AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Making with code!

Happy Holidays!

So, Q is a little too young to really enjoy this now, but for those who have young children (I could see this being as young as 3, but probably closer to 4-5) this looks like a fun way to play with coding with them.

This isn't the only project available, but it is thematically appropriate for the season. 

So, try Make With Code. It is pretty cool. Oh, and click the image. It is more than just some dots on a tree.

If Make With Code is a little too easy for your kids, there are a number of other online coding platforms to get your kids playing with code.

Try out:

Turtle Academy for all of your Logo experiences

Kodu (no link, because I saw it via Lynda.com)

Scratch - for programming interactive stories

Learning something new is a perfect way to end the year! So, go out and learn something!

GOAL!

Hockey season has only been over for almost two months, but hockey is always on our minds here.

I'm due in late September, so there is a possibility (though these are sized bigger than a newborn) that our baby will get to see hockey on TV and watch their first game all dressed up to root for BU.

The baby sweater is the Baby Pullover, a free pattern from Bernat. I followed the lead of another BU alum on Ravelry who had done most of the grunt work for turning the sweater into a hockey sweater. What I did that was different? I decided I still hate seaming and so knit the entire sweater in the round. This mostly worked until I got to the neckline and had to coordinate instructions from multiple sections of the pattern at once. Definitely a spot where writing things out ahead of time would have been key.

Next up was the Baby Robitaille helmet, which was a quick knit though slower finish because I put off sewing on the single snap. Once I had the snap separated it was, well, umm. Yeah. That. I did have to have someone separate the snap for me, because I had just trimmed my finger nails all the way back. For once I didn't even sew half of the snap on backwards. Take that pregnancy brain!

Lastly, I made the hockey skates (it's a free pattern on Craftster). Now the skates look huge, and while we hid it for the photo, I need to resew on the blade portion on the back skate. I don't think the pattern had any sizing or gauge guidelines, and given I don't really know much about baby booties I knit away not thinking about their size. It's possible that they will fit fine. My husband has very wide feet, so this might be for the best!

Oh, and for the blades, I took my grey yarn and cast on 24 stitches using a size 4 needle. I knit the even rows as instructed, but when it came to separate for the upright portions of the blades, I knit 6, bound off 12, and then knit 6.

We bought two pairs of 14-inch white shoelaces for the sweater and the skates. If I had to do it over again, I'd buy the next size up, because these were too short to easily tie. 14-inches sounds so much bigger until you are actually faced with the reality of lacing a garment.

Month of the Author

Apparently December is month of the author, because I went to Eat Boutique last week to get a book signed, and two additional food bloggers (recipe creators, food stylists, etc.) were there. Now, I didn't pick up Aran's book, Small Plates and Sweet Treats, because I don't need to cook gluten free very often. Her book is beautifully styled, which really should be no surprise to those who follow her blog, Cannelle et Vanille. Instead I picked up Joy the Baker's new cookbook, which has the great little addendum A Celebration of Butter and Sugar.

And it is.

I've already made two things from the cookbook, though one is not quite ready for prime time pictures: Nutella Grilled Cheese sandwiches and the Strawberry Cookie Dough Ice Cream.

Om nom nom.

The Nutella sandwiches were a not healthy, but delicious dinner that used up the last one packet of cream cheese.

The ice cream?

Well, I might be an expert at ice cream at this point, or at least as reasonably as one would expect from a home cook. The base is delicious, but only the extra time in the freezer will prove whether it is a good recipe or a great recipe. I'll have a full review when I finally eat more than the leavings from the dasher. What? You don't like the dasher and the spatula when you're done?

I don't remember when I started following Joy, but I do know what recipe I've made the most often. The Bread. This bread is magic in a Dutch oven. A very friendly and forgiving recipe. I've made it with hot peppers (ghost chilis), fresh herbs, dried herbs, lots of garlic, modest garlic, and extra lots of garlic and it is delicious each and every time.

This is bread two from Sunday. I let the Dutch oven sit with the bread in it on top of the stove while the oven was preheating. It gave a little extra oomph to the rise, creating this glorious open bread that you can literally just tear pieces off of like monkey bread.

This is the bread that I will be making a special spicy version of if we ever get hell night planned out. I have the ghost chili olive oil already prepped, and a test batch has been run. I know it is a bread that is delicious with a bit of a kick. Or at least as much kick as a loaf of bread can have with all of that flour saving your tongue from delicious, delicious doom.

This is also the bread my husband requested for his work holiday party on Monday. No ghost chilis, but definitely a bread for work. I'll be making it on Tuesday for a work party as well. It really is that good.

I'm Smitten!

Last night I went to see Deb Perelman, the person behind smittenkitchen.com and her new mostly self titled cookbook, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. Like many people I had neglected to acquire tickets in advance to a sold out event, but thankfully one woman in the ticket line had extra tickets so I was able to get in without the drama of the standby line.

It was a bit of a cold wait with my cookbooks, my knitting, and the cookies I made Tuesday night, knowing that I wanted to offer something that she could enjoy when she was in a hotel after the signing. I was the proverbial bag lady.

Deb is as full of warm, self-deprecating humor in person as she is online. Affable, and friendly, she gave maybe a 20 minute talk and then turned it over to questions, which ran the gamut. Where did she get her dress (something from 2007 or so that she got altered), to how does she write her recipes (type it up, and then make notes, alter and repeat until perfect), to how many hits does she get on her site (about 10M a month). (Oh, and for the blurry pictures, you have my apologies.)

After the talk, we all trooped over to the Brookline Booksmith to stand in what might have been an interminable line except for making new friends. The woman ahead of me, Elizabeth, was a recent transplant from New York, so we talked about her family, law, books, food, etc. Pretty much everything under the sun as we made our way through the line that snaked through the store.

Sometime after 10 we finally made it to the front of the line (our fault: those closest to the front of the theater were definitely in the back end of the line). One of the women ahead of us brought her yellow KitchenAid stand mixer to be signed. An awesome idea, and if I didn't go to work and had a rolling suitcase, and if my KitchenAid was spotless from the last batch of cookies... well, I might have done the same thing!

I loved meeting with Deb. I was pretty wiped, so I feel like I kind of stumbled over my words and probably came across as a bit fannish (and not in the good way. More like in the 12 year old boy with a crush way. *sigh*). And I gave her the cookies. Which I made from her site, modified of course.

Our Favorite Chocolate Chip cookies, lightly modified

The original cookies are mix of finely chopped and toasted nuts (pecans), and chocolate bound together in the smallest amount of dough possible. It makes for cookies that don't spread too much, and have a delicious treat in every bite. Mine are much the same, except a few lazing tricks. Now I did everything with the digital scale, so no actual cup measurements (though you can go to the original recipe for the cup versions).

Ingredients
100g granulated sugar
120g light brown sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, brought to room temperature
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
175g all purpose flour
130g almond flour
1/2 tsp smoked sea salt
205g peppermint bark, chopped (mine comes from Au Chocolat, an awesome store in DT Boston)

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line your baking pans with parchment paper or Silpats. I could have gotten away with 2 pans, but I did end up using Deb's recommended 3 pans (2 cookie sheets and a pizza pan).

Cream the granulated sugar, brown sugar and butter until it is light and fluffy. Scrape it down and add the egg and vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl measure out the baking soda, all purpose flour, almond flour and sea salt. Add to the egg mixture and stir till well combined. Add the chopped peppermint bark.

Pull out an ice cream scoop, and make flat scoops of dough (aka, even with the top of the scoop). I put 6 per cookie sheet approximately 4 finger widths apart. Plop them in the oven for 30 minutes (start checking them at 25 minutes). When they indent but don't sink when touched, they are done. They should be golden brown. Maybe my awesome husband will take a picture of one of the cookies when he gets home... just a little hint! I got 14 cookies out of this dough by making some of the cookies just a smidge smaller.

A little note: I could have easily used the entire package of peppermint bark. Because I used almond flour rather than chopped nuts, it is more of a dough component rather than a dough and add-in component and offers more room for chocolate! The entire package of peppermint bark would have been about 350 grams at my best estimate. But hey, we ate the rest of the bark!

Swimming

The hover. The hover makes this all so amazing! (Aka, feel free to look below, but go to the comic.)

Even if you don't regularly read XKCD or watch the Olympics, if you've paid any attention to swimming in the last decade or so. It is totally worth it.

I'm about to head out again. Stupid appointments at 7:30 a.m. mean leaving the house often by 6. *yawn*

Parlez vous Olympics?

I probably used that same blog post name during Beijing, because really I like The Cutting Edge in all its cheesy glory.

Last night despite being sick, but probably because of my long nap, I watched the opening ceremonies while casting on for the 2012 Ravellenic Games (I'm cheesy too). My lovely husband provided a simplle infographic covering many of the important features of the ceremonies from the eyes of a geek.

I loved the opening ceremonies, but I definitely saw this as well as the one ring being forged to bind the other rings. I don't know if this was intended, but it was pretty much how all the geeks I know saw it.

For the Ravellenic Games, I'm competing in two events (hey, feel the cheese): the Shawl Sailing and the WIPs Wrestling. Unsurprisingly, I cast on for the shawl last night, because the new project is always more interesting than the old project much to their detriment. The shawl I'm doing is Leftie, and it is also my Camp Loopy project 3 (I'll post my photos of project 2 tomorrow after it finishes drying). Leftie is intended to use up your leftovers, so here is my quick gloss over that I bought 2 new skeins of yarn for the project. I am still using some leftovers in it from a shawl I made last year.

This was my progress last night (picture from the iPad, so the colors are very off). I am using a skein of Sweet Georgia superwash sock in Lakeshore Drive and one of Lorna's Laces Solemate in Cookies Deep Dark Secret. These are both new to me yarns, though I've been seeing photos of these yarns for months.

I've made a lot more progress than this today and will probably take another photo nearer to the end of the night. Sandi is doing a stitch count and a progress photo to document hers. It is a great idea and a simple thing for trying to get back into more regular blogging. Of course, my stitch numbers change nearly every row, so I am not doing a stitch count. I am too lazy for that.

Also, last night's opening ceremony could have used more corgis.

Even more corgis.

Umm, yeah, more corgis.

What, they were cute! I love most dogs, but the corgis were more adorable than most. I hope that they show more shots of the dogs, because I'm just sick enough that I don't get to walk outside as much (well and it is super rainy). Makes it awefully hard to go out and greet all of the pups in the neighborhood.

on the road to Squam (java java java)

I'm leaving for Squam on Wednesday morning. While I might not act excited in a traditional manner, I am pretty thrilled. It's a very comforting and nurturing environment, and it is nice to have a bit of time to myself (not that I don't carve out some me time on a regular basis, but somehow it is a bit different when you aren't quite as accessible).

Last year people complained about the quality of the coffee. Now, I love mself some good coffee, but I drink Starbucks drip, lattes from a number of places, coffee from Mary Lous (which varies in intensity, but hey they give Victor a dog treat almost every time), and places with various levels of quality. To me, coffee is almost always coffee. I like it better when it is good, but even mediocre coffee is pretty good. The standard complaint was strength, more than quality of flavor itself.

However, for me, I am an early riser. Last year even without an alarm, I woke up at 5 or so every morning without the alarm on my phone or iPod. The dining hall opens about 2-3 hours after I've gotten up, so this year I'm making my own coffee. Yesterday I bought a Woodneck from Dwelltime yesterday. This morning I made myself coffee using it for the first time using their brew instructions. The Japanese instructions involve about 20 grams less coffee, so the Dwelltime instructions make a much stronger brew. I'll probably try it again with one scoop of grounds (about 16 grams) next time. This is a much better coffee than even the Clever Dripper, though I have to wonder how much of that is the amount of grounds vs. the brew method.

Either way, this involved making coffee this morning that was at least as good as what I can buy in my neighborhood. I tend to buy coffee out, because something about the French Press means that it just doesn't taste quite as good as what I'm buying out. Given that this tastes better than both Mary Lous and Donut King, my local coffee places, I'm way more likely to make coffee at home.

Just a quick one: Word Realms!

I really want this game.

I spend a lot of my non-crafting free time playing Kingdom of Loathing (don't ask how many Avatar of Boris ascensions I plan on doing), and I love word games best of all games. This is on my list to support. Boo ya!

Now, it is off to work and then a sewing class. I really need to ramp up my sewing skills. Time to suggest a class to Virginia.

Happy birthday to me!

My birthday is in June, and I think I am going to need to drag my friends to see this:

 

While I like Pixar, I'm even happier that they now have a film with a strong female character. It looks awesome!

At least as awesome as cheese

One of my favorite web comics, Order of the Stick, is doing a Kickstarter drive to raise the money to reprint all of their books. Now we own most of the books already, but they were pretty hard to find at times and we certainly didn't get to buy them in order. However, the Kickstarter drive includes magnets, notepads, stickers and PDF exclusive stories for anyone who donates at least $10. It is pretty darn awesome.

 

The fans of the comic (all 5000+ of us) have pushed this drive to be the top earning creative drive and pushed it into the top 10 Kickstarter drives of all time. This is a fan-based equivalent (though without the happy doing good feelings) of the Yarn Harlot's Knitters Without Borders efforts, and both of them can be usefully funded for the cost of a few cups of fancy pants coffee.

I would highly recommend that if you like funny stories that you take a look at Order of the Stick. Yeah, it is geek humor, but the stories are well done and often very funny!