Finger Knitting

My last post was over three years ago. It's been awhile, huh? Since last writing I have been taught to knit by a dear friend. Today's post is about my latest knitting adventure.

The other day I was contemplating how machine knitting could work, which led me to consider that a similar process could be accomplished by hand. Well, fingers.

I had bought some ribbon-like yarn on sale a few weeks ago. I liked the color and purchased it despite having no idea what I'd do with it. Let's call it crafter's optimism.

In dreaming up a finger knitting technique--which is akin to knitting with your fingers as four vertically held crochet hooks, instead of using one knitting needle--I realized the as-of-yet-purposeless yarn would be perfect to test this idea.

My intial test proved quite successful. Except I don't have much use for a two-finger thick scarf. I tried attaching the two ends. It was an improvement but I'd probably never wear it.

Grabbing my other skein, I tried to knit some patterns using size 15 needles. (One of the many crafting treasures inherited from my grandmother.) Despite the super thick needles, I found the stiches to be too tight. The finger knitting had had a pleasant looseness to it.

I decided maybe a braid using three finger-knitted ropes would work. I could have sworn I had purchased three or four skeins of the ribbon yarn, but couldn't find more than the two in my crafting room. I settled on trying a twist of two ropes.

The struggle has been finding a way to connect the two ropes at every twist/overlap. I experimented with using the size 15 needles to knit a row across the two at every twist, but that made it hard to get my fingers back into the stiches. I spent probably an hour or two trying out possible solutions.

I've ended up knitting the twist connections with my finger knitting technique. The process overall involves having both ropes on one hand, knitting on the accesible row of stitches, and swapping it all to the other hand to work on the other rope.

With my luck I'll find that third skein after I finish this project. I recently convinced myself that I'd never purchased a certain french grammar book because I couldn't find it. I ordered a different french learner, only to find the grammar book while looking for the skeins.

My scarf is well on its way to being complete. Or it would be if my cat wasn't preventing me from working on it right now. While writing this post he chose my lap as an ideal nap spot.

I never did get around to looking up how machine knitting actually works.

Tuesday's Dinner

Tonight I attempted to cook something "fancy" which I have been wanting to attempt for a few weeks now. Mind you, my forte is in "flat bread-y breakfast foods." Also, I can count the number of times I have made chicken myself on one hand, so I was not sure how it would go.

Several weeks ago at a restaurant I had some pecan crusted chicken with a cranberry sauce. I like the idea of using fruit in dinner dishes and cranberries have a nice color. Though science might argue (if I could find that article...) that reds appeal to me because I'm female.

I grew up liking a lot of cheesy dishes. Cheese as in the food, not cheesy-haha. In recent years my stomach has grown somewhat lactose-intolerant. I keep telling it to love and tolerate, but it never listens. Suffice to say, the time is gone when anything can be made delicious by applying cheese. Fruit seems like a good alternative, and healthy too.

After the tasty restaurant food I went hunting for recipes. Below are my findings and what I took from them.

Pecan Crusted Chicken
Pecan Crusted Chicken Tenders with Cranberry-Orange Sauce

• Combined the flour, panko and pecans and did not measure any of them. When I cooked the chicken, the breading got a little burnt and some came off the chicken.
  • Next time I will try this recipe's breading method, including finely chopping up the pecans.
• Completely ignored their sauce.

Pecan And Cranberry Crusted Chicken

• Was going to use some parsley, but I forgot!

My Pecan Crusted Chicken

• pecans (somewhat crushed)
• panko
• whole wheat flour
• egg
• chicken

Mixed the dry ingredients in a bowl, and cracked an egg in another bowl. Dipped the chicken in the egg and then rolled it around in the dry ingredients. Cooked the result in a ceramic pan. As I said before, it got a little crispy and the coating did not want to stay on.

Had a fair amount of egg and dry mix left over, so I combined those and a bit of baking mix and cooked up a pecan-biscuit/dumpling in my pan as well. Some people seem to think that is gross, using the leftover chicken battering ingredients, but it has never gone wrong for me yet! The biscuit was quite tasty, especially with a little bit of Monterrey Jack. (Cheese made it into my meal, after all.)

Cranberry Sauce
Apparently cranberry sauce traditionally has a lot of sugar in it, so I looked for healthier recipes. The sauce I had at the restaurant was not terribly sweet in the first place.

Cranberry Sauce

• Followed this recipe's cooking instructions but ditched the juice, orange zest and pineapple.

Sugarless Cranberry Sauce

• Used this recipe's apple sauce idea.

My Cranberry Sauce

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/8 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 (generous) tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 (generous) cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 6 oz frozen cranberries
• 1/3 cup whipped honey

Plopped the frozen cranberries in a measuring cup (for lack of another container) and rinsed them. This seemed to help defrost them as well. I have no idea how one usually handles cranberries, but I removed the ends where the stems had once been.

Combined the water, ginger, cinnamon, lemon juice and apple sauce in a pan and and brought it to a boil. Added in the cranberries. Let it cook for about 10 minutes, occasionally mashing and stirring.

After ten minutes I stirred in the honey, took it off the heat and poured the sauce into a bowl to cool.

Glorious Results


The chicken needs some work, but the cranberry sauce came out well. It has a powerful flavor. I did not need as much sauce as I put on my chicken!

na... shostowrimo?

So... I started working on a short story. Sort of. Earlier this week Sandy IMed me and we were chatting about this nanowrimo thing, national novel writing month. She said she's gonna do it and was trying to get me interested. I really had no idea what I'd write a novel about. "I like goats" was the first thing that came to my mind. Very inspirational.

However, the other night I got an idea for a short story. I guess I could make it into a poem or something, but I think it would be fun and a good brain-stretch to write something more substantial. It will hopefully turn into a short story, though it'd be cool if I could really write a novel!

The idea is in extreme-rough-draft mode at the moment. A.k.a. I know sort of how it ends, but not how it begins or any of the middle! Earlier I started brainstorming some stuff to give it a more substantial plot.

I don't wanna say more, 'cause it would give too much away!!! But the working title is "The Hounds," and it was inspired by an emotional experience I had a few nights ago.

freelancing

Since sometime mid-September I've been working on a website for a local watercolor artist (who is--conveniently--my good friend Kate). I obtained this job by having our mutual friend Lyla (also a CS major) move to Rwanda. I'm actually quite grateful to be doing freelance (emphasis on the free) for somebody. It's a good learning experience as well as fun. Working for a friend has been interesting. On one hand it's very chill and relaxed because we know each other. On the other hand I often have to bug her to respond to my emails.

The site is coming along well despite the lag. We're still playing with the design, so what you see below is likely close to the finished appearance but not necessarily exact.

I prefer to use highly advanced tools (like MS paint) when marking-up spacing.



I've been using Chrome's developer tool feature lately (it's that thing that comes up if you right click and choose "Inspect element"), but sometimes I open something in Firefox solely to use the firebug plugin. Firebug has an awesome layout feature.



On a side note, redundancy is fun. I once found two names followed by "BFFs forever" scribbled in bathroom stall.

the owl bag returns!

It's been a while since I've updated. I got a bit sick of sewing for a while there, but I've worked on the owlbag a lot in the past week. The feet have been sewed on. They're not really even, but I didn't want to attempt to sew the first one on for a third time. Sorry about the blurry picture.



I sewed the eyes on, which involved a bit of a process. Traced circles on the back of the face panel using my lactaid pill bottle. Basted down the brown cordoroy and sewed that on. Cut holes for the buttons (nonfunctional), reinforced the edges and sewed on the bottons. Padded the backs. The one on the right in the first picture is prior to padding.



I finally started working on the sides. I ran into size issues with the grommets I had being too large for the clasps. I dug up some hardware pieces I'd removed from my winter coat awhile ago (it needed fixing) which happen to be the right color.



You can see in the pictures below how I used them. I was a bit concerned about them not being able to bear much weight, but the bag isn't going to be that big, so they should be okay. The ear tuft details nicely cover up the stitches holding on the hardware.



Exciting! First bit of lining was sewed onto the ears! The second picture shows the clasp attached.



I started engineering a beak (sorry no pictures yet), but the snaps I was planning on using I fear will come off. (That's what happened in my test sample.) I've been wanting to do some more work but I need to find a solution for the front clasp before I can sew on the beak and more lining. Also I need to order more variegated thread from Janlynn so I can make the wing pockets with the same color detailing as the chest feathers.

Here's me being silly/excited.

song writing, what!?!

GASP! I am posting.

I wrote this tidbit of a song years ago, but I am thinking of writing more.

(Note: the weird orchestral-y sound is the vocal representation.)

openCanvas doodles

Uh, I was feeling bored and restless... so I drew random stuff in openCanvas.



One of my friends was talking about a sherbert monster, so I drew that. Fear is the suggested reaction, as can be seen from the text.

The more "realistic" drawing (of me) came out pretty well color-wise, considering I haven't colored anything in ages. The reference photo for the drawing was one of the many boredom-shots taken with my cell phone.



As for the spanish music confusion fiesta... there was some spanish rap on my youtube playlist.

The cat is gray because I had a dream about a gray cat the other night. It kept running away from me. When I finally caught it, it purred happily as I petted it.

I've had openCanvas for 8+ years now~ wow. The version I have is the last free one, I think. Either way, it's a really simple art program as you can see below.