YOP14 Week 18/52 – sourdough baking with a side of knitting

Acquisitions/Stash Enhancement

I went to Hobbycraft on Tuesday after my hospital appointment and bought some lovely fabricโ€ฆfat quarters in green tones, floral prints and patterns and some beige bias tape. My plan is to use my super simple way of making bunting to make some for our sunroom. It doesnโ€™t have any curtains in there so I think some bunting around the top of the windows will make it look cheerier. Iโ€™ll put it up once the Christmas lights come down so thereโ€™s no rush to get started on making it yet. (BTW my Christmas lights arenโ€™t up yet.)

Knitting

Jumpers/cardigans

Having finished the body of my jumper last week, this week Iโ€™ve been working on the sleeves. On Thursday I was almost at the cuffs before bed. On Friday morning I was in Ravelry and saw my notesโ€ฆI was supposed to have knitted the body after the colourwork with 3.75mm needles!! I used 4mm! Iโ€™ve used the 4mm on my sleeve, but my tension is always tighter on sleeves, so usually they match if I knit them with different needles. Anyhoo, my patience has been tested enough with this jumper ๐Ÿ˜‚ so I continued the sleeves and it is what it is.  It needs binding off and blocking.  I need to buy some more colour catcher sheets first because I don’t want the white to end up pink too!  I’ll do an FO post eventually.

Next up Iโ€™ll be making a 2nd feather and fan jumper using the raspberry and natural colours and I can just follow my notes from my 1st and not have to think! After that Iโ€™ll make my 3rd version of Such a Winterโ€™s Day jumper in dark blue. I think Iโ€™m done with trying new jumper patterns out for the foreseeable ๐Ÿ˜‚

Weaving

Inkle loom

Iโ€™ve not started my new project yet. I have definitely had less shoulder pain as the week has gone on so I do think the band weaving had made it worse unfortunately.

I cut about 9โ€ off the band from last week and it didnโ€™t start unravelling, Iโ€™ve used some polyester thread to put tiny stiches through some of the weft threads and now using it as a book mark. I will try some other hemming methods out with the rest of it.


Other News

My sourdough journey continues! My first loaf I baked last Sunday was a success. Only a few “too big” holes, so I was really pleased. I over boiled our eggs we had with it which was unfortunate.

Because it took a while for my sourdough to get going I had quite a lot of discard to use, so I found some recipes on the Clever Carrot website.  The layout isn’t great and there’s annoying pop up videos but the food is tasty.

With some of the discard I made an overnight sourdough apple cake (delicious) and later in the week I made a sourdough granola! It made nice bigger clusters so if my husband likes it Iโ€™ll do that regularly for him. (I used different fruits, nuts and seeds to the recipe).

On Thursday I started a new loaf with sundried tomatoes and rosemary (and smoked paprika), put it in the banneton basket on Friday morning and then kept in the fridge for ~20 hours and baked Saturday morning!  For dinner we ate it with tomato soup and cheese.

On Friday I made some sourdough chocolate chip cookies.  The recipe is ridiculous it makes soooooo many.  I baked 24 I think and froze some of the dough.  Mine don’t look like the website version.  Next time I’d do a third as much.  We didn’t find them chewy which is what it said they were.

Baking seems to be something that does not agitate my shoulder so itโ€™s filling my time well. Iโ€™ve started watching all the Hallmark autumn movies available on Amazon Prime. They usually have baking in so itโ€™s perfect background noise.

The mammogram was very painful on my right as expected, on my left side where I have a lot of scar tissue from an operation when I was 11 it was absolutely excruciatingly painful. I was glad she had me holding on to the machine. She did warn me it would be a lot more painful and given thatโ€™s also the side with my frozen shoulder too ouch!!  The next day I woke up with a lump under the scar tissue but trusty Google said it was normal (and cited some reasons scars may swell after a mammogram) and it should go down, by bedtime it had gone.

Iโ€™m very fortunate to not carry the BRCA gene but know there are other breast cancers so itโ€™s still worth doing but Iโ€™m pretty confident when they scan for testicular cancer they arenโ€™t putting those body parts in a vice to scan them! Anyway they are every 3 years here, hopefully I wonโ€™t get called back or need it sooner. ๐Ÿคž๐Ÿป


This is a Year of Projects post. Officially the Group is in its 14th year, but this is my 7th year participating. If you would like to find more about the Year of Projects Group on Ravelry, as youโ€™d be very welcome to join us.

Year 14 list.

13 comments

  1. You should consider sourdough baking a craft. It is not for sissies! I have decided the ‘unloaf’ recipe is the one I will continue to use for my everyday bread. It uses unfed starter. For the recipe you can shoot me an email and I will give it to you as well as a chocolate cookie recipe that makes the softest sourdough cookies ever and uses discard too. Interested in homemade crackers to go with you soups? Got a recipe for those too using discard. LOL. Yes, I love making everything sourdough.
    What an interesting thing to find out about the sweater once you had almost completed the entire thing. I am still hoping the blocking will work it all out for you.

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  2. Your baking sounds wonderful. I’ve been baking pumpkin muffins (from a mix) and plan to make some cinnamon scones tonight with almond flour that I forgot was in the freezer. I like my scones more “tender” than all wheat flour ones. Congratulations on going through all the pain of a mammogram. I get one every year since my mother died of breast cancer. Sorry to hear of all your jumper problems. You make me feel better that I’m not the only one struggling with jumpers/sweaters.

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  3. I’ve had one terribly painful mammogram in my history, after others that were not too bad. I’m so sorry your first one was painful. I’m also glad it’s behind you for three more years. All those baked goodies look amazing! And thoughts of Christmas lights in the sunroom is kind of intriguing me. ๐Ÿ™‚

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  4. So sorry your mammo was so painful! It’s good to do those scan as they come up though. Wow – you are rocking it with your sourdough! Sounds like so many tasty experiments going on ๐Ÿ™‚

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  5. That sour dough apple cake sounds delicious. Wonder how cinnamon raisin bread would taste ๐Ÿ™‚

    I am sorry the mammogram was so painful. Mostly mine hurts where the machine pokes into my underarm, but I’m sorry it was also hard on your shoulder and where you had surgery :(. Ask them if you can take an aspirin for pain before you come in next time to see if it helps. You only get them every 3 years? I’m jealous, they do mine every year, but then I have cysts in one of my breasts. They also had me do the genetic test for the gene you were talking about and also for colon cancer and something else, but I also did not have any of the mutated genetic markers, yea! I had to laugh when you mentioned they would probably not be using that squeezing machine for testicular cancer testing.

    Maybe you could use a zig zag stitch on your sewing machine to keep it from unraveling?

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  6. All of the sourdough stuff looks so yummy!! Hope your shoulder continues to improve, and that blocking is the solution for your potential sleeve/body problem with the jumper.

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