I am still very enthusiastic about bread, and I thought I would give Tessa Kiros' recipe for white bread from "Apples for Jam" a go.  It used a bit less (450g) flour than my usual (500-600g), and used a fair whack of butter and an egg and milk, and no water, so the bread turned out more cakey and dense than the loaves I have been making lately.  It could also be that our nights are getting warmer, and by warmer I mean that we don't need the heaters on overnight, so the loaves probably didn't have the advantage of rising all night in a heated bedroom. 

I bought a whole heap of strawberries yesterday, so after baking the bread, I sliced the berries and put them in a bowl with some sugar, and put them in the warm oven for a while to moosh up a bit.  When they were warm, I sliced the loaves thickly, spooned some warm strawberries and a bit of the strawberry syrup from the bottom of the bowl over each slice, and they were all eaten by my family in record time.  We will do this one again!

 

I think that the bread would be better for something like grilled cheese with mustard pickle, because it tastes really yeasty and doughy.  There is a bit left, I might have to experiment at lunch time.  For science, you understand.

I have just finished my very first skein of spindle spun yarn and I am so proud I might burst.  Unfortunately I am having trouble getting photos of the yarn properly formatted on Blogger (boo hiss), since I took photos with my spanky awesome digital SLR.  Had I taken photos with my crappy iPhone camera, it would have been fine.  Sigh.

To keep you going until I can get the photos up, I present to you the movie I made of the Spindle House - a lazy kate made out of Duplo.  I am almost as proud of this invention as I am of the yarn.  Behold!  And do not fail to notice the Patented Chicken Tensioning Device.

Lately, since I have been getting a mite more sleep and haven't been completely full time responsible for the whole everything, I've had a bit of time to cook nice things.

Roast beetroot and garlic dip, with crackers. Poking these roasted beetroots to see if they were cooked was like stabbing Tom Riddle's diary with a basilisk fang, the bright red ooze was amazing.

The dip was delicious, but two bunches of beetroot makes a very very lot of dip and I had to share it with friends.

I made some crackers while I was feeling all domestic and bakerish, and they were a very simple recipe but a bit of a pain in the bum to roll out properly. I need a bigger and better rolling pin.

I went to the markets the other day and instead of buying a bag of bread mix like I had intended, I bought a 10kg bag of bakers flour and have been baking bread nearly every day. The pic below is of some pumpkin bread, the recipe I used as a guide was American and wanted me to add cloves and cinnamon and brown sugar - BARF. What is wrong with treating pumpkin as a savoury vegetable? The recipe insisted that I use proper strained pure pumpkin instead of mixture canned pie filling. EEEEEWWWWWW. I used left over roasted pumpkin from the roast dinner a few days before, for I am Australian.

My kids wanted to know why the mixer bowl contents looked like play dough but smelled like bread.  It turned out delicious.

I just saw this project advertised on a board on Ravelry and I am excited!

As 2011 is the International Year of Chemistry, the Knit The Periodic Table of the Elements project will collect squares from knitters, and have them sewn together to be displayed at the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry conference, and other places. 

I signed up to knit Thulium (Tm), because I had no opinion on the merit of any one element over any other element, Potassium (K) was taken (K is my initial), and the atomic number of Thulium is 69, which is a much finer number than any other.

Wikipedia tells me that

Thulium ( /ˈθjuːliəm/ thew-lee-əm) is a chemical element that has the symbol Tm and atomic number 69. Thulium is the second least abundant of the lanthanides (promethium is only found in trace quantities on Earth). It is an easily workable metal with a bright silvery-gray luster. Despite its high price and rarity, thulium is used as the radiation source in portable X-ray devices and in solid-state lasers.

also that Thulium is

Not to be confused with Thallium or Thorium.

 So now you know.

I will have to get moving on this square, as it has to be in NZ in a month's time.  It is only a 20cm stocking stitch square in 8ply, which won't take long, and a strip of black stocking stitch for the symbol.  I figure that making the symbol will take longer than making the square itself.  Watch this space.

I am miserable.  A dear friend, who wanted the baby she was carrying more than anything in the world, birthed her sleeping baby early this week.  She is devastated, I am devastated, everyone she knows is devastated.  No sadder thing could happen.  When someone dies, people across time and across the world get together to grieve.  Another dear friend who is grieving gathered a heap of us together so that we could comfort each other. But I couldn't go.

My fully vaccinated children were exposed to whooping cough (pertussis) at school.  At our lovely hippy school, populated with just the demographic of typical anti-vaxxers, left wing, middle to upper middle class, very educated, and easily swayed by the fear and pseudoscience of people like the Australian Vaccination Network. I'm not getting into the whole debate, that would take years and give me an ulcer.

There is a whooping cough epidemic on the east side of Australia right now, and it is caused by falling vaccination rates.  No brainer.  And my kids have been exposed to whooping cough.  They are mildly unwell, but thanks to their vaccination status I am not worried for their health.  But I am worried about exposing young babies who have not had the opportunity to be fully immunised against whooping cough.  These babies die.  I am not going to be responsible for another mother saying goodbye to the baby she will never hold again in her arms.

My kids have seen a doctor, have had swabs taken, and I will base our further activity on the results, which I should hear in a day or two.

So instead of grieving with my women friends, all mothers, for the baby that has died and for the hearts that have broken and will never heal the same, I am keeping my kids away from their kids, because it is the right thing to do.  I can't be with these women today, and might not be able to make it to the funeral for that wee babe who never had the chance to draw breath.

Fuck you, anti-vaxxers.  I hope you are happy.  I am miserable.


18/07/11 update - the swabs taken from my kids came back clear.  My kids do not have pertussis.  I can once again go and be with my friends, right now when we need each other the most. 

Thanks for kind words, and for strong words based on science and evidence, to counter the comment fuelled by paranoia, fear and misinformation. 

Please go and vaccinate your kids, and vaccinate yourself against whooping cough.  More info here.

Stage 8 - I finished the 50g of rainbow coloured silk tops that has been on  my Windwheel for over 12 months.  Hooray!

I didn't think to put a lego brick in the picture for size perspective (Lego bricks are my inclusion for standardising colours and sizes, coins are no good, most of the rest of the world doesn't know what Au cents look like), but the yarn is very very very thin.  Like super thin.  Think hair or sewing thread.  Next challenge is to navajo ply it, which will be a very long undertaking indeed.  I will have to move the kids out for a week to get it done.  Or even better, move myself out for a week.  Yes... good plan.

I was going to blog every day with my le Tour spins, but this week has been a bit hideous.

Here is what I can remember.

Day one - stayed up late knitting Party Wig, and stopped knitting to get in an hour or so worth of spinning rainbow silk on my Windwheel.  The singles that this silk is turning into is either cobweb weight or lace weight, and will likely end up being navajo plied to keep the colours together.  I've had this on the wheel for over a year and I would really really like it to be finished.

Day two - I only managed about 10 minutes of spinning of alpaca fleece on my teensy tinsy new turkish spindle.  The alpaca is part of the many kg of raw alpaca fleece I was given last year, and I washed it, dried it, carded it, combed it and dizzed it off into gorgeous soft delicious top.  When I tried spinning it on my wheel I couldn't find my mojo at all, so I am really happy that it is spinning up so well on the spindle.  I also managed a wee bit more rainbow silk on the Windwheel

Day three - some more alpaca on the baby spindle, and also a bit of time spinning laceweight merino/silk on my other spindle

Day four - spindling, both merino/silk and alpaca.

Day 5 - about an hour spinning rainbow silk on the Windwheel.

It is all I can do to get the spins done, I haven't managed photos yet.  Maybe this weekend.

 My friend was telling me about her birthday party and how the prep was making her tear her hair out, and I joked that I would make her a wig.

Two days until party. GO WIG GO!

I started using some pink Bendigo 8 ply, and knitted like the wind. All was going well until I started the decreases, and somehow the graphic on the Knitty pattern didn’t fit into my head properly, and I started decreasing on the sides instead of the front and the back. Once I realised my mistake, I frogged back to half way down the fringe (WTF is BANGS?) and picking up all the stitches in rib was too much of a pita so I started again. I was thinking of dyeing the pink wig since it was pastel and a bit boring, but had found some bright red 8 ply, so decided to make a new wig with this instead.

Cast on new wig. 24 hours until party. KNIT BABY KNIT!

I finished this wig, learned how to do a three needle cast off (awesome), sewed in ends, turned up the bottom of the wig and sat it in the bamboo steamer over some boiling water while I had a shower and got dressed for the party. Took wig out of steamer, dried it out while I found my shoes, wrapped wig and headed to party.

Party hostess loved the wig and wore it all party long.

Last minute wig knitting FTW.

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!