How To: Wet Block a Knitted Object

I've finished knitting the baby jacket and it is drying on the blocking board. And now, a photo tutorial of how to wet block a knitted item!

Fill a sink or tub or something with lukewarm water. If you'd like, you can add a wool wash or a little bit of dish soap. Let sit for a bit (5-10 minutes should be good, depending on size).

Place the knitted object in the water and gently squeeze the air bubbles out of it. If you are working with a cotton then you don't have to worry about being as gentle, but don't go crazy. If you're working with wool, being careful is key as you can felt it with agitation. If you're working with acrylic... Don't bother blocking. It won't.

Gently lift the item out of the water, being careful not to let it stretch. I've heard of some ingenious people using colanders to do this. Refill the sink and repeat the process above, but without the soap. This is the rinsing step. Some wool washes don't need to be rinsed, so work according to the directions on the package if you're using a wash.

Once the garment is rinsed gently lift it again and squeeze out as much water as you can. Don't wring it! Just squeeze. Then, lay it on a towel and roll it up.

Now the idea is to get as much water out of the item in the towel burrito as possible. I generally use my hands, but some people stand on it. Do what you like.

Lay the piece on a block board, bed, towel, carpet, piece of cardboard.. Whatever you can find really. I use foam floor/exercise mats that I found at Lowe's for 18 bucks/4 pack. They're pretty much the same thing as the fancy blocking boards, only half the price!

(Since I knit this sweater as one piece with picked-up-and-knitted-sleeves, I didn't have individual flat pieces to block. So what I did was open it up and pinned down the back side first, then folded the fronts over and pinned them, as you can see in these two photos.)

Using RUST FREE (this is important) pins, pin the item to your surface of choice according to measurements of your pattern (if you have any) or til it looks about right to you. Stockinette does not need be to pulled too severely. Lace benefits from getting stretched like it was on the rack. Let your eyes be your guide. You can usually tell when it's good.

Let dry under a fan, out in the sun, or just alone. Release from its pin torture and present to the intended recipient!

A few notes:

• You can see all my ends sticking out. I usually wait until after blocking to weave in the ends, that way the fabric is already stretched and I don't have to worry about them coming loose during blocking. 
• Blocking will not fix severe issues, like being 4 inches too short. Believe me. Using the phrase "oh, it will block out" is an indication that you need to go back and fix it.... Just trust me on this.
• If you are knitting an item that is to be seamed, block the pieces individually to measurement before you seam it up. This will help everything to line up better and then you can see before hand if you have any serious size discrepancies.

Blocking really does bring out the best in knitting. There have been quite a few items that I think look like crap until they have been blocked. It opens up the fibers and fills out the stitches, as well as aligns and stretches everything to give it a nice, crisp, finished look. My favorite thing to see before and after blocking is lace. Talk about a transformation.


Finished pictures of the jacket coming once, well... It's finished!

Random on a Tuesday (Warning: Long Winded!)

Looky! It's a random Tuesday! I'm procrastinating. I have things to do, but wanted to share pictures and stories.

Our 'maters are getting big. We've got about 5 or 6 now. I don't think we're going to get a ton though, so I guess I'll have to find my chili ingredients elsewhere.

I planted Basil a week ago and it came up within 5 days. It's supposed to take at least 8. Hot weather makes basil happy. This in turn makes me happy, since I LOVE basil and am so excited to make pesto from my own garden. I want to get a ton of different herbs and scatter them around. Cooking from my garden has seriously big appeal.

This is one of our flowers that came from a bulb that came from the 99 Cent Store (in a hole at the bottom of the sea... Sorry.) I can't remember what it is, and I'm not sure where the package is, so I will guess and say that it is one of the Freesia. I think I'm horribly wrong though.

Here is a bouquet of flowers entirely from our own plants. This picture does not do it justice. It made me so happy to walk outside and pick them all. It really brightens up the kitchen.

I desperately want tons and tons of plants in the backyard. Ben keeps saying we have to wait until we get sprinklers in (even though he's dieing for foliage as well), but I think I might just tell him I'll stand out there with a hose just to have plants.

This is the place our garden is going to go and I am severely tempted to rip out that slab by myself, one chunk at a time and plant things.

Last night was spaghetti for dinner. All the kids look like this on spaghetti night, but Duder was especially excited, and especially messy. I've never seen a kid enjoy food so much. You put him in his high chair and he does a little dance for food. It's the cutest thing. He's not picky. He eats anything and everything (sometimes things not edible), which makes me happy since I love to feed people.

I also changed him to a toddler bed yesterday. I was wondering how it would work out, since he's only a year. Every morning he stands in his bed and yells and screams and gets mad because he can't get down and play with his brothers. So my thinking was that if I just change his bed and put it on the lowest mattress height, then he could get down in the morning and play like the big boys. It worked beautifully. He only fell out once last night (to be expected, and after that Ben rigged up a little wall) and this morning I heard giggles and chattering. Perfect!

For anyone who hasn't seen them yet, these are the chairs we got to go with our table. I loved the X's on the back. We got them unstained, since they were cheaper, and Ben stained and laquered them and now they look like this:

Tada! Perfect match for the table! We love them, and they're so comfortable. We just got 4 for now, and will get 2 more later. Now we just have to get rid of the stupid, horrible, uneven kitchen floor. I'm having issues with it, can you tell?

Knitting has been lacking lately. I have been so incredibly busy and feeling kind of stressed. I have a website to finish for a client, bookkeeping work to get done for another, and the other day I cast on for this

which I need to finish. It's the Lace Edge Cardigan that I have knit twice before. This one is for the newborn baby girl of one of Ben's co-workers. His little one was born without half of her heart and has been down at a children's hospital in L.A. to fix it since her birth at the end of June.

Now, you all know that Ben and I have done the babies-in-NICU thing and we know how terrifying and painful it is and how you hate that you can't do anything but wait. I firmly believe that all babies should be knit for, but I have a special place in my heart for NICU babies and felt that I needed to make this. Not just for her, but for her parents, to let them know that we are there with them in spirit, praying and waiting. Ok, moving on. I'm starting to cry now.

So anyways, that's on my To Do list of things that need to get done soon, but the clients come first so it's going slowly. The blue thing above that is the GK 2010 mystery shawl progress. I'm on the last official chart, aside from the lace edging, but I will need to add a few more repeats of one of the other charts to make it bigger. The problem with knitting on smaller needles than called for means the size turns out a lot smaller. Unfortunately I haven't done any knitting on it recently. I've actually been working on washcloths more than anything. It's knitting I don't have to think about or pay attention to.

And last but not least, I found a new awesome blog/site:
Simple Bites

Go there. Just do it. You'll love it as much as I do.

Sorry for the longness, but I haven't posted in so long I had to catch up!

What's Cookin': Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ok that's kind of a mouthful. You could probably get away with just Chocolate Chip Muffins. But having 3 year olds has made me literal. Before I give you the recipe let's start out with a lesson.

Have you ever wondered why every muffin recipe tells you not to over mix your batter?

This is why. When you over mix muffin batter the gluten in the flour develops too much generating a more elastic dough texture and can cause high peaks, "tunneling" (caverns in the center of your muffin caused by gas bubbles being trapped by said elastic dough), and a tough and chewy muffin. In bread, this is a good thing. In muffins... not so much.

The sad thing is that I know this. I've known this for a long time. And I knew I was over mixing them this morning. I was just in a hurry to get food done for hungry children. Luckily though, I just over mixed them enough to get high peaks and they aren't too terribly chewy and not tough at all. They're a little more like bread than soft muffin, but they still taste delicious. However, they could have gone a lot farther and been bad. Let this be a lesson to you. DON'T OVER MIX YOUR MUFFINS! :)

And now, the recipe! (Notice the more-bread-than-muffin like center.)

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Muffins - makes 24 (truck not included)
I always make double batches, for extras to eat over the week or freeze. Cut the recipe in half for a normal batch.
2 C AP flour
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour (or just use 3 1/2 C all AP flour for regular chocolate chip muffins)
2/3 C sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 C milk*
1/2 vegetable oil
1/2 C chocolate chips (minis, if you have them. But who the heck keeps mini CCs on hand??)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl or quart measuring cup, mix eggs, milk and vegetable oil. Make a well in center of dry mix and pour wet into it. Stir until just combined (remember not to over mix!). Gently fold in chocolate chips. Spoon into greased or paper lined muffin pans, filling cups about 2/3s of the way. Bake 18-20 minutes, until golden and the toothpick test comes out clean. Allow muffins to cool in pans about 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack.

Notes & Variations: I have two different muffin pans. One is the shiny kind, one is the dark non-stick kind. I have found that the non-stick gives me dark, crispy bottoms and sides, and almost burns them. So I did some research and found that if using a dark non-stick pan then you should lower the temperature by 25 degrees. Just so y'all know, if you're having the same problem. I prefer my shiny pan.

*I tend to use dry milk powder in my baking and mix it with water for the amount of milk called for. This way I don't use up the good drinking stuff for cooking. The dry milk powder I've found isn't necessarily that much cheaper than buying fresh (it's about $10 for a box that makes about 5 gallons of milk - about $2 a gallon, rather than $2.50 for fresh), but it lasts longer since it can be stored in the pantry. I would highly recommend keeping some on hand. It's good for emergencies as well as baking.

What's Cookin': Bean & Chicken Tostada

To mimic my son: Hey! Look! A post!

One thing I love to do is use up leftovers. In fact, I detest throwing food away. It pains me to even throw little bits of food in the trash. So I try as hard as I can to make "new" out of old.

Another thing I don't generally like to do is have meat as a main dish by itself. It's too expensive and there are so many meals I can make out of just a chicken breast or two, stretching our meat further. With that idea, the other day I roasted up a packet of chicken breasts with some olive oil, lemon pepper, Pappy's and salt and then chopped them all up to use in various dishes. I had a little bit left, along with some cooked rice, so this is what I came up with last night.

Bean & Chicken Tostadas
2-3 rasher of bacon, chopped
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 can pinto beans, drained and rinsed (or about 2 cups of cooked beans, if you have them)
2 (ish) Cups chicken, coarsely chopped
1 Tbs ketchup
1/4 (ish) Cup water or broth
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp cumin
Salt & pepper to taste
Corn tortillas
Leftover rice

Heat oven to 400 degrees and grease a cookie sheet. Spread corn tortillas out on sheet and spray with cooking spray or brush lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and any other desired seasoning. Bake 10-15 minutes, until crisp and starting to brown. Why buy "tostada shells" when you can make your own?

Meanwhile, in a medium pot or pan place 1 Tbs oil over medium high heat. Add bacon pieces and cook until crisp. Drain (if desired) then add onion and garlic and lower the heat to medium.  Cook until onions are soft. Add beans and smash them a bit to resembled re-fried beans (or you could just use a can of re-fried if you have it). Stir in chicken and spices, adding water/broth as needed to thin it out to a smooth consistency. Lower heat and warm through.

Spread bean & chicken mix on tortillas along with rice and taco toppings such as cheese, sour cream, salsa, tomatoes, avocados, etc.

Notes & Variations: If I didn't have the chicken to use up I would have just left it out. You could leave out the bacon too if you don't have it and it would be a perfectly good meal. Beans are horribly filling and the toasted shells make it a little bit different.

Depression Cooking with Clara

Sorry I've been so boring lately. Unfortunately, I'm still boring! Not much to talk about I guess. Not much cooking, since it's been too hot. And not a whole lot of knitting being done so you don't even get that!

But I wanted to share with you something I found last night...

Depression Cooking

It's videos of a 94 year old woman named Clara who shares her recipes from the depression era. In between cooking she shares stories of making it through the hard times. I think she's FANTASTIC and I love her. She even has a cook book out!

I want to try all over her recipes, but here is the first one I watched last night that I think would be awesome.



Enjoy! :)