I NEED chocolate! :)

Did you ever have one of these days? You wake up(Ha, should've known better), determined that it will be a good day, and you have 20 things to do?  Well, do you ever make it? OR does it go bust?  :)  My day today went bust.  :)

I just wish someone had been here to film this, cause I imagine it was pretty funny. Although, I wasn't laughing at the time.

As I was getting my ingredients out to make my blender cheesecake recipe, I was thinking that I should share this with you on my blog.  Yep, the cheesecake is sooo easy that everyone could make this. Until.......

So, here's the scene. I have all of my ingredients out, screw the base on my 38 + year old blender.(yep, wedding present) and put the first four ingredients in there and whirr it. Good, everything is fine, no problems. So, I cut up all of the softened cream cheese into tiny pieces, put them in there and turn it back on. OK, still working everything is OK and I turn my back to set the timer and WHOOSH!!!  The top pops off and as I turn around the glass pitcher goes flying off and lands on the floor!  Oh, and if that wasn't enough, the blades are still whirring at top speed, spitting milk, eggs, sugar, cream cheese all over the counter, cabinets, and floor! Ohhhhhhhhh, there went my day........

To make matters worse, The House in the Woods, is a fixer upper. The previous family put indoor/outdoor carpeting in the kitchen......... Not being MY priority, it is still there. How in the world am I going to get that mess out of the carpet?

I picked up the errant blender and placed it in the sink. Rolled up the throw rug and put that in the sink. Then found the dust pan and a small cutting board, for the firm straight edge, and tried my best at scraping this mess up. Then I scrubbed the carpet.  Oh, and I had to get if off the cabinets and off the counters, but those were easy in comparison. :)

I started to rinse off the blender and then said, NOPE. Off you go. I am not taking another chance with you. Everything was hooked up correctly and you blew your top.  Into the trash it went. Truthfully, I was a little upset in throwing it away.  It was like a friend.  I mean I used it for 38+ years.  I know the color isn't vogue, but it was my friend........

With that, I thought, crumb, now I need a new blender. ug.   AND just as quick I remembered, NO, I have a Ninja. :) Out the Ninja came and I made this chocolate pie on the other side of the recipe card. The directions say to put sweetened whip cream on top. I don't have that. After all I was supposed to be serving cheese cake.  But, I have ice cream!!  Ha!

So, today, instead of the easy cheesecake recipe, here is an easy brownie pie recipe.  :)

Impossible Chocolate Cream Pie
(it makes its own crust!)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup margarine or butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
2 squares(1 ounce each) melted unsweetened chocolate(cooled)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup biscuit mix(calls for Bisquick, but I use Pioneer Baking Mix)

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease 9 inch pie plate. Place all ingredients in blender container. Cover and blend on high 1 minute. Pour into pie plate. Bake until no indentation remains when touched lightly in center, about 30 minutes. Cool completely. Serve with sweetened whipped cream.

And yes, knitting is still happening!  I have joined a Knit ALong(KAL) with Jane Thornley. Jane is a knitting designer who thinks outside the box and doesn't follow a lot of traditional knitting rules.

I am working on a shawl. The upside down card is my color inspiration and the yarns are what I am using. All of my yarns are made by me.  One is an old silk garment, dyed and cut into strips.  The rest is handspun yarn. Some yarns are wool, some cotton and the off white one is mohair.

Oh, and I decided after having scrubbed the carpet and stepping on it and it feeling slimey(eeeew!) that I needed to steam the carpet. So, I took out the carpet steamer and have that portion of the kitchen carpet steam cleaned.

Fun projects and links to patterns!

I have been on a baby bootie craze.  I guess having a 5 month old grandson would do that to a gal. :) I wanted to make him some colorful booties. This is them! I used only 100% cotton yarns for these. The tie inserted at the ankle, seemed to keep them on. Shocker! The pattern I used for these is from Ravelry, found here. I did change up the pattern a bit, but my changes worked. :)



Next, I decided to have fun making dolls!!! I made these two dolls, one for each of our granddaughters. The pattern came from Interweave Press Knit's magazine, Summer, 2002.  The pattern is named Best Friend Doll, by Sandy Cushman. You will see my JoJo doll on my blog, she is knit from this pattern too. :) I must say, these dolls were a hit! The girls had fun with them most of the afternoon.
I made them to sort of look like the girls. One has blue eyes and the other brown. Then I used different brown cotton yarns, cut to be close to the length of each one's hair. Both girls wear glasses, so I fashioned glasses out of craft wire.  HINT: If you know a little/young girl with glasses, putting glasses on her doll is a big plus!
Pattern Here. The dolls are made from 100% cotton, but the clothing is a mixture of types of yarns.

Last, but not least, is Laurie's beautiful shawl. Laurie used her beautiful handspun yarn and made this shawl.
The pattern is a free pattern from Crystal Palace Yarns. The name is Fan Shawl.



House Remodel and Bunnies

When you arrive at the House in the Woods and drive up the driveway, this is pretty much what will great you at the front door. Last year, the pots were empty, the heat, drought and grasshoppers, took care of our potted plants. However, this year, I decided to plant some onions, broccoli and cabbage in the pots. So far, most of the gardening that I have done in TX, has not been very successful.  I have had gardens in other areas of the country, where we lived, and they have been successful.  So, we'll see how I do with the pots. I did just harvest some broccoli and that will be for dinner tonight!



Inside the house you would see lots of updating, needing to be done, and lots of updating, being done.  The latest finished project, is the laundry room!  I wanted my laundry room to be a fun place to visit.  :) I now have a deep sink and shelves to house my dye pots and supplies.  Everything has a home.  What a feature! The window is a bit bright, so you cannot see the curtain. But, I have hung a white linen napkin with curtain rings, on the rod. It makes a wonderful curtain!

One little project that I finally finished was this bunny project.  It took me a year to make these little guys. I started last spring and finished this spring. They just ended up on the bottom of the cotton yarn container and I moved onto other projects. When I found them several weeks ago, I decided to get them done!

The tails were supposed to be pompons, but I decided to crochet tails.

Here are their fronts.  :)  These bunnies are from the pattern by Danger Crafts, called Bunny Nuggets. The pattern can be found here on Ravelry.

These little bunnies were fun to do and now decorate my knitting studio for the spring season.

Apple Strudel

My mom originally found this recipe in a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook, that she had purchased when we visited the Lancaster County area of Pennsylvania.  The area is a wonderful place to visit and some of my favorite memories are of trips I took there as a teenager and again as an adult.

Anyway, back to the recipe.  I love to bake and I love apples.  It doesn't have to be autumn for me to bake with apples, I will use them any time during the year.

One way that we love to eat this dessert, is with vanilla ice cream.  But, it is good plain too. I am going to write the recipe as it came from the book and then my adaptations, will be in ( ). 



Pennsylvania Dutch - Apple or Peach Strudel

Into the bottom of a buttered baking dish(9x9 inch), put thick layers of apples or peaches.

Sprinkle with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.*

Dot with lumps of butter.

Into mixing bowl, combine:

1 cup sugar (1/2 cup granulated, 1/2 cup brown)

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup flour (1/2 c flour, 1/2 c quick cooking oatmeal)

1/2 tsp salt

Add one egg to this mixture and mix until crumbly. Spread over apples, bake in moderate oven (350 F) until crust is brown and apples tender. (30 minutes)

Serve plain, with milk, whipped cream or ice cream.

*Cinnamon/Sugar = 1/2 cup sugar + 1 Tbsp cinnamon.

This recipe is a family favorite, I hope you will enjoy it too. :)

Two Cars and Knitting

Squirrel - 3 points, Humans - 0 points

For the third time in 2 years, that dastardy squirrel has eaten the wires in the Blazer and tried to build a nest.

Again, we had it towed and Knit Girl (my Blazer) has now returned safely.  Turns out, this is quite common according to the tow truck driver.  On Friday, he had towed another customer's car for the same reason. It was fixed and returned home, that evening. On Monday that SAME owner called to have the same car towed back to the shop, because the squirrel had attacked again, that fast!  The tow truck driver has figured out the issue. Yippeeee!

Seems the newer cars, mine is a 2000(not so new anymore), have wires that are wrapped in a SOY (yes soy) based polymer type coating. The squirrels have discovered it and are eating like crazy. 

Watch out, no car is safe now. :) The news is out on the squirrel radio's and tv's.  They are attacking.  Never mind that they have to eat the copper wire inside that tasty soy treat, it is worth it.  :)

So, our mechanic has wrapped the wire treat in black electrical tape, in hopes to scare the squirrels off. We also put moth balls under the car in hopes that this will deter them as well.

 I finally decided what sweater to knit from my 1800 yards of handspun yarn. The Tweedy Aran Cardigan from Interweave's Knits Magazine. Sweater is started, don't know how long it will take to finish. Maybe for next winter, since I am not going to make it for this winter. Where is winter anyway?

Then, like all Americans, we have watched in horror as our gas prices have risen steadily at the pumps. The UPS Store guy, is also a Mechanical Engineer. He has been researching, for several years, what smaller older cars are still running well on the roads and watching for them to come for sale. You see, years ago in the USA, we had cars that had great gas milage. One of those was the Mazda Miata.  I now have a 1993 Mazda Miata, that gets 32 mpg. :) That should help the gas bill a bit, don't you think? Oh, and Lacy Girl (my Miata) doesn't have Soy based polymer on her wires!  Yippeeeee!

Wingspan and knitting

The Wingspan is a great pattern.  I found it on Ravelry and the pattern itself is free. To make it, you work short rows and the design is such that each row is shorter than the previous row. That is, of course, to the end of the triangle you are working on.  Then you cast on some stitches and start all over. Truly a fun knit, and fairly easy if you follow her directions and use stitch markers!

I used a self-striping yarn, so I didn't have to change colors to make the stripes. The yarn did that for me. The yarn that I used is call Poems and I used the worsted weight size with 10.5 US needles.

I made mine a little bit longer than the pattern called for, because I wanted the ability to wrap it around my neck.

For Valentine's Day, I knitted our new little grandson a red teddy bear. I put a bright lime green scarf on the teddy bear to liven him up. 

Robie House in Lego's and A New Idea

One of the knitting groups that I attend, is held in a local library.  It is actually a crafting group, and you will see various crafts being work on, from time to time. There are even free classes that are taught, should a person wish to learn a new craft.  This last month, a needlepoint class was being taught to some eager students.

Over the Christmas holidays, one of the prolific knitters in our group decided that she was going to build a Lego Kit of Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. The Robie House, designed and built in about 1910, is in the Hyde Park area of Chicago.  Quite a gorgeous home for its time and for today, as well. It is now a National Historic Landmark and can be seen by taking a tour of it. It was almost torn down twice, but saved each time.

Phyllis's house.

Here is Phyllis with her Robie House. There are 2,276 lego pieces in this kit.  Truly, amazing project to undertake.

The top of Phyllis's Robie house.

Here's the idea.  Jane, another knitter from the library crafters group, came up with a great idea for her stitch markers, needle point protectors and anything else you can fit in this box.  She purchased a pill box and is using it to safely store her knitting and crochet supplies.  The lids are see through and they lock down securely, so she can put the box in her knitting bag and take it with her. She is always prepared!

Don't you just love seeing what others create and the idea's that they come with?  I do.