Saturday, October 17, 2009

holes

The first batch of sourdough bread in the new oven was a little bit overdone (still good, just some loaves too dark on top), but Scott had better luck with yesterday's batch. Jesse's learning how to work the oven right along with him and the two of them are just tickled pink with this whole thing -- good fun, good food!
Happy to see the holes for which sourdough is known, and to taste that distinctive flavor of sourdough, made from starter that's been alive since the days of the Oregon Trail and actively in use here for five years or so.

Another happy dance for making something full of holes when the last two Swallowtail shawl knitalong'ers, Lyn and Leah, showed off their newly blocked shawls at our favorite lys yesterday evening. Leah's pretty psyched to have finished this challenging project, having overcome some major difficulties with it along the way. Now that she gets it, she has fallen in love with knitting lace.

While the swallowtail was blocking, she was winding the lovely yarns she received as gifts from Gail Callahan, the Kangaroo Dyer. She printed out patterns for two more shawls yesterday afternoon and cast on for one of them last night, having already determined that one will be travel knitting for an upcoming vacation and the other will be for knitting otherwise. She likes the idea of knitting things that are challenging, beautiful, can be worn in multiple ways, and, importantly, won't be outgrown.

I made a hole too!
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4 Comments:

Blogger Rani said...

That brought me back - my great grandmother made sourdough bread (10 loaves) every other day to feed her 10 kids on the prairie of North Dakota. My grandpa passed a glass jar of starter on to me. It's very special.

My bread never looks as good as yours.

9:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Leah--nice job.
Scott--the bread looks great
Debbie--interesting mitts.

Jean

7:54 PM  
Blogger LaurieM said...

Oh! Was Leah sad to see her handknits go? She's smart to work on shawls, especially since hers has turned out so lovely!

I think those mitts are a great use of handpainted yarn.

It's amazing how comforting homemade bread can be, and I'm just thinking of the kind made with commercial yeast in a regular oven. I can only imagine that Scott's bread is altogether higher plane of heaven.

8:47 PM  
Blogger Donna said...

The shawl came out beautiful! Good for her - she's got the lace bug.

Nice mittens. Love those colors. I made a similar hole last night. Hope to have pics on the blog this week sometime.

And the bread - wish I lived closer because I would be coming over for a taste :)

7:49 AM  

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