Sunrise Flour Mill emailed me a no knead pumpkin roll recipe that I had to try. It calls for the making of Tangzhong, which was new to me, and is basically a cooked flour paste. I’m not sure the purpose of the Tangzhong, but the rolls came out soft and flavorful, so I would make it again. The thing I won’t do is the pumpkin shaping. Wrapping soft dough in kitchen string is fiddly bits, and my baked rolls looked more like segmented oranges than pumpkins.
Photo description: raw dough wrapped in cotton kitchen string to create six segmentsPhoto description: baked rolls which expanded more than expected, still with the string in placePhoto description: rolls with the string removed arranged in a cloth bread basket
The rolls were definitely tasty and soft. They didn’t last long, despite their strange appearance.
The only sugar container available at the store was a plastic bin. Sigh. Since it was a last minute run to the nearby market, to pick up what I forgot to put on my list, I bought it. All is not lost, though, since the flat sides of the container could be cut to make yarn bobbins.
I like these bobbins for knitting and weaving and holding scrap yarn. They don’t unwind far and don’t need half hitch knots to hang from a project. They are made from recycled materials that would otherwise go in the trash. Win. (And yes, I wrote about them last year too!)
Photo description: plastic sugar container cut into sections and marked with a bobbin patternPhoto description: 10 bobbins cut from one sugar container
I made my swatches for my fiber book from the Egyptian cotton that I spun on an Ashford Traveller spinning wheel.
Photo description: knit square in moss stitch with size 2 Prym circular needlesPhoto description: crocheted round coaster made from Egyptian cotton with a size B Clover crochet hookPhoto description: 3 salvage twined swatch with knotted tassels
I still love the twining weaving technique with open ended warps. This was my first swatch, but the sides are less wonky than my other weaving attempts.
It must be getting close to Christmas, my Thanksgiving cactus has its first bloom!
Photo description: Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) with one pink bloom
I think mine blooms at this time of year because it only starts to really cool down in Texas in late November. The branches against the window finally get cold enough to trigger flower buds, then I turn the pot so the other side can experience the temperature change. Here is a link for more information.
In January 2011 my husband and I designed a terrarium in a 25 gallon tank. I painted a faux stained glass mural with special plastic lead and translucent glass paint on the outside of the tank. We built a clear acrylic planter with a pass through for water circulation and covered the pump with a hand sculpted and water safe painted rock formation made of styrofoam. The bottom section was for fish and two red bellied newts, who would presumably also venture onto the land. The newts had the best story, because they would somehow escape the enclosure and roam the house. We are pretty sure a cat found one, but the other crawled onto my husband’s foot one morning startling him and sending the newt flying. Newt-imer survived the flight and my husband returned him to his enclosure where he lived until 2015. We had to re-home him after a house fire when we all had to find new accommodations for a while.
Photo description: hand painted terrarium tank with custom clear acrylic structuresPhoto description: same tank filled with rock and dirt with faux rock pump cover and skull decoration
While the designing process was interesting, and there were lessons learned, the cleaning and maintaining of a fish tank is not something either of us want to bother with again.
Critters and Craft 