It's been quiet...

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I haven't been very creative lately...

Houndstooth

The Houndstooth bag has been felted and it turned out wonderfully! So much so that I think I shall make another, this time in green and black. I finally got my simple knitting machine in the mail and have spent some time getting it up and running. After a few rough starts, I finally figured out what had to be where and how to keep it from dropping stitches. When knitting the bag by hand, I can knit all 4 sides at once. On the machine, I have to do one panel at a time. Doing intarsia on the machine doesn't seem much faster than by hand since I'll have to sew it all together, but we'll see how it goes. I actually like the idea of sewing the panels together because it might help give more distinction between each side of the bag.

Closet's done, dude

The utility room closet is DONE! I cut the last shelves today and have started to move everything back in.

Everything tastes better when chocolate coated....

I decided to dip the caramels I made in chocolate and wrap them up. Yummie. I think I forgot to take a pic after dipping, but here's the pieces ready to dip... Brad's favorite way to eat them is straight out of the freezer. I prefer my chocolate and caramel at room temperature so that it melts in your mouth. We're meeting friends for dinner, so I'll be offloading much of this load on them, you can tell we like them way too much. Can't have all that candy sitting around for Brad and me.

And I now have 8 repetitions of the hounds tooth pattern done on the bag, just 6 more to go and it'll be ready to felt. It's going a lot quicker than I thought it would. It looks more hounds-toothy in the picture than it does in person. I'm not sure why. Ruth - I think this might be a good pattern for you, I'll have to send it along when I get around to sending you the hat pattern I promised.

I had been trying to get my grandmother's knitting machine to work for the last few months with no luck. I've spent many many frustrating hours with it. Ugh. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with the machine, or if I'm not doing something right. Grandma's machine is pretty fancy and has lots of bells and whistles, so I decided to start on something more simple. I won a basic knitting machine off eBay, I hope it arrives soon! It doesn't do anything but just knit. No intarsia, no ribbing, no tucking, nothing but knit.

We're off to see "Better Off Dead" at the Cedar Lee tonight and meeting friends for dinner beforehand. Should be lots of fun, I'm just hoping I don't get paged from work during the middle of it. Time to go check my databases to see if anything looks like it might cause me issues later.

Utility Closet - Check

It's been a busy week here for me. I was on call for work, so it meant that the lines between working and not-working times were a bit blurred. In the meantimes, I was able to just about finish off the utility room closet. I hung most of the shelving. I have to buy one more bracket for the shelf supports to go on the right side of the closet and then cut some shelves to fit the width of the closet. But then it's DONE! I also removed the bulky folding door that took up half the utility room when opened and replaced it with a folding accordion-style door. It's a little cheesy, but it does the job. Since all the shelving is hung from the walls, I'll have some space on the floor to put laundry baskets, which will be nice.

I got a little further on the hounds-tooth bag that I mentioned before. The pattern is just starting to emerge, I can't wait to finish it and get it felted and see how it turns out.

Meanwhile, here's my snow-crazy dog. We got lots of snow this week, and he loved bounding through it. You can see his "tracks" in the snow. When there's fresh snow, he makes a few tracks and then follows those until it all melts.

Caramel

I figured out the recipe for caramel....

1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup which sugar
1 cup brown sugar (am going to try next batch with 1.5 cups)
1 stick butter
1 can evaporated milk
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp vanilla

Combine Corn syrup and sugars in a large heavy bottomed pan. Heat on medium/high until the sugar starts to bubble a little and has become less granular. Add butter and mix until the butter is all melted. Stir in evaporated milk little by little.

Heat this mixture on high until it reaches approx 235 degrees farhenheit. Cook at that temperature for 2 minutes, then remove from heat. Stir in salt and vanilla, pour into prepared (buttered) pan, let cool, cut and wrap.

This is the closest I've come to the taste I like, while still having that great caramel consistency.

Done with the green

I took the utility room closet apart this afternoon. I had picked up some paint from the old house and got half the closet painted and realized that it looks really atrocious. It's a cool color in a room that you can accessorize with curtains and pillows and sundries, but in a closet it just looks like the sad ancient olive green stove left behind by a previous home-owner. So I'll be heading to Home Depot here soon just to get some plain white paint. I'm usually against white, but for the closet maybe it will just look clean and fresh. Yeah, that's it.

We didn't do the casino thing yesterday, insead we went to a yarn store, a tool store, and out to lunch at Willoughby brewing company. We got home and watched a movie, and Dugan and Stanley got comfy. So CUTE!!!

I started a hounds-tooth felted bag, pics coming on that once it has some shape to it.

Mom was over as well, she's a wiz at the tax thing from dad's rental business, so I feel like we have a handle on the craziness that is tax season now. Yay!

Brad's out of town this week :-( But at least that means I have GUITAR HERO all to myself...