Hard Boiled Eggs or "Riffing on a Theme"

AJ Knits

Episode 38:

1. Production scheduling

   1. Production

   2. What’s in My Teapot

   3. Materials Sourcing

   4. After 5

2. Production

   1. Gnome Socks By Spilly Jane

      1. I had a little progress on these this week. I’m in to the three color rows which include the tip of the gnomes beard, his shirt, and the main color.

      2. I have a feeling that my gauge is too loose. There aren’t any blatant holes but… I think in my quest to make sure my floats aren’t too tight I’ve over compensated and the stitches are too loose.

      3. For a bit of inspiration I took a look at Mary Scott Huff’s video for the Rockin’ Sock Club Where she discusses stranded color work.

         1. Can I just say that I love Mary? Her Sense of humor kills me! Do check out her blog on the exploding over head lighting. This is sooo something that would happen to me and I would be blogging / hiding under the dining room table as well. Don’t even get me started on the Laundry – cano.

      4. Right now my gnome socks are resting in my project pile. I have to decide whether or not the gauge issue is an issue and they should be frogged or to press on and get a better handle on the technique and then possible frog and do it right or press on boldly and cross my ankles to show only sock #2. (which will surely turn out better… right?)

2. Ruffled and Ruched Scarf by Pam Powers

   1. I have a friend whose mom is Turning 65 at the end of the month. I gave her a choice of what she’d like hoping she’d take an FO and she requested a rosette. Which I was baffled by. I offered socks, hats, shawls, mitts, and she asked for a rosette.

   2. So I sent her daughter the picture of the Ruffled and Ruched scarf and that’s what we’re doing.

   3. I’m knitting this from _______________ which is an Acrylic Alpaca blend with Grey, Teal, Bronze, Purple, and Magenta in it mixed with Alpaca. Which may be a bit sacrilegious to mix lama and acrylic but the fabric looks nice and the yarn feels not so crunchy. ?

      1. Acrylic has 2 redeeming qualities in my book. How well it takes color / colors available and ease of care.

   4. Of course Hobby Lobby didn’t have more than 3 skeins of the same dye lot so I’m switching skeins every row to avoid the patchy dye lot problem.

3. Hexipuffs!

   1. Still Hexipuffing away. Another 2 down 352 to go. :P

   2. I’m thinking I may get a quilt faster if I start making my puff out of worsted weight on Sz 8 or 9 needles…

4. The Bangle yarn Experiment

   1. While I was n hobby lobby I checked the sale rack and found 2 Skein of white “Bangle Yarn”

   2. This stuff look like White fuzzy packing peanuts strung on a cord.

   3. At first I tried to Q hook crochet it. And found it was too hard to find the little cord in the packing peanuts.

   4. Then I did some research on You tube for how to knit wit this stuff and found a video on the red heart version. The video tutorial showed casting on 2 stitches between each peanut puff. The ht worked out pretty well but I was knitting in Garter stitch and the peanut puffs were stacking up so that 10 rows gave me three inches of fabric. I pilled it off the needles. When I’m feeling adventurous again I’ll see if stockinette distributes the peanut puffs any better. Until then just another oddity in my stash.

3. What’s In my Tea Pot

   1. Blueberry Tea From Adagio Teas

   2. A delightful blend of bright Ceylon black tea, fresh blueberry flavor and playfully accented with dried blueberries. An aromatic cup, definitely more like the 'highbush' variety of blueberry (highly fragrant and delicately tart). Fresh flavor, slightly sweet and rounded texture - not too juicy. Great hot or iced and easy to blend with other teas, too. Try it with Vanilla Black or Cream for added creamy texture.

   3. The ceylon is nice and my first thought was mmmmm.... black tea. It reminds me of the Oh SO yumy black tea my favorite Vietnamese restaurant #1 pho uses in their bubble tea. The blueberry is really more of an after thought that's more of a scent in the back of the sinuses than a flavor. Very warm and comforting. I collapsed on the couch with this at the end of a rough day and it perked me up quite a bit.

   4. Speaking of perking up I found a few fact about tea and caffeine this week via Choice Organic teas http://www.choiceorganicteas.com/caffeineintea.phpb

      1. The more oxidized the tea the greater it's caffeine content.

      2. Beverage Caffeine Per 8 oz Cup

      3. White Tea 30-55 mg

      4. Green Tea 35-70 mg

      5. Oolong Tea 50-75 mg

      6. Black Tea 60-90 mg

      7. Coffee 150-200 mg

      8. Consider this:

If an 8 oz cup of brewed coffee contains 150 mg of caffeine, a 16 oz cup of coffee will have 300 mg.

Similarly, when you drink an 8 oz cup of tea served from a brewed pot of tea, doubling the serving size to 16 oz results in double the caffeine.

But steeping tea in a mug is different.

If you were to brew a mug of tea using 8 oz of water and one tea bag, the total caffeine could be around 40 mg. If you were to brew a larger mug of tea using 16 oz water and one tea bag, the total caffeine would not double. It would still be only around 40 mg

4. Material Sourcing

   1. I had a bout of Start – itis for the wheel but when I looked around all my bobbins were full of half started things.

   2. So grudgingly I decided that I had better get on with something that was in progress.

   3. Back on the wheel is the Jacob fleece from the Anne Arbor Fiber expo

   4. This was giving me fits last week and I think I figured out why. The roving is half black and half grey and for some reason the staple length of the black is totally different in spots to that of the grey. So I’ll be spinning along moving from grey to black back and forth across the top of the fiber and hit a short spot in the black and get a break in the single. Now that I know what I’m looking out for things have been going along a bit better. I finished that 1st ball and I’m a bout a ¼ of the way into the second ball.

   5. I’m also running out of bobbin so I may need to Andean ply the 1st bobbin to free it up… Or perhaps just send out the search party for another Bobbin. I think there is one somewhere unaccounted for!

   6. Speaking of things unaccounted for. B found about and 18 inch long chunk of roving under the couch. He was rooting around under their looking for his Firey – Flynn the Fire truck and said “Here mommy, here’s some of your fluffy stuff.” It’s some of the Nantucket from Copper pot Woolies that I made my awesome dragon rider hat from. I have a bit of that yarn left over and now it looks like I’ll get a smidge more! But this doesn’t say much for the house keeping around here. Hey there’s knitting and spinning to be done!

5. After 5

   1. Spaghetti Sauce

      1. Despite my polish last name my MIL is Italian.

      2. My genealogy geek did some digging much to my in-laws dismay and found that the Italian side is also Sicilian by way of Palermo.

         1. Palermo has PALM TREES and Mummies! It must have been _really_ bad for the family to leave that for SNOWY non Palm Treed CLEVELAND.

      3. My mil’s Spaghetti Sauce contains meat balls, sausage, ground meat, mushrooms, and hard boiled Eggs. It’s a meal unto itself.

      4. I’ve never understood the hard boiled eggs but my husband assures me they are absolutely necessary. Much like the Pupa Cu L’ova http://www.food.com/recipe/Italian-Easter-Egg-Basket-Pupa-Cu-Lova-218686 (Italian Easter basket cookies). Which also have hardboiled eggs in them and can not ever be absent at Easter.

      5. Joe spend all of Saturday crafting a pot of sauce and we’ve been eating it ever since. Of course when we have a ton of warm hearty food in the house the weather perks up a bit and I feel like grilling out…

   2. Pinterest

      1. I finally bit the bullet and joined Pinterest this week.

      2. WHY ON EARTH DID I WAIT SO LONG!

      3. I usually have to be dragged kicking and screaming into new things. Like facebook… I waited forever to get a facebook acct and now I live on FB.

      4. Pinterest is like browsing Etsy with recipes! I found a couple of blogs with Jar cakes and even better Jar Pies! Mmmmmmmm! Can’t wait to try that.

      5. I’ve been adding a few FO’s up to pinterest as well. It’s really easy to get that little “Pin it” button on your blog page.

   3. Rifftrax

      1. Joe and I rewatched the Twilight movies with rifftrax this weekend. If you’re a fan of Mystery Science Theater you’ll love Riff Trax.

      2. Riff Trax is an MP3 that is downloaded from the Riff Trax website. When you start your DVD the mp3 gives you prompts to line up the riff Trax with the movie. What you get is a bunch of guys cracking jokes about the movie as you watch it.

      3. Yes, I know that can be the most annoying part of going to the theatre. But I own the DVD’s I’ve seen them a million times so the jokes enhance the experience plus they make my husband more inclined to watch chick flix.

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