Saturday, June 26, 2010

I'm Spent!

I got to spend the day making Spent Grain Bread. "Spent"......Not "spelt." Spelt is indeed a grain, but my bread is made from the, well....leftovers of my Darling Hubby's beer-making. Making beer requires grain, once the beer-making is over, the grain is "spent," but far from useless.

Take the grain, spread it out on a cookie sheet and let it dry (it's wet, you see). Once it's mostly dry, you can store it in a zip-loc bag in the freezer until you are ready to make the bread.

So, spent grain, flour, another kind of flour, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, olive oil and warm water, and the usual bread-making magic, and you come up with THIS.....

Warm, and buttery, out of the oven......

And I have three MORE loaves rising right now! Yeah, that's an awful lot of bread, but who cares! Fresh, hot, healthy and HOMEMADE!! This is how you LIVE!!

BTW, I would really like to find a butter churn................

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Where the Hell have I been???

Yeah, Yeah, I dropped off the face of the earth again. It seems to be a habit of mine, and honestly, I'm as annoyed by it as you are. But life, constantly, intrudes. If I had my way, I would knit, watch Doctor Who and play on my computer all day every day. But last time I checked, no one had died and made me God, so I'm stuck with having a job, and trying to balance work, home, family, and yarn all at once. Mea Culpa,


But I've been busy, went to Washington, DC again in May for the REALTOR mid-year meeting and ran all over the place as usual. We took the youngest son with us, so that added a whole new aspect to the adventure. (and prevented us from our usual sojourn to Russia House for vodka, russian beer and foolishness, but oh well, sometimes you just HAVE to act like an adult).


Oh yeah, we did get our picture taken with our local Congressman on the roof of the congressional office building (one of the best views in DC, really).

Back from DC and back into the fray - work, little league, and end of school year activities. The youngest son has been out of school for a week now, and I am not yet motivated to ship him off to grandma's...permanently.....but just a little more newly minted teenaged attitude and I may change my mind.


I have been knitting, however. It is, after all, one of my few attachments to sanity. This is what I've been up to.












I joined a square swap on Ravelry, and I have completed 4 squares so far. I even CROCHETED a square. I know! It shocked me, too!!


I knitted a pair of socks for an elderly friend for her birthday. She loves my handknitted socks, so I try to make her at least one pair a year. Her daughter is hopelessly NON-crafty, so someone has to knit for the poor woman!


I knitted a blanket and some baby hats for the babies who just keep popping up around me. Babies are always worth knitting for, even if you hardly even know them. Baby stuff is just plain FUN to do (and no, I am NOT longing for grandchildren). Actually, I didn't knit just one baby hat, it was more like FOUR, with matching booties, but boy babies just keep showing up and I keep giving everything away, so no pictures! But all the hats pretty much look like the one above.


Also knitted a hat and bootie set for a little girl baby. Picture is crap, sorry. Now bear in mind I don't know anyone with a little girl baby, at the moment, but that has never really stopped me knitting something. A girl baby is bound to show up sometime soon, and I'll be ready!!

And I even finished a pair of socks for ME! Can you believe it for ME! I would be a whole lot more pleased with this accomplishment if I hadn't started them in October of 2008, and just finished them this week. And of course, this week is the first week of summer and sporting brand new pair of hand-knit wool socks is not the most intelligent thing I've done. But hey! They're done, and I LOVE 'EM!

There's other things in the knitting queue, two shawls, two sweaters, two...wait....three.....nope, FOUR afghans....oops...FIVE afghans, and at least two other pairs of socks. But what is a knitter without a list of UFO's a mile long?