Cleaning Out The Spice Rack

 It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me well is that I got really sick after Eric died.  Had a lot of different surgeries and have had a very bumpy ride on the road to recovery.  Because of that I have not been doing as much cooking as I would like.  My kitchen and pots have become lonely. 

Today I was experimenting with a sugar free, grain free zucchini breakfast bar.  Both my cinnamon and baking powder were expired.  I went ahead and tried my experiment anyway. Yes, it does need both cinnamon and baking powder.  Those are now on my shopping list. 

That is not where I was going with this blog post.  I decided to look at all the spices in jars and bottles in my spice rack.  Any thing from a store no longer in business is leaving.  Any store that I have not shopped at for 2 years is going. Anything past its expiration date is going.  So all totaled I have 49 jars and bottles leaving the kitchen this morning.  

The liquids have to be emptied and the bottles rinsed out, then sorted between recycling and trash.  The jars have to opened and emptied, the jars being sorted between recycling and trash.  I figured it will take me an hour to do all of this. I will only add more spices as needed.  Not everything will be replaced. For instance, take spices that are used for beef, since I no longer eat beef, except for the occasional bite, the spices will not be replaced. Since we are not using the barbecue anymore, those spices will not be replaced. Yes, the barbecue died while I was sick and since we don’t grill steaks anymore, it is not high on the shopping list. 

My challenge to you my readers is to check your spice racks before the holidays. Check for all those expiration dates. Spices don’t last forever.  Fresh spices mean a better quality product. 

The bonus is that I have 1/2 of an empty shelf in the highly prized prime kitchen area open.  I am sure that if will be filled up in no time.  

These are all the jars and bottles leaving the house today.  

The Poncho That Was Not Meant To Be

 About a decade ago I had decided to start an open work summer poncho.  I bought the required number of Juniper Moon Farms Zooey, a linen and cotton blend yarn.  I even bought a few extras just in case.  I was making it a little larger than the pattern. The calculations for making it a bit bigger worked out perfectly to the point other knitters used them and their ponchos came out perfect.  

I am not the best at knitting open weave knitting under the best of circumstances.  Theses were not the best of times for me.  Eric was in and out of the club which was code word in our house for the hospital.  He was also home sick an awful lot too.  This was not a sick room project like my pattern Count 1-2-3-4 was.  Count 1-2-3-4 was mainly knit in Eric’s sick room, the emergency room and Eric’s hospital room.  It was a simple one row pattern.  This was a pattern knit over many rows with many weird repeats. I was distracted and sometimes forgot to write what row I was on.  It was ripped out more times than I can remember.  

Then there was a nursing student from the University of Arizona School of Nursing that was stressed out over her finial exams.  Commented how pretty the yarn was.  I told her where to buy it. She said it did not fit in her budget as a student. When I left my knitting at the table to hold my seat she helped herself to a couple of skeins of the yarn.  She and the yarn were gone when I returned. That left me scrambling to find a couple skeins in the same dye lot and color.  

I restarted it after Eric died. I ripped out the whole thing.  Then started over. I lost my place yet again.  Then put it into the closet.   Last night I had an epiphany and decided that this needed to be a woven shawl. So today I am empty in the bag. Ripping out the shawl yet again.  Finding the odd balls of linen yarn and putting it in the queue to be woven.  

I have no regrets on giving up on this pattern.  In fact I feel very relieved. The yarn will be put to good use.  I will no longer torture myself with open weave knitting.  If I don’t like how it turns out I can either gift it or sell it.  I am free of the weight of trying to knit that darn poncho.  

A Rare Double

 Today a rare double was completed.  Yes, in that I mean 2 finished yarn projects were finished within 2 hours of each other.  They are both scarfs for a children’s clothing bank.  The red one is for a younger child. The 2 tone blue one is for a high school student.  Please note, not one knit 2 together stitch was used on either scarf.  The 2 streak had to stop somewhere.   

In case you were wondering, new projects have been cast on both sets of knitting needles so that they would not get lonely.  Now I am off to knit 2 more scarfs.  

Overheard

 I recently overheard this comment by someone who should have known better.  At an open house a presenter said that they were not getting the new fiber animals with the 1 to 2 micron fiber.  Yes, he did say 1 to 2 micron fiber.  Wait for it….because the hair was too fine and brittle. 

First off to put this all in perspective the average human hair is approximately 70 microns, plus or minus 20 microns.  

I have never seen wool fibers smaller than 15 to 25 microns sell in a retail store, which is considered a finer and softer wool.  In fiber a micron is used to measure the diameter of wool.  Lambs and kids first cuts might be finer but the trade off is a shorter staple length and a slightly harder spin.  The finished yarn will not be as durable either from my personal experience.  So that is why if I get any first cuts I blend it with other fibers from the same breed. 

A micron is a way to measure the size of a particle.  A micron is 1 - 1,000,000 of a meter or 0.001 millimeter  or 1 - 25,000 of an inch, or .0003937 inch. It is also said that the human eye can see objects that are approximately 0.1 millimeters in size.  

So now that you have seen all the geeky math you know why it gave me a laugh when we left the area. 

If you find an error in my math, please know that I relied on a search engine for the hardcore numbers.  Math is also not my forte.  Although I am getting better at math with the amount of knitting that I do.  

Lastly if you are a presenter please know your subject matter a lot better than this.  Also feel free to use note cards for the hard to remember things.  

Early Morning Clarity

 This morning in one of those brief moments of super clarity the thought occurred to me.

Why not weave in the ends of the scarf before I took the scarf off the loom? While the scarf was still under tension.  

So I gave it a try using the technique my friends grandmother taught her. You know, the one I thought of on my own. The one that goes against how they teach weaving in the ends in Tucson.  

Well to make a long story short. It worked. It was easier. I am sharing pictures of both ends woven in.  On my next scarf I will show off the technique.  In the meantime just marvel at how clean the woven in threads look.  I will trim the ends after the hot bath.  

By the way I also wound the yarn on the shuttle from the inside of the skein so that the colors would look very similar to the way I spun the yarn.  Otherwise you would have seen a stark green line next to the purple.  I am breaking rules right and left this morning.  

My New Scarf

 This morning I finally finished a new scarf for me.  I bet you are all surprised.  The scarf is very colorful to say the least.  I designed the scarf with leftover yarn from other projects, my hand spun thread and yarn plus various samples that I have gotten over the years.  I trimmed all the extra yarn after weaving in the ends and washing it.  All I can say is that it is very soft and comfortable.  An added bonus is that John likes it, so I will not have to find a new home for it.  

On the less exciting news of the day. A wasp found its way on to the front drivers seat of my car.so I sat on it by accident   Who ever thinks there will be a wasp on the drivers seat of a locked up car.  Not me.  To say it hurt was an understatement.  John captured the wasp while I went into the house to wash it with warm soapy water. Then rinse it off and towel dry it.  Next came the ice.  Only then did I even google how to treat a wasp sting.  The good news was that without even knowing what I was doing, I got the first steps through icing it done in the correct order.  John did not find the stinger.  Thank goodness I did not have an allergic reaction to it.  It is still sore hours later with a small bump.  Hopefully it will feel better by morning.  

This meant that I did not get my shopping at Target done.  I guess it will be tomorrow.  We also did not get to see the Blue Super Moon because it was raining and hailing at our house.  Never trust the weather forecast. It was supposed to be clear skies tonight, however, I will take the rain any day it chooses to make an appearance.  

From My Work Table

 Sometimes it is necessary to use more than one yarn butler for a project.  Take the picture below. Notice how the black yarn is wound into a cake and the Anne from Circulo is wrapped in a shape as best described as coming off the commercial winder that they use.  They unwind at different rates. That makes it hard to put both yarns on the same yarn butler.  

My simple solution is to have two yarn butlers in use at the same time.  

The colorful scarf is destined for a boarding school on the Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona.  It has one strand of Anne which is a fingering weight yarn. And one strand of worsted weight cotton yarn in black. They are knit together in double stranded knitting.  It is being knit in the round and will be around 6 feet 2 inches long and 6 inches wide.  If you look very closely you will notice that I am using 2 different colors of Anne, but from 5 feet away you will not notice.  

Behind the yarn busters is my OttLite with a random assortment of stitch markers and a random pen for notes.  

Now is the time to add that extra Yarn Butler to your holiday wish list. Some local yarn stores will keep a list so you get exactly what you want for the holidays.