What I made, by Sharon

I bake all my own bread, and have done for the last decade or so. The photos in this post are of my bread, made with commercial yeast. Originally I made bread in a bread machine, and then I “graduated” to oven baking – I must admit I don’t knead the bread by hand, I used my beloved Thermomix. I have dabbled in sourdough in the past when I saw Modern Sourdough by Michelle Eshkeri on Netgalley I said "yes please" very quickly. Michelle is a Jewish, London based bakery owner who has a similar cultural background to me, and a lot of the breads are familiar to me from my everyday life - I bake challah whenever I host Friday night dinner and I'm obsessed with bubka.  Even on my tablet this book is exquisite. Very clear recipes, accompanied by stunning photos. The text is interesting, informative and clear. So, will I be getting my starter started and my dough soured? Probably not. We only bake once a week, and this book is quite clear about the extra preparation an...

It's been a good week, so far. After my " knit four things in a week " craziness last week I started a pair of Rachel Coopey socks on Sunday night. It's been a while since I knit lace socks, and I'm loving it. I did manage not to knit at lunch time for a couple of days, but blew it today! I'm particularity loving knitting in my own hand-dyed yarn again.  In reading, I started and finished R.H. Herron's Stolen Things . Check out that front cover, isn't it marvelous?  The book itself is great. Fast paced and thrilling and a tiny bit silly while still raising very serious issues. I highly recommend. And then I read another e-Arc, courtesy of NetGalley, We have Always Been Here , another great cover : It's the memoir of Samra Habib, a gay, Moslem, immigrant to Canada, and the first half was really good, but the last part has descended into identity politics and lectures about representation. It's fine, but kind of tedious. And tha...

I wrote about having enough left over yarn to knit a hat last week. I did, and I did. It came out a little too big, and, although I loved knitting with the mohair, and see more fuzz in my future, I wish I'd chosen the pink, rather than the grey. I can't see me wearing this, so it's into the donate pile. I like it with the purl side out best: Although it works with the knit side out too. I also knit a hat deliberately for charity out of jewel tones of LOSY. The thing is, the mini balls of yarn I use for my blanket are 10 to 40 grams. Each blanket square uses 3 - 5 grams, so each row of blanket gives 50 to 100 grams of leftovers  Even if I reuse some of the colours later, there is still a frightening amount of leftovers, and apparently I'm severely afraid of leftovers. So, when I wanted something simple to knit on Tuesday night, I thought a charity hat was the go. The thing about these plain hats, is I can cast them on, do one decent nights knitting, and...

I finished the   Chuck Sweater by Andi Sutterlund last week, and wore it for the first time one Thursday, and I am in love. It fits perfectly, hitting exactly on my waist,  The sleeves, always a challenge for me, are the exact right length.  The yarn, which I dyed myself is lovely (if I say so myself, and I do!)and knit up exactly how I was hoping. i did alternate skeins, which is always a good idea with hand-dyed yarn. The base yarn is Bellevue Park Wool , and it is beautiful, soft with a really smooth hand, a delight to dye and knit.  The knitting itself was quite straightforward, after I had got the hang of how Andi writes her patterns, Although I know people have had trouble with the sleeve cap. even though I've knit a fair few top down set in sleeves, I sat down, in the light, at the table with a cup of tea to pick up the stitches and knit the sleeve cap. No wine, no TV...and the first attempt (which I ripped without taking photos) was ...

Welcome to Unravelled Wednesday, were I link up with Kat and the gang to chat about what we've been reading and knitting this week. In knitting, I keep on finishing things, which is fun, but then I need to start things and that seems difficult right now, so after I finished Chiuck, and made a matching hat (more about that when I see how it came out of the blocking) I cast on a charity hat with LOSY. It's knitting up really fast, and really quite prettily, if I say so myself. but I'll have it finished by the end of the day, and I'm having trouble deciding whether to cast another one on, or whether I should move on to the next thing in my queue, whcih is a colourwork cowl. i wonder why I'm stuggling with such a low impact decision? In books, after I DNFd The Calculating Star s last Wednesday, and then in one the Hugo award. I guess I'm out of alignment with popular opinions. I started reading Last Train to Istanbul . I really struggled with it to star...

The whole time I was knitting Chuck I hoped to have at least 70 grams of yarn left over. My plan was to buy some mohair and make a hat. I've started obsessing about carrying mohair along, to play with colour and texture. Rachey's Latu used 70 grams, and was also 10 ply, so that's where I got that number from. I had bought more yarn than the Chuck pattern called for, because I knew I wanted long sleeves, and also, dying it myself means that the colour is not replicable. Not even close! At the end of the jumper (which is currently blocking, photos and wrap up late in the week) I do have exactly 70 grams -which includes both my swatches! I went to Morris and Sons today and bought some dark grey Kid Slik haze. I'm very excited about knitting with this yarn. 12 years ago, when I started knitting seriously, loads of people where using this yarn - it was nick-named KidSilk crack for it's addictive properties. Then it went out of fashion. Now mohair is back, and I...

I finished my latest pair of sneaker liners ( Roxy by Trudy Hertaas , and wore them today. Knitting these in Socks Yeah , which is a fairly thin sock yarn reminded me of a solid fact: there are three things that affect the final size: 1) Needle size 2) number of stitches AND 3) yarn thickness.  Which is to say these, knit on my usual 62 stitches and 2mm needle size came out quite small. But I wore them today and they are rather perfect. I reversed the pattern for the second one. I was thinking about just eyeballing it as I knit, or rewritting it in excel, and then I wondered if my (work) photocopy machine could mirror the image. It could, and it worked, so that made life fun and simple. I also changed the side cables: the pattern had one extra long cable, which I didn't realise, so when I saw my sock had one longer cable I "fixed" it. After I realised what had happened, I left the cables equal, because to me it looks better that way. And now I'm back to ...