Blankets Blankes Blankets

A continuation of my last post, but I did finish my blanket.... eventually. It took me a week and it's a bit messy, but I finished!

 Here's after 3 days, I was making speedy progress. My entire afternoon was just sitting in my room and getting as many rows done as I could, while I listened to podcasts (10/10 recommend Reply All, they're cool).

I had a couple of times, because I was using scraps, where I ran out of yarn halfway through my row. Thankfully for this one, I had another skein I was saving for a different project that I used to save the row, but otherwise I would have probably had to unravel it.






Day Five ish, I finished the actual blanket portion, and started on the border. I wanted to make the border wider, because the blanket itself wasn't very wide.
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Finished! I did 1 row of white, one row of black, another row of white, and then a scalloped or curved edge in black to finish. It's not super big or very neat, but I'm really proud of how it turned out.


   badda bing badda boom

Who let the cat get the yarn................. again?

What's this weeks project? Well, I wanted to crochet a blanket. But the problem is that takes a lot of yarn. So we went and ordered some, but it's going to be another week before it arrives. So I took my 2 baskets of yarn and grabbed all the smaller balls of yarn, and I'm making a smaller blanket using the scraps. It's bright and colorful, and I'll post a picture when I finally finish it. I'm probably a third of the way through and it's been 3 days from the start. When I'm not doing school work I've been working on it and listening to music.
Day 1:

 Day 2:

My cat, Neptune, trying to eat any string he comes across, making this project double the work:

 And this morning:

Bread Day 4: French Chocolate Bread

Quarantine: Draining Energy Fast

Surprisingly, all this time at home is doing the opposite of what I would expect. I thought it would be a nice chance to recharge, being an introvert, but after about 2 days I was ready to be out, doing something other than sitting around. I've been really tired and also losing a lot of motivation, which isn't great when you're trying to stick to deadlines 😬.

I started another crochet project. I made two hats for friends last week, so this week I decided to try something different. I bought a bunch of yarn, which unfortunately isn't supposed to arrive until next week, but in the meantime, I'm using up my scraps of yarn to create a smallish blanket and to try out some different stitches. I hope it ends up finishing well.
Crochet has also given me a lot of time to think, and a lot of time to make more music playlists and listen to too many podcasts.

Painting Paper Airplanes

New quarantine craft! I'm making a mobile because I have time, resources, and nothing better to do. So here's sort of my process:

At first, I was just making some paper airplanes, partially because I was listening to a song called Paper Airplanes, and partially because origami! And why not. I had taken a piece of paper and divided it into smaller and smaller pieces. Then I started taking some old homework pages (well what else am I going to do with it?) and made more

  

(don't mind the messy desk)

After that, I thought "what am I going to do with all of this?
Well, I have this mobile I had built in 7th grade, using paper cranes. So I decided why not make another? I had a wooden hoop in my basement, usually used as a hoop for embroidery, and some invisible string.

After a while of stringing airplanes. I was bored and decided to paint some as well. Some I painted the tops a different color from the bases. Some I decorated with different designs. So now I'm just hanging them all up and will update when I complete it.

Finished

It came out pretty well granted the fact that it was a sort of last-minute project, but I'm happy with how it turned out, and it's now hanging from the ceiling in my closet (because I kept running into it when it was sitting in my doorway)

French Petits Pains au Lait (Milk Rolls)

Bonus Bread! Baking Powder Drop Biscuits

This recipe was a bit of a side project, my mom asked if I could make biscuits for dinner so I decided to make a quick video for it. It's super simple and took less than an hour altogether.

Day Who-Even-Knows-Anymore

This weekend hit hard with a solid bout of "I have no idea what to do". I'd painted, crocheted until my hand hurt, drawn, written a story, listened to way too many hours of music, and I felt like I was running out of things to do. I'd even made a pillow fort. So I found myself on Sunday wandering around my upstairs hall. And my eyes fell on my my mom's ukulele case sitting by our keyboard.

Now I'd tried in the past to play. I think I learned amazing grace a few years back, but that was it. So I thought, well I have nothing else to do. I grabbed the case, sat down on my bed, and pulled up some tutorials. So far I've learned 2 lines of Can't Help Falling In Love by Elvis, Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2, and a few snippets of others. It's something to keep me busy so I won't complain. 

Bread Day 2: Cinnamon Swirl Yeast Bread

Bread Day 1: White Yeast Bread

Baking Bread: The Basics

As my project is baking different kinds of bread, I think now would be a good time to talk about how one bakes bread, or at least the different components of making bread.

Step one: Ingredients. Specifically Yeast.

What is Yeast?

Yeast is a small single-cell organism. How this works in bread is it feeds on any sugars in the bread dough, converting it into carbon dioxide, which helps bread rise.

So in order to have a loaf of good spongey bread, you have to have some sort of sugar in it, and warmth helps speed up the rising process. This creates tiny pockets of air in the bread which helps with rising in the oven.

Step 2: Rising

You have to let bread dough rise for a certain amount of time. What is that amount? It depends on the kind of bread. If you leave it for too long, the air bubbles expand a lot, and you will end up with a deflated bread when it comes out because there was so much space it just collapsed. If you don't let it rise for long enough, on the other hand, your bread will be dense and doughy in the middle, because there wasn't enough air to let it expand.

Step 3: Baking

Pretty straight forward. You want a good loaf of bread, it's gotta be just right, not doughy or burnt. This is mostly monitored by watching the bread to ensure the top doesn't get too dark and keeping the oven at a temperature where the bread is able to cook through fully before darkening the edges. They say a good way to test if a loaf of bread is done is to take it out of the oven and the bread pan and tap the bottom. If it sounds hollow, congrats! It's done. If it sounds dull, let it bake for longer.

Step 4: Serving

Allow the bread to cool, mainly so you don't burn yourself cutting it. Then, slice it and serve! If there's ever leftovers, place them in an airtight container and leave it for a good breakfast. Butter is always good, or jam, whatever you choose!

There's my basic ramble about bread, some of the basic knowledge you might want to have when you start.