A Party Invitation For Wills & Kate

Are you caught up in the Royal excitement of the wedding? If so, please come join in the party on April 29, 2011.  All details can be found here, where the party invitation says...

Let’s have a virtual tea ... to celebrate the Wedding of the New Millenium!

What are you knitting whilst preparing for the celebration? What are you reading (British literature, of course)? What are you planning for Aprll 29?

My husband and I will awake early (2 AM in the MST zone of the USA) and prepare a royal breakfast. Please bring a virtual British treat, along with the shared recipe, and join us for breakfast. We will discuss it all in the next week. Join in!

Supportive husband will be making a true English breakfast, including the full monty of

2 links good quality sausages

2 -3 slices bacon

2 flat mushrooms

1 -2 ripe tomato

1 large egg

1 slice bread

Optional Extras

1 slice black pudding
baked beans
cooked potato, thinly sliced

Later in the afternoon, we shall have scones and champagne!

And hats! Wear your hats!

One British Ravelry friend, HandWashOnly, said:

I work in a British boarding school. We will be at work on the 29th but we have the lessons off to watch the wedding (if we want) and are organising a whole school picnic lunch with bunting and plastic union jack bowler hats. We will be wearing red, white and blue!

I think regardless what people feel about the royals, the wedding is a fab reason to get together as a community!

So, because things might get a bit hectic as we try to sort our own celebrations, I am going to leave some bunting here and wish you a happy tea party!!

I shall be knitting on my V-Neck SummerTop Down Sweater whilst watching the festivities on the telly.

 

Please provide your virtual presence, complete with festive hat, perhaps a cucumber sandwith and an authentic English recipe. See you (virtually) around 2 AM here in the States. 

 

(No pajamas allowed.)

PS: Gifts for William and Kate may be given to their charitable trust that will support 26 charities of the couple’s choice, incorporating the armed forces, children, the elderly, art, sport and conservation.

Sheep Picture by Craftlit Friend Amy & Watercolor

Fellow tourist to Wales in the UK took this picture.  Actually, this is a screen shot, and the original was much clearer.  Is that a magpie on that sheep in the background?

Here is my watercolor rendition of a sheep:

This sweet picture of a fairy is my next watercolor effort. My first attempt ended in the wastebasket because it had too much color in the background.

More Flower Fairies can be seen here.

Small Places

North Carolina friend Carol sent me an article about a 90 sq. ft. apartment in New York City.  The entire article with more pictures can be found here.

Obviously, there is a place for everything. And at $700/month rent, WOW!  Her back yard is Central Park.

But I am still impressed that one of my Scrabble friends in Calgary, CA has moved into a renovated loft above a 100 year old pub in a toney part of the city.  His apartment is a bit over 300 square feet.  (And cost is not a concern for him, as he is wealthy by most middle American class standards.) 

It is all in the mindset.  Now I need to go get rid of a few clothes.

After posting this, my friend The KnitNurd gave a further link to TumblewoodHouses, tiny houses that pack a wallop.  Wouldn't you LOVE to have one of these?

Grandmother's Bread (with yeast and fairly sweet)

From the 1960's, this recipe was my favorite food item my grandmother made on a regular basis. I copied it down at the kitchen table while she spoke it. I knew I would want it later.  Boy, am I glad I did because I have used this recipe for these many years after she has been gone.  It is a real comfort food for me.

Favorite parts of the recipe include the words "beat with rolling pin" and the stains on the paper showing the age of the recipe.  And I do remember Mom beating the dough with a rolling pin!

Yesterday was cool and cloudy, and I made three loaves of this bread, although the original recipe said "Makes 4 loaves".

Loaves "under-cover"

All said and done, it was overcooked at 55 minutes (I confess to falling asleep while waiting for the stove buzzer), but still mighty tasty.

Aprons: Some Free Vintage Patterns

From The Sew Weekly, this week's theme is aprons.

As hard as it is to believe, there was once a time when women cooked in clothes that they didn't want to get dirty! Yes! It's true! And then the 1960s happened, clothing got a whole lot cheaper to make and buy and the idea of *not* wearing your party dress while you made some sort of gelatinous dish was born. While wearing an apron today has become more of a kitchy nod to the past, there has certainly been a resurgance of aprons as textile art.

Although I am not in that perfect age group to wear aprons, I still do it.

And IMHO, the perfect age group is either young (ages 4 to 29) or old (just a bit older than I!). 

Last week, I wore this apron to painting group, and got a funny look from a guy in an even older age group.  It probably is not attractive from the back view, if ya know what I mean, but it is very cute from the front:

pocket with embroidery, watercolor and crayon embellishment

A big lot of vintage FREE patterns for aprons can be accessed here.  Now go make one!

A Knitted Gift: Top Down V-Neck Sweater

Finished after several attempts, Heidi's Simple Summer Sweater:

The yarn is 75% cotton and 25% acrylic, so it should be a comfortable summer sweater for cool evenings.

The steep learning curve is detailed on this post.

Details are here if you are an interested knitter.

Hope you like it, Charlotte!

Angry Birds...err...Petulant Birds?

Almost finished:

And with a little more attitude:

Oil, 11" x 14"



Now working on two large panels on wrapped canvas of similar petulant birds for home display.

Where Do You Knit? 2KCBWDAY7

Write about your typical crafting time. When it is that you are likely to craft – alone or in more social environments, when watching TV or whilst taking bus journeys. What items do you like to surround yourself with whilst you twirl your hook like a majorette’s baton or work those needles like a skilled set of samurai swords. Do you always have snacks to hand, or are you a strictly ‘no crumbs near my yarn!’ kind of knitter.

Since this is part of the Blog Along week posts via the Blog Hub group on Ravelry, I'll contain answering about where it is that I spend crafting time to simply "where do you knit?"
 
But let's create the entire environment of where I knit.  There is usually, if not always, some sort of background noise involved.

The noise is not actually annoying, as the word implies, but is just part of the usual sounds of life: television programming, radio coming in from the study of the husband,

 podcasts coming in through earphones via the MP3 player, dogs chatting with one another in the room, and dogs loudly conversing outside through what we humans deem "barking".  Also there might be the dishwasher chugging away whilst making those dinner dishes squeaky clean.

Let's go on to the actual place where I sit when knitting.  (And no, I never knit while standing up as I have observed sales personnel performing while  in yarn stores.)

 

This is the worn covering on the La-Z-Boy seat, poor thing:

 

 

It has had just too many hours of my bottom wearing against it while knitting.

 

This is my last post in the 2nd annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, so normal posting will resume after today. It's been great fun, thinking about specifics to do with knitting, and also visiting a whole load of new blogs. Big thanks to Eskimi for all her efforts in organizing this blog-along.

Wordless Post 2KCBW DAY5

2KCBKWDAY5: This is an experimental blogging day to try and push your creativity in blogging to the same level that you perhaps push your creativity in the items you create.

There are no rules of a topic to blog about (though some suggestions are given below) but this post should look at a different way to present content on your blog. This can take one of many forms, but here a few suggestions:

•Wordless, photographic post
•Video blog post
•Podcast
•Cartoon/sketch of an idea
•Write about a subject from a different perspective (for example, you could write about a day in the life of a knitted sock from the point of view of the sock).
•Interpretive modern dance (why does someone always suggest this?
•A poem or piece of rhyming verse
•Stop motion animation

Go on over to Eskimi's blog to join in with the blog-along.

"To read more posts on the topic ‘Whatever Happened to your ____"  from bloggers around the world, all blogging today, enter the code 2KCBWDAY5 into Google or your search engine of choice. Happy reading, and happy blogging."
 
WORDLESS POST:
 

Day 4: Whatever Happened to those Pink Breast Cancer Dolls? 2KCBWDAY4

All those little dolls that were knit several years ago for breast cancer patients....where did they go?

This is Day 4 in the blog along, and the question to answer is this:

Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.

There are a lot of different aspects to look at when looking back at a knitting project and it can make for interesting blogging, as much of the time we blog about items recently completed, new and freshly completed. It is not so often that we look back at what has happened to these items after they have been around for a while.

How has one of your past knits lived up to wear. Maybe an item has become lost. Maybe you spent weeks knitting your giant-footed dad a pair of socks in bright pink and green stripes which the then ‘lost’. If you have knit items to donate to a good cause, you could reflect on the was in which you hope that item is still doing good for it’s owner or the cause it was made to support.

Tips: This topic is similar to one we used for the first Knitting and Crochet blog week. This is purposeful and is intended to help the blogger to reflect on past items and refer back to previous posts and projects once in a while.

For Day 4 of the Blog Along, my choice of "whatever happened to your ___?",  I am showing those cute little Breast Cancer Sit-sters I knitted in 2008 and gave to patients undergoing chemotherapy at our local hospital.

(That original blog about those dolls can be found here.)  Several people asked for the pattern, but since it is in the book by Barbara Albright called The Natural Knitter, I felt obligated to refer them to her book, now one of the knitting classics.  The pattern starts on page 16 of the book and goes through page 21.

Amazon is selling the book for only $5.49, well worth it!

So the answer to the question of whatever happened to those knitted Sit-sters is still a mystery.  I can only pray that each of the women who was given one is now cancer free and living a happy and productive life.

Go on over to Eskimi's blog to join in with the blog-along.

"To read more posts on the topic ‘Whatever Happened to your ____"  from bloggers around the world, all blogging today, enter the code 2KCBWDAY4 into Google or your search engine of choice. Happy reading, and happy blogging."

Honey Mustard Pretzel Snack

This is a very good recipe for all snackers.  I found it at Food.Com.  Here goes:

Ingredients:

12 cups miniature pretzel twists
2 tablespoons margarine (NOT low-fat)
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon onion powder

Directions:

1 Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
2 Spray a large roasting pan with non-stick cooking spray and put pretzels in it.
3 Combine margarine, mustard, honey, garlic salt and onion powder.
4 Microwave or heat on stove until hot.
5 Drizzle over pretzels while stirring carefully to coat well.
6 Bake for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
7 Pour out onto waxed paper and quickly separate into a single layer.
8 Cool completely and store in sealed bags or container.

The reviewers at the website all said the mustard flavor was not strong enough, so I added 1 tsp. dry mustard to the ingredients and REALLY liked it.

If you have food allergies, just use wheat free pretzels.

This reviewer said:

Oh wow! First off, I love, love, love the honey mustard and onion pretzel pieces from Snyder's of Hanover, but recently found out that they contain milk and dairy ingredients, which are not good for my IBS. I did a search for honey mustard pretzels and found this one and only recipe listed. After reading the reviews, I also decided to try some dry mustard; I think I used half a tsp, I forget because I made this last week and forgot to review it, hehe. The smell of this baking was heavenly. My bf tried one of these, and then snatched the Zip-loc bag out of my hand! He said 'get your own pretzels, these are mine!'

Try them, and I'll bet you will like them.