Jennifer's 365 Project

Chris made dinner tonight, which is awesome because I was way too lazy. Plus, that meant I got to entice the cat with string while I messed with the knitting needles.



I decided I was going to start in on a scarf for Chris. He assures me he will wear it, but honestly I think he should wait until there's a finished product before making that kind of commitment. Why a scarf? I read those were a good easy beginner project. I did pick a scarf pattern that I needed the knitting book from the library to decipher. K2og. What? After casting on 60-some stitches over and over only to discover I didn't have enough thread and having to start over, I finally got on the 92 loops. Gah. My wrists hurt now.

When I was a little kid, my mother tried to teach me various crafts with thread and yarn. I remember being taught to crochet, I remember starting ambitious cross-stitch projects (which I recently unearthed and unfinished in my sewing box), and I remember declaring the activities too boring and too girly.

My mother had a lot of patience with me. A lot.

Anyway, over the years I've steered clear of anything requiring needles and thread/yarn. Button fell off? Grab a safety pin. There, all fixed.

I've crocheted a few things as an adult, mostly toys for the ferrets to hide. They're always hideous, lumpy, and it's obvious I got bored half way through the project.

 But the twitter ladies I follow who enjoy knitting work wonders. When one of them discussed excitement awhile back about finishing a pair of socks, I was amazed. Socks? I could make weird funky socks? What else could I make? I joined ravelry to check out a bunch of patterns and I found all sorts of things. There were Tardis Kindle covers, Sherlock Holmes scarves, dragon plushies and more. That put me over the edge. I was going to get better at crochet!

There was just one problem: all the patterns I liked were knitting patterns.

So out we went last week to snag some cheap yarn and needles for me to play with. I've been messing with them on and off this week, trying to get the hang of different stitches.

I am making progress. I'm yelling at the YouTube video tutorials less and I picked up a knitting book at the library today. I'm still not very good, but I have a lot of yarn to mess with and I'm slowly creating a tangle of gray stitches, as you can see. So anyway, mom (dad, go get mom to read this. Thanks!), I'm sorry I was a massive brat about this stuff as a kid and thanks for giving me a foundation of knowledge on this stuff.

I was just going to play Mass Effect for a little bit after dinner. Then I looked up at the clock and it was 10pm. Oops.

Today is my first day back from a week of vacation I was greeted this morning with an adorable gift: from a co-worker: a vacation in a box! There were coconut-flavored M&Ms, tea, lemonade, a sleep mask, a beach-themed calendar and more!

I felt slightly better today so we headed outdoors. And by outdoors I mean from the apartment to the car, and then the car to the grocery store. But hey! At least I left the apartment today, which is more than I can say for the last few days...

This is what a big chunk of my afternoon (in between sneezing fits) looked like: glass of water, box of tissues, and Mass Effect. Super thanks to Comfort and Adam who loaned me the game (after much praise on it's awesomeness). I'm a much larger fan of fantasy video games than of sci-fi (which is why I own Bioware's Dragon Age game and not their Mass Effect game) so I kind of glossed over this one in favor of ones with more dragon-slaying and sword-wielding. After four or so hours I realize that was a mistake. This game is badass. I just wish I felt better so I could play more. Stupid cold.

Later in the day, after much laying about acting like I was dying, I let the ferret out to run around and stash her toys. The stitching on the new egg is a little tight and she does have to try harder to grab it, but grab it she does and off to the various living room corners she goes. As a side note, if this blogpost is incoherent I blame the stuffy head combined with the pain I decided to put myself through by watching the GOP primary debate. I'm not ready for bed yet so what better way to wake up than by riling myself up listen to that? I may need shot soon though.

I pulled out my sewing kit a few weeks ago with the intent to create another crochet egg for the ferret. See, ferrets love to hide things, and it's way easier for them to hide an Easter egg full of rice (not instant rice) when it's covered in yarn.

The last one I made I half-assed. As you can see I only had a few short bits of different yarn and I got really lazy at the end. The fraying is, honestly how I made and through no wear and tear from the ferret. I'm just that bad at crochet.
After spending a really good chunk of the morning first refreshing myself on how to actually crochet there was a lot of starting a row, pulling all the stitches out and then trying it over again. Eventually I found a nice tutorial for making crochet eggs.
After Leki gave up trying to play with the string, he just got plain jealous and laid on it.
The day wore on. I stopped and started quite a bit. In the evening I finally decided to finish it off (it can't be that hard, right?)
I finally finished it looks better than the old one, that's for sure. I just hope I didn't make the stitches too tight that it's difficult for the ferret to grip.

Now to just wait for her to wake up and show her.

I've been eyeing this Braided Lemon Bread recipe for a long time, but I've always been leery about trying it. In my head I loathe dough recipes that involve rolling, cutting, etc. I always use too little or too much dough, things are sticky, things are ruined, and the cat always tries to help.

But today? Today was the day. I'd bought all the ingredients yesterday and it didn't matter that there's no room in the fridge or the freezer for leftovers or that it's extremely unlikely Chris will like or eat this stuff (well, there's a chance he might eat it, unlike this Citrus Cranberry Cream Cheese Danish I want to try). I was making this bread.
The dough for this bread was extremely sticky when it was done rising, but a light dusting of flour (not the heavy coating I gave it for fear of stickiness) made it really pliable and easy to work with.
It braided pretty easy and I even had chunk of leftover dough from trimming that I tossed into the freezer for later baking session.
It smells delicious and I can't wait to try it after it's cooled a bit.

I took a bunch of photos again so here's a slideshow of the whole process, including making the fragrant lemon curd.

I wrote a rather ambitious list of things to cook last night. So I started the day off with a hefty grocery list and I was get up out of bed early and get cooking!

About noon I finally made it to the grocery store. Lets just say that vacations with no forced structure means lots of reading and laying about. But I'm ok with that.

I started off prepping things for Chicken and Dumpling Soup. I really thought it would take me all afternoon to make it from scratch, so I wanted to start early. I was half right. It took me half the afternoon.

I'd picked up a Cornish hen instead of a whole adult chicken so that we'd have less leftovers, but now that it's all said and done I think we're still going to have a ton of leftovers. But I digress.

I actually rounded up on some ingredients (for example, entire cup of heavy cream instead of 3/4 of a cup - what was I going to do with that extra 1/4 cup?) and somehow my dumplings ended up making this much thicker than the original recipe appears to be. But I actually prefer thick soup so I'm happy this is thicker rather than runnier.

It ended up super tasty and hours later my mouth is craving more even though my tummy has no room.

Here's a small slideshow of the pictures I took while making it this afternoon.

Also on my list was something sweet and spongy; marshmallows. Honestly, ever since Chris came home with delicious treats Erin made a few months ago I've been dying for an excuse to make some. The peppermint honey bear from yesterday put me over the edge (hot chocolate + marshmallows + peppermint honey? I have to try this). Plus she recently mentioned on twitter making champagne marshmallows which sounded like a delicious idea. Unfortunately I forgot to pick up the champagne (I always forget at least one thing when I go grocery shopping).

The whole process wasn't as messy as I'd anticipated (thank you recipe for forewarning me!). The hard part is waiting to actually cut up and use the marshmallows! Here's a quick slideshow of the process.



I also made some meatballs and shoved them in the freezer for quick tasty ravioli at a later date. I'll have to save this braided lemon bread recipe for a later date since it's really too late to start this one. I'm also going to have to get my butt in gear and try to make those peppermint patties and chocolate dipped peanut butter crisps!

It's Tuesday and the first official day "vacation" day of the work week. Today is the only day we really have plans (for the four days we're not working) and those plans are driving to Flint to see Adam and Comfort.
It wasn't long after we go there that Chris was demonstrating all the new magical apps he'd downloaded to his iPad recently.
After a little while we headed to downtown Flint to check out the much raved about Flint Crepe Company. It's a very adorable little restaurant with a hipster bistro feel. To top it off they're using iPads and Square to take credit card purchases.
They even sell Calder Dairy & Farm milk in fancy glass bottles. They remind me of the Shelter Family Dairy milk I fell in love with from up north (seriously, their chocolate milk is like liquid ice cream). Adam and Comfort really liked it.

We headed back to their place for some awesome entertainment ala RiffTrax. Seriously, they really do make horrible movies better.
Before we headed home we stocked up on Withers Mountain Honey Farm honey. I've also learned that there are early and late season flavors that taste very different. I really liked early season, but for cooking purposes I think the more robust and stronger flavored late season will go better with granola and the like. Next time I'm out there though I'm going to snag some early season too, just to have both (going into this I didn't even know there were different flavors - I feel like a whole cooking experiment door has opened!).

Mr Withers was even kind enough to gift us with an adorable little bear of Candy Cane Honey. This means a lot of my hot chocolate is going to be spiked with peppermint honey, and I'm ok with that (by the way, the bear comes with a delicious sounding recipe for just this sort of beverage).
It was a long drive home and the cat was very happy to have us back.

Peppy the ferret is getting up there (7 years old), and she's not quite as finicky about sleeping spots as she used to be. Mostly that means I can scoop her up from her makeshift nap spot behind the chair and she'll pass out relatively quickly if I give her somewhere equally warm and fuzzy.

This afternoon between reading and dozing off myself, I grabbed her from her napping spot and whisked her onto the cozy bed for a brief snuggle. I had intended to nestle her against Chris who was reading there, but she passed out before I got that far. She stayed put for a good five minutes, then promptly woke up and looked for the bathroom in the typical ferret fashion (frantically searching for corners).

Chris was even kind enough to stain the miniature clothespins for me so they'd match the coloring of the paper (I was nervous about making a mess if left to my own devices so I'm happy he stained these for me).