Fiber Fool

Okay, I’m too scared to open up Google reader after letting it sit untouched since Thursday evening when I was trying to make a dent in the count. I think I was back to well over 900. Feel free to guess where I may be at now…

I did keep a bit better tabs on Twitter and Facebook so I still ran into plenty of interesting links. It seemed I had a hard time finding the right word a lot last week and I took that as a hint to look at something different for a bit. I kid you not, poor Amanda got an e-mail from me with a lengthy description of something I was wanting to describe in one or two words and the answer was actually “Processing.” I couldn’t put my finger on the word “processing?” *sigh*

Crafty

• Have you seen the sneak peek up at Ennea Collective? (Hint: roving, alpaca and lace!)
• My friend, Deb, shares her traveling drop spindle kit which led me to this cool niddy noddy that adjusts to different lengths (just like my PVC one I made, but prettier).
• Here is a great illustration on how needle size impacts the look of laceand why suggested needle sizes on laceweight yarns are often a range rather than a specific size.
• I just stumbled upon a reference to this blog where a woman spends $1/day at a thrift store and recycles what she buys into new clothes for an entire year. Very interesting to peruse!
• The New York Times has run a nice series on sketching.
• I used to do a fair bit of carving my own rubber stamps, but it isn’t terribly kid friendly. Here is a wonderful tutorial on making stamps from plasticine! I must find some kids to do this with, it look like too much fun! :-)
• Not so crafty for you, but great art skill went into this great print-your-own Owl Calendar for 2011!

Photography:

• The New York Times had a great list of 10 things to do in post-processing to make your photos look more professional and I have to say they did a great job!
• With the days getting shorter it is going to be harder to get photos taken, this article (NSFW, boudoir images are used for some examples) has tips on indoor portraits without flash that could also be applied to knits and food too.
• For those of you more serious about photography, I recently learned a bit about creating your own camera calibration profile in Lightroom that could prove mighty useful!
• About a year and half ago I attended a Pinhole Camera Day demo and fell in love. Thus began my lust for another digital camera body so I could fit one with a pinhole cap without worry about the dust exposure. Well, now there is a sealed pinhole camera cap for Nikons & Canon bodies! Now I lust for that and have different reasons for wanting a second camera body :-)

Food:

• In a couple weeks I’ll be hosting Monday night knitting once again. I think I may just have to try making this eggplant dip and sesame crackers!
• We’ve finally had a couple days of fall’s cool temperatures and it has me looking at soup recipes like this lentil one. And these 5 Autumn Soups.
• Of course there are more pumpkin things, like maple pumpkin latte in a slow cooker, and healthier pumpkin cupcakes.
• I’d also like to try these pear cupcakes!
• These Herbal Candies for Fall have me sort of intrigued. Seems like something China Bayles would make!

Humor:

• Love this ad for “Photoshop Beauty Cream” featuring Madonna.
• Here is an animation about being a family portrait photographer. In some ways it is super funny, but in other ways it is almost too real to be funny.

Caught My Eye on Etsy:

• It has been established multiple times that I love my squares. Thus, I’m loving these drop earrings from Splurge and this cube necklace from Sleepy Moon (bonus, it’s on sale!).
• I’ve fallen in love with this feather and brass headdress and think I *need* it for this year’s Halloween costume.
• This choker might be a nice touch to my costume as well, to give it a tad bit eerier feel.
• This “weekender” tote bag just resonates with me. I think it is the geometric print and the colors.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! Ours was busy, as usual. I’m thinking I’m about ready for a completely empty weekend on the schedule :-)

Just before Christmas last year, after the completion of the large pumpkin butter canning for the giving of gifts, I created a bar cookie that made one of the largest splashes of any of my baked goods. While my good Minnesota farm upbringing taught me not to brag, that is saying something if I do say so myself.

I started with the Fruit Filled Oatmeal Bars in the ubiquitous red and white checkered Better Homes & Garden New Cookbook. Since I had an odd amount of pumpkin butter that didn’t fit in the canner I opted to use that as my filling rather than make any of their suggested fillings. It made for a great bar, especially for the holiday season with richness of the slow cooked pumpkin infused with all the yummy warm spices of the season - clove, cinnamon, a hint of ginger and nutmeg.

When I made the plum butter this year I pondered trying it in the bars, but Drew declared the pumpkin so good that I shouldn’t mess with it. I still think I’ll want to try some of my other fruit butters, but perhaps Drew’s insistence to not mess with it was a good idea.

I decided to make it with pumpkin before I ventured into other fruit butter territories, but I did not leave well enough alone. I have been playing a bit with alternative flours recently and looking at my bags of oat flour, brown rice flour and almond meal had my wheels spinning. Since the basis of these bars landed somewhere in the realm of apple crisp topping meets shortbread, I thought it would be an easy adaptation. Mind you, I kind of jumped in with my eyes open, but covered with my hands and just barely getting a peek of semi-recognizable shapes between the fingers.

The results are tasty. Just not up to my usual standards. I forgot that the cranberry vision pans we have often require even less baking time than standard glass pans so the edges wound up a bit overly dark. It was the only type we had in the right size and I try to stay away from those pans because they have a tendency to make things look less appetizing in photos. If it hadn’t been for carryover cooking I don’t think you could have tasted the extra darkness, but the edge piece I tested wasn’t one of the darkest and there was a slight hint of burnt sugar to its flavor. So while I made them with the intention of Drew sharing them with the math graduate students today, they’ll be staying home with us. He insisted he would have no trouble finding them a home in his own stomach.

The other disappointment was their fragility. When I cast my mind back I’m pretty sure the original batch was not the most stable bar, but these require a bit more care when serving and eating them. A plate and fork seem mandatory (thus not terribly break room friendly). I’m assuming that is due to my less than thorough research into flour substitution before diving in. Oh and my inability to just use my bag of “gluten free all purpose flour” :-} What can I say, sometimes I get struck with an idea and run with it out of enthusiasm despite lack of time to both research and bake.

So, dear readers, especially those who are more practiced in the art of gluten free baking (Heather, Chris? *nudge* *nudge*), I’m guessing I should have included a starch of some type? But which kind and how much would you recommend? My first pass is below. Those not caring to have the bars gluten free, feel free to substitute regular AP flour in place of the total volume of flour and almond meal.

Not Quite There Yet Gluten Free Pumpkin Oatmeal Bars

makes 20-25 bars

Ingredients

• 1 C Oatmeal*
• 1/2 C Brown Rice Flour*
• 1/4 C Oat Flour*
• 1/4 C Almond Meal*
• 2/3 C Brown Sugar, packed
• 1/4 t Baking Soda
• 1/2 C Butter, diced and chilled
• 8 oz Pumpkin Butter

* As was pointed out to me in the comments, some of the ingredients pictured here are not certified gluten free. I was only baking for us and for me to learn a bit about working without wheat flours. If you are baking for someone who requires GF food, always be certain the ingredients are truly GF and not processed in a facility that also processes wheat and other gluten-containing grains.

Directions

1. Cut butter into small pieces and chill while preparing the rest of the ingredients.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (325 if you are using a glass or dark non-stick pan).

3. In a flat bottom mixing bowl, combine oats, flours, sugar and soda.

4. Using a pastry cutter, cut in butter until you have a nearly uniform coarse crumb mixture. Set aside 1/2 C of crumb.

5. In an 11″ x 7″ (or 9″ x 9″) ungreased pan place rest of crumbs evenly. Using your hand or the bottom of a measuring cup or glass press mixture into an even layer on the bottom. A little can work up the sides.

6. Spread pumpkin butter evenly over crust. Sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture.

7. Bake in for 30-35 minutes or until top crumb is golden brown. Cool on wire rack and cut into bars.

I was contemplating using teff flour rather than the almond meal, but I decided that was a bit too obscure to many. Instead I opted for flours I was able to get at either of my nearest regular grocery stores. It does seem I’m seeing teff around a bit more lately then when I was first trying to find teff flour, but I wouldn’t expect to be able to the flour just anywhere. Here I know Whole Foods has had it on the shelves and I’m thinking I’ve seen it at our local food co-op as well, though that could have been just the whole grain. On the second pass I may go that route anyway :-)

1. The abundance and variety of fresh produce!

2. The color!
3. The slightly more moderate weather! Though with our lower humidity daily temperature swings of 40 degrees are not out of the norm which took a bit of getting used to, though after 11 years I’m getting there, LOL!

4. The return to wearing hand knit socks!

5. Pumpkin Time! In the form of bread, muffins, lattes, donuts, shakes, Blizzards, cupcakes and more :-D

6. Harvest Festivals!

7. Seeds of all shapes, sizes and colors!

8. The return to wearing hand knit sweaters!

9. Halloween & it’s associated creepiness!

(photo ©AMS Photography, post-processing by me, used with permission)

10. It’s our anniversary! We are marking 8 years together today!

It only just occurred to me that it is now Socktober! Since I’ve got my head down and working I didn’t get a chance to design something specifically for Socktober, but I’d still like to celebrate in some way. So, now that coupon codes and sales promotions are working in Ravelry shops I’m gonna test out all the ways to run them ;-)

For the remaining days in October you can save 20% on all my sock knitting patterns in my Ravelry shop. Just head to click here to activate the code, or enter SOCKTOBER in the “Use Coupon Code” field while shopping. It is a one time use per customer code. Feel free to share it with others and spread the word.

I knit these cozy mittens about 9 months ago or so. They were a free pattern in the My Sister Knits newsletter back in February. There they had to fit in very limited space so both mittens were to be knit with the cables identical on each mitten and the stitch pattern was given only in line-by-line format. I am a die hard chart knitter so that wasn’t going to do for the final product. I am also a sucker for little details so knit my pair with the stitch pattern mirrored across the mittens.

I’ve had the pattern pasted up and ready to go except for photos since February as well. I’m not 100% certain what held up photography, likely weather to a certain extent until they were forgotten about and late winter turned into spring and releasing bulky mittens seemed silly. I’ve been getting a few unfriendly e-mails lately about it being “unfair” that a pattern that is not available be listed on Ravelry. Rude as they were, it was a good kick in the pants to dust the pattern off and get it out there now that fall is supposedly on it’s way (though it is hard to believe with our upper 80’s and low 90’s highs this past week).

One of the many very warm things Amanda modeled for me on Sunday in the record breaking heat were these mittens. As you can see, we had a good time. (Though I probably should have bought her an ice cream or at least an iced latte afterwards seeing as how she modeled alpaca, cashmere and yak in 90 degrees - I owe you big time, Amanda!)

It seems we have stumbled upon a magic place for photography in town. The energy there and the light just all comes together. There is also a wide variety of backdrops to choose from making it great for when we need to photograph multiple projects but want them to each look distinct.

Since I haven’t looked at the pasted-up pattern in so long I want to make another technical edit pass over it before releasing it for sale. It will go up on Ravelry today sometime, barring any horrific errors found. To celebrate I’ll be having a little sale over the weekend, so stay tuned to my Twitter, Facebook groupor Ravelry group to get all the details once the pattern is up!

The Laridae Mittens pattern features thumbs with an asymmetric gusset that help keep the cables centered nicely and undistorted on the back of the hand while the palms are knit in plain stockinette stitch. The cable pattern is mirrored across the mittens. Knit at 16 stitches and 24 rounds per 4″ / 10 cm in stockinette stitch in the round the resulting mittens will be approximately 7.5″ circumference unstretched and 10.5 inches long from beginning of cuff to tip. Additional sizes can be obtained by adjusting gauge appropriately. The pattern is 4 pages long, with both written line-by-line and charted instructions for the cable pattern and top of mitten shaping and will be $6. It will be sold in my Ravelry store, though you need not be a member of Ravelry or have a PayPal account to purchase the pattern.

If you have questions about purchasing my patterns, please send them to patterns (AT) designedlykristi (DOT) com.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I’ll be taking in one final harvest festival this weekend where I shall buy this year’s pie pumpkins. What will you be doing?