I have signed up to participate in the Tour de Fleece, which is a challenge to spin every day of the Tour de France.  I wanted to do this last year, and I can't even remember what it was that got in the way of me doing it, so I am going to spin in the 2011 Tour.

My goals for this tour are to

• finish the rainbow silk that has been on my Windwheel since at least this time last year, and even navajo ply it if I can be bothered
• spin as much alpaca as I can on my new wee turkish spindle.  Even though it feels like moving a mountain one grain of sand at a time (since I started out with 17 whole fleeces, and this spindle only spins a tiny amount at a time), it is good to get some of it spun finally
• put a dent in the bag of merino silk that I am spinning on my other spindle
• go stash diving - shut my eyes and stick my hand into my tub of fibre and spin whatever I pull out.  I really would like to reduce my stash, because it is awkward to want to buy new stash when this stash is not really in control any more.  Must remedy this situation!

I will be spending a lot of time at the theatre since Monkey 1 will be doing rehearsals and performances in a show for the 2 weeks of the school holidays, so I will take one spindle or the other with me and try to get in 10 minutes at a time wherever I can.

I might hit my goals, or I might miss, but I will get some more spinning done and that will be fine.

Yep, it has really been a long week.  Today's adventures of swimming lessons and other stuff got railroaded by a toddler wee in pants, and no spare pants in the car.  Of course, the best thing to do in these circumstances is to go home and have a day off.  Monkey 4 has been watching more telly lately than I think is good for her, which is completely a reflection on how much I can manage in these solo-parenting months.  I offered to make her some fresh play-dough, I mean, who can resist nice fresh bright warm play-dough?  Neither of us.

 

Did I ever mention that I love my KitchenAid mixer?  Oh yes I do. Turns out it is excellent for making play-dough.
Recipe

• one cup of salt
• two cups of plain flour
• a couple of tablespoons of cream of tartar
• a goodly slosh of vegetable oil
• two cups of boiling water
• colour if you feel like it.  I use Queen brand food dye.

To make

1. put all ingredients except the water in the mixer bowl
2. slowly start mixing with the dough hook
3. pour in the boiling water
4. let it mix until it starts to set a bit
5. stop the mixer and use a spatula or scraper to get all the mooshy bits off the side and any dry bits that might be on the bottom of the bowl
6. at this point I changed over from the dough hook to the mixing paddle, but ymmv.
7. mix that wild yellow dough up a bit more until it is soft and warm and smooth.

 

Then play with it of course!  Mash it, poke it, roll it, cut it, ball it up, squash it out, or put it in a pot to cook on the stove.  Or if you are Monkey 4, sneak a lick of it when you think your mum isn't watching. Maybe I need to take a closer look at her diet...

 

On the way home from playgroup on Monday, Monkey 4 told me that she was making jellyfish with her fingers.  I sang her the Jellyfish song, and she was so enamoured of it that we had to sing it all the way home.  

The song goes like this

three jelly fishthree jelly fish
three jelly fiiiiiiiiiish
sitting on a rock
one jumps off (awwwwwww)

two jelly fish
two jelly fish
two jelly fiiiiiiiiiish
sitting on a rock
one jumps off (awwwwwww)

and on and on until there are no jelly fish, which is where it gets exciting because

one jumps on (yaaaaaaaaay!)

and then they all jump on (yaaaaaaaaaay!) until they start to one by one jump off again (awwwwwww).  I wasn't sure that Monkey 4 would get the gist of three jellyfish - 1 jellyfish = 2 jellyfish just from singing the song, so I thought I would make some jellyfish for her to play with.

I don't know about you, but we seem to have more magnets on our fridge than we ever put there, maybe the promotional magnets breed when we aren't looking.  I got some of those magnets, cut out some jellyfish and a rock shape, glued some felt and some yarn, had Monkey 4 choose some googly eyes and stick them on, and now every time we go to the fridge we get to sing the Jellyfish song.  Woot!

The lurgy has been lurking at our house, so things have been going very slowly this week.  All monkeys sick with something or other, so we have had some nice slow days at home watching dvds and convalescing.  I haven't been able to get much made or much done, but I suppose that's ok too. 

One project that I am slowly chugging away with is my Red Velvet Cupcake Arm Warmers.  It is getting very cold here in sunny Canberra, and my leather jacket, that I love and wear every day, isn't woolly warm, but great for layering.  In my 3/4 sleeved tops, there was a little section of chilly up my arms, and when I saw the pattern for these, I was completely smitten.  I waited a while as I searched for the perfect yarn, and once I found it at the Celebration of Wool Day at the Old Bus Depot Markets, I was away.

I knitted one sleeve, based on the pattern measurements for people with slender wrists.  Not too many of my measurements could be describes as slender, but my wrists are not chubby. 

 

Unfortunately the pattern was written for someone with skinny wrists and skinny arms, which is not me, and the arms were bitey tight.  I knitted the next one with some pattern mods, and it fits better.  The first one has been frogged back to the wrist, and I'm half way through reknitting it in the more generous size.  I can't wait to wear them, I have the biggest crush on the design, the yarn and the feel of the ruffle, and I would like cozy arms.  A few uninterrupted days should do the trick, or a week or so of normal life.  Watch this space.

Either I need to learn HTML or need to find someone who knows HTML to help me to get rid of the stupid beige lines under the photos in this blog template. I don't know enough to fiddle with it without being able to back out if I need to.

I'm having a slow day at home with sick kids today, which gives me a little bit of time to put up some more cake photos.

Monkey 1 requested cupcakes to take to school for his birthday, specifically the crab cupcakes featured in Lily Vanilli's book A Zombie Ate My Cupcake.  Which would have been an easier request to grant if the cake decorating shop that had edible glitter and all that stuff was open on the day that he asked.  Which was the day before his birthday.  I agreed to do my best.

 

I decided to make the Red Velvet cupcake base that was recommended in the book, and it was the most decadent and delicious and sensuous cupcake making experience I have ever had.  The red was so red, and the batter was so smooth.  Delicious.  Once again, as every time I use it, I fell in love with my KitchenAid mixer.  Not that I love it any less when I'm not using it, but when I am using it I love it more. 

 

The cupcakes turned out very well, the next challenge was to crab them up.  The recipe required marzipan, but of course marzipan is made with almonds, and nuts and nut products are not allowed in primary schools any more.  Quandry.  But the local stupidmarket stocks a kind of fake marzipan with almond flavouring, and also stocks ready made icing that behaves much like marzipan, but doesn't have the smell or the taste.  This time I used one packet of each and an enormous amount of food colouring.  Next time I won't bother with any kind of marzipan, I will just use the icing.  Once again the KitchenAid did its thing brilliantly to mix the colour through the icing.

The Love Of My Life and I sat up until past midnight assembling the crabs, he was the Master Claw Roller, I did the cutting, assembly and finishing. 

Monkey 1 was thrilled when he saw these waiting for him the next morning.  His teacher was suitably impressed with the cakes, until I told her how much sugar and colouring I had used, and then she said that maybe the kids could eat them just before they go home.  What a wuss.

For the family birthday dinner party cake, Monkey 1 both made me proud and broke my heart by poring over the Woman's Weekly Birthday Cake book.  I felt torn because passionately studying that book for my own cakes was a very important thing in my own childhood, and also for TLOML.  His mum gave me the copy of the cake book that she used for his cakes.

I feel like my kids are following a fine Australian childhood tradition. On the other hand, I felt sad because up until now, Monkey 1 has asked for certain and very specific cakes from his imagination, and I have delivered.  A DNA cake?  Fine.  A Scorpion cake?  Great, I will sculpt it using wire, gaffer tape and hand made and filled profiteroles.  A Mallard A4 Pacific steam engine? No problem, even the steam train buffs will recognise it as an A4 Pacific (and they did, too).  I wonder what happened that he wanted replicas of other designs from books, instead of consulting his own imagination?

Anyhow, he chose the Log Cabin cake, which I made with some alterations from the official design.  I felt very retro 70's when I was colouring coconut for the grass.  But colour it I did and he was really happy with the result.

 

Happy birthday darling boy, how on earth can you be 11 years old already?

The weather here is getting cold, so I am trying hard to be a Good Mummy (TM) and send my kids to school with a nice, hot lunch.  I am also the sole Minister for Lunch since The Love Of My Life is doing the work thing interstate this year.

I bought some bargain wide mouthed thermoses (thermii?) for the monkeys, and it is a miracle but they haven't lost any of the lids or bits yet, which makes me pleased and proud.

So far the noms that I have been sending to school have included

• hot chocolate
• fried rice
• chicken curry
• pumpkin soup
• minestrone

I'm also planning on sending

• spaghetti bolognese
• other pasta dishes such as pesto pasta
• prawn biryani
• dahl and rice

After this I am stuck for ideas.   Does anyone have any more inspiration for hot food or drink that could be sent to school in a wide mouthed thermos?