Window Shopping La Bien Aimee - from Portland

 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: 

People say I am good at choosing colors that go together - I am not.  I am just good at using tools and inspiration from people with actual ability to combine colors! Also, Pinterest!

I will find a picture that inspires me, and start there.  This one is a sweater from LL Bean.

This one is from a Pinterest image in my Color Board that I have been curating for 10 years:

I just bought this sweater, photo from Saving Paige Boutique:

As I sit here and write this, I just got an email from La Bien Aimee, and they were having the same thoughts as me! They are releasing "yarn medleys".  Genius.

Oh no, Oh no!  I have a gift card to Eat Sleep Knit and I have always wanted to try The Farmer's Daughter Juicy DK:

I made an outing just to stop at a yarn shop on the other side of Portland last weekend and discovered this beautiful yarn, Chasing Rabbit Fiber Co Merinolux DK:

Homemade Oatmeal Creme Pies

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.

Sock from a Crank

 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

72 Stitch Option

10 grams reserve yarn 

Shop: Birdwithfrenchfry

Date Ordered: Sept 16

Date sent: Sep 17

Date received tube: Oct 2

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