Knotty Mouse

Hope your weekend was this relaxing!

I’ve had this object finished for almost 2 weeks now but I keep dragging on posting this up to the blog. This is the Lacy Starfish Snood by berrymama knit in less than 1 skein of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece.  This skein of yarn (and the other Cotton Fleece in my stash) was bought years ago for the purpose of knitting Kyoto from Knitty…  but it looked hideous on me when nearly finished (it was a fit problem and a sleeve issue) and I never bothered to finish it.  This skein was an accent color that never got added.. but it makes a lovely hat and I’m glad I hung onto it.

I love this hat/snood and am definitely casting on another one in black shortly.  My only mod for next time will be to drop down another needle size for the ribbing because I’ve had to take it in from stretching and I have to pin it to keep it on.

I do love that it keeps all of my hair contained..  its very useful and pretty too!

Why is it called “starfish” snood? Check out the decreases in the back! How cool is that? (also.. my husband rocks at taking pictures. You should have seen the horrible photos I took in the bathroom)

Everyone in hubby’s family has a May birthday so we’ve been spending a lot of time over at MIL’s house for gatherings. I usually dislike being around the whole in-law clan (because they are all mouthy Conservative Christian Republicans and LOVE to argue politics) but I was in charge of helping hubby’s grandmother (who is the only decent one of the bunch) with the bbq. I’m always into learning how to make kick-ass food and believe me.. this woman can barbecue like nobody’s business!! The food was awesome (mmm.. grilled chicken…) and no one ended up dead, so I consider that a success. I also managed to squeeze the recipe for homemade Challah bread out of my SIL. She married into the Jewish faith and had some awesome ’sisters’ where she lived who made their own EVERYTHING from scratch.. including challah for Sabbath.

After puttering around the house for a while yesterday I pulled out SIL’s challah recipe and gave it a go. I usually don’t have eggs in the house (which challah uses a few of) but I made brownies for hubby’s birthday last week and still had them in the fridge. I followed the directions and ended up with a whole bowl of sticky, soupy dough that would have just oozed down the counter rather than kneaded. I panicked, called SIL (who didn’t answer her phone), and then proceeded to dump flour into the bowl and stir until the stuff in the bowl resembled dough. When SIL did finally call back.. she was convinced that I had done something “wrong” but had no idea what — since she mostly watched the bread-making and didn’t actually do it herself. DOH! By this point the bread was rising in my “dough bucket” and I figured I would just ride it out and see what happened. I had already “wasted” the ingredients and had the oven pre-heating.

After a few pathetic attempts at a 4 strand braid (admittedly, I had never done a 4 strand braid and should probably try it on something other than giant wads of sticky dough) I gave up and did a simple 3 strand.. let it rise a second time, covered it in an egg wash, and threw it in the oven while silently hoping that it didn’t suck. The results?

It seriously didn’t suck. My husband has eaten over half the gigantic loaf between last night and today.. He usually doesn’t go that crazy for homemade bread but I couldn’t even keep him out of this! Totally a success- and it looks pretty too! The only thing I’ll do differently next time is to add more sugar so its sweeter – more like the Russian Easter bread (or “paska” as its called) I love so much.

(also.. if any bakers out there would like to tell me why the bread “cracked” like that on the top where the braiding crossed over and how I can avoid that next time.. I’d be very grateful. I’m thinking I might have “braided” it too tightly.)

Yes, I’m spamming all of you in an attempt to win a cool bike for me and the munchkin. I’ve always wanted a cruiser style bike (or any bike at all, really) – so I hope I win! If you click the photo it takes you to their website so you can check out the other bikes. How cool are these bikes with all that cargo room? I’d love to have this bike in black and add some custom graphics to it.

Since I’ve been feeling dramatically less contagious I decided that I would get back into the kitchen, put on my flour covered apron, and see what I felt like making. People have been talking about Indian breads on the Indian Cooking forum on Ravelry and someone posted that they had tried a good online naan recipe.. so I went to check it out. Realizing that I had everything to make it AND the makings for a chickpea curry.. I set about making myself some garlic naan. A few rises, a fling with the George Foreman Grill (a pan worked much better.. but I saw this on one of the comments to the recipe and figured I’d give it a shot) and setting off every one of the smoke detectors in the house (oops).. I had this :

mmm… garlicky goodness. After I decided that the GFGrill wasn’t big enough and the naan were getting too thick I decided to use a skillet which is when I burned the crap outta the first naan and set off the smoke detectors. Sadly I have no photos of the skillet cooked naan because by that point I was too hungry and ended up just stuffing my face. The recipe made 10 naan (not counting the two I burned the crap out of) and I was only able to eat about 2 pieces before I started bloating. I have a ton left and will be eating leftover chickpea curry & naan for the next day or two… they taste just like the bread I loved from the Nepali restaurant in Colorado.

I haven’t baked or knitted in over a week now because we’ve been hit with one type of sickness after another around here. Earlier last week our new kitty Jack was attacked by something (we think a fox or a small coyote – and yes, its news to me that we have coyote here in Georgia) in our yard and had the side of his face torn up and his back leg injured. He was doctored up and is healing quite nicely.

I put a new piece of jewelry in my stretched earlobes and had a horrible reaction to the metal (surgical steel.. but maybe a high nickel content?) leading to a really big infected nightmare. Thankfully I caught it before it was unmanageable and I ordered in a nice new set of jewelry from BodyArtForms.com. My ears are now much happier…

On Friday at noon I got a call from the school to come get Munchkin because he has “pink eye”. A highly contagious illness you say? OF COURSE. We waited 24 hours (b/c the person in the clinic is not medically trained at all and even said it <em>might</em> not be conjunctivitis) and his eye was nasty – so we had to take him into one of those ‘emergency’ clinics and wait for 4 hours to be seen and get antibiotic eye drops. (Did I mention we don’t have insurance and the state run children’s medical insurance has been dicking me around for on the upwards of 6 months??? yeah… you don’t want to know what that visit cost.) HUGE amounts of sleep lost while I cleaned Munchkin’s eyes every few hours so that they didn’t get stuck shut. He is MUCH better today and has a note which allowed him back at school today.

Yesterday when I was woken up by the cats chasing each other around the bed (they were jumping on our heads.. what a great way to get woken up) I realized that I couldn’t see out of my left eye. When I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror I realized that I had caught Munchkin’s pink eye!! The good news is that the clinic doctor anticipated this issue, had given us enough eye drops, and had told ME how to take them (Love ya doc.. seriously.) should this happen. I’m doing much better but my last pair of contact lenses had to be thrown in the trash because they were contaminated.

I wear 2 week disposables but my prescription is LONG expired and I’ve been wearing this particular pair for an obscene amount of time. The only glasses I have are now about 12 years old (though apparently my prescription hasn’t gotten that much worse because I can see pretty well, just don’t ask me to read you anything on the tv or identify anyone at a distance).. and I’m blind as a bat (and I don’t have that handy sonar feature) without some sort of prescription eyewear. Fortunately my parents (who are AWESOME) are going to help me out for the extra money I need to get myself an eye exam and a box of new contact lenses.. they even said “happy mother’s day” – which means its a gift instead of a loan.. so I don’t feel as crappy about accepting money.

My husband is on a business trip to the West coast for the next 6 days (hence the utter chaos a contagious infection in the house has caused…) and he left early this morning for the airport.. so I’ve been up since about 4am. I’m going to go take a very VERY long shower (all your hot water is belonging to me!!!!) and veg in front of the tv. *sigh* Is it Friday yet??

I’m in the middle of a ton of WIP’s right now – its the end of the year and I’m trying to crank out some teachers gifts (see: Kitchen Tribble scrubbers) and also get ready for the onslaught of May birthdays – SIL, Hubby, FIL & MIL are ALL May birthdays. I did however manage to make this silly, bright and clashy stuffed mouse toy from Stitch n’ Bitch Nation for a kitty named Jack. The stuffed mouse ended up being an R.O.U.S (rodent of unusual size.. for those who don’t love ‘ The Princess Bride’ as much as I do) because I used worsted weight instead of sport.

Some of you at this point are wondering… “Who’s this Jack she’s knitting for?”. Here’s a little picture gallery for you.

This is Jack playing with his new mouse…

This is Jack sitting on the rug on my kitchen floor…

And this is Jack sleeping on my husband’s pillow on the bed….

I’m sure you can guess where this is going.. right?? Yeah, Blog- Meet our new cat.. Jack. More accurately I should say, Blog- meet Ms. Kitty’s new cat.. since she’s the one responsible for bringing him home.

About 4 nights ago I heard a loud noise outside and ran out to make sure that Ms. Kitty (who is an indoor/outdoor cat) wasn’t in some sort of trouble and when I opened the door.. a very freaked out looking Ms. Kitty came plowing into me at about a thousand miles an hour.. followed by the kitty you see above.. followed by the biggest possum I’ve ever seen in my life. As my husband went to run the possum off, I reached down to pick up Ms. Kitty and take her in the house and this cat came right up and wanted to be petted! When hubby came back, the cat went over to him to be petted as well – and that’s when my husband- Mr ” no more pets EVER” – said ” he doesn’t seem to be sickly or have fleas, let’s let him inside and give him some food”. (*insert eye-roll here*) I opened the door so that Ms. Kitty could go inside and this little guy went running right after her! They’ve been following each other around the house and the yard ever since.. and my husband decided (with the help of Munchkin) that the cat’s name should be ” Captain Jack” – or ‘Jack’ for short. (His full name is something like “Captain Jack Skellington Sparrow Rackham Harkness” – if you’re really wondering. There are a lot of folks named Jack that we’re fond of around here.. lol) He is still a kitten, from the looks of him he’s about a year old or so… and he LOVES yarn.

I do wonder where Jack came from or how he came to be sitting at my front door.. which is why I’ve waited to write this post. I’ve done some asking around and no one seems to have ‘lost’ a kitty, I’ve let him in and out of the house as he pleased in case he wanted to go “home” (if he had a home), but so far there isn’t any sign of someone wanting to find this guy. There have been a lot of cases (I’ve heard from the owner of the small store down the road) of people dumping animals recently, and there have been a few local rental houses which have recently had people move out.. so I’m wondering if he’s simply been abandoned. We’ve lived here a year and have had our share of stray cats on the property but we’ve never seen this guy.

Morally, I do feel like I’m doing the right thing by not turning him into a shelter (because they are over-crowded, under-funded, and currently putting a LOT of animals down that aren’t being adopted) when even though we don’t have much money ourselves, I know that we can at least afford to feed him and give him a good home as long as we have a home ourselves. I’m going to be checking into low cost pet clinics and having the little guy checked over (which will also check to see if he has a micro-chip) as soon as possible now that we’re pretty sure that his new home is here at Chez Mousie. Besides, how could you say no to a face like that and those big ol’ paws??

Sorry about the change of plans in the contest – I had things scheduled that fell through and decided to just extend the contest until I had some time to sit down and write a blog post. Figured it would give a few more people a chance to enter and that’s always a good thing, right? Ok.. on with the winner!

The winner- comment #11 was Lady Euphoria Deathwatch! Congrats – email me and let me know what you like and what your allergies are so that I can make you a gift box!
(BTW.. I did have to edit the comments before doing the Random # Generator because 2 people double commented and I wanted to keep it “one entry per person” so I combined and deleted. )

In other news… RAISIN BREAD!

I used the same KAF cinnamon swirl bread recipe that I had made earlier this month and added raisins into the dough after the first rise but before flattening it out to put the cinnamon topping on. There is a great blog post on the KAF blog about how to add in items into your loaves of bread – I added less than 1/2 cup of raisins into the dough and made sure to poke them down so they didn’t show outside the loaf- otherwise those would have burned while baking.  I made sure to measure its first rise until it had doubled in size (which I didn’t do the first time.. ) and also made sure to let it rise the second time over the top of the loaf pan as stated in the directions.  For the first rise of my dough I started using an old plastic 2qt. pitcher so that I can track the rise – just like those fancy “dough buckets” they sell on the KAF site.  The results were a light and fluffy loaf of bread – nothing like the dense and heavy loaf I made the first time.. and eleven million times as awesome.

Speaking of cinnamon raisin bread… I am going to go slice myself another piece.  The photo above was taken yesterday – I believe I’m going to have to make another loaf by the weekend for sure!

I’ve extended the contest until Tuesday at Midnight because… well, because I can. Keep commenting on the 5 year post and I’ll be back on Wednesday with the results!

Whoah… today is my FIVE YEAR blog anniversary! I’m seriously stunned that its been that long since I started this on a whim when we lived in Tennessee and I was longing to connect to like-minded folks. I don’t really have much to say that I haven’t said before on my anniversary posts.. but I do want to say thank you again to all of the folks who read and comment. I’ve met some really awesome friends through this blog and I wouldn’t trade y’all for anything!

So, as you may have expected.. I’m going to have a contest. I wasn’t sure how to go about this because I really don’t have any store bought yarn to give away (the usual contest prize here in knit-blog-land) but I’ve decided that the winner of the contest will receive a “goody bag” of things. It might be chocolate, tea, incense, handspun yarn, or soaps… it will also contain something hand made by me but not necessarily knitted. If you win you can tell me of any allergies or hates (you know.. “the smell of flowers makes me barf” or “I hate yellow” would be helpful) so that I can tailor the gift package. Think of it as a Mousie grab-bag… try your luck. Ask around.. I think I put together rather good giftie bags.

So… what do you have to do? Simple. Leave a comment on this post and tell me something. Your favorite quote? Favorite memory? Thing you are thankful for? Anything you want to tell me. The only content rule is that it has to be something “nice” – nothing mean or nasty please. The only other rule is that this contest is ONLY open to people who have actually read my blog before. I’m not saying you have to ever have left a comment.. but please be honest and only enter if you actually are a blog reader (though I’m willing to make an exception for those folks who I talk to on Ravelry.. just leave your Rav name in your comment). I’m going to leave this contest open until Tuesday night at midnight and I’ll choose a winner via the magic random machine (or a drawing in a hat.. depending on how many folks enter).

नमस्ते (Namaste’)

-Mouse

On a roll again here at Chez Mousie.. Cinnamon Rolls this time! I used another King Arthur Flour recipe (but substituted regular packaged yeast & grocery store brand flour) and they turned out awesome! I’m still bloating from dinner because I also made homemade macaroni & cheese… it was a very domestic sort of day here – laundry washed & hung outside (I still don’t have a dryer and at this point don’t really see the point in getting one.. funny how things become less necessary after an entire year of living without!), a trip to the grocery store (I drove myself again- woot!), and a homemade dinner & dessert!

(I’m inserting a WP Gallery of the cinnamon rolls here.. not sure if it will show up in feed readers or not. If you click on the picture it will take you to a full size photo… I think.)

Happy Easter!  I’m setting this post to auto-send because by this point I’ll be at hubby’s grandmother’s house and face down in a plate of ham.  I hope everyone who celebrates it is having a wonderful Easter…  (we celebrate the “giant mutant rabbit who brings baskets of candy” part of it.. )

Seriously.. I sat here for about the last 10 minutes making myself giggle with possible titles for this post, but instead have decided to let you make your own. Go ahead.. have at it.

So, tomorrow is Easter – and while we don’t celebrate the religious part of it here at Chez Mousie, we do rock the “Look, a giant mutant bunny brought you a basket filled with sugar!!! wheeeeeee!” part of it for Munchkin. The bunny is a little short on cash this year so the basket contains dollar containers of bubble solution, vanilla sugar wafers, dollar chocolate & white chocolate bunnies, and a whole container of Transformers fruit snacks. I always sort of had a feeling that the one year that ‘the bunny’ brought my son a GI. Joe action figure (one of the big ones too.. ) would come back to bite us in the ass (thanks hubby.. I told you so.) eventually.

Along with the visit from Bunzilla we also spend the day with hubby’s family at his grandparent’s house, where we hide eggs for the kids (munchkin is the only kid there this year since ‘the cousins’ have moved to Florida) and I attempt to eat my weight in spiral honey baked ham. As with every family gathering, I’m required to bring a “dish” (which usually ends up being about THREE dishes.. but I’m not upset or anything *fumes*) of assigned food to the meal. Usually its something that my husband hates and that I’m sick of making.. like deviled eggs or rice pilaf. This year (with the fact that I’ve been totally sucked into the Cult of Bread) I decided that I would make homemade yeast dinner rolls because right now I’m having a lot of fun baking bread, and the normal family dinner cooking is usually a miserable chore.

Bread making? It totally rocks. I used this recipe from King Arthur Flour and added Italian dressing seasonings to it to make some kick ass herb rolls… and I even got them finished early enough in the day so that I could take some food-blog worthy macro shots! Two trays worth of dinner rolls (minus the one that Munchkin had to sample.. it was VERY good) that were stupid-simple to make and fun too (not to mention seriously food-model worthy)– what more could someone want? I can’ t wait to eat these tomorrow… I hope no one else wanted any bread.

(If you are dieting.. you might want to sit this post out.. it contains gratuitous bread photos)

I’m sure you are probably wondering whether this place is turning into a baking blog.. and I’m starting to believe that the answer is YES. I have to admit that I’m getting pretty into baking bread and that I am finding it to be way more comforting than knitting and easier on my poor back than spinning.

This weekend while my husband was away I hit the King Arthur Flour website and found a recipe for Cinnamon Swirl Bread that looked like it could be fun. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly because we don’t have dry milk (is it the same as powdered milk? I don’t even know..) but I threw in some regular liquid type milk and went on with the recipe as stated, all while hoping for the best.

Obviously I am not an expert baker.. but what I came out with certainly LOOKS like cinnamon bread, it smells divine, and tastes pretty darn good! I did notice that my loaf didn’t rise as high as the one on the website and it is a little “dense” but I’m figuring that was because my liquid ratio was off (because of the dry/wet milk thing) and because my kitchen was cold and I got a little impatient on the second rise because I knew my husband was on his way home and I wanted to get this out for his arrival. Regardless, it tastes awesome and I’m all proud of myself because it has an actual cinnamon swirl inside JUST LIKE THE PHOTO ON THE WEBSITE. One of these days I’m going to learn how to take pretty photos of food just like those food blogger folks.

This gorgeous choker came in the mail ages ago (sometime around Christmas) from my blog friend Lady Euphoria Deathwatch as a prize for winning her epitaph contest… but apparently real life sort of slapped me in the face and I haven’t had a chance to blog about it.   Its a length of hand tatted black lace with a silver & black charm hanging from the front  and it is GORGEOUS!  I keep poking at her to open an Etsy shop and sell these puppies because I’m sure the goth crowd (and goth at heart) would just eat them up… (poke.. poke..poke)

You can see the rules and enter to win at this post – she has some beautiful new styles and colors (ooooh… purple…..) too.   I ended up wearing this at Christmas dinner and even my straight laced in-laws loved it..  I even found a set of nearly matching earrings lurking in my jewelry box.   Yes, I AM that pale.. and yes, I DO glow in the dark – just in case anyone was wondering.

After making pizza on Monday I decided on Tuesday that I really wanted to make soft pretzels. I looked online and found a recipe which was modified from Martha Stewart… and spent some time making the dough. After dinner I rolled out the pretzels, “poached” them in a baking soda bath, gave them an egg wash, and threw them in the oven. Ten minutes later I had these:

Looked decent- tasted ugly

They looked pretty decent but they tasted like crap. I made a few cinnamon ones (you can see one on this tray in the upper left) which weren’t quite so bad but the plain pretzels were sour. Munchkin declared the pretzels “disgusting” and spat them out.. my husband refused to eat them. I threw them in the trash this morning.

Pretzel dough part 2

I spent part of the morning searching for for “Aunt Annie’s” style pretzels since the family requested “mall pretzels”… and since I clearly had something to prove. No pretzel was going to beat me!! After a few emails with baker & super-mama Faith I had my modified recipes and went into the kitchen to make some dough. After dinner I made more pretzels…

behold the awesome!

I ended up with 7 puffy pretzels (1 met with a terrible disaster in the baking soda bath) 3 plain (shown above) and 4 cinnamon sugar pretzels.

cinnamony sugar coma-y goodness

As you can see… there are only 2 cinnamon sugar coma pretzels left on the tray — that’s because Munchkin and I made ourselves sick on them directly out of the oven. They were SO good- if not a little bit under cooked. The plain pretzels were over-cooked but were still pretty tasty.. all in all a much better turn out than the last batch. If I make these again I will definitely be only making the cinnamon ones since no one in the house seems interested in the plain ones. I’m going to go sit on the couch and bloat now…

Wow, I can’t believe its been so long since I’ve last posted! Sadly, the most exciting thing that happened worth noting around Chez Mousie in the last two weeks was that I accidentally slammed an Exacto knife into my thumb a few nights ago while trying to remove the plastic wrapping off of a bottle of vitamins. Seriously folks, when bodily injury is the best subject you have for a blog post, you might be in trouble.

So, instead of offering up some more bodily injury.. I bring you a post about homemade pizza! (everyone all at once) mmmmmm…. pizza.

(click to embiggen)

I love to cook (nothing fancy- mostly slapped together curries, family favorites, and the occasional tv recipe) and I do like to make easy desserts and those boxed cakes & muffins.. but I would never ever call myself a baker. Truth be told, I’m pretty well terrified of any recipe that involves little yeasty beasties because I have heard all about the things you can do to absolutely ruin a loaf of bread. The only bread I’ve ever “baked” involved a weekend fling with a borrowed bread machine and packaged mixes… and believe me, it ended BADLY.

So, how did I end up with homemade pizza when I’m clearly a bit yeastophobic? I’m blaming my MIL & P*zza H*t – seriously. We don’t have a lot of money so in our house ‘delivery’ pizza (we pick it up to save on cost and always use coupons) is a once a month treat. At our last stop for pizza & movies night (yay Netflix..) my husband ran into ‘Pizza the Hut’ (does anyone else get this reference? ) and came out to tell me that our local PH is in the process of being bought out- and that the new owners will NOT be accepting ANY PH brand coupons even though the name will remain the same!! It was already a stretch for us to get pizza at the coupon price, so this new plan just torched us. We bought a garlic bread frozen pizza from the grocery store next door and went home to cook it.. vowing only to return to ‘the Hut’ for boneless wings, should the late night craving arise.

When I relayed this story to my mother-in-law, her (rather snide) response was “well.. what are you going to do, make your own pizza??” Yes, yes I am.. and mostly because you just insinuated that I couldn’t. Yesterday, while hubby was out doing odd jobs (boy, this economy SUCKS) I searched the internet for “easy pizza recipes” and hit on one from Hillybilly Housewife which looked like maybe even I could pull it off. The only ingredients I needed  from the store were yeast, fresh mushrooms and some shredded mozzarella cheese… the canned tomatoes & tomato paste needed for my stupid-easy homemade sauce and the rest of the crust goodies were already in the pantry. The dough (which I had to set outside in the sun to rise b/c I feared it was too cold in the house for it) ended up getting just right and the family declared homemade Mousie Hut pizza to be a success. It was so much of a success that I ended up baking up the second batch of dough so that we could stuff ourselves stupid.. even Munchkin enjoyed helping. I’m definitely going to be baking our own homemade pizzas from now on.. and I’ve conquered a bit of my yeast bread fear in the process. Next up? Homemade soft pretzels!

The snow accumulation so far here in GA… taken from the window here at my desk. I’m not feeling so great so I decided not to go back outside right now but we’re planning on letting Munchkin romp around in the snow later. They’re expecting about 4+ inches here in the Atlanta area! YAY!