I've been frogging, but not yarn, and not even knitting, the blanket is only one corner from completion and so has been my most active project this week, and the sock ... well it was abandoned during a lace talk earlier this week, really abandoned .. mid round even ... so needs some knitting time.
Yesterday I headed of to run errands, weekend non-workday errands. You know a, new laundry basket to hold dirty washing in the bathroom, a new seal for the stove top coffee pot, the potatoes that we had forgot to pick up at the supermarket, the paint for elder cubs kit set model plane that he ordered a few weeks ago, find something for lunch while I was out. Usual Saturday stuff, and in Total Food Equipment while buying the coffee seal I found frog cookie cutters. Not only that but frogs like I some times use to decorate things I make, knitknitfrog kinda frogs! I had to take one home ... and make bread frogs. Now I will admit sometimes I am one of 'those-parents', the kind that does things that take longer, involve more work, but should be healthier. My cubs would love me to buy flavored crackers and savory biscuits, Arnott's Shapes and their ilk.My cubs tell me with angelic faces that all the other kids have them in their lunch boxes, and they would like them too. But as the daughter of a health food nut, and sometime hippie (my mother who went way too far when she to mashed her potatoes with their skins on --uggh!!) I just shudder at the list of ingredients that are identified by numbers and codes. So I compromise ... I make bread dough (in the machine), roll it out thin and cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Some weeks we have teddy bears, other weeks gingerbread man and woman shapes, or flowers, or hearts, and since Christmas we have had ninjabread men*, all cooked from plain bread dough. Today we have several dozen frogs ...... I feel this might be ever so slightly Harry Potterish, perhaps it is too much. These bread shapes are brushed with milk or olive oil, and sprinkled with salt, or smoked paprika or cheese .. depending on my pantry, requests and mood, then baked on a pizza stone for 10 minutes. Once cooled they are frozen, and tossed frozen into lunch boxes each morning, with fruit, something vegy, a muffin, and whatever else is on hand to complete a lunch. By lunchtime they are thawed and fresh not stale. Yes I could default to sandwiches, but ... that involves stocking the fridge, and takes time each morning, and often they come home uneaten even when the cub itself prepared it! Making these is part of my weekend ritual, a batch of bread dough takes me 15 minutes to roll out and cut, and then its just a matter of rotating each batch through the oven to cook, whilst I do something else (knit, spin, dream, drink coffee, surf the knitterverse and online pen community forums ....). Most week days Bear and I even fill a wee box each of whatever shapes we have in the freezer to complete our lunches.
I'm nearly there on the blanket edge, one corner left. I'm not calculating repeats to go and ticking them off ... because if I did it would automatically end up miscalculated and somehow slow the whole process. Part of me wishes that I had knit this with a darker grey or black even instead of the blue ... but it is too late to turn back now. The blue works ... but perhaps it is not as 'sophisticated' as I would want it to be. Live and learn .... and I like it enough to keep and use it.
Wednesday I went to a talk by a visiting expert on lace. Rosemary Shepherd spoke about lace in fashion the first 300 years. I loved her talk and learned a lot bout how lace was valued and used and gendered and perceived differently at different times in history. I took my knitting but the lecture theater was very dark, with the dark grey yarn and 3x2 rib ... well I had to abandon knitting and just listen and learn. I've been so busy on the blanket lace edge I haven't even returned to finish the round of magic loop I started ..... oh well .. it will keep, possibly tonight I might finish the rib and start its pair.
Take care
eat frogs
na Stella
*Last weekend we even used those Ninjabread cutters to cut out toast sliced bread into shapes to make french toast, and over breakfast we decided that these must be Foreign legion solders, what other explanation could account for Ninja trained warriors made in french toast, served with maple syrup .. and it all got a little complicated on the nationality front.
Yesterday I headed of to run errands, weekend non-workday errands. You know a, new laundry basket to hold dirty washing in the bathroom, a new seal for the stove top coffee pot, the potatoes that we had forgot to pick up at the supermarket, the paint for elder cubs kit set model plane that he ordered a few weeks ago, find something for lunch while I was out. Usual Saturday stuff, and in Total Food Equipment while buying the coffee seal I found frog cookie cutters. Not only that but frogs like I some times use to decorate things I make, knitknitfrog kinda frogs! I had to take one home ... and make bread frogs. Now I will admit sometimes I am one of 'those-parents', the kind that does things that take longer, involve more work, but should be healthier. My cubs would love me to buy flavored crackers and savory biscuits, Arnott's Shapes and their ilk.My cubs tell me with angelic faces that all the other kids have them in their lunch boxes, and they would like them too. But as the daughter of a health food nut, and sometime hippie (my mother who went way too far when she to mashed her potatoes with their skins on --uggh!!) I just shudder at the list of ingredients that are identified by numbers and codes. So I compromise ... I make bread dough (in the machine), roll it out thin and cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Some weeks we have teddy bears, other weeks gingerbread man and woman shapes, or flowers, or hearts, and since Christmas we have had ninjabread men*, all cooked from plain bread dough. Today we have several dozen frogs ...... I feel this might be ever so slightly Harry Potterish, perhaps it is too much. These bread shapes are brushed with milk or olive oil, and sprinkled with salt, or smoked paprika or cheese .. depending on my pantry, requests and mood, then baked on a pizza stone for 10 minutes. Once cooled they are frozen, and tossed frozen into lunch boxes each morning, with fruit, something vegy, a muffin, and whatever else is on hand to complete a lunch. By lunchtime they are thawed and fresh not stale. Yes I could default to sandwiches, but ... that involves stocking the fridge, and takes time each morning, and often they come home uneaten even when the cub itself prepared it! Making these is part of my weekend ritual, a batch of bread dough takes me 15 minutes to roll out and cut, and then its just a matter of rotating each batch through the oven to cook, whilst I do something else (knit, spin, dream, drink coffee, surf the knitterverse and online pen community forums ....). Most week days Bear and I even fill a wee box each of whatever shapes we have in the freezer to complete our lunches.
I'm nearly there on the blanket edge, one corner left. I'm not calculating repeats to go and ticking them off ... because if I did it would automatically end up miscalculated and somehow slow the whole process. Part of me wishes that I had knit this with a darker grey or black even instead of the blue ... but it is too late to turn back now. The blue works ... but perhaps it is not as 'sophisticated' as I would want it to be. Live and learn .... and I like it enough to keep and use it.
Wednesday I went to a talk by a visiting expert on lace. Rosemary Shepherd spoke about lace in fashion the first 300 years. I loved her talk and learned a lot bout how lace was valued and used and gendered and perceived differently at different times in history. I took my knitting but the lecture theater was very dark, with the dark grey yarn and 3x2 rib ... well I had to abandon knitting and just listen and learn. I've been so busy on the blanket lace edge I haven't even returned to finish the round of magic loop I started ..... oh well .. it will keep, possibly tonight I might finish the rib and start its pair.
Take care
eat frogs
na Stella
*Last weekend we even used those Ninjabread cutters to cut out toast sliced bread into shapes to make french toast, and over breakfast we decided that these must be Foreign legion solders, what other explanation could account for Ninja trained warriors made in french toast, served with maple syrup .. and it all got a little complicated on the nationality front.
4 comments:
Love the bread idea, must try that.
Love the frogs. You might like visiting coppergifts.com, which has a big range of cookie-cutter shapes and ships quickly to NZ. (Yeah, they're in Kansas, so there's some Christian-themed and stars and stripes stuff, but I managed to ignore it and cut to the puzzle shapes and fish.)--Erika
Foreignlegionbreadmen. I love it! You guys have the best conversations :) And I love your bread frogs, too - about how big are they? I'm trying to get a handle on size. I think I should try something like that (mostly because *I* don't like sandwiches at all, and hate making them for lunches - Rick usually does it, but it's nice to have other options).
The blanket is just lovely. I'm really looking forward to seeing it spread out in all its glory!
Loved the bread frogs. My husband would have had to use green food coloring! The knitting looks wonderful. If only I had the time. My latest small project has been following me around in my car for over a year. I'm a mystery writer and writing and editing has taken over my life. I started knitting when I was a second grader. Now although I write for adults my middle grade book is my best seller this month,must still be that kid in me.
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