them into the bottom of the jar.

Here's the jar! It looks fun and is just itchin' to be dumped out onto the floor and rummaged through.
Top view. Doesn't that look fun?
Here is what I couldn't fit into the jar. I'll put this in a box and she can unwrap it at the same time as the jar. I took some of the clothespins and put them into the jar.

Now, those of you that really know me, know that I am a very organized person. Leaving the jar "as is" would likely drive me crazy, because it's so extremely unorganized. We have a craft closet at our house, with labeled bins which will likely hold some of the things in this jar, like the scissors, and paintbrushes, and the glue and paints. All of the 'adornments' can stay in this jar, but for safety and organization purposes, we'll migrate a lot of these things to their respective bins.
But doesn't it look fun? For younger kids you could use foam stickers, pom-poms, stamps, glitter glue, etc. Really, you can tailor this idea to anyone, even an adult with a hobby...such as knitting, perhaps?
; )

Weekend Things

I have yet another FO to share. The Republic Hat, I knit for a friend who is giving it to her friend for Christmas. The pattern is here, and it's free! It's a nice hat. I used Arucania Atacama yarn which is really soft and sort of fuzzy, holding two strands to create a chunky yarn that the pattern called for. I'd have to adjust the pattern to make it smaller if it were for my head, as it seemed a bit loose. I think my head is 22". The person that I knit this for has a 23 3/4" head so I think it will be perfect. Yes, that is a rather large head!



Also this weekend I made some great banana muffins. Usually I don't use papers for muffins (because a muffin should not have a paper - papers are for cupcakes!) but I doubled this recipe because I had a ton of frozen bananas to use up, so I was able to fit them - all 24 of them! - on a jelly roll pan in my paper cups. I used whole wheat pastry flour instead of white, and rather than incorporating the spices into the batter I sprinkled it on the batter before putting the crumb topping on top.

Before baking:

After. Mmmmm!

Sweet Things...

I have another FO to share! Two cones and two cupcakes -my own pattern- that I made for a friend's kids to receive as a gift from St. Nick. I think they turned out really cute.

Mint Chocolate chip ice cream cone

Raspberry sorbet with blue sprinkles

Chocolate cupcake with blue frosting and "edible" flower

White cake with chocolate frosting and candy on top
(I was going to do a stemmed cherry but this is for a toddler)

Another "sweet thing"... We collect the Paw Points on Sai's kitty litter boxes and with those you can log online points that accumulate towards products. We just redeemed points to get this really neat box made of wood that you can put treats, catnip, and small toys in. Sai seems to like it, although at the ripe old age of 13 he's not as playful as he once was, but I've caught him pulling the crinkle balls and pink "wormy" out of the holes. See, it's really worth redeeming those Paw Points!

And lastly but not least(ly?), the sweetest thing of all for today... my poor little son who has no ambition to do much at all, with several spiking fevers over the past few days and a case of bronchitis. Doesn't he look completely lethargic?

He enjoyed the fun lunch I made for him though, even with having little to no appetite, and even fed me a few bites of that sparkly applesauce. Fish sticks are not my first choice, but hey - you do what you can, right?

I'm starting to feel pretty crummy myself, I think whatever virus he has is making it's way over to me. I guess that is what happens when you co-sleep with a sick toddler, rub his head half the night and kiss his rosy red cheeks to make him feel 'all better'. It's worth it.

CT Scan Results...

No news is good news in this case! Well, I did receive the news but neglected to update everyone here since there really wasn't any news to share. My scan was 100% clear! No tumors were found, and so I have another 6 months to smile more, hug my kids, be thankful for life free from cancer, and kiss my husband. God really has blessed me with a unique situation. I had a huge tumor that should have been an indicator of metastatic cancer (anything larger than 2cm has a 75% chance of spreading, and mine was 10cm!), but there is no more cancer to be found! The odds are against me, but maybe I am that small percent that won't ever have the primary tumor spread again.
Anyway, I just wanted to update those of you that were waiting for news.
~~~~~~~~

Knitwise, I am working on two cupcakes and two ice cream cones for a friend. I am almost done and they are oh so cute! Of course I will share pictures when they are complete.

Have a great Tuesday!

FO: Sock Monkey

Finished the sock monkey!! He's very cute.
I used this pattern, but made the body longer and in turn lengthened the legs and arms a bit as well.



Also, I've been meaning to share this neat project that Isabel and I did but I keep forgetting. We pressed some leaves in fall to use for a Thanksgiving Turkey project but decided against that and instead made butterflies out of them! We used leaves for the wings and then cut out felt bodies and mounted them to scrapbook paper. We drew the antennae and eyes on, and then I found this $10.00 frame at Target and we framed them. I've packed it away since we decorated for Christmas this weekend, but I think it turned out great and it was a fun project, and so easy!