Knotty Mouse

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.