sparkly blueberry dough

The most recent batch of play dough made here has reduced my princess loving child into a giggling puddle of sparkly, blueberry stained glee. 

1 C of water + handful of frozen blueberries boiled for a bit, strained, then boiled down again till you have about 1/2 C of liquid = your natural food dye

I was going to make a batch with turmeric powder but I discovered that it was all gone. Curry powder was going to be too.....pungent. Cocoa powder is a great idea too, but it smells amazing and Violet already has a problem with eating things that smell less than amazing. She doesn't need any more encouragement to start wolfing down bites of nasty play dough. 

You leave your liquid in the pan and throw in 1/2 C flour 

 1/4 C salt

1/2 T cream of tartar

1 T of oil (at the last minute as you gasp that it's already cooking and haven't added the oil...if you want to follow my recipe exactly) and stir while heating over medium heat. 

Once it all comes together you plonk it out onto a surface to cool till you can knead it. Then you let your child "sprinkle" an unmeasured and excessive pile of martha stewart glitter into it before kneading it all together. After that comes the glitter removal process from your hands and clothes and utensils.

To Clover's delight, this matches her favorite skirt almost exactly.

holy geez, is it really friday?

2013 has been a terrible blogging year for me so far. Honestly, there are several times a day when something comes across my mind that I think would be nice to blog about quickly, but life is not suited for it at the moment I guess. My kids HATE it when I'm on the computer. I started typing this when I thought the kids were happily occupied in their room, but they burst down the stairs at the first sound of a click. It's uncanny.  I have no idea how other people manage to put together a well thought out post every day. 

Also on the back burner have been most of the creative arts. Once I got out of the rhythm of working a little on something each day it was hard to get back in. Parenting also kind of took over. But knitting has been coming along!

Here is when I had only gotten the ribbing done on my Downton knit along hat. The blue in this shot is way more intense than it is in person

Then the leaves started showing up, and my mind was blown that this was actually working.... that my tragic knitting skills hadn't totally destroyed this project and it was actually starting to look like something! 

Progress as of this morning: the first row of leaves is nearly complete and the second is taking shape. So far no mistakes that will affect the outcome. Not even a wrong stitch count at the end of a row. I think there has been an angel sitting by my side micromanaging this one. Lol. I've had to consult the master instructor (youtube) several times when I encountered stitches I had never done before, but nothing has been too difficult. I'm excited! This poor wonky thing is going to need the shite blocked out of it when it's done though. 

 

We took a weekend trip to Algonkian park last Saturday when the weather basically grabbed us by the shirts and threw us outside, lest we suffer a painful punishment.  Full of gnarled, huge trees, this park was perfect for the little imaginations with us. All of the big holes in the tree trunks were mysterious hiding places, and fallen logs a place to have an adventure. The only thing stopping us from enjoying it longer was the fact that I'm pregnant and decided to drink iced tea on the way over to a park where there were no bathrooms. Brilliant. By the time we stepped out of the car I already had to pee. 

An Amazon box became a little village this week. I took instructions from the girls on drawing our village in sharpie, and then we all colored it together. So romantic. Except that it took forever, and mostly consisted of me cleaning up an epic crayon mess every five seconds. 

I've also got some kombucha brewing in my pantry, and some grand ideas about getting a manual grain mill and grinding flour to make sourdough bread from my new Tartine book.

 

Lately I have been trying to focus more on enjoying my kids where they are right now, at these ages, with these interests and personality quirks, these little cheeks, little people needs, little people energy, their thirst to learn skills and information. I'm a forward looker, often with my eyes on the horizon to see what's coming next, which can often lead to missing what's going on right in front of me. And these little people aren't going to be so little for much longer. 

On that note I need to go read some stories and play a game with my girls. Not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of our day though.....

mushroomy foldover clutch plus some new books

My sewing machine still works. It was iffy....the cover hadn't even been taken off of it for some unknown time - several weeks or so before Christmas. 

But my deal old Pfaff jumped right back into the action with no problem. The only rust in the situation was on me! There are several things that I really could do because they need to be done. Violet has a lack of pants that aren't either leggings or blown full of holes. Clover could use a few t-shirts even though she likes to live in two shirts on rotation. But ever since I saw

 Skirt as top's foldover doily clutch tutorial 

and the

You and Mie leather accent clutch mod

I was inspired to make one like them for myself with a mushroomy linen fabric. 

Unfortunately I didn't have any mushroom fabric or leather, but I did have some nice blue hemp/linen blend leftover in my stash, so I had to make a print. This was made with a couple of old wine corks and some crappy fabric paint that I picked up at Joanns. I don't recommend buying fabric paint there....

Jacquard is so much better quality, and the colors in the paints I got are weird. Why, I ask, are things labeled with names like "red" or "crimson red" all various shades of pink? 

I decided to grab some crappy paint anyway, and carved out stamps from old wine corks. The place where the hole from the corkscrew went through is where the dot ended up on all of the mushroom caps. Lol. 

It's lined with some scraps of Sarah Jane that make me happy when I open my clutch

Now I'm back to knitting again. The Downton knit along has started, and after two false starts on my project due to using the wrong size circular needle, and an aborted long tail cast on after running out of tail, I'm now partway through the ribbing band on my hat. Hopefully I'll get some shots of my progress tomorrow and update on that. I'm excited! We also just finished the last episode of season two and can start watching season 3 now. Yay!

In other news I'm obsessing over two books that my parents got me for my birthday. One is Ladled by Kimberly Harris, whose blog "The Nourishing Gourmet" I follow and love. It's all about making super nutritious and delicious soups with a base of homemade stock. There are so many recipes in this. One I'm interested in trying soon, among many, is the authentic pho recipe.

Source: thenourishinggourmet.com via Tara on Pinterest

And the other is Tartine Bread

which is an incredibly beautiful book about making traditionally leavened bread. It's an interesting mix of cooking instruction, history, narrative, and biography. I love how it starts out with the story of the author's quest for making the perfect loaf of bread, and his journey around the US and into rural France before opening Tartine in California. The photography in this book is to DIE FOR. And I can't wait to start up a culture to make some of this bread out of.

Source: tartinebread.com via Tara on Pinterest

arbutus cowl knitting project

Just got this cowl blocked and ready to gift. It's the Arbutus cowl from Island by Jane Richmond, knit up in an alpaca/merino blend from Three Irish Girls yarn. The yarn is really beautiful, and the colors look great together I think. It's also very drapey and squishy as a finished object, and I hope the recipient likes it! 

Lets ignore the fact that I somehow managed to line up front and center one of the lines of awesomely botched short row wrapped stitches. Despite several videos on youtube and endless fiddling and adjusting, I still had a hell of a time figuring out how to find and pick up those wrapped stitches in the short rows. So the project is now "lacy". Boom. Bonus feature....

 

Getting a shot of it being worn ended up meaning me and my iphone. I like the fit of this cowl, and it took less than a skein to make a pretty full looking accessory. So despite my little boo boos making it, I still think it looks nice. With it all crumpled up when it's worn you probably can't see the "lacing" very well. Ha. 

I think I need one of these for me now since I'm a big cowl lover......but I'm a little scared of those short rows now. 

 

Next up is the Downton knit along! Woo hoo! It's silly, but I'm kind of excited and feel like I joined a little club. 

I'm going to be knitting this Rustling Leaves Beret in Tosh sock, the denim colorway. 

Pray for me. lol

knitted gloves and a birthday

 These have been finished for a long time, but I finally blocked them this week. They are the Rathtrevor gloves from Island by Jane Richmond. They are miraculously not FULL of mistakes, which is my specialty, but there is a real winner on the thumb of one of the gloves. When I used my DPNs to pick the stitches back up on it I somehow managed to begin knitting inside out and the stitches on the outside ended up being the purl side. Brilliant. 

Tim says the thumb looks "reinforced"

I used some superwash merino wool in charcoal for the project. It's amazing how much lighting and white balance affects how they look in photos. That's one of the frustrating thing about trying to choose yarn online. The yarn looks different in every photo you see! 

I just ordered some tosh sock in denim for a downton abbey knit along coming up on luvinthemommyhood. I agonized over the yarn choice and then realized that the colorway I wanted (celadon) was out of stock everywhere. As soon as I placed the order I panicked and had buyers remorse. It's...going...to be....OK. ha

 

Did you know that it's darn near impossible to take a decent picture of yourself wearing a glove? Clover was an eager, if undersized, model for the task. I even remembered to wipe the raspberry residue from her face before taking a picture. 

The other bit of news is that I turned 27 on Jan 1st. It's always been a bit weird having my birthday on New Years day, but I'm grateful that it's a Federal holiday and Tim gets it off from work! 

We drove an hour to Ikea and I ended up leaving with nothing. Fail. But if you ask me where I want to eat out for a special meal, it will inevitably be at Fireworks Pizza in Leesburg. It's got less magic now that I'm pregnant because part of the appeal is the amazing beer menu, but the pizza remains delicious, crispy and woodfired, gourmet, local/natural, and the atmosphere is fun.  

I'm a bit too tired these days to have any major life crisis moment over my birthday so far, but I can feel it coming eventually.....lol. 

When mom gets to choose the pizza you end up with something like this. Pesto sauce, all natural salami, roasted red peppers, goat cheese, spinach, and mozarella. All that it could have used was some caramelized red onions. 

I've just casted off and begun blocking another gift for someone, so hopefully I'll be able to share that one soon. Still one knitted gift left to get done and then they can stop haunting me. In case it wasn't clear, these are Christmas gifts. Boo, me.