Easy Squash Soup

It's a cold, dark day today, and I have a snuffly husband on the couch - a perfect day for soup! Digging around this morning, I discovered I had several varieties of squash hiding away in the dark corners of my cupboard under the stairs. One of them, I have no idea what to do with. It looks like a giant yellow pattypan. I think my darling husband picked it up at a local farm some time ago....

Picture this, but the size of a dinner plate.

Anyway, for this soup I am sticking to the old standby acorn squash.

First, preheat your oven to 400*.  Wash 1 acorn squash and 1 large sweet potato. Puncture them both with a knife and roast them for 1 hour. ( I use foil or parchment on a cookie tray for easy clean up). Cool for 15 minutes or so for easier handling.
Heat a large pot on med/high heat with a bit of butter, avocado oil, or another high heat oil.  Chop 2 carrrots, 2 garlic cloves, and 1 small onion and saute them in oil until softened.
Add about 3 cups of chicken stock and your peeled and seeded cooked squash and sweet potato.
Stir in a dash of cayenne, a pinch of nutmeg and a sprinkle of curry powder.  Bring to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes or until all the vegetables are soft.
Add more chicken stock or water if it looks like it might be too thick.
Blend soup with an immersion blender, blend in batches in the blender, or mash with a potato masher until desired consistency is reached.
Serve with a good dollop of sour cream or garnish with parsley or parmesan cheese.

Closet Clearing and Downton Abbey

Well, it's January again, and I haven't written a post since this time last year. Can you guess what my New Year's Resolution is every year? I have been very busy over the Christmas season felting Christmas stockings, crocheting bunting, knitting cowls, needle felting ornaments and peg loom weaving. I resolve to write a post about each one of those activities in the coming days.

What is on my mind right this minute is my closet. It is jam packed with clothes I don't wear and don't fit. I want to start the year out with a few lovely pieces, and really enjoy wearing them often. At present, I often forget I have them as they are lost within the masses. So this afternoon, I am going to do a giant clear out, with a trip to the thrift shop first thing tomorrow.

Last night I stayed up way too late and watched Enchanted April for the zillionth time. I absolutely love the clothes in that movie and would love to dress that way.

This morning, I spent a couple of idle hours on the laptop just looking at 1920's style dresses. They look so lovely, feminine and comfy, and if you don't have a stick figure, a little bit frumpy.

I also discovered the "One Hour Dress" (available on Etsy. ) Apparently, if you are a competent seamstress, you can make a 1920's style dress in under an hour.

This new season of Downton Abbey is set in the '20's and this style of dress seems to be making a resurgence. I have only watched season 1 and half of 2, so I guess I had better catch up. It will be interesting to see if anyone actually adopts the style at all.  Other than me that is..
I am also in the painful process of growing out a pixie haircut. My favourite style of all time is a bob with full bangs and I have worn it on and off since my childhood. I think by the summer it might be able to be cut into a gorgeous bob something like this:

How gorgeous is that hair??

Wet felting a hat tutorial

While wandering through a local thrift store recently, I came upon a gigantic bag of wool!

I am the furthest thing from a wool expert, but I bought it based on the fact that it didn't smell, and someone put chestnuts in the bag. I heard once that chestnuts keep away moths and I figured that whoever owned this probably knew more about wool than me, and  therefore it must be worth buying. Certainly worthy of experimenting with.

It isn't all lovely smoothly combed out roving is it? I read a blog recently where a gal made a pair of wet felted slippers using raw wool and it looked like they worked quite well, so fingers crossed for this project.

First I weighed another felt hat that I have and it was around 85g. I want this one to be a bit smaller and the math to be a bit easier.

I weighed out 80g and then split that into 8 different piles of 10g each so I could make 4 layers of roving on each side of the resist.

I lay out my resist on top of a towel and a big sqaure of bubble wrap and started laying out my first layer:

The second layer looked a lot like dreadlocks and I was thinking that this might be a very Rasta sort of hat..(Make sure that each layer had the fibres going in a different direction than the one underneath).

Once I had my 4 layers set out, I covered the whole thing with a sheet of tulle and wet it down with hot soapy water. At this point you don't want a lot of suds, just a slippery surface.

This is a the handle of a drywall sander. Instead of sandpaper, I put in a piece of bubble wrap and rubbed the surface of the tulle. You can also just scrunch up a piece of bubble wrap and use that for friction,  but this way my hands stayed a bit dryer. Periodically peel up the tulle to make sure that the wool fibres aren't felting through too much. 

 You can see in the photo above that the wool around the perimeter of the resist is left dry. This is the part that will wrap around to the other side, so you don't want to felt it yet. Rub the wet surface for about 5 minutes or so. How long it takes can depend on the type of wool you are using. Merino top and Corriedale are quite good for wet felting. With this mystery wool though, I wasn't sure what to expect. When you think you might be getting close, you can do a pinch test: peel back the tulle and gently pinch the wet wool up. If it is still wispy, keep rubbing. If the layers are coming up together, you can flip it over and start on the other side..

I carefully folded over the overlapped edges and wet them down, before laying down the 4 layers on this side. I also made each layer hang over the edge of the resist to fold back onto the first side.

Once both sides were rubbed with bubble wrap and there was a good 'skin' on the wool (you've done some pinch tests), I covered the wool with hot sudsy water and put another layer of bubble wrap over top (bubbles facing in).

I rolled up into a tube and then rolled it back and forth  about 25 times, then unrolled it and rotated the hat clockwise 45 degrees, rolled it up and repeated. I did this 4 times, then flipped it over and repeated. 

I carefully cut the wool along the bottom of the hat and pulled out the resist. Then I sandwiched the hat between soapy hands and rubbed the the folded edge all the way around to make sure that it was felting as well as the flat parts. I the flipped the hat inside out and repeated the same rolling pattern as on the outside of the hat, sometimes getting the seams off center so it all felted evenly. I did want it to end up round after all. 

When I thought I might be working it down to the size I wanted, I wrung out the water and tried it on. I thought it was almost there, so I rinsed it in hot water, then cold, then soaked it for a couple of minutes in some cold water with a glug of vinegar in it to restore the proper pH. ( I was getting a bit tired and forgot to take pictures. It's not complicated though, and at this point your wool is pretty durable, so just rinse it out as you would a t-shirt). I rinsed out the vinegar water, wrung it out, and formed it over this very cool hat block that I just bought from here.

Now I have to wait for it to dry, and figure out how to embellish it a bit.

Making a hat block

Hat blocks, I have discovered, are not that easy to come by.  You can get them on Ebay or Etsy, but they are quite expensive.  I found one source here where they are quite reasonably priced especially if you live in the States. Shipping outside the US however, can start to add up.  Being impatient to get started, I decided to try and make my own.  I searched about the local thrift stores to find a hat that I could use as a mold, but I couldn't find any that I thought were sturdy enough. I dug through my own things and came up with a woven hemp cloche that I thought would do.

First, I lined the hat with plastic wrap to protect it from getting damaged. Then I filled it with this stuff:

It says on the can that it expands about 50% and it does, but slowly. I overfilled it of course but it was easy to carve back down to the shape I wanted.

I covered the whole thing in duct tape to protect the form and also to protect my wool from getting covered in little crumbs of foam.

I am really pleased with how it turned out. I am going to make a really tall dome next.

My first rug hooking project.

I found a really neat video of rug hooking on Youtube recently - using yarn!! It's the ultimate stash buster. I was eager to try it myself. I found a rug hooking kit for beginners here.  It took me about a week to do while watching tv in the evening and now it's complete!

 

I love it! Especially since it is a picture of sheep. I love sheep!

Everything in the fridge soup

This really is a whatever you've got soup..

Ingredients:

2 small yams, peeled and chopped
4 med. beets, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 zucchini, chopped
5 brown mushrooms, chopped
1 cup green lentils
1 tbsp fresh rosemary
1 tsp fresh oregano
a pinch of thyme, sage, savory, Italian seasoning,fennel seeds, herbs de Provence, basil
1 tbsp butter
8 cups water

Method:

1. melt butter in a large pot on medium heat
2. add chopped vegetables and saute for 8 - 10  minutes
3. add garlic and herbs and stir for an additional 2 minutes
4. add water and lentils and raise temperature to bring it to a boil
5. turn the heat down to med/low, put a lid on, and simmer for 45 - 60 minutes or until lentils are soft.

Serve with buttered toast or with leftover rice, quinoa, pasta etc.  and top with black pepper or parmesan.

( We sometimes call this mushy soup because the yams, carrots and zucchini usually get very soft.)

More Blueberries

Dehydrating Blueberries

Making blueberry cookies didn't make much of a dent in my giant stash of blueberries in the fridge, so I thought I'd pull out the dehydrator and dry some up for snacking.

There are several ways to dry blueberries in a dehydrator - it just depends on what you want the end result to be. You can simply wash them and set them drying and you will end up with something like a mini blueberry chip.

Most sources recommend that you dip them in a hot water bath first to soften and break the skin. This will result in blueberries that are soft and chewy like raisins.

First, I put a pot of water on the stove to boil, and prepared an ice bath to cool them and stop the cooking process.

Once the water was boiling, I dumped the blueberries into the hot water and let them sit for about a minute. Then I scooped them out with a slotted spoon and let them soak in the cold water for another minute or so. (if you have a metal mesh strainer, you can dip the entire strainer into the hot, then cold water.) 

I then spooned the berries out on my dehydrator trays, being careful to keep the berries spread out.

I turned on the dehydrator to 135 degrees and am now waiting until tomorrow to try them out.