[knitting] Holy Hand Grenade

It's done! The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch:

I would like to do more (in particular- sew some pearls on) but I'm calling this done so it's not hanging over my head anymore.

The pattern is free on Ravelry: Holy Hand Grenade. I knit this using gold and silver yarn that I bought at White River Yarns. 

The pin is removable- which isn't how the pattern is written but I felt that a removable pin was a must:

It's an extra large safety pin that I sewed the cross to. You need to have a removable pin so that you can pull it, count to three (One... Two... FIVE!) and throw it at whatever killer rabbit is attacking you.

The chest is an unfinished box that I bought at Michael's and stained in a dark walnut color. I also glued a few gold squares around the lock and brass circles to the ends:

Just to dress up the box a bit.

The red fabric is a crushed panne that I got a Joann's. I was prepared to spend way to much on a pure, rich velvet but saw a little roll of red in the remnants bin- and it was perfect. And $2.79.

And I got red flat-backed rhinestones and slightly smaller clear ones to glue all around the silver straps. I used E-6000 glue, which is supposed to be good for fabric, wood, metal, anything and dries to a clear rubber. The rhinestones are holding on really well.

So. Done. Love it. Nailed it. Hope I don't ever have to use it ;)

[misc] Penny Friday

TGIF. I'm going to spend the weekend knitting, crocheting and cooking. And picking more ramps. 

[cooking] Saving scallions

I saw a cute tip on Pinterest for saving scallions. Slice them up, put them into an empty water bottle and put them into the freezer. 

Then simply shake out what you need, when you need it. Miso soup. Stir fry. Dipping sauce for dumplings. Salsas. Chicken salad. Anything!

Next time I'll slice the scallions on a bias to make them extra pretty. And I'll use a bottle with a wider mouth- getting the scallions into this bottle was a little frustrating.

[cooking] Rampapalooza

Monday afternoon I hiked up an old trail behind my house, hoping to find ramps that my neighbor told me about last year. I found it!

It wasn't a solid field of ramps, like I've seen in some pictures online, but patches here and there. I saw a patch... took a couple steps... saw another patch... took a few more steps... saw more ramps... 

It was actually much easier to pick this way- I could squat, dig, pop out the bulbs I wanted and move to the next patch without stepping on any plants. Because I'm taking the bulb, there is a danger of over-harvesting and preventing new growth, so if there was a root with 5 plants growing up, I would take 2 and move to the next.

These bulbs were very easy to pop out. I stripped the dirtiest exterior skin off, to reveal a pretty white bulb:

This made clean-up much easier when I got them all back to the kitchen. After much washing and cleaning, I had:

Some bulbs are quite large- nearly the size of a quarter in width- but most averaged dime-size in width. I'm giving most of these to friends and co-workers. If the weather's nice this weekend, I think I'll head back up the hill and pick a few more.

My plans for the ramps are:

Ramp butter with the greens

Ramp pesto with the greens

Pickled ramps with the bulbs

Flatbread with whole ramps

[art] Winner winner!

Here's the instructor's painting that I won at the end of my Joy of Painting class:

Not quite as good as mine, but I'll take it ;) I need to find some frames to get these works of art up on the walls asap.

[misc] Murderface Monday

Hope everyone had a good weekend. My sister and I went to the Wild & Woolly Festival in Proctorsville, VT on Saturday. It was a good little festival, with many nice vendors. I bought some new spinning fiber and I was so pleased to see that Harrisville Designs brought Brooklyn Tweed yarns- I picked up two skeins of Loft and one of Shelter. I'm so happy- I've wanted to get my hands on this stuff since it came out.

Murderface:

Sunday I went to a baby shower. I was in charge of games/prizes. I did the poopy-diaper game: melt various candy bars inside diapers, then pass them around and guess the candy bar. This game is hilarious... to me. I think some people were put off looking at the diapers and seeing something that resembles poop... but that's funny. Poop is funny. I have a picture of the poopy diapers and I feel like I must refrain from posting it to Flickr and here because I don't want to make anyone barf on their keyboards... but I think barfing is funny, too, so... I just have a toilet sense of humor I guess.

Santana:

My Holy Hand Grenade is nearing completion (finally!). Only the pin remains.

A couple weekends ago Penny was hanging out with Dollar in the Man Cave (the loft above the garage) and tried to eat a wasp. She must have been stung because we noticed that her right cheek was swollen:

Poor PenPen :( But the swelling was gone by that evening and she was back to her adorable self:

[cooking] Ramp Season

I've been checking a small area in front of the house, near a brook, where I found wild leeks last year. I found some!

I only took the leaves because the bulbs are too hard to take and if I leave the bulbs, they'll keep coming back.

So now that I know ramps are up, my sister and I are going to head up into the hills around the house where my neighbor told me last year there is a big ol' patch of them. I actually found a lot last year at a park next to the White River, but that entire area is covered with a solid layer of silt now, thanks to Hurricane Irene. :(

I used these ramps last night for supper. I simply rinsed and minced them like parsley, and sprinkled over homemade spaghetti and tomato sauce. Last night was the first time I've ever made homemade pasta and it was... a learning experience. The kitchen looks like I was trying to make the pasta blindfolded and I knew it can be easier/faster than how I made it. Having said that, my spaghetti (which really looked more like spaetzle) tasted awesome. 

[crochet] Curtain

I started a filet crochet curtain: 

This is just one, wide panel that I will hang from a tension rod in the laundry room window. This is the first time I've crocheted in a filet crochet style and I like it. Mindless and easy. Except for when you're not paying attention to what you're doing and you realize that you'd made a pretty obvious mistake and you need to rip back two rows, which is approximately 1 hour of work. 

[embroidery] Organization

I saw some pictures on Pinterest (love Pinterest!) from someone who had organized her floss into boxes, by color, onto bobbins. It was so pretty. Here's what my stash of embroidery floss looked like:

Messy.

I found an organizer at Michaels. It comes with 50 bobbins and it only cost something insane, like $2.79. I spent Saturday morning winding, winding, winding the floss. I thought "This isn't going to take long." 4 hours later, I thought, "WTF, why did this take so long?" I don't know, but it's easy to do while catching up on episodes of The Colbert Report on Hulu. Here's my finished FlossBox:

Pretty! Now I can easily pick and choose colors for embroidery and cross-stitch.

[art] My first painting!

I took last Friday off work and went to a Joy of Painting class taught by a certified Bob Ross instructor. It was amazing. SOOOOO much fun! The instructor came with a finished painting that she had done and we used that as a basis for our own paintings. She did another painting as she told us what to do (use a 1" brush, hold it like this, use this color, tap tap tap tap like so, etc.).

Here's the canvas that everyone started with:

Our brushes and oil paint:

All the brushes and paints are Bob Ross brand. And my little easel had Bob Ross on it:

The first thing we painted was sky:

Clouds came next, which was kind of difficult. Then mixing black and green to tap a background for all our trees and bushes:

We used green mixed with yellow to tap on highlights to the trees and hill in the foreground:

Here's I've added some reds and browns. Painted on some branches. Added little waterfalls.

Those really thin, white branches and trees you see into background? That's just taking the tip of the knife and scraping away thin lines of paint. That's the canvas showing through. Isn't that cool?!

Finally, we added some land/coastline, rocks and water froth:

That's the finished painting. I'm not so pleased with my rocks, but overall I'm so in love with this. My first painting and I think I did an awesome job.

The class is at Mascoma Bank. I was the only noob at this class- the bank has been holding these classes for something like 10 years and everyone had been before. I wish I could have taken a picture of everyone's paintings- we were all doing the same painting, fundamentally, but every painting was different. Everyone's clouds looked different, people used different colors for their bushes, people placed their waterfalls in different locations. It was really neat to see all the paintings.

I took the class on Friday and they were holding another one with the same instructor on Saturday. I simply assumed that it would be the same painting, but no- the painting will be different. So you could sign up for both days and do different paintings (which some of the students were doing). At the end of my class, there was a drawing for the finished painting that the instructor was doing the next day- AND I WON. I won the painting that she was doing on Saturday, which is a totally different scene. This TOTALLY makes up for not winning MegaMillions, I swear. I have to wait 7 days or so for the paint to dry, then I can pick up the painting at a Mascoma Bank branch office. I can't wait to see it!

[cooking] Hotdog Stuffed-Crust Pizza

Last week I read that Pizza Hut UK is starting to offer a hot dog stuffed crust pizza. My initial reactions went something like:

"What?"

"Ew."

"How can this not be American?"

"I must to make one."

I love pizza. I like hot dogs. What's the problem? I told Dollar what I planned to make for supper. His reaction? An ambiguous "Crazy." To which I sullenly thought, "Yeah... Crazy-AWESOME."

I made the dough in my mini-Zo. For pizza sauce, I mix tomato sauce with minced garlic and pizza seasoning from Penzey's. I bought three McKenzie natural casing hot dogs from the Co-op. Green peppers and onions are our usual toppings for pizza.

How cute is that cutting board? It was a birthday gift and I like to play Air Guitar in the kitchen with it.

Here's the dough pushed out and docked. With the three hot dogs. Only three because I still wanted half of the pizza to be normal.

Then I rolled them inward, toward the center of the pizza 180 degrees, to wrap them in the dough.

Then sauce, cheese and toppings:

I showed Dollar the pizza and he pointed out, "The hotdogs are backwards." Which, yes, okay, they are. They started out following the curvature of pizza perimeter but after rolling them in, they're concave. I couldn't be bothered to fix it (you know, after all the assembly was complete and it was ready to go into the oven), so I shrieked, "OH NO, THE HOT DOGS ARE BACKWARDS! Now the pizza won't taste good!!"

I actually don't have a picture of the cooked pizza, but it wasn't bad. It just felt a little weird, like, "Are you done eating that slice of pizza? Yeah? Now have a hot dog." The hot dog in the crust was just an over-sized Pig in a Blanket, really.

So... meh. We decided it should be an either/or thing. EITHER pizza OR full-sized hot dogs individually baked in dough. We didn't really enjoy them together. But I'm glad I tried it.

[misc] Murderface Monday

Made myself a nice bubble bath. Penny wasn't sure why I was filling up a gigantic bowl with hot water and bubbles:

She's really interested in water.

She always wants to check out the shower after it's been used. She likes to watch water drip down the door. She loves to drop her favorite toys into her water dish.

Murderface came in to see what all the noise was, but as usual Penny just wanted to check out his butt:

Sorry, buddy.

[knitting] Dice bags

I knit a couple small, quick bags using leftover sock yarn:

These are very easy. Cast on 60 stitches. Knit for 3/4 inch. Work k2tog, yo around. Knit for another 4 inches or so. Use kitchener to close the bottom. Make a couple drawstrings and thread through from opposite ends.

This makes a small, useful, cute, drawstring bag. I call them dice bags, because I love to make these to hold chits and bit for boardgames, but currently I'm using these for:

Holding the glass pieces that I've painted with nail polish. Perfect!

[jewelry] Nail Polish Pendants

I accumulated a lot of nail polish at the height of my "OMG Must make all the nails GLITTER" obsession. Because Santana's all coughy-coughy and I'm not painting my nails that much any more, what the crap am I going to do with all this polish?

Pendants!!

The process is pretty simple. I ordered round and square glass tiles, plates in a variety of finishes, and chains from Sun and Moon Craft Kits.

I painted the back of the glass with clear polish. Then glittery polish or glittery top coats and then a solid background color. Then a top coat. Then glue it into the plate. Voila.

I do the painting out above the garage (so no fumes in the house) and it took a week to do 20 pieces of glass. I did 6 - 8 at a time, all with different polishes, and let the pieces sit for hours or overnight between coats. I didn't use everything I painted as pendants- but I'll glue magnets to the back of the rejects/seconds to use as refrigerator magnets.

Here are the one that I liked best:

This one might be my favorite- it's a multi-chrome polish that changes color depending on what angle you're looking at it:

Crazy, right?

I'm going to start painting the last of the glass pieces I have. I'll save these necklaces to give out as Christmas presents this year (hurray for finished Christmas presents in APRIL).