I signed C and I up for the Summer 2025 Reading Challenge at the Tualatin Library.
June
Remarkably Bright Creatures - listened
Good of the Woods - Read
The Obesity Code - Read Kindle via Libby
Good Energy - Listened on Libby
How Not to Die - Listened on Libby to half
Everything is Tuberculosis - Listened to h
alf on Libby
July
Project Hail Mary - Audible
The Third Gilmore Girl - Audible
It's a grey Friday afternoon. It's one day before halloween, 240 ish days into Covid lockdown/work-from home, and 4 days until election day. What am I doing? If my boss asks, I am working. If I am telling the truth, I am taking a quick brain break to window shop La Bien Aimee yarn from Portland, via PowerPoint and my trusty Snipping tool.
I found this color block shawl and I am obsessed. I also need an excuse to order from La Bien Aimee. This is all their DK.
To window shop from home, I open PowerPoint and I snip photos of yarn I like with my Snipping tool and paste them into a presentation. I put all of the colors that I like on one slide, like this:
Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies are an all-time favorite of mine. They remind me of summers in North Carolina when my grandparents always had them stocked. Baking is also an all-time favorite, so let's make them at home.
Recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/homemade-little-debbie-oatmeal-creme-pies/
For my first attempt I used a 1.5 TBSP cookie scoop. I saw a YouTube video and they guy who was making them also used the same scoop for the filling. I found that it was perfect and perfectly used every drop of the icing and I didn't need more.
I baked the cookies for 13-15 minutes like stated in the recipe. They were GOOD, but they weren't GREAT (although everyone who ate them thought they were). I wanted to make them smaller, and I felt they were too hard / cooked too long.
I ordered a .5 TBSP and 1 TBSP cookie scoop!
I love the .5 TBSP cookies scoop the most for these (I tried all three sizes again). It made a silver dollar sized cookie.
Cooking time was 7-8 minutes for these size cookies and they came out perfectly soft. It didn't make a different if I used a Silpat or parchment - I used both.
I bought a few skeins of La Bien Aimee Merino sock at the beginning of the year, I bought 4 50G skeins to make anklet socks and a 100G skein to make Joe socks for Christmas.
Fast forward to September. I hadn't knit Joe's socks yet, and didn't see fitting them into the schedule by Christmas along with the other Christmas socks I have promised to people in my head.
I heard about people making tubes with sock crank machines. I ordered up a tube on Etsy, sent the yarn off, and waited.
Ordered: Circular Sock Machine Knitted Sock Tube Service Sock Snake Yarn Snake
This is what I received and I am beyond impressed and excited:
My first step will be to measure the gauge and then choose which needle size with get the same gauge.
Gauge: for this yarn, a US size 0 needle met the gauge of 9 stitches per inch.
Tutorial: Craft House Magic on YouTube has a great tutorial that suited my learning style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MmCLrnITec&t=490s
