Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Other stuff’ Category

We got about a half inch of ice. It was still doing the freezing rain this morning, but switched over to sneet and then finally snow around noon. The above photo is a close up of the walnut tree branches. Below is the yard… and I tried to get a photo of this view about every 2 hours today.

When it changed to sneet or sleet or whatever it was, it was hard to tell, except more white stuff showed up on the ground.

When it finally started snowing it was coming down heavy. I tried to get photos of the snow falling, but with a point and shoot camera that I don’t really know how to use very well… it didn’t work out. But here is some snow…

It’s STILL snowing. The wind is blowing like crazy, too… and from the north east. Weird, very weird. This storm system is moving steadily to the east, so why the heck is the snow blowing from the east? Ah, I guess it’s because of the layers of weather interacting… but it’s still very weird in my opinion!

More snow…

Some more snow before it got too dark to take pictures. Well, I do have a few more on the camera, might post em later.

In case anyone has forgotten, clicking on a photo opens up a bigger view of it. I resized all photos to about 800 px wide, so they aren’t too huge but get you a bit more detail.

Hardly anyone in the area has lost power… the electric companies did a good job of getting the right of ways cleaned up good. The biggest power outage I’ve heard of was when a car took out a major pole. Duh, stay HOME when the roads are bad. I can’t believe how many people feel like they HAVE to go somewhere when the roads are so messed up. I just took photos of someone in a pick up truck turning around almost in our driveway. He had about a 10 inch hole of cleared windshield, maybe wipers not working. Not going fast, but someone was behind him. Backing out, well he wasn’t IN our driveway quite, so he backed out in the fairly deep ditch. Made it okay tho, must have 4WD. He turned around and went back the other way (north)…. it’s still quite a bit of climb from here going south. Going north its a slide down to the lake, then a climb… and then either more up or more down and up depending on which way you go. I know the snow will drift really bad over the top of the hill south of us… if I’ve got 6 inches of snow in the yard that hill will probably have a lot more on top.

South is town, well, the small town closest to us. I don’t need anything. But I’m sure there are other people who do… even though we had a LOT of warning on this storm.

So, that’s the weather report…

Hugs,
Vyx

So, two weekends ago I dyed some wool yarn for my friend Jan. I used procion mx dye, which is mainly for cotton and other fibers of that sort but will work on protein fibers if done in the right way. (using acid to fix the dye, rather than soda ash like on cotton… you can’t use soda ash on wool, but you can on silk)

Before I dyed all the yarn I did a couple of test runs on short bits of yarn. The color came out beautiful.

Not so when it came down to the actual yarn. I got a big shock… the yarn came out MUCH darker than I expected and while the color was pretty much the same color… there were also whole sections of the skeins that came out even darker… totally a different color than I was going for.

It looks horrible in this photo… the actual yarn is much better. My camera skills are not that great, and I was shooting with no natural light. But still, you can see what the sample looked like on top there. And how the actual yarn is quite a bit darker.

I was all AUGH AUGH! However, my experience in dyeing stuff allowed me to dye all that wool in TWO batches and have it come out pretty much exactly the same. Even down to dark spots. That was part luck, part skill and frankly pretty amazing. I =do= have skills! Hand dyeing any sort of fiber can be a gamble to get the same color on repeat, but I was very careful measuring everything out… and even the boiling of the yarn.

The first batch took over 6 hours to get up to a simmer. My instructions said to heat slowly, so slowly is what I did… VERY slowly. That’s probably why the yarn got so much darker than I expected. I was worried about felting the yarn in the dye pot, so extra careful.

The next day I did the second batch. I didn’t use the simmer burner for that batch, but I still took it very slow… even after re-reading my instructions. The instructions say bring from room tempurature up to a simmer over a 45 minute period. Somehow I missed that snippet the first dye batch! But I’m trying to exactly duplicate the first dye batch… so very, very slow again. Probably only 4 hours to simmer though, not 6 or more, hah!

One of the reasons I did the yarn in two batches is that a POUND of wool is actually quite a bit of yarn. It would all fit into my 4 gallon stainless pot, but not swish around very easily. You can’t stir it too much or risk felting… but to not stir could mean the yarn at the bottom getting too hot from the burner. So, having it move around more freely is a good thing.

Up this weekend… the lime green yarn gets a transformation. Another horrid photo… and the test is way too dark so I’m going to use a lot less dye to start out.

This, however, is an acid dye. That means it’s MADE to dye wool, unlike my procion mx dye. From what I’ve been reading, when I hit that sweet spot in tempurature…. the dye will all disappear from the dye bath and go right into the yarn. In other words…. instead of a murky dye bath the water will turn =clear=!

How cool is that? I can’t wait to see it happen! I’m going to start with 1/8th of a cup of (mixed up) dye for 1/2 pound of wool. It’s a beautiful spruce… blue green. At a lower strength than full strength dye like the sample it should come out amazing. Of course any other color than that pale lime will be great, lol!

Back to the mx dye on wool… I used Dharma Trading Company’s “Chocolate Brown”. I’ve used this on silk with vinegar, and it comes out a really nice maroon… pretty much like the test bits on the wool did. It’s a mixture, tho, not a true color. But still, I expected it would work nicely on the wool, and it did on the tests. Lots darker on the wool and actually made brown in bits. Very red brown, but still. The odd thing, in my opinion, was when the dye bath had cooled and I got to rinse out…. the water left in the dye bath was cobalt blue. I’m thinking that must be a component of the mixture… and it doesn’t take on wool (or silk) when used with acid. Cobalt Blue mx is one of my favorite dye colors… not as useful for mixing as Turquoise is, but splendid by itself. Works great on silk when used with soda ash instead of vinegar. Just a brilliant dark, and slightly green, blue. It is one of the better mx dyes, and not a mixture.

So, that’s my little story of dyeing wool yarn. Did I tell ya I was saying AUGH AUGH AUGH when I was rinsing the yarn? Seriously freaking out. Then I got to mail it to my friend and cower while waiting her email when she opened the box. Jan loves it, and I get to try again with pale lime yarn. That’s my plan for this weekend, when it’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow.

Hugs,
Vyx

Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow… oh wait… it’s jam today!

Last weekend I dyed wool yarn. I have a post about what I did last weekend, but I’m not posting it until my friend gets her yarn.

This weekend I could have dyed more yarn, but I decided I’d better make tomato jam instead. We are on our last jar, I think, and I didn’t make any at all last year because of such a poor tomato crop. Ron really likes blackberries but his favorite jam since he met me and my mad kitchen skillz… well, it’s tomato jam. He’d never had any until I met him and introduced him to it. Now it’s his favorite. Me, I grew up with one of my Mom’s friends making TONS of the stuff… I helped one year to make 32 quarts of tomato jam! That’s a lot! (and I totally see the point of quarts when you make that much… less jar filling)

I know, you are wondering where I’m getting tomatoes in January. Well, from the freezer, of course! All extra tomatoes that we don’t eat or give away (or sell), for whatever reason… those get cut up and bagged and frozen. So, this tomato has a big bad spot on the bottom but otherwise is fine? Cut that off, it can go in the freezer. If you’ve ever grown a lot of tomatoes you know that there are those that just don’t make the cut to eat fresh… you hate to waste them but probably do. I don’t. As long as the bad spots, sunburned spots, whatever get cut off, I freeze em. Or rather Ron does… this last year I pretty much took over on the growing part of it and all Ron did was pick them and do the freezing stuff when needed.

So, last night I pulled 4 gallon bags out of the freezer. 2 were pretty full, the other 2 only about 1/2 full. Looked like enough tomatoes for 2 batches of jam and that’s plenty for one day. I used to try to do double batches, but after having to recook countless times, I’ve given that up! It’s easier to do it all at once, but not if you have to dump all the jars back out and add more sugar and pectin and boil it all over again.

So I start out with a bag and a half of semi-frozen tomato pieces. I dump them into a colander and let the excess water drain. Some of that water is tomato juice, some is frost from the freezer. Down the drain it goes… tomatoes are mostly water and water doesn’t make good jam.

Then I start slipping the skins. This is another reason to freeze… the skins slip with out all that boiling water, dipping, and trying to peel them. It’s a messy business, and the longest part of the process. Not only do I slip the skins, but I try to get any bits that are green looking or seed holders that are white. (I could skip this if I could get Ron to squeeze the tomatoes before freezing, something to work on this year)

Tomato pulp goes into a bowl. I do try to get out a lot of the seeds while I’m slipping the skins, but it really depends on how frozen the tomatoes are. Tomatoes that are still mostly frozen are not as easy to peel, and they have a lot more water held in them than ones that have sat in that colander longer. BUT! The seeds pop out easier when the tomatoes are still pretty frozen. The good bits will be almost like wet sundried tomatoes when you slip the skin. All pulp, not fluffy with water. The less water the better, too… as this jam is very hard to get to set. It’s taken me years to get a good recipe and it’s =still= iffy sometimes. If you have never made a jam or jelly before you probably don’t want to try this as your first attempt.

Sometimes I chop the pulp as I go, this year I skipped that step… it’s a bigger mess. And we all know how tomatoes just sort of come apart when they cook anyhow, right? So, finally I have a bowl of tomato pulp that I stir around looking for bits of skin or big chunks of green that escaped my eye while slipping the skins.

Measure it out. 4 to 5 cups is good. If you have more, save it for the next batch. Make sure it’s not too watery. It should look like this photo. (and yes, I know this looks like a lot of chopped meat or something, except it has seeds) It should NOT look like bits of tomato swimming in juice.
BTW, if you want to do this in summer with fresh tomatoes… you peel, squeeze, chop and then let drain for a while unless you LIKE standing at a hot stove for hours cooking it down and boiling off the excess water. The water draining off easy is my second reason for using frozen and thawed tomatoes from our garden.

I used powdered pectin this time, some that I’d bought a while back when I couldn’t find the liquid stuff. Not a big deal, the basic process is the same sort of… I did forget with the first batch tho, and added the sugar first. According to the powdered pectin recipe you add the sugar later, after it’s at a boil. Oh well! With liquid pectin you add the sugar first and boil, then add the pectin. Whatever, I figured it wouldn’t really hurt it as long as I made sure to cook the tomatoes a while before getting up to that boil.

Whatever kind of pectin you are using…. you want 7 cups of sugar to that 4 or5 cups of pulp. Plus 1/4 cup of bottled lemon juice. If you think your tomatoes are really watery… go with less pulp or cook them longer before adding the pectin. I like my jam rather soft, but not runny…. however, even 5 cups of pulp in the mix tends to work out… it’s very spreadable! This jam is mostly pulp, not juice, after that freezing thawing thing.

So, bringing it up to a boil. Not something you want to go watch tv while it’s cooking. (I have done that, and scorched the jam) Stand there and stir, stir stir. It’s going to get very, very, very, very hot when it has sugar in it and reaches a rolling boil. You don’t want small children around who could get splashed. I’ve had it pop at me, that’s a burn if it lands on skin. I managed to splash it all over myself tonight… face, arm, shirt, pants and headphones. That’s because I was pouring in the partial jar I’d made earlier… so it could get cooked in, heated… I forgot that I was going to just heat that partial jar in the microwave and fill it. Of course I got it all over the floor too… what a mess! I don’t think I got burned, tho…. I jumped back and ran in and washed off with ice cold water as fast as I could drop the spoon in the pan.

I have all these pictures but they wouldn’t upload before I started this post. So I’m not sure where I am now. Oh, yeah! Me making jam! With headphones… standing at the stove is boring, so I needed music to dance to while stirring my tomato jam. Yes, Ron was laughing at me. I sing, too… and badly. But as long as I’m not too loud he doesn’t care. The important thing was making him the tomato jam. :)

Have 8 jars and a partial jar cooling on the counter. It’s still runny, but I hope with time and some refrigeration that will resolve itself. It usually does. We don’t want jam that is hard to spread, like jello or commercial jams. Spoon in the jar and smear it on a buttered biscuit… heaven.

Lastly, a recipe that might still need to be tweaked. I usually use a strawberry jam recipe to start from… with my frozen tomatoes, that is. I figure the water content is pretty close. Your mileage may vary… tomato jam isn’t for beginners.

Tomato Jam

4 to 5 cups tomato pulp (no skins and the less seeds and juice/water the better)
1/4 cup bottled lemon juice
7 cups sugar
Liquid or powdered pectin

Follow basic pectin jam instructions. Pour into jars, put lids on and seal with a water bath as recommended. Or do like we always did… put boiling jam into jars right from the burner still going and put lids and bands on, and turn over like this for 5 min. Then turn back right side up.

And be careful! I used the oven to keep my jars hot and sterilized today and kept trying to move them with bare fingers. Then I splashed my jam on myself, it’s a wonder I’m not burned. Sticky but not burned. Ron can always lick me clean, lol…

hugs,
Vyx

January 24, 2009 is the date of my first post after switching to WordPress. I’ve only written 70 more blog entries since then (counting this one). Obviously I’m not a prolific blogger!

I never have redone my classes in blog format. Always meant to, still have all the html and photos, just never got to it. That was the main focus of all my other websites. And while it was pretty handy when I was teaching online classes… well, to change the format to fit into WordPress is a lot of work! I’d basically have to start over… and a lot of those photos were NOT very good. Plus… well, I don’t teach online classes any more. No one has ever asked me to redo the classes, either.

Some of my stuff is still available online, anyhow. Even though my user accounts have been deleted I still managed to download photos and such from old websites. Kind of weird, but as my sister said: the internet is forever! (what she really meant was “don’t post anything you will regret later” …heh!)

So, my year in review… what I remember most…. not always in chronological order…

First of all… We survived the ice storm that happened right after I started the new blog. A week of total ice and trees down and the power out for days. Then we took BuddyMack back from his owners abandoning him. Before we took him back, I fell down in the ice going to check on him and give him food and water and gave myself almost whiplash. Then I got let go from my job and was unemployed. Jasmine got pregnant from the Rottie next door and gave birth to 12 puppies, but we moved her to live with her owner just in time, before she had the pups… Whew.

I got to do some visiting with a friend I rarely see… twice I drove over to OKC for visiting. Had lots of fun. Learned new stuff, got to play with craft stuff and awesome dogs, not to mention my awesome friend. When I grow up I want to be like her. Jan is an inspiration to me always.

Then I started going to the local farmers market to sell my tie dye and didn’t do too badly. Never did have enough veggies to take, tho, because I got called back to work and had to quit doing the farmers market. Still, we froze massive amounts of blackberries and tomatoes and I even roasted a lot of peppers which then got sliced and frozen. I have a lot of jam making to do yet… tomato jam and blackberry jam! I prefer cooking jam in the winter… no one minds the house being heated up! And I seem to have more time for indoor stuff in winter, too… hmm.. :)

Bought another used boat, didn’t sell the first one, and after not catching anything while fishing in the day time we hooked up lights so that we could go night fishing in the little lake a mile away. Caught plenty of catfish to stock our pond and took the across-the-road neighbors teenager with us one night. That was fun! We gave him a lot of the fish from that night, but I guess none of his sibs like fish as he came back with most and we put those in our pond, too.

My daughter came to visit and her boyfriend, too. Sarah drove down from Chicago, Jamie flew down from his home. We had a good visit, Sarah and I dyed things and I cooked “real” barbeque for them. We went on a hike at the little lake… supposedly to go fishing, but we never found a good place to fish from so we turned back before I was totally wore out. My adventures with barbeque were funny… my old smoker was ready to be retired but I got one last use out of it and hiked back and forth between the barn and the house cooking slabs of ribs. The kids went hiking one day and I told them they would get rained on… they came home soaked, totally soaked. But they had fun while they were here. And so did I! :)

I bought veggies… green beans… from a farmers market to make vinegar beans for Ron. Not quite pickled beans, but they are a bit tart. He loved them as a child and I was trying to recreate an old time recipe. I only got 2 quart jars out of $10 worth of beans, so I expect I’d better grow my own this year. Lot of work, but for Ron of course I will do it. :)

Oh, and the neighbor next door (Brent) planted a garden big enough to feed a small town. I got a LOT of free produce from him, including buckets and buckets of cukes. Made lots of jars of pickles. Almost all in quart jars… except for a few pints of Sweet Lime Pickles. Sweet Lime Pickles are VERY good. People in other states beg them from me. :) Brent also shared some sweet corn with us and I have to say… that was the best sweet corn I’ve ever had in my life. It was perfect. Great neighbor to share his garden produce with us like that! I tried to share our blackberries with him and his folks, but no one came over to pick em… so I will probably just take over jars of jam for them when I make it.

I just asked Ron what his memorable thing was from the last year… and he said ICE STORM. He spent a lot of time cleaning up the debris with only some help from me. He did the chainsaw, I helped pick up and move the smaller stuff and stack the firewood sized stuff. We had a LOT of bonfires over the spring, summer and fall, until we finally burned the last of the giant piles of stuff too small to cut up for firewood. There is another pile building… what with wind storms and such more debris has fallen down. It’ll be a good start to the year when it gets warm enough to sit outside again! I think the last big bonfire was in September… my son showed up on his birthday and we were down below the barn burning the last of it. Kid almost left until he noticed the light from the fire.

In the late summer my son moved out of my mobile home to go live in OK with his girlfriend… she moved over there to teach school. That meant that I had to bring my little dog Rita over here to Ron’s house to live. I should have done it anyhow, but I was worried about her and that highway out there. Too close to the house. So far Rita has been fine but we did have a BAD scare when she went visiting across the road and didn’t come home until a car was coming. Augh! She was nearly hit but backed off just in time. I keep a closer eye on her since then. Hyper dog is still hyper… but she’s been diagnosed with CHF a few days ago.. on medication now. Considering how much she makes Ron smile… I hope she’s got quite a few years left. Rita is a fun dog, and I love her… but she just makes Ron’s face light up. It makes ME happy, too, that my little pest has won a place in Ron’s heart.

The beagles are doing just fine, and BuddyMack has been super even with all the horrid weather we’ve had that keeps me from walking them. He just doesn’t eat as much food as when he gets to run, and yesterday I went out and he’d buried his bowl with the previous nights food! Beagles do tend to bury stuff… but still! His dish was almost invisible under all the dirt and stuff. Silly dog. They are all silly, they won’t eat in the house except for treats and nummy bones, so no matter the weather I’m out there feeding them every evening.

This fall hasn’t been that interesting, but we did acquire a new cat for a while. We had a big rainstorm that flooded the river and the lake up over the roads. Lots of rain. And then when we went to walk the beagles right after that, Ron could hear a cat meowing in the woods. He stopped, called “Kitty Kitty”. And there is a strange orange kitten right there…. climbing up a tree to get away from the beagles. So we took him in, named him Garfield and the younger cats welcomed him to the family. Heck, all the cats came running down to see what was up… and then escorted the new cat back to the porch. But pretty soon our grown up cats started picking on him. He’s moved across the road now. Poor guy, still comes here to eat, but mostly what he wants is petting business. Poor homeless cat, I see him going to hide in the culvert a lot. He does hang out across the road, tho… sleeps with Cocoa Puff on their back deck in a little dog house. I can’t save every animal that gets dumped, we have more than we can really afford now.

2009 had it’s ups and downs… but it wasn’t a bad year. 2010 oughta be just as interesting. (or boring, the way I write it, lol!)

Gotta work on that… the boring writing, that is. Or not… I am who I am, and this is my blog. Happiness is all I ever resolve for… and I have that most of the time. :)

hugs,
Vyx

probably longest post ever, yikes!

I felted my new purse this afternoon. It’s laying on the dryer air drying now.

(glasses in photo for scale this time, lol!)

It’s QUITE sturdy, I’m sure knitting with 2 strands of wool and only adding the others helped that a lot.

My handle is quite lumpy… should have expected that, as the fancy yarn I got is quite varied in size. Oh, and just in case anyone is wondering: Nashua Handknits “Sitar” is the fancy yarn, in Deep Blue Seas color. It’s only 50% wool, but felted up quite nicely along with the regular wool.

Here is a shot of the top with a piece of unfelted i-cord using the same yarns.

And finally, a photo of the bottom so you can see how the knitting disappeared. It’s amazing! I’ve never felted anything before… and knowing how it’s supposed to work is a lot different than actually doing it and seeing for yourself.

Now I’m off on a hunt for a small coin purse to knit and felt… to use up the last of the yarns, of course. And then I think I’ll knit a hat. A hat should be almost as easy as this purse was, right? :)

hugs,
Vyx

(next up, learn continental knitting…it just looks so much easier)

P.S. All photos enlarge when you click on them… I forget to remind people about that.