D285: Scones and quarter circles

There are lots of tutorials about making quarter my circle templates.  This one at Sew Inspired blog was just the second one I found, and close to how I imagined I'd be making mine, so off I went.

"Now?"

The main difference between my quarter circles and most on the net is that I want to take my curve to the very edge, not short of it like in a Drunkard's Path block.  So I decided to make my own and have made an instructional post for that. 

In the meantime, Bub and I made scones!!  

Tip of the day: Any time you ever make or do something for the first time with one of your children, get someone to take photos.  I'm a bit sad I didn't drag in Hub from the shed to take snaps.

Scones, Cookery the Australian Way

We used the recipe from CTAW.  I probably didn't need to rush as much as I did between steps, when I was asking her to wait while I faffed about with ingredients and tools.  Although I've looked forward to cooking with Bub, I've been a little worried about how it would go - nothing like having your dreams dashed with pure indifference.  But I needn't have worried so much, she was darling and I loved watching some much of her character come out in the activity.  It also helped that she really likes scones.

There are probably lots of tips and instructional posts about cooking with toddlers too (hundreds? Probably.) But, obviously, I don't care.   Here are my pointers for cooking with a littlie, keeping in mind I have a toddler who can focus on a task.  Some of these are pretty obvious, but I put them here in case you're new to baby-sitting or just wondering...

Set expectations to 'Low'.  Start with a simple recipe, something with mixing and pouring, where mess and waste don't matter.  It doesn't even matter if the food is no good.

Pull out all the ingredients and tools before you start.  If you're using the oven, set that off early too, unless you're up to teaching that part.  If things need to be chopped preparing that prior might be good too, unless your helper has an activity to do while you're chopping.  

Choose to make something they already like to eat.  I mean, I rarely cook things I don't like eating... And this way, they can get excited about the result.  

Prepare an accessible space for your helper. If they can't easily reach across the bench top, do it at the table or on the floor.  We have some picnic cloth, left over from a previous project, that I threw on the kitchen floor.  This is just the sort of thing I imagined using it for.  One of my friends sits her bubba on the table top.  I opted out of standing on a chair at the table because we're discouraging standing on chairs right now and she's too young to understand 'special occasions'.

It's called 'hands on', not 'eyes on'. Any 'thing' they can do that's related to the task is worthwhile, even if it's not what needs to be done right now, or even needed at all!  At step 2. I used my crumbing tool; Bub stirred with a spoon and scooped the flour about which was 'very important help'.  Scooping and pouring are tricky and occupy her well.  Every now and then I'd point and say "More here please," or she'd say "More?" and she'd feel involved.

Pouring is a great way to involve your helper.  Some people hog this task for fear of spillage.  Please don't - there's no real need.  At step 3. I measured the milk and she poured it in with my guidance.  While bub held the handle I had my fingers on the base of the jug.  My table top friend will break eggs into a cup and her little one will tip them in.  Use as many containers as necessary.  The involvement is what it's all about and the dishes are worth it.

Pretending still counts.  Although I pulled the dough together and got it into a ball shape, I was able to put a big bread board on the floor mat and we took turns kneading.  Bub also put her hands on the middle of the rolling pin, while I used the handles at the ends.

Get tools that help your little one.  Bub was a star with the cutter.  I got cutters with handles over the top especially for her.  She needed help to press hard enough, but I pressed my fingers on the circle rim when I helped, not on her hands or the handle.

Don't be in a rush.  Bub was really good at the procedure of cutting ("Scone!" every time) then putting the cut-out on the pre-floured tray.  Just pulling the dough out of the cutter is new and tricky and putting each scone in it's own carefully chosen place on the tray is a thoughtful task.  If you've done anything with toddlers you may already know that rushing something (or someone) that shouldn't be rushed is a sure-fire way to create trouble*.

Look at that messy tray! So much shuffling :)

Mess means it's going well.  I use a little sushi dipping dish for milk when brushing.  Bub hasn't been very good at painting - very random and without much concern for colours or making a mark - but all her concentration went into loading that brush and carefully putting milk onto each scone.  She was very deliberate and thorough, with milk going everywhere because she wanted lots of it on her brush.  It was cute as all get out.  By the end she even had the obligatory flour in the hair.  This is what washing is for.

The next time we make scones someone will take pictures.  I might even make it into a picture story for Bub because she loves the photobooks of family holidays & activities.  As I type this, I think I might actually have become one of those mummy bloggers for real.  Pictures stories of our scone baking?  More pureed fruit for the reusable food pouches?  Oh, and Hub was busy in the shed cutting out parts to make a stepping stool for Bub - because we're that adorable.  I can least reassure myself that I still have rubbish photography on my blog.  Plus I don't remember when the laundry was hung up and I have no idea how to grow veggies.  Stereotypical perfection is a long way off for me folks!

"More scone?"

*I think there's probably some law out there about it... "The stamina and creativity of your toddler's resistance is inversely proportionate to your task's urgency and importance." Or some such.

D271: It all my fault! Yey!!

I'll start with the key point here...

Tip of the day: If you love your machine, use quality thread.  It affects the tension and the debris and build up in the machine (at least). The quality of your machine's performance begins with the thread.

The poor quality thread in the bobbin is fluffy

My sewing machine dealer provides a free lesson on any machine purchased.  Today I used mine.  While I waited for the previous lesson to finish up I mentioned I'd had trouble with my machine's tension and was worried about the timing.  The technician plugged it in and, after looking at my trial swatch, did these things:

• Changed the needle
• Oiled the only user-accessible oiling spot available.

Thunking sound gone.  :0  

Stitches even and beautiful.  :O

Me stunned. 

And delighted!!  It was me!  I'm not sure which thing made the difference - he didn't run it between the changes to see - but there are three things that may have caused the problem.

1. The needle may have been bent. This is highly likely when I think of the fifty or so pivots I've done, on the nine or so zigzags so far.  This involves manoeuvring a lot of heavy fabric, which I'm very careful about, but it's only the needle holding it in place.
2. The thread fluff may have collected in the oil.
3. The thread fluff or quality may have affected the tension pads.

A low quality thread, such as a brandless bulk-buy three-pack spool I may or may not have been using, it can be uneven in it's thickness and fluffy.  The fluff can pack up corners and lubricated points.  The thickness can make the tension pads lose their even grasp on the thread as they adjust from thick to thin patches.  Top-thread loops on the back of your work can ensue.

I thought that, like with my old workhorse machine, I could throw anything at this one and it would suck it up.  I wrongly assumed that a higher quality, more refined and sensitive machine would adjust itself it all sorts of thread - coz it's awesome right?  Nope.  It's sensitively means it needs consistency and, well, protection.  Cheap and nasty thread was okay on my old 807 as it wasn't sensitive enough to notice.  My 530 needs better quality thread.  Like I said, the quality of it's performance begins with the thread.  Also, like a commenter on my quilting forum discussion mentioned, it's not really the machine, in the end; crap thread is crap.

I also learned that 'quilting' needles aren't desperately important; regular universal needles are fine.  It's more important to match the needle to the thread thickness and to the fabric.  Can I mention my awesome Bernina, again, and the page in it's manual dedicated to different needles and their purpose? 

So, with all that under my belt, I finished quilting the white zigzags tonight.  I plan to tie up all the loose ends and remove most of the basting, and then do the coloured zigzags.

I'm working from right to left in all the initial zigzags because, even though I'm using a walking foot, I want to avoid twisting or pulling the fabric by working back and forth.  It means that I'm not sewing the quilt in the most convenient way, which would be to put whichever end is closer through the machine throat. Instead I'm putting the same side through and rolling up its bulk, when necessary, for easier management.

Here is me working through the last of the zigzags with as much bulk as possible being put through the throat.

Top: At the start, I support the length of the quilt over my shoulder and change shoulders as I zig and zag.

Middle: Managing the bulk of the quilt through the throat of the machine is challenging, especially midway when pulling it all back through as I pivot to go up the zigzag (the 'zig'!). I keep a firm hold on the roll to ensure my sewing area is flat.

Bottom: To keep the quilt weight from pulling on the machine I hold the tail of the sewing with one hand and guide with the other.  I don't know if I could do this with a full-sized quilt!

D258-60: Happy Quilting Day!

Today is Worldwide Quilting Day!  I am very glad there is such a thing :D  I celebrated by buying a few quilting tools to see if they make life easier.

(The metal thimble is my usual, and the new plastic one is for quilters, but it's too big!  I'll have to make a fabric cap for my finger!  It's meant to be worn the other way around, I suspect, but I'm using it in place of my fingernail.)

I spoke with my sister-in-law a few nights ago, who has an extensive career as a seamstress and wedding dress maker.  She has made quite a few quilts but still doesn't count herself as much of a quilter...which means she knows waaaay more than me.

I've watched and read about the process of basting as a stitch, but how to approach a whole quilt is different.  I wanted to ask her about how to start, especially since my quilting will go from side to side.  A lot of the basting advice I've seen look like this:

1. Tape down backing squarely
2. Lay down batting
3. Lay down top quarterly
4. Begin in the middle and baste towards an edge, then the opposite edge.
5. Then baste from the middle to the other two edges.
6. Baste in even intervals parallel to both your first two basting lines (which will be in a cross form).

Then they talk about the quilting beginning from the middle and working it's way out.  

I've gotten a walking foot specially because I knew I'd be doing straight stitching on quilts - I love the repetition of straight lines in some modern designs - and I've had frustrating experiences with layers shuffling in the past.  I wondered if that might still be a problem with a walking foot and if basting would make a difference, and it does. So...

Tip of the day: If you're quilting path has a direction, baste perpendicular to that.  I'm basting in a north-south direction because my quilting will be east-west.

My basting is quite frequent, but I'm being finicky as I've not machine quilted before.  I ruined a fingernail (heavens!) with my straight-needle basting so I splurged $3 and bought a curved one.  

I'm not sure I love it yet - it's thick, it's hard to get a small stitch length and it's a bit flippy while wearing a thimble - but I suspect it's still better than a straight needle, especially if the holes can be worked out later.  The plastic thimble was in case the curved needles didn't workout, but I forgot how small my digits are - it almost slides to my second knuckle.  Still, trying out new toys is hardly a hard ask.  

Hope you were able to enjoy World Quilting Day somewhere too, even if it was simply to be under one! (A quilt, I mean, not a quilter.  Although...)

D256: Jumping in

So before we went away for our long weekend I decided to get started on basting this thing together.

Pre-apologies for the rubbish pics.  My work tends to be in the evening so good natural light isn't available for photography.  I'd promise to get some better shot before I'm done, but I'm not really the place you should be coming for a tutorial on quilt basting!  I do however have a great tip for you...

I have a big fold-out cardboard cutting board.  It's grid is in 2cm increments and I love it.   It fits on the floor snugly between our couch, the toy tub and our coffee table, or on our Ottoman by length with the width overhanging.  I love that I can fold up a portion if the work or the space is short.  One of its best features, besides being cheap, and folding and storing very nicely, is that you can use it for blocking.  Just a towel under a knitted item, plus some well placed pins and some misty water squirts, and you've got a sturdy flat blocking base.

Tip of the day: get a large cardboard cutting board (sometimes called a "pattern sewing cutting board").  It's cheap, easy to move and store, has a variable length and you can stick pins in it.  Be mindful of any precious tabletop you place it on, but otherwise it'll be the best $12 you ever spent. 

I pinned the backing down, ensuring it was even, fairly well aligned and flat, and lay down the batting.  I was able to use my cutting ruler and the lines on the board to square up the quilt top and use pins to hold it in place around the outside.  Once I'd basted around the outside I set to evening the rippled, warped or puckered patches. The clip in my last post was so good at showing me where, why and how to pin.

The left, below, shows the alignment of the fabrics against the grid. The edges had been aligned, basted and the pins removed.

The first pin in the right photo is correcting the width of the border by pinching it a bit at the seam.

This is where I got to before I had to get to bed... Look at that cutting board go!

Not especially even pinning but it seems to be a fairly even top.  I haven't finished basting it yet anyway. That will be more evenly spaced and organised and I can give it a final check then.

D236-8: Zip zip zip!

I've been production lining these strips of colour/white QSTs.  I left timing it too late, but I had a hunch, and was right, that it takes me about half an hour to sew up one colour.

I order the squares using the guide I've taped to the extension table and zip zip zip them as quickly as I can, with careful pinning.  Then I put the strips aside until an evening when it suits me to press them. Tonight I had six strips, making three colours.

Oh my goodness the pressing.  I don't know how long it takes coz I do it in front of the telly and stop and start, but it's fiddly.  And here's what I learned from that...

Tip of the day: Quilting work needs an iron with as simple a surface as possible.  The star shape for the steam in my iron is fine for shirts, but annoying as all get out for pressing lots of little seams.  It collects and crookedly creases them all. Grrr.  

Tip of the day: Fitting your craft time around your baby time

When they nap, you craft.  

Do the desperate must-do tasks* - chuck on the laundry or whatever is time dependent, do the baby's dishes, feed yourself - then skip the emails, the book, as well as anything you can do while Bub is up (i.e. other housework).

Then start your craft.  Start as soon as you can.  It doesn't matter if it's thinking, planning, organising, doodling, actually putting needle to fibre - start.

And here's the antithesis of that advice:  Don't put off starting because the baby 'might wake soon'.

This hesitation is the Achilles Heel of all Bubbamummas.  It's a furphy, a ruse, a con.  

Of course she might wake soon, but she might not...  What if you knew you had a solid 40mins guaranteed?  You'd start, yes?  Well, pretend you do and begin.  Even if she does wake in 5 mins, which she sometimes will, you'll have made a dint in something. And that's something!

That's the best advice I have about productivity with babies and toddlers.  I'm not sure at what point craft time can realistically overlap with their waking time.  I've done some simple knitting while she's pottered around me.  I've been able to sew while Bub lunches by me in her high chair, but I wouldn't try it when she's running about.

The only other thing that makes a difference to my productivity (besides sleep) is space.  I'm fortunate that Bub shows no interest in my craft stuff that's around the living areas.  It's not laid out, pins exposed with scissors in reach.  However my machine is on the table, out of reach but handy to me, and there are boxes of fabric about and snaplock bags of quilting squares.  But! I would love to have a room I could close behind me where the work actually is laid out, pinned and ready to go.  If you have such a room please stop reading this and go use that glorious box you lucky thing.

Here are some other posts I've enjoyed along the way of this blog... Maybe they have the magic recipe for you.

Check out guest blogger Kathy Stowell, and her post about Sewing with Kids, hosted by Sew Mama Sew.  She follows 6 steps to fit it all in, including using any 5mins you can get every day!

See if Abby Glassenburg's One Touch Rule, over at While She Naps, is for you. 

Or maybe Sara of Sew Sweetness has your style.  I call it 'going hammer & tongs': "Even though I take care of my family during the day and work a part-time job on the weekend, I devote every spare minute and stay up until midnight every night, so that I can work on my bag designs and blog. I have found my calling, and I'll do whatever it takes to make it happen."

*I write this under the premise that you're reasonably rested.  Sleep trumps everything, especially in the early days of mumming.  If you have to choose between sleep and food, have a bowl of cereal and go to bed. For the love of all things cheesy, sleep if you need it.  Can you name the day in under a second? No? Go to bed.  Trust me: I didn't and it was often a mistake.

D229: Humans can't do random

From what I understand, it's really hard for humans to do random things, even moreso to organise things randomly. We're just inclined to create patterns and repetition, make links and meaning. And it's hard to clear your head and just...blaaah.

With these colours, I want the appearance of random. But I'm pretty sure if I actually tried to do it randomly (i.e. without planning) I'd end up with an imbalance or pattern in there somewhere. So this is me planning random.

Each pattern has been labeled A, B, C or D and I made a sequence that mixed them up fairly evenly.

A B C D  A D C B  D C B A  C D A B  A D B C  A C B D  B C D A  C A D B

My four-patch chevron 'phrase'.

It's a four-patch phrase: The chevron pattern uses four colours make one 'point' as a set. (I'm calling mine upwards points.)

And then I realised something. Colours will reveal patterns much better than letters! So I drew out what I had and realised it was horribly clustered. I redrew it twice more, using the sequence above in various ways. Then twice more using colours.

It was relatively easy to get a balanced pattern for a short 16-piece strip, but with a longer set it was hard. I instinctively want to have 'one of each' in each point to balance the patterns along the strip, and even wanted an equal number of each pattern in the top and bottom rows. (Yeah, I soooo wanted random.)

However there are only so many ways I can mix up with phrase without creating repetition across the points. I even thought of repeating the short phrase, but that's not random enough for me. The best I can do is evenly space the pattern clusters.

The bottom line of all that is I stumbled back at the starting gate*: creating 'randomness' and evenness is pretty much impossible when you've got four things in a four-part phrase. The real solution for me is to have more patterns. But we're beyond that point. Decisions must be made.

So tip of the day, folks: when planning a 'randomly-coloured' geometric quilt pattern, begin with noting the number of units in your pattern (your tile). The number of colours you want to work with should be a different number.

We have a winner!

My solution for this was to make a eight 4-square units. Each colour appears in each position twice. I shuffled them around until I was happy with the balance. And there is, in the end, a pattern. Can you spot it?

I've already sorted out the patterns in their row/colourway order to see if there's any clumping of plain colours, stripes or spots across the As, Bs, Cs and Ds. So hopefully it will balance vertically as well as horizontally.

Hopefully, when it's all sewn up, it will look like a serendipitous, carefree mess of oh-gee-I-just-threw-it-all-together-a-ha-ha.

*Hub and I agree: there must be a language somewhere that has a word for accidental self-sabotage.

D145: Tip of the day - Time yourself

 Last night it took 30mins to pin and sew three letters into place, and then sew five of them into flags.  So I knew, by the end of the night, that I had about another 3-4 hours of work left on this project.

This evening it took almost an hour to arrange and pin eight letter and sew on four.  With another nine letters to sew and about 18 flags to sew up, all of them to turn out and press, and then sew onto bias binding, I'm running on schedule.

On Saturday I only had a gut feeling that I hadn't enough time to finish this project; this maths confirmed it for me.  So, in hindsight, I was very glad I followed my hunch about the time available and not my desire to try to get the project done.

This is my take-away tip for myself and you: as soon as you get your groove, get your gauge.

Are you in the flow of knitting? About to do something you're going to repeat a lot? Glance at the clock and see how long it takes you to...

...pin the pattern and cut out the fabric for an A-line dress.

...get a cake in the oven from opening the cupboard to starting the oven timer. (Was your butter frozen or room temp this time?)

...ice three cupcakes. (Don't use the first two or three if you're learning).

...sew up the arm seam on a baby's jacket.  That's about a foot of sewing.

...knit a row, or 100 stitches, or five rows, or 5cm of jumper front with this weight yarn.  

...Figure out your actual stitch-per-minute or rows-per-minute rate for the current task: knit for 5mins straight, uninterrupted (or interrupted, telly on or off, whichever is more likely), count your stitches or rows and divide by 5.

Whether it's for this task right now, planning for coming events or so you can go to bed at a reasonable hour (HA!) knowing your working speed is empowering.

For longer projects, make a note how long it took to complete a project and the rate at which you worked.  For example, I'm going to go back in Ravelry, where I record all my knitting projects, and note in my Shawl Collar Sweater project that it took me a fortnight to complete it when I worked on it nearly every day.  If I knew how many hours it took, I'd note that as well.

For me, knowing how long I'm going to take can be motivating.  I can get my hands around the task and see the end.  I also find it quite rewarding to have an awareness about my work, as it feels like my experience is starting to show.  

Last thing:  I also recommend flipping thoughts like "Ugh! I have so many hours to go STILL" on a task that's become stale, into "Only this long till the next thing!"  This silver lining, folks. Talk it, work it.

D143: Well, well, well... if it isn't the old alphabet...

I've had it in mind to make bikkies of ones, exclamation marks and the letters of Bub's name for her first birthday, and ice them too, of course.  A few weeks ago I bought some Fred & Friends Letter Pressed Cookie Cutters and Letter Pressed Numbers.  The cutters and the boxes were full of promise and I was delightedly keen to go.  

Tomorrow were seeing our family for Bub's birthday, so I'm doing a test run for next weekend when we see Hubs family and aaaaaall our friends (well, many of them).  I'd like for the biscuits to be the party favour, but I'll skip it altogether if they don't come up to scratch.

Below are some tips for working with this product.  

TLDR? Roll out the dough, and cut and stamp the biscuits before chilling. Stamp the biscuits deeply, chill them for a full 30mins, bake till browned (for me, 12mins).

I'm familiar with the CTAW biscuit recipe (which rises quite a bit) so decided to try the one recommended with the stamps.  Here it is, somewhat summarised.  I had to make changes anyway, so am taking liberties with the presentation*:

Fred's Favourite Sugar Cookies*

• 1 cup (250g) butter
• 1 sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 cups flour

1. Cream the butter and sugar till fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla, mix thoroughly
3. Sift together dry ingredients
4. Add dry ingredient to mixture in two batches. Ensure it's thoroughly mixed.
5. Split sought in two and roll out each between two sheets of parchment or grease proof paper. 
6. Chill for 30mins.
7. Use stamps to cut and impress dough.
8. Bake for 8-10 mins, or until biscuits are browned around the edges.

Steps 5 - 7 are where I had concerns.

The stamps have rounded edges and are not that sharp. Even if I was to create a rectangular shape, and even if I could perfectly tessellate the stamps into that rectangle, there would still be off-cuts at the corners and under the stamp edge.

I wasn't sure of the purpose of the chilling.  Was it a binding/resting step? Or was it to control the spread and rise of the biscuits?  If so, that progress would be lost when the offcuts were kneaded, re-rolled and cut again.

So, I experimented. I rolled, cut and pressed all my biscuits and lay them on parchment in three batches.

The first batch was not chilled.  Also, I was still learning how deeply to press the stamps.

It was doing the 1 when I realised how much deeper I should be pressing.

The second batch were well pressed and chilled for 10mins.

See the slight bulge on the sides? That's how hard you press.

The last batch was well pressed, chilled for the full 30mins, and baked 12mins.

Finally, she figures it out.  Hope these ones are crunchy too.

So there you have it!  Press well, chill well, bake well.
I wonder if chilling the CTAW bikkie recipe would have the same effect...

In other news, I won't have my sewing project ready for my family's gathering.  If you've been reading for the last few days you've probably figured out that I've been sewing a birthday bunting for Bub.  I'm really pleased with how its going, but I've only done three letters of 18 and some flags.  This makes me a quite sad really, but I should spend the morning making a second thing for the arvo tea and icing these bikkies (more practise for next week). I won't have time to sew on the rest of the letters, the rest of the flags and sew the bunting together.  I don't know where the day went :(

--------

*It's worth mentioning, the recipe on the Letters box was wrong.  It listed "1 egg" twice and didn't list flour at all.  If I hadn't bought the Numbers box - with a recipe that was the same in every other way - I couldn't have used their recipe.  Admittedly, this did not bode well for the quality of the product, but Bub slept for 7hrs in a row last night so optimism lined the day.

D132: Tip of the Day - Cutting Mandarins for Babies

Mandarin pieces need to be halved for babies, both to prevent choking and to remove pips.

Chop first! It's hard to see here but I've already removed the pips from this one.  

I'd let Bub have a go at pulling them out by herself if only she didn't play Chubby Bunnies* with all her favourite foods.

In other news, we're up to the neckline in our knitted baby gift.  Hopefully I'll finish the front tonight.  :D

*Remember the Chubby Bunnies party game? Stuff a marshmallow in your mouth and say "Chubby Bunnies". Repeat. Whoever can still say Chubby Bunnies with the most marshmallows in their mouth wins.  I'll be putting my money on Bub.

D128: Tip of the day - Joins in knitted cuffs

Sometimes yarns have a bulge where a ply (a little thread within the yarn) begins and ends and they've been worked together, such as with weaving or an attempt at felting.  Sometimes there's just a little knot with two little tails.  This yarn I'm currently working has given me a knot and it's landed in the cuff of a sleeve.  (These knots pretty rare:  in the two balls of yarn I have left I can't even find one to photograph for you.)

The little blighter

Initially, I wasn't fussed about it.  I planned to work it so that the tails would appear at the back of the fabric, if at all.  In fact, joining a new ball by tying the two threads at the back of the work is perfectly acceptable and has been done since time cast on.

However, there are at least two places where this shouldn't occur: the collar and the cuff.

I'm pretty sure I can still weave this little tuft into the work, but I can't be sure it won't pop out in the future.

I should have cut out the knot and rejoined the yarn at the side.  The side seam is an easier place to hide an end and this is important because cuffs (and collars) often have both sides exposed, especially in baby items where lengths are turned back for growth.  I forgot that when working on a sleeve the 'right side' really applies to the arm and shoulder part because often both sides of the cuff may be the 'right side'.

So let it be known people: if you're working on a portion that may have both sides showing during its use, keep knots out of the work by rejoining at the seams.

In other news, and for my own records, I made another fruit purée with the following stats:

6 medium/large apples, two pears & 1 banana = about 42 tbsp of purée (840ml or a bit over 3 1/3 cups)

D124: Tip of the day - Hang your ball low!

Does your ball hang low? Well, I should, in some way or another.

While working on this garment, knitting left-handed in the Continental style I usually use with circular needles, I had patches of loose stitches.  Sometimes, this was due to dropping the tension when doing purl stitches - I'm still developing my reliability with tension when switching between stitch styles.

However, during the arms holes and neck bands I realised how this was happening.  (I knit faster than I think, it would seem...)

Here's a picture of how the tension is meant to be held when knitting Continental:

The wrapping and hold or traditional Continental knitting

This yarn is lovely and smooth.  in these winter months my fingers are slimmer, cold and smooth and the yarn just slips through like ribbon. Here's how I held it for this project:

The way I wrapped and held my yarn for this project.

And here's how those loose patches turned up:

The ravelled loop already in my hand, and what the little blighter looks like when drawn out.

As the garment is turned the yarn becomes ravelled*, sometimes into it's twist and sometimes against.  Either way, a little loop sometimes evolves and travels towards the work as I knit.  Soon, it's inside my fingers and I haven't even noticed it's there until it's too late, slackening my work - even just one or two   stitches, and developing a loose bunch of stitches.

In my hurry with this project, I haven't taken the diligence to go back, unstitching suspect bunches and reknitting them with better tension.  I also let my work space be very crowded, with bags, needles and my book, because I was keeping it from little hands.  This meant the yarn got wrapped up in things sometimes - another tension trap!

The solution is to anchor the ball of yarn somehow, and some distance and gravity would suffice.  So whether it's next to your feet or in a container, hang your ball low so that the yarn doesn't loop on itself before it gets to the thing that should control the yarn: your tension hand!

*yup, I choose to use that word this way

D101: Quick Tip of the Day: Gadgets!

Today's creative thing is a short Tip of the Day...

Kitchen aid thingy plates

USE YOUR GADGETS!! (Creatively too!)

In the last few months I've used my kitchen aid thingy - I don't even know what it's called - and it's been marvellous.  Capsicum, mushrooms, carrots, fruit - so quick.

From slicing apples for the Apple Roses, to doing all but the broccoli in our dinner meals, to grating apples again! This thing has become very handy since I started pulling it out more.  My thumb says to remind people that the slicer plate is also very sharp. :(
I'm sure one day I'll use the zester, as well as that other plate for something other than grating when the grater needs washing...

Tonight, while cutting pears for baby food, I thought I recalled a corer in our drawer.  It's not the kind of corer I prefer for apples, so I've ignored it for ages (not even sure how it got there). But for soft juicy pears it was pretty much perfect, and way better than a knife.

Corer, spring mixer, parmesan grater

The spring mixer looks useless, but it's actually quite robust and excellent at fast mixing.  I usually use it for cake batters, but have used it to cream butter and sugar for other things too.

And the cheese grater... do you know you can grate frozen butter?  Well, not that neatly, BUT STILL!  I gave it a go!*

So I encourage you too - dig through your utensil drawer and remind yourself of the bits and pieces you've got.  I'd love to hear of any second uses you've found for what you have!  :)

*I also tried using the slicer to chop cold butter for faster melting, but frozen butter really is like a kind of stone - brittle yet changeable.  Oh well, now I know.

D97: Quick Tip of the Day!

Today's creation is regular dark chocolate brownies from the Donna Hay chocolate book.  I haven't made these yet, somehow.  

Quick Tip!

Here's my tip for lining your pan: once you trace around your tin on the grease-proof paper, cut your corners like so - parallel to an edge and then inside the curve - and tuck the long flap under the shorter edge.  It captures things quite neatly.