Massive earbuds

Tiny ears.

This is a complaint that I’ve gone on an on about before. My ears are tiny. It is less than ideal when you consider that earbuds don’t fit, ear buds with hooks aren’t positioned right. Those that just pop into your ear canal/hole, just pop out if I can smash them in at all. Of course smashing them in isn’t the most comfortable thing to do. Periodically I get hopeful and try to fit some it but it just doesn’t work.

Earhooks just hang the bud far too low. Then I’m turning the volume up so loud that everyone can hear what I’m listening to.

In comes the fire.
Burn here

and smoosh the melty plastic until you have a really unattractive earhook that actually fits.

The burny melty parts get to be a bit dangerous so keep the kids and animals away. If you burn too much it gets super melty though, not enough and it doesn’t budge. It’s a gentle dance with fire. Also make sure that when you choose earhooks, you choose the kind that doesn’t have wires and such up in the hook part. I have one for my phone that I’d love to set fire to but it’s got wires up in there. Next time I shop for a phone headset, I’ll make sure it’s one I can burn and melt a little bit.

Fleecing

There’s been a lot of fleece going on around here.
I’m working on a “stashdown” with my fellow Ravelers. My stashdown participation is to go through some of my fleece and make room for new 2012 fleece. We had a few nice days where I could dry the fleece outside.

The black is some Wensleydale that I sold off half and this half is mine all mine. I’ve got to bring it home for some loving. The other stuff is cormo and will likely be in the shop eventually.

Just because it’s a stashdown doesn’t mean I don’t shop. I got some Polypay and Cormo from The Spinning Loft. I immediately washed and dyed both. The polypay is a golden yellow and awaiting it’s turn on the carder. The Cormo started out deep brown (black) and I dyed it a garnet red over that. I have almost 8 ounces of lovely batts:

Of course I’m still plugging away at carding the grey for Jay’s sweater. I have almost 2 lbs carded

Yet only 2 bobbins spun up:

Slowly but surely I’ll get through all the fleece and Jay’s sweater. Lets just hope he gets his sweater before snow flies again.

Tutorials.

I have a ton of these that I’ve started. Drafts and posts all over the place. Photos I’ve started to take. Projects I’ve finished but never taken the final photos. Kind of sad really. When the Tramadol stuff hit the old blog, all the momentum I had was just gone. Tutorials I thought I had posted, also were never posted. I’m pledging to get this stuff cleaned up.

Here’s what’s coming:
Apron Dress
T-shirt skirt
wrap skirt
Headphones
Linen Pants
Tab cuffed pants
Makeup

I have a lot to talk about and generally don’t. I know there aren’t any tutorials in there for spinning or weaving or knitting or crochet. I am not sure what to write about since I feel like I’ve said a lot of it before and there are other great tutorials out there. If any of you reading want to hear more about something….you want me to give you the lecture or roving vs top again, I’m happy to do it.

I don’t have a ton of time but I love to write so if you have something that you want a tutorial or a lecture on, let me know and I’ll see if I can work it into the line up here. Otherwise, I’ll just keep blathering on and on about the stuff I want to talk about. I suppose I should let you all know that I’ve become highly enamored with the smock dress, the apron dress, the shapeless shift. I love them and I plan to make plenty for my summer wardrobe. This is where that Apron dress/top comes in. I’ve left my good camera in my sewing room so that I can get good photos when I’m working on stuff. Be ready for the summer of the shapelessness!

New Cricket!!

Last night a bunch of cricket looms arrived. Not the usual 10 inch kind but the brand spankin’ new 15 inch kind. WAhooo!!! SO I eagerly took one home to put it together. And I’m glad I did (not just because the shop has a great new demo model) but the instructions weren’t complete but they know about it and have corrected ones on their site and soon in the box. If you have one with old instructions, please follow through to see what you need to do or go to the Schacht site.

Lookit that gorgeous box with the 15 on the cover! And my handy leatherman I’m going to use to put this puppy together.

And inside all my pieces and parts.

All the pieces and parts all over my floor. Notice no dog feet. I have no idea what happened for the dogs to not be interested in this project unlike every other time I am anywhere near the floor but you’re getting a dog free post here.

Me and my leatherman!

And after one screw and realizing I had dinner to make it was then changed to “me and my electric drill”!

ok. So from here just follow the instructions and you’ll get to this:

uh oh. extra parts.

This is where my instruction booklet ended. But there’s this cross piece and hardware. Insert the barrel nut

and then screw it in to the side where there are holes. Yeah, it’s that simple. Nothing fancy or huge missed there. This is just to stabilize your loom. You want to do this part, don’t leave it out. It should look like this:

and then you’re ready to weave.

PieCakin

You’ve heard of the Turducken (chicken and duck inside of a turkey). Well, this is the dessert version. Pie inside of a cake….

I didn’t bring my camera to dinner so this shot is just a simple phone pic. It doesn’t even come close to showing you how good this thing is.

There is the Cherpumple which may be the most notable. It’s got cherry, pumpkin, and apple pies amidst spice, yellow, and white cakes. I couldn’t imagine doing a 3 layer masterpiece. One was going to challenge the folks I was feeding so it was decided that I would make a cherry pie inside of a chocolate cake. I’m going to post about how I did it and then I’m going to tell you how I’ll do it the next time because it will be different.

Before I even got started, I needed new pans. All of my cake and pie pans matched in size and really, you want enough cake around the edges so the pie doesn’t stick out. I bought one 7 inch pie tin and one 10 inch cake pan that was extra deep.

The first thing to do is to make the pie. I did not photograph the pie because that couldn’t have been described as a masterpiece. More like a master mess. I used a new recipe for the crust and it was a disaster. I can make a mean cake but I am a pie failure. Luckily this pie was going to be encased in cake and no one would be the wiser. Lets just pretend it was a gorgeous cherry pie…. the hint I have for the pie to get it out of the pan easier is to use strips of overlapping parchment paper. Strips because, well, you take a large piece and try to make it fit in there good. I would also suggest that you use a good crust that will hold it all together well. Don’t attempt a new one. make one you’re comfortable and familiar with.

Don’t remove the pie til you’re ready to throw it into the cake. Also you will also want to chill the pie well so it solidifies and makes it easier to remove and will hold together better. Make the batter the for the cake when your pie is all ready. Add about one half to two thirds of your batter to the cake pan (I’ll tell you about my cake in a moment). Put your pie in and make sure it sits in a little bit so that the batter is coming up the sides. Pour the rest of the batter in. Don’t plop it right onto your pie. I did and the pie broke up some. I thought at that point it would be a disaster but it held together better than I thought it did. Then bake it, frost, and eat.

RECIPES:

Black Magic Cake
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup strong brewed coffee
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
I got this free on the net some time ago. It’s my standard chocolate cake these days. Bake it at 350 in a preheated oven. My method is to cream all the wet ingredients together and in another bowl sift or at least stir all the dry ingredients together. Add the dry to the wet but don’t over mix. Just mix until it’s all incorporated.

Vanilla Buttercream
This one is more like my standard recipe – If you’ve read my recipes in the past, you know I’m a throw it in and give it a pinch kind of gal. I start with 2 stick of salted butter, softened to room temp. I start whipping that with my stand mixer (I didn’t know what my frosting was lacking til I got my Kitchenaid). I add in 2 Tbs of milk, 1/2 teaspoon of meringue powder, 1 heaping teaspoon of vanilla extract (also good here is almond extract). And then about 2/3 of a bag of powdered sugar. I know, for those that aren’t in the US or get powdered sugar in different containers are stymied but this is how I do it. If I remember, I’ll measure it for you guys one of these times.

Ganache
This is just a standard ganache.
1 cup of heavy cream – bring to a boil remove from the stove and immediately pour of a bowl of good chocolate chopped (9 ounces). Dark bittersweet chocolate is our favorite. Whisk until it’s smooth. Let it cool for 15-20 minutes and then spread over the cake pouring in to the center and helping to go over the sides evenly.

So what would I do differently?
I wouldn’t set the pie in the batter and bake it all. I would do it all separately. How? I would pour 2/3 of the batter into cake pan, then I would take my empty pie tin (the same one I’m going to use for the pie) and push that into the batter to make a divot for the pie. Fill the tin with pie beads/weights to keep it weighed down. Bake. Bake one flat cake with the remaining batter for the top and one pie. Why all separate? Partially because it would give a chance to add more frosting or jam into the middle of the cake. Partially because I think it would go together better.

I’m not sure on this alternate method of cooking and will probably need to make one in this manner. There is talk of a pumpkin pie and spice cake. This might have to happen for Thanksgiving…. or I’ll have to find an excuse to make one sooner, I’m sure. If you make one in either manner, please let me know how it turns out. Piecakin is an interesting concept and a pretty decent dessert.

Imported Blog

I was avoiding importing my old blog because of that nasty virus. I realized that my website is about to change drastically and that old blog will be destroyed. I had to capture those posts. I didn’t want all that wisdom (ha!) to be lost.

If you do a search or flip through you’ll be able to see all the old Boogie Knits posts here. The odd thing is that they were loaded by date in reverse order. So it starts with posts from 2007. Which isn’t entirely bad because one of the first one’s I saw was this:

Awwwww.

LilBoog from a long time ago, reading a knitting magazine.

Yeah. so. All the recipes. All the tutorials. All here now.

Gift Edition – Part 4

Today’s charities are those that you get something tangible. You get a good feeling of doing good but you also get something. Back to the giving to Unicef. Threadless has 12 t-shirts, that if you buy one, the money goes to Unicef. Not even kidding here. The dollar amounts are the same as it is on the Unicef site.

These 12 shirts.

FEED.
Buy something and they send money to something. Who couldn’t use another bag like this one And in return, you’ll get the bag and 10 school meals will be provided through the United Nations World Food Programmes’ School Feeding Program. Each item (not just bags) has something attached to it. Food, books and they go to different countries, or they can stay in the US.

Toms shoes, buy one pair and another pair goes to a kid in need. That’s a pretty good ratio. One to one! Buy a soft toy from IKEA and they make a Unicef donation.

This is just scratching the surface. It’s kind of neat to get a gift and at the same time, you know your doing good. Make the money count so to speak.

And now, the craft – mittens from old sweaters.

Good will has sweaters for $4.99 every day. Men’s and women’s. Occassionally they have sweater sales where they’ll be half that. On top of that, if you have a Goodwill card it’s 10% off. If you find a sweater that is in the tagged color of the day, it’s half off. The savings just keep adding up!

You know this means I have a stack of sweaters. So I started cutting into them to make mittens. The sweaters were all washed well by me and then dried and just sitting there waiting for something to happen to them. Some are thin and some aren’t wool so we’re going to line all the mittens with Polar fleece which also helps them resist water too.

Find your sweater and roughly cut out a mitten shape using your hand:

Or a mitten that fits someone already:

You can see, I used the side seam of the sleeve for the side seam of the mitten:

You can use a sleeve or the middle of the sweater. If its got designs or motifs you want to have in the mitten make sure you get what you want. By cutting into the double thickness of the sweater you get the 2 halves of the mitten you need. You’ll need to cut out 2 (one for each hand). These aren’t going to be left/right specific so you can just cut as you wish. Cut out a cuff or not.

The one that we’re going to do for the tutorial is just the hand in the sweater and we’re making a cuff out of polar fleece.

You can see the 2 pairs of sweater hands cut out and the 2 pairs of polar cut out and the polar bands.

The polar fleece cuffs are meant to be sewn down one edge and the raw edge folded in to create a tight double thick band that won’t let snow in when playing outside.

Sew it all up. I left a quarter inch edging around.

Turn the sweater hand right side out.

Insert the Polar fleece into the sweater hand. The easiest way to do this so it’s all together good is to wear it and insert.

Now you can see all that’s left is putting on the cuff.

Pin right sides together and sew.

Voila! Mitten!

Out of the smaller lady sweaters I got 2 pairs of mittens and out of the sleeves, I decided I needed arm warmers or leg warmers.

There is that little pile left in the corner of that picture….I decided they needed to be little owl stuffies. They’re not done yet Or I’d show you the finished ones. But you can see the idea here.

If I remember, I’ll trace off these little guys and put up a PDF of the pattern. Assuming it all works like it does in my head.