Bread and cushions
I postponed my gardening plans yesterday because of a few brief showers in the morning. For no particular reason, I expected the weather to be better today. So when I woke during the night to heavy rain that went on for hours, I started regretting that I didn't deal with it yesterday.
When I got up some hours later, the rain had stopped, but the world outside still looked grey and generally soggy. I abandoned my gardening plans and ensconced myself on the couch to watch TV and work on the current stash-busting crochet project.
I'd decided to use up some odds and ends of cotton yarn by making a cushion cover. I had a particular concept in mind for this, but after extensive fiddling around I ended up with a fairly standard 'granny square' shape. After all, when you're bringing in a lot of colours it's probably best to use a simple pattern.
Even making a simple square turned out to have its complications. I hadn't taken much notice when sorting through the yarns I wanted to use, but some of them were 8ply and some 4ply. If you're not up with my hip yarnwork lingo, that means some of the yarn was twice as thick as the rest, and it worked up differently. It made some odd stretching and bagging to the shape I was making. I shrugged and trusted to the magic of blocking to fix it.
I had intended to have the whole cushion cover completed by the time my lockdown holiday ends, i.e. tomorrow, but as these things have a habit of doing, it's taken longer than I expected. I finished one side of the cushion today, soaked it, and pinned it out to dry in the sunshine. Happily, I managed to get it reasonably square. Now I have to scrounge up the remaining bits and pieces of yarn and try to work them into a second square the same size.
With the crochet partially complete, I wanted to do a little breadmaking. There's been a lot of homemade bread recipes floating around during the lockdown, on the off chance that people who couldn't get bread might instead have located some (equally scarce) flour and yeast. It's made me hanker after the smell of baking bread.
As it happens, I had both flour and yeast on hand. On inspection, I found the yeast was a couple of months past its best before, but I experimented with letting it activate and found it worked much as usual.
The problem with bread recipes is they usually make a large loaf, or even two - more than a single person can sensibly use before it stales. I did a little googling and found this recipe for a teeny little one.
It was so much fun to make. The dough was a mere handful to knead. I set it in a bowl to rise for 45 minutes, and decided I could probably achieve a few garden tasks while I was waiting. The sun had now come out and was actually very warm. (Sadly, in the unforgiving sunlight, my newly washed windows looked as grubby as ever. I must clean the insides.)
I didn't attempt any mowing or weeding, but spent a productive period pulling out dead and dying plants, bolted lettuces and the like. I collected yet another bowl of feijoas and relocated some sadly neglected herb pots to an indoor windowsill. They'll die off if I leave them outside as the weather closes in. In fact, given my ineptness with indoor plants they will probably die anyway, but I thought it was worth trying.
When my timer went off, I came back inside, cleaned the dirt from my hands and set about kneading my dough for a second time. Then it went in a mini loaf pan (I have had these for years and hardly ever use them) and I sat with a cuppa and a book until the second proving was done.
After half an hour, the bread dough had swollen to fill the loaf tin. I bunged it in my small oven, making some adjustments to the temperature and baking time to allow for the fan bake. Since the elements are quite close to the food in this oven, the bread browned on top fairly quickly. I ignored the stated cooking time and took the bread out when it looked and felt right, a much shorter time than stated in the recipe.
I'm quite delighted with my tiny bread. I'll keep this recipe; now I've tested it I can play around and see what else I can do with it. After all, that yeast needs using. And it's just the thing to go with feijoa jam.
When I got up some hours later, the rain had stopped, but the world outside still looked grey and generally soggy. I abandoned my gardening plans and ensconced myself on the couch to watch TV and work on the current stash-busting crochet project.
I'd decided to use up some odds and ends of cotton yarn by making a cushion cover. I had a particular concept in mind for this, but after extensive fiddling around I ended up with a fairly standard 'granny square' shape. After all, when you're bringing in a lot of colours it's probably best to use a simple pattern.
Even making a simple square turned out to have its complications. I hadn't taken much notice when sorting through the yarns I wanted to use, but some of them were 8ply and some 4ply. If you're not up with my hip yarnwork lingo, that means some of the yarn was twice as thick as the rest, and it worked up differently. It made some odd stretching and bagging to the shape I was making. I shrugged and trusted to the magic of blocking to fix it.
I had intended to have the whole cushion cover completed by the time my lockdown holiday ends, i.e. tomorrow, but as these things have a habit of doing, it's taken longer than I expected. I finished one side of the cushion today, soaked it, and pinned it out to dry in the sunshine. Happily, I managed to get it reasonably square. Now I have to scrounge up the remaining bits and pieces of yarn and try to work them into a second square the same size.
With the crochet partially complete, I wanted to do a little breadmaking. There's been a lot of homemade bread recipes floating around during the lockdown, on the off chance that people who couldn't get bread might instead have located some (equally scarce) flour and yeast. It's made me hanker after the smell of baking bread.
As it happens, I had both flour and yeast on hand. On inspection, I found the yeast was a couple of months past its best before, but I experimented with letting it activate and found it worked much as usual.
The problem with bread recipes is they usually make a large loaf, or even two - more than a single person can sensibly use before it stales. I did a little googling and found this recipe for a teeny little one.
It was so much fun to make. The dough was a mere handful to knead. I set it in a bowl to rise for 45 minutes, and decided I could probably achieve a few garden tasks while I was waiting. The sun had now come out and was actually very warm. (Sadly, in the unforgiving sunlight, my newly washed windows looked as grubby as ever. I must clean the insides.)
I didn't attempt any mowing or weeding, but spent a productive period pulling out dead and dying plants, bolted lettuces and the like. I collected yet another bowl of feijoas and relocated some sadly neglected herb pots to an indoor windowsill. They'll die off if I leave them outside as the weather closes in. In fact, given my ineptness with indoor plants they will probably die anyway, but I thought it was worth trying.
When my timer went off, I came back inside, cleaned the dirt from my hands and set about kneading my dough for a second time. Then it went in a mini loaf pan (I have had these for years and hardly ever use them) and I sat with a cuppa and a book until the second proving was done.
After half an hour, the bread dough had swollen to fill the loaf tin. I bunged it in my small oven, making some adjustments to the temperature and baking time to allow for the fan bake. Since the elements are quite close to the food in this oven, the bread browned on top fairly quickly. I ignored the stated cooking time and took the bread out when it looked and felt right, a much shorter time than stated in the recipe.
I'm quite delighted with my tiny bread. I'll keep this recipe; now I've tested it I can play around and see what else I can do with it. After all, that yeast needs using. And it's just the thing to go with feijoa jam.
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