Vanilla Extract Part 2

About 2 and a half years ago I made some homemade vanilla extract. Homemade vanilla extract is the easiest thing in the world to make. It only has two ingredients - alcohol and vanilla beans. Most people use vodka because it has the cleanest flavor but any alcohol over a certain percentage can be used. The beans are steeped in the alcohol for about two months before use but the longer it sits the richer it becomes. So at this point my vanilla is a really rich brown color and imparts a great flavor to my baking.

Recently I decided to try something new. I am currently making a vanilla extract with Seagrams 7 as my base. Why Seagrams? Because I'm competitive. For the last three years my family has had a friendly competition on Christmas Eve. The first year was salsa (I lost), the next was fudge (I won), and this past year was mixed drinks (I came in second). This coming year will be cookies but we decided to put a twist on it. Everybody wrote down an ingredient on a piece of paper and we picked two that need to be included in the cookie. We ended up with Seagrams and peanut butter. I figured if I treated the Seagrams the same way I treat any vanilla extract, the peanut butter should be easy to incorporate.

I found the cutest bottles to use at a store called Home Goods. Since they had two bottles I picked up both and decided to do another batch of vanilla extract with a vodka base (I think it may end up divvied up into Christmas gifts.)

Hopefully this plan works for my cookies. I can't wait to start experimenting in a few months

 

Work in Progress Wednesday

My work in progress this week is a pair of socks - this time for me! When I went to the yarn shop to get the yarn for my son's hat, I may have strayed into the sock yarn section and found a green and pink Zauberball. Of course something that fun and funky could not be passed up! (Hey at least it's not blue!)

I decided to branch out a little from a plain vanilla sock and do a patterned sock. It's still cuff down with a heel flap on my handy Size 1.5 needles, though. The pattern I chose was Jury Duty socks. Still pretty easy knitting but at least they are slightly different than others I've knit. And I absolutely love the color changes in the yarn - reminds me of a watermelon!

For more works in progress, check out Tami's Amis!

 

Finished Object Friday - Minecraft hat

Boy I'm on a roll - two finished projects in as many weeks! This week I finished a hat for my son. His birthday is about a month away and he is crazy about Minecraft. A few months ago I was browsing Ravelry and I came across a pattern for a Creeper hat (Creepers are characters in the game) and thought it was just perfect for him. So rather than wait until the last minute I actually started working on it a few weeks ago.

(I'll get a better picture when I give it to him - trying to be a little stealth here)

To make the hat I used Cascade 220 Superwash in a Christmas green and Black. This was my first time using Cascade and I think I like it. I used size 6 needles for the hat and tried to be very careful on the color work so I didn't pull the yarn too tight. Looking through other's pattern notes on Ravelry provided me with two very helpful hints about the hat. 1 - the pattern runs a little small so rather than knitting the child's size I went with the small adult size. I was glad I did. I tried it on me and it was quite snug and a little short so I'm pretty sure it will work perfectly on a seven year old. 2 - I followed a different decrease method used by quite a few people that I think worked out very well for shape of the hat.

Can't wait for my son's birthday so I can give this to him!

For more finished objects, check out Tami's Amis.

 

Finished Object Friday - Tardis Socks

I'm so excited about my most recent finished knitting project! E and I are both big Dr. Who fans so I made a pair of Tardis socks for Him for Valentines day.

I based the socks off of the Tardis Socks pattern but modified it so they were ankle socks and the pattern was on the foot. E prefers ankle socks, which means the pattern isn't showing when he wears shoes, but it's kind of fun because it's a hidden surprise. You might even say that his shoes are now "bigger on the inside". (Sorry fellow Whovians for the lame joke).

The socks are knitted top down with a heel flap and gusset but unlike standard socks I did half an inch of ribbing (as opposed to 1.5 inches) and then knitted three rows of stockingnette before moving onto the heel flap. And thank goodness they were ankle socks because I had to knit an 11" inch foot!

E was pretty thrilled with the socks - he's already worn them a few times. Definitely a knit worthy guy!

For more finished objects, check out Tami's Amis!

 

Garden Update

The indoor gardening set E gave me for Christmas is working really well. It came with a variety of herbs so that's what I started growing. I've got Thai basil, Italian basil, dill, mint, chives, parsley and cilantro.

This is what it looked like about a week after I planted it. The two basils, dill and chives had begun to sprout

Here's the garden about weeks after I started it. The chives took off first (which is funny because they were supposed to be the shortest.) The dill went crazy right away too. Now a few weeks more and I've had to raise the lamp up a few notches because almost everything has grown so tall. The only one lagging behind is the mint. After six weeks, it's barely peeking above the surface. I thought I took a picture of it more recently but I guess I haven't.

I needed to prune the plants so I've been looking for different ways to use them. For the basil, I went with my old standby, pesto. The dill and chives have been used in roasted potatoes and carrots. l love roasting vegetables. Just cut up he veggies, throw in a gallon size bag with some olive oil, salt, pepper and the herbs, shake it up, dump it out onto a pan and bake. Easy peasy!

The parsley was used with basil in a manicotti filling. And the cilantro was used in salsa. I used Roma tomatoes, a Serrano pepper (I like spicy salsa), lime juice, onions, a little bit of sugar, cumin and of course the cilantro. This salsa turned out better than my first attempt but is still not quite right. I'll have to keep practicing.

I've also worked preserving some of the herbs. I've got dill outside drying and some chives and dill in olive oil in a ice cube tray in my freezer. Hopefully this works for long term preservation.

 

Fingerless gloves

After so many gift knits recently, I decided to knit something for myself. I'm still working on my Serina cardigan sometimes but it's slow going. So I wanted something that was a little more instant gratification. I decided to make a pair of fingerless gloves. Full gloves aren't used very often in Arizona but my office gets so cold that I figured fingerless gloves would be useful there, allowing me to have fingers free to type easily but keep my hands warm.

It was easy for me to settle on the yarn. When we went to Iowa this summer I picked up one skein fingering weight yarn. There's no nylon in it so I was looking for a non sock pattern. Plus this will make me smile at the office when I see vacation yarn on my hands. Also it gave me a chance to play with this bad boy:

E got me a swift and winder for Christmas and this was my first time playing with it.

I had a harder time deciding on the pattern since there are so many cute ones out there. I ended up settling on Mitt Envy, which has a cute cabling detail on it. I modified it slightly to give it a little more length by adding a few extra rows of ribbing and an extra repeat of the pattern.

These were such a quick knit, taking me a little less than two weeks to finish. (It would have taken even less time if I had started the right mitt instead of a second left one. Lost about a night's work for that one.) can't wait to wear these!

For more finished objects check out Tami's Amis!

 

Knitted Christmas

This year I ended up knitting a few of my Christmas gifts. I love giving homemade gifts and I wish I had the time to make everything. As it was I barely finished and haven't had much time to talk about them until today.

The first thing I made (and probably my favorite of the items I made) was a hat and scarf set for my niece. My niece is super knit worthy - for her birthday I hinted that I had gotten her something really cool. Her response: "you made me a hat and scarf?!" Unfortunately I hadn't but now I knew what she was getting for Christmas. I picked out some variegated purple/green/grey in Sheepish as my niece loves purple. For the hat I used the Three Tams pattern from an old issue of Knitty (and used white Sheepish for the contrast color). The scarf pattern was Yarn Harlot's One Row Scarf.

My niece loved them! She was actually wearing them when I saw her this week, even though it was 75 degrees outside. Like I said, totally knit worthy.

For her little sister, I knitted a stuffed owl. My niece is so into owls so I thought it might be fun to knit her one (plus it would probably go over better than a hat would). I found an adorable giant owl pattern from Purl Bee. The pattern calls for super bulky yarn on Size 15 needles. I used Lion Brand Hometown, which is also a super bulky but recommends size 13 needles. I like the owl but I do wish I had gone with size 11 needles for a denser fabric.

My niece liked it. It's so big she could hardly get her arms around it!

Another project I finished was a hat for my aunt. In our family we do an exchange by drawing names and getting something for that person (like secret Santa but not secret). My aunt had seen me working on my niece's hat and joked that she hoped I would get her name so I could make her a hat. Well sure enough I did pick her! I used the Flora hat pattern. Other people who had kntitted the pattern mentioned in their notes that it came out big. So I switched to a size 6 for the body of the hat and a size 4 for the brim.

I tried it on before I gave it to her to make sure it fit and it fit me fine so hopefully it fits her well. I also gave her a bottle of wine to go with her present so I thought I'd have a little fun.

I made a hat for the bottle! The pattern is obviously not the same (I used Susan B Anderson's Santa hat ornament) but the yarn is the same.

My last knitting project for Christmas were gift card holders for the boys' teachers. They were nice, quick knits that added a little bit of personalization to the gift cards. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of them before I gave them away. But trust me, they were cute. I used a mini stocking pattern with leftover scrap acrylic on size 5 needles.

I also had two other non-knitted craft projects for Christmas. In my resolutions post I mentioned the sewing I did last year, with one of the items being heating packs for my FIL. These are so simple - just two pieces of fabric held right side together and sewn most the way around the outside, leaving a couple inches open. Then they are turned right side out and filled with beans. Lastly the opening is sewn shut.

The last project was a couple of ornaments for the babysitter. I made a batch of salt dough and rolled it out into two disks. I then had my boys press their hands into the dough and then poked a couple of holes at the top for the string. Since they were a little big I poked two holes in each to provide more support to the string. After I baked it, I painted the imprints of their hands and sprayed a glossy sealant on them. Then I ran some string through them.

Whew - I think that was all of the crafting fun around here!

For more finished objects, check out Tami's Amis!