Mish-Mash Post

I have no idea how it’s been almost a month since I last posted. I sure don’t feel like I’ve been sitting around doing nothing. On the other hand, I don’t feel like I have much to show for my time away from the blog. So this post is an assortment of things that come to mind, most with photos. These are not in chronological order, or any order.

In my last post I reported that I was going to go kayaking. I did indeed, on Black Creek. It was a stunning day, temps in the high 70s. RIT maintains an amazing launch for their integrated paddling program. It’s actually wheelchair accessible, and is available to the public any time RIT isn’t actively using it. The launch is amazingly easy, and you’re guaranteed to not get wet feet either getting into or out of the water. There’s a very cool double arched bridge you paddle under on Black Creek. You can just see a bit of the second arch on the left of my not-so-well-taken photo.

That was on April 10. Then we had snow, rain, below freezing temps, and nothing that called me back to the water. Finally, on May 2 the morning was very pleasant and I decided to postpone my morning walk and go kayaking. I went to the place closest to me, a little public park with a launch onto Irondequoit Creek (to the left) or Bay (to the right). Although we’ve had a decent amount of rain lately, we’re still in an overall precipitation deficit, and the water in the Creek was low. That also means that the launch was, um, a bit ugly. Especially after the great launch noted above. Still, I had the Creek to myself at 8:30 in the morning, and got an hour in before the sky darkened and I decided I had to leave.

I did see that someone – beaver? muskrat? other? – had made themselves a nice little home in the bank. There was another entrance not far away, and I’m assuming they were connected by a tunnel in the bank.

——————————-

I continue to have fun with sourdough. Sometimes I’m really happy with the results, other times not so much. This was a loaf I particularly liked.

I added some grated sharp cheddar cheese to the batter, along with black pepper, cayenne, and crushed red pepper. It was just the right amount of cheesy-ness and peppery-ness for me. If only I’d taken any kind of measurement of how much of anything I added….

Today I made some sourdough crackers. The brown ones are very nice. The lighter ones are just okay, and I doubt that they’ll keep well. (After posting I baked the crackers a bit more in my toaster oven to crisp them all up.)

I’m confused. I had them in the oven for longer than the recipe called for and they still didn’t get very brown. I think my oven must be off as this is a common occurrence, but the confusion is that my sourdoughs always cook in the appropriate amount of time. I guess I just have to get an oven thermometer and check it out.

——————————-

A house I pass by regularly had a few of these little beauties in their garden this morning. Never saw them there before. I’m usually pretty good with flower ID, but this has me stumped. The flower bud looked like a tiny rose. I’d estimate that the whole thing was about 2″ tall. And those leaves are pretty distinctive. Anyone recognize this?

——————————-

I get ideas in my head and can get pretty obsessed with trying my hand at things. I pretty much always have socks on my needles, and gradient dyed sock blanks were intriguing me. I rarely work with wool so all my dyes are made for plant-based fibers (cotton, bamboo, Tencel, etc.). BUT. There’s a woman, Rebecca, who blogs and has YouTube tutorials as Chemknits, who has experimented with dyeing wool yarns with everything from fiber reactive dyes to koolaid to food coloring to skittles. So I watched a bunch of her tutorials and jumped in. I successfully dyed a sock blank with my hyacinth and eggplant fiber reactive dyes.

A sock blank is made on a knitting machine. I bought three double-knit blanks. That means that each blank is made with two strands of yarn, so that when I dye them, I will have two identical balls of yarn, one for each sock. I’m not a person who can get into wearing 2 different socks.

I’m very happy with this as my first venture down this particular rabbit hole. Here’s a sock I’m knitting with the yarn, about 3/4 done.

That dye experiment was so successful I decided to try to use the same method with a pair of cotton leggings. Hmmmm….This is the exact same hyacinth dye I used on the wool. Nowhere near as dark.

So I mixed up more dye, same color, in various strengths and hand painted over those leggings. Still not excited.

My perisistent/stubborn self would not be bested by these leggings! I mixed up MORE dye – hyacinth and navy mixed together, and did a modified version of immersion dyeing, gradually pulling out the legs throughout the dye process.

I can tell you I won’t be going through this process again with the other pair of leggings I have to dye. I’m not sure what I will do, but it won’t be trying 3 different things!

——————————-

I made 2 more warps of towels. The first was yet another Ms & Os draft. It didn’t do exactly what I had in mind, and what I’ve seen others accomplish, but they are certainly fully functional towels.

Although I’m intrigued with how others achieved some cool effects with Ms & Os, I decided I needed to move on to other drafts and other colors. In my stash-busting effort, I went with a variety of greens, with a few blues, purples, and a pink thrown in the mix. I’m calling these Moss Creek, partly for the color, and partly for the ‘bubbly’ section that is very reminiscent of water running over little rocks in a stream.

The towels are up in my Etsy shop, as are some other things. I plan to list more scarves and wearables in the next several days, as I have my Mother’s Day sale going on and want people to have plenty of options.

To do that, I’ve had to take more photos of my shawls and scarves. Towels are pretty easy to photograph. Other things? Not so much. I do not have a good location in my house. Period. I’ve tried hanging sheets as backdrops, both indoors and out, and I end up spending a lot of time in Photoshop trying to clean up the background, still to end up with something that I’m not happy with. I recently asked for and received permission from my neighbor to try to use their fence as a backdrop. If I wasn’t spending so much time writing this post I would have tried it out today. 🙂

——————————-

My daughter’s nanny got Covid, so I’ve been helping out with childcare. The other day I took the little one to the zoo. He mostly wanted to climb on their wonderful new climbing area. I’d guess it’s 40′ wide and 80′ long, perhaps larger. Mostly made with fallen trees/logs and ropes. Some of those logs were planed on one side to make a flat surface for walking on, and they were attached aat various heights and angles. It was great fun for little kids!

——————————-

A friend of mine told me about a project sponsored by the Rochester Central Library called Knit Democracy. It’s a very cool concept: a collaborative knitting project AND a method of learning more about how our electoral system works. So of course I signed up. I completed four ‘building’ blocks and four ‘window’ blocks and submitted them. I’ve since gotten more yarn and as soon as I’m done with the socks I’ll knit more blocks.

——————————-

Last for this post, I also signed up for another stint of writing postcards to swing states. They send you the postcards, the names & addresses, and the script. You hand write them out and provide the stamps. I’ve committed to 400 postcards this time around! I’m aiming for 10 postcards a day, 40 days total, to get them all done. I think I’m on day 8. I’m hoping it encourages people to vote.