Back to spinning!

On February 3, 2020January 30, 2020 By CarynIn Craft

Yay! Yarn stash busted and I’ve picked up my spinning again! But oof. Taking a month off to reduce the yarn backlog definitely took the edge off the skills I had built up. It is taking a bit for my fingers to remember the magic.

I have motivation though! My sister bought me a beautiful rosewood ring distaff, and I’m figuring out how to use it.

The purpose of a distaff is to provide a way to keep the source fiber organized while spinning. It is quite frustrating to have the wrong bit of roving wrap itself in the yarn twist as you spin the spindle. A distaff keeps the excess fiber up and out of the way.

The first thing I did was load up the distaff with lots of roving. Oops. Nope. I read some more, then pre drafted my roving (thinned it out), and tried again with much less.

Trying again with a smaller amount of roving on the distaff

As I am learning, starting off with smaller amounts of fiber is much easier. In the picture above, I am holding the spindle the way I think it was designed to be held. When I wasn’t paying attention, my grip would switch and my finger would come out of the ring, as pictured below.

The distaff definitely helps with fiber management, and as I became more comfortable with it, I was able to load more fiber. There are many different kinds of distaffs as well as other methods of fiber management. So exciting! More experiments!

Engineer castle

On February 2, 2020 By CarynIn Craft

My husband wanted an Army Corp of Engineers castle on his truck, but subtle. So I ordered some matt black outdoor vinyl, converted the public domain svg (scalable vector graphic) file to a Cricut cut file, and used my Cricut cutter to cut the sticky vinyl.

To transfer the cut image to a permanent location you need to use transfer tape. Take time to line up the image with the guidelines on the transfer tape. I had to take a couple tries on this, which means I had to cut and weed (take out all the vinyl I didn’t want) twice. Please learn from my error! And when lining up the image in the final location, soapy water doesn’t work with intricately cut out vinyl, so go slow and use your guidelines. (By the way, soapy water works great for solid vinyl. It allows some wiggle room to set the design, then you squeegee out the water and the vinyl will stick. The soapy water with this cut out just nestled cozy in the openings and wouldn’t go away.) You know what? If you do intend to do this, just cut two or three images to start with, or maybe tape an image to the inside of the window so you have more guides. Hindsight is 20/20.

The result was awesome. Really hard to photograph because the window is reflective and the castle is not, but very cool to walk up to the truck and see the castle because of the difference in sheen.

Freezing bacon

On February 1, 2020January 28, 2020 By CarynIn Recipe

This is my favorite method for freezing bacon. I hardly ever cook up a whole package of bacon, and freezing it means I can cook just a couple pieces whenever I need it.

Cut bacon between layers of Press and Seal

I cut the package open, then cut the bacon in half with kitchen scissors. I take two halves at a time and lay them on one sheet of Press and Seal wrap (tacky side up). When I have all the bacon placed, I put a second sheet of Press and Seal on top (tacky side down) and run my fingers along the edges and between the sets of bacon to seal.

I can fold up the sheet so the bacon freezes flat, but doesn’t take up as much room, then pop it in the freezer. When I need to cook a piece of bacon, I take it out of the Press and Seal and put it directly into a hot skillet. Because it is cut in half, it fits well, and when it is thawed enough, I can separate the two halves and finish cooking the bacon. I also use a cast iron bacon press which helps me get super crispy bacon!

Another shell less egg

On January 31, 2020January 25, 2020 By CarynIn eggs

When I was turning over the night droppings under the roost I found a very small, shell less egg. This is the second shell less egg, but this one had a rubbery exterior like I’ve seen in videos, but no yolk. It was only 18g! I recorded breaking it open, then I fed the whites to the dog; he has a stronger stomach.

Acorn experiment

On January 30, 2020January 25, 2020 By CarynIn Garden

My eldest wanted to try roasting acorns as we have post oaks and the yard is covered in thousands of tiny acorns. We also found a few white oak acorns at a neighbor’s as we read that those are sweeter.

We followed the instructions from The Farmer’s Almanac, and after shelling the acorns (we found pliers worked better than a nut cracker), did the cold water soak to remove the tannins.

Shelled acorns soaking to remove tannins

While we were shelling, we found quite a few were moldy or had acorn weevil grubs. We threw out the black and moldy nuts, but kept the grubs. The chickens appreciated the treat.

After changing out the water a few times, we dried the acorns in the oven, but the “keep warm” option on my oven didn’t just dry, it started roasting the acorns, so I turned up the heat to finish roasting.

The acorns smelled amazing as they were roasting! We let them cool when they were chocolate brown, added a little salt, and tried them. No. Oh no. Definitely no. I can see how ground acorn could be a coffee substitute, it has a similar taste to coffee beans, but ours were dense and chewy, not at all pleasant to eat. So these go on our “only during an apocalypse” food list!