white bread instead

The weather is whipping back and forth between unusually warm and fairly cold, which is typical for an Indiana February (...and March...and April...).  On warm days...we hike.

There's really an embarrassment of riches when it comes to hiking around our house.  When we lived in South Carolina, we had to drive an hour for a good hike...here in southern Indiana, we're surrounded by opportunities.  Morgan-Monroe State Forest, which is 24,000 acres and the second largest state forest in Indiana, is just three minutes from our house.  We also like to branch out to Bean Blossom Bottoms, a 733 acre wetland wildlife preserve that's only ten minutes away, and to Lake Griffy, a 1,200 acre wildlife preserve that's only 16 minutes away.  This week's Lake Griffy hike was two hours on a rugged trail, a bit too long and rugged for Borga... 

...who continued to rebelliously slip her collar...

...until Todd carried her the rest of the way.

Still, it was a great hike.  I love finding new growth in early February, since I'm so starved for color by this time of year.

roundleaf ragwort

grape fern

haircap moss

We also saw a familiar face:  a little muskrat, carefully watching us pick our way across the limestone bluffs.

This is clearly a favorite place for others, too.  What a nice tribute to a beloved friend!

Yes, we love to get out on warm, sunny days...

But on cold days, we stay in and enjoy nature through the window.  Thankfully, we get a lot of birds congregating nearby.

tufted titmouse

I'm also baking on cold days.  In my attempt to eat less processed food, I'm looking at different homemade recipes to provide my daily toast.  I found a wonderful white sandwich bread recipe that makes soft, sliceable loaves every single time.

I've always preferred wheat bread, though.  I tried a recipe from the same site yesterday.  It utilized a sponge that was meant to cut down on the bitterness of homemade wheat.  There was a 5-hour total rise, which is a lot, but it paid off with a delightfully soft and springy loaf.  It tastes good, but has committed the sin of being difficult to cleanly slice. I think I over-proofed one of the steps, because the loaf sank a bit in the middle, and the top separated from the loaf bottom when I sliced. I'll try it one more time, but I'm going to look at other recipes too.  

March is just around the corner and is going to provide many more opportunities for us to get out and explore.  Until then, we're just going to follow Barnabas' lead and take it easy!

Have a great week!

the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad quilt

I finished my snails quilt!  But I had more struggles with it than any I've done before.

The piecing itself was more difficult because of a few really tiny pieces. They frequently got sucked into the needle plate and I was ready to pull my hair out by the last snail!  When I was ready to sandwich the layers together, I laid strips of leftover batting down instead of buying a new sheet of it. I was nearly out of adhesive spray but was determined to complete this step, so the various layers only got a light misting instead of a heavy dousing.  It seemed to work, but once I started quilting, the layers separated as I constantly rotated the quilt and shoved it through the small throat space of the machine.  Unbeknownst to me, the back became detached and started to wrinkle and bunch, and soon that extra fabric caught up in my concentric spiral stitching.

So you can see that because of the pleating, the quilt backing no longer reached the edge of the quilt.  I could either pick out all that stitching (NEVER) or sew new strips of fabric along the edge.  I chose the latter option and did a contrasting color to make it feel more deliberate.  It was a ton of work but now I can say...it's done.  In the end, the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad quilt turned out all right!

Here's the spiral design!

I've already started another quilt!  It's a sampler quilt, so every block is different.  It's definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone!

I had forgotten to post this baby cardigan I'd knitted for a friend's daughter.  I am a total convert to lining baby cardigans now.  It only takes a little while to whip stitch a soft piece of cotton fabric to the inside!

I also started a pair of Halloween socks.  I had this yarn from years ago and wasn't sure what to do with it, so I thought, I'll just add skulls!

But alas, I forgot my cardinal rule to never knit light-against-dark designs where I have to catch and carry the dark yarn behind the light.  It ALWAYS shows through on socks because they're stretched, although you might be able to get away with it on a hat or looser sweater.  I ended up frogging this sock and starting another!  Hopefully I'll be able to show an entire sock next week.

Lots of wildlife to be seen around the house this week.  Our cats keep us informed about new arrivals.

Here a titmouse tidies up in the gardenia tree outside my office window.

A Ceratonia undulosa - a waved Sphinx moth - rests on one of our screens.  They're nocturnal and so never active during the day.

More empty webs around the yard.

Male spiders abandon their webs in the fall to go hunting for mates, but female spiders only abandon the web if it proves to be in an unfruitful location.  I haven't seen the female garden spider in the top web for at least a week, so that must be the case for her!

Although we'll be in the mid-90s through the week, we're supposed to hit the upper 70s by Sunday. I'm so excited for fall weather to really start!

Have a great week!

a trifling matter

It's been a little colder here this week, and I love how the little birds puff up to stay warm, like this titmouse...

...and this carolina wren...

...and these mourning doves.

Despite an infrequent drizzle, Todd and I cleared out the side garden.  Without the somewhat picturesque covering of leaves, it looks awfully...bare.

I'm waiting to see what will grow, but I envision filling this space with my cottage garden plants.  I can't wait to see what it will look like next year!

Inside the house, we're still pulling things into shape.  Todd had me lay out my rubber stamps to get an idea of how many I had.  Uh oh...it's a lot.

Two years ago he built me a wooden stand for my stamps...

 

...but now I've got double what I had then, so we'll have to figure something else out.  Once we get that set up, and the curtains up, and the slipcover on the chair, the craft room will be done.  It looks a little better than this:

...but there's a ways to go!

I've been trying to do something with all of these bare walls.  I'm not a huge fan of pictures, but I got a great deal at Goodwill recently.  I found this picture...

...for $10.  Normally I don't like gold frames, but it's very subtle.  I found the same picture + frame online for over $500, so I'm pretty excited about my score!

Here's another bare wall.

I was inspired by this magazine picture:

...and decided to try the same thing.  I already had some hats, so it only cost me $9 to flesh out the rest of it.  

Of course, you can't see it too well in this photo...and since then, we've added a rug and changed the fireplace mantle...but you get the idea.

I've also been feverishly knitting.  I wanted to knit a certain something for a friend, and I wanted to knit it in blue yarn.  For me, it's hard to tell by looking at the ball, if it's not a solid color, and see what it might look like.  Here's a ball from Knitpicks:

I was worried that, knitted up, I'd see too many pastels.  I made a little swatch:

...and liked it very much.  I also had a Cherry Tree Hill ball...

Would it be too much like denim?

No...I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would.  Anyway, all that knitting, and I ended up going with a solid green.  Here's a peek of the finished project!

Valentine's Day is coming up, and I'm a sucker for holidays.  I made valentines for friends and family...

...complete with valentine's themed envelopes.

Last year I made cookies and took them around, but this year I had to settle for making something for Todd's office.  My original plan was coconut cream-stuffed chocolate cupcakes covered in coconut buttercream and dusted with pink-tinted coconut, but I disregarded the recipe line, "Bake these in cupcake liners, to be removed later."  The cupcakes were VERY 'sticky' and didn't easily come free from the tins.  I had to settle for - you guessed it - trifle.  ARGH!

Later this week, I'm making a three layer chocolate cake with raspberry marshmallow cream filling for Todd and hopefully, if it's not botched, I will post it next week!

To cheer myself up after the trifle fiasco (and the kitchen scrub-down that took almost an hour), I picked more camillas and made bouquets for the entire house.  Yay!  It's the little things.

Have a great week!