Where's the Sun/Summer?

It's the middle of June already and it still doesn't feel like summer. Of course we're not wearing our winter clothes but it isn't all that warm.

Carla has sent her cookbook Quick and Easy Vegan Bake Sale (Amazon link to pre-order) off to the publisher and that's the end of the testing for that book. The last recipe I tested was this Spicy Corn Biscotti which was really good. Despite having to have the time to bake biscotti twice and have it cool in between, I like that it can be munched on whenever.


Carla has started coming up with recipes for a new cook book. I've only made one recipe so far. This Lentil "Spag Bol" Sauce was really good. I'm trying to use things up from the freezer to make room for strawberries when they come. I'd also like to make up a batch of this sauce and freeze it in individual portions now that I'm an empty-nester and find making food just for myself a bit of a nuisance!


I started the second ball of wool for my Vortex shawl. Not wanting to bother with putting the live stitches on a piece of string, I just measured half of it. It's now about 48 cm across. I don't have this size circular needles (and I don't know if they sell them long enough) so I'm going to try to use dpns. At the moment I'm using 7 needles. Hopefully I can find 1-3 more around the apartment. I don't know if they were 4 or 5 needle packs or if I've picked up some somewhere. I'm at 336 stitches.


Only working on one project was getting a bit boring so I restarted a wool hat for my son. I wanted to do a top-down hat so I wouldn't have to keep undoing it like the last one when it would be too long, too short, too long again! The first one I tried seemed to leave gaps between the stitches and that wouldn't be warm enough here. So I'm trying a different pattern. It looks good but making increases every row is taking forever. It would be so much faster to do decreases! II need to take my glasses off to do such close work with this colour. Good thing I like listening to podcasts because I wouldn't be able to watch anything without my glasses.

I just went to look for the name of the pattern and I can't find the pattern! and I didn't bookmark it in anyway! or write down the name of the pattern! or write down the pattern past row 9, where I am up to! Guess what I'm going to be doing now. Hope I've just missed it (twice) and it hasn't been taken down. Sigh.

Winnings

I've won two prizes recently. One was this lavender filled matryoshka sachet from Amy over at Chick Chick Sewing during the May 17, 2010 Giveaway Day.


The other prize was this book. What fun. I have to take the train to get to the library and so winning a book is great. Jan from Prytz Family often has book giveaways so it's worth visiting her blog if you like to read.

I'm really thankful that people are willing to send to Finland.

I Can't Blame My Machine For Everything This Time

We bought my son a white shirt from the charity store. It's a size small and a bit tight around the bottom and it gaped open. I told him that I could add a buttonhole and after figuring out where the best place would be, I got the machine ready. It's been a while since I made a buttonhole so I got out my instruction book, put the buttonhole foot on and started sewing. But all it did was go back and forth so I was making a lump of thread! It turned out that the instructions were for 2 different models and I had looked at the wrong one and had the dial set at the wrong letter.

Ripped that bit and tried again. Had another mess. Realized that it was stitch width and not length that was suppose to be at number 4. Rip. But I dropped the seam ripper and reaching down to pick it up from the sofa, I stabbed myself with it. Blood! Couldn't continue on a white shirt with my finger bleeding, so I had to wait for that to stop.

Sewed the first long side and then a short side and when I started on the second long side the zigzag wasn't close together like it was on the first side. I didn't know what to do, so I turned the material around and sewed it backwards with the first setting. I got it done finally and the button sewn on.

Next I'll tackle the sleeves. He wants them short.

Asparagus

Today I tried asparagus for the first time. I keep seeing recipes for it and so I thought it was about time to buy some. I wanted a simple recipe so that we could basically just taste the asparagus itself. So I melted a bit of butter in some olive oil in a frying pan and added the asparagus. I turned it a few times as it started getting brown. Of course I forgot to add the salt as it was cooking as I tend not to salt things but we added it before eating. I don't think that I'll be one of those people who look forward to asparagus season but if I notice that it is on sale, I might try to cook it some other way. Like in a soup or on a pizza or grilled. I was curious to see if it could be eaten raw and after googling it, it seems like it can.

Summer seemed to arrive overnight. A few days ago I was still wearing a light scarf around my neck and my gloves and today it was too hot to wear anything more than a t-shirt. I hope it lasts for awhile.

Happy Mother's Day!

21 Mother's Days ago I got my first Mother's Day gift. It was a food processor and it is still working! Some of the parts are broken but I've learned to live without them. Today my son made griddle scones for breakfast. It's so nice when I don't have to cook. My son made this card and got me this box of chocolates that I was going to buy myself. Didn't he make a great card?

We prefer our cakes cold and 'aged' so we made this Zebra Cake that I tested for Carla's cookbook yesterday. It's fun making Zebra Cakes and I recommend trying it. It was a good choice for my Mother's Day Cake. Well chocolate anything is good for my Mother's Day!

Gardening

Last summer I had a few things growing on our balcony. They didn't grow very well and so we didn't get very much produce! I did find out though that we don't like ruccola and I should try to find someone to give the seeds to before they are too old to use anymore.

In this container I've got basil on the left and kale on the right. I keep reading about kale and seeing recipes for it but I've never seen it in the store. I shouldn't say never because I only bothered to find out what it is in Finnish over the winter, so maybe they just sell it in the summer. I found seeds though, so I decided to try and grow some. I read somewhere that a grape container is a good greenhouse for seeds so I tried it. The stickers on the top were difficult to get off but I thought that they blocked too much of the little sunshine that there is.


Here there should be dill on the left and basil on the right. I was surprised that the dill hadn't sprouted yet. It's such a fine plant that I would have thought that it would sprout quickly. I guess the seeds could be dead. I'll have to wait a few days and see what happens. I have no idea when I should try to put them outside!

This and That

Last month I finally finished the Aspen wrap (Ravelry link) that I started in January of 2008. Between the time I started it and marked it as finished on Ravelry the name changed! After not working on it for about a year I wrote out each of the 16 rows of the pattern repeat on separate cards and used a carabiner (why can I never remember what these are called) to hold them together. It was easy to flip each card when I finished the row and I didn't loose my place.

Last year I bought some baby wool and after looking at a lot of patterns, I've decided to knit a Vortex Shawl (Ravelry link). After the first 13 rows there is only a 2 row repeat so I hope I'll have no trouble remembering it!


It was my son's birthday at the beginning of the month and this is the card I made for him. I saw it somewhere and made my own. We are hoping to invite his grandparents for a birthday meal next week. So I've been trying to tidy the living room and do some of my decluttering goal at the same time. I'm aiming for 7 items from around our home a week.

I'm still doing test baking for Carla's cookbook. This Clafouti Tart is the latest. I used black currants instead of the raspberries because I didn't have any and I'm trying to use up the food from my freezer. I'm thinking of making it again when my son's grandparents come because my son and I both really liked it and also I think that the grandparents will be interested in tasting tofu and a vegan dessert. Though I'm tempted to let them eat it first before telling them what is in it.

What I've Been Up To

I'm disappointed with myself again! It's been so long since I've posted.

My son's in the military hospital with a bad flu and probably bronchitis, so when we decided to go to visit him yesterday I made some biscotti because it would keep well without being refrigerated. I won the book My Sweet Vegan cookbook some time ago and I wanted to try something from it as I've been doing the Carla's cookbook testing for a while now. I made the Orange Hazelnut Biscotti. I substituted almonds for the hazelnuts and left off the melted chocolate. I don't use Amazon but where else do people link to?

I'm taking bridge lessons. I'd be failing if there were tests. Yesterday it took me an hour to translate 2 pages! I wanted to make notes for myself and I thought that I should use English terms in case I want to look things up on the Internet. I'm such a slow translator. I either use English or Finnish and seldom need to translate. I seem to be missing the bridge between two languages. It's probably why French was so difficult for me at school. I wish I had realized it back then.


Last time I was at the charity store I had a great find. They have several boxes that have free items in them and I found 6 English books. Then in the back where they have the books they are selling I picked up 2 more at 0.50 € each. Not bad!

Don't Laugh!

I finally made it. I visited over 1000 blogs to see what they were like. And of course to see what they were giving away for One World One Heart (OWOH) event. Some I've marked to go back to, but with 270 blogs on my bloglines list, I didn't want to add too many more! I hadn't heard of this event before this year and I was glad to find out about it just before it started and not soon after it ended.

I really found the mixed media pieces interesting. I need to start looking for tutorials as I'm not creative. I'm good at following directions but not with coming up with my own.

My friend is turning 50 next week so I thought I'd make her a card. On my OWOH tour I came across a style called zettiology. I don't have many paints or supplies that I could use, so I just used what we have. I went around looking at people's art and took what I thought I could manage on the card. I started putting them on the paint program and came up with this. Now if you continue on reading I don't want to hear any laughing!

This is what I came up with from going around looking at people's artwork. The first version also had the words 'tick tock' and a larger clock but I thought that she might not find that as funny as me!

I had trouble finding pictures and colours in magazines that I wanted to use, so I just took what I found. All of our felt markers are old so I didn't think that they would last to do the black around the edges, so I used crayon. It isn't as dark as I liked but better than nothing. I painted the background with coffee and sprinkled some instant coffee granules on it. If I'd had more experience I would have realized that I should have planned where to put the granules first!

This is what I wrote inside.

I baked some cookies for the recipe testing.

A Little Bit More Sewing

I finally got the tote done that I won from Green Bag Lady. The prize was a finished tote and pieces to make a tote to give away. I wanted to give the second tote to my son to add to his university chest (ha ha, like a hope chest) but I decided to take the striped handles off of mine to put on his and put the pink ones on mine. I French seamed the seams and I think it turned out well.

I bought a bundle of material from a charity store and I want to start making a (lap) quilt. I don't have enough material to make anything yet but it's a start. The bright material at the bottom of the pile won't be part of the quilt but it was included in the pile. I decided to look through my quilting magazines (which are from 1985 to 1989) and all of the patterns I've cut out, photocopied or drawn out but I didn't find anything that I felt was what I wanted. I haven't looked at the magazines in years but it was funny how familiar the pictures all looked. I guess I've looked at them too often.

I found a fabric giveaway at Kvnita Quilts. The colours are really pretty! She will draw a winner on Feb. 15, 2010.

I did a bit of recipe testing again. This time it was flavoured scones. Both my son's and my reactions were 'yum'. I look forward to Mondays when Carla posts new recipes for us to try.

My friend's 50th birthday is coming up and I'd like to make her a card. I'm hoping that my son will be willing to make her a pair of earrings. (And that he'll help me make the card too.) She doesn't want to celebrate but I'd like to give her a little something. I need to get started so I can have them done before I see her next week.