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| Timur wearing one of his creations in Vegueta |
I had seen various videos with bleach applied to dark fabrics, leaving rust-colored patterns on them. We spoke with Timur about it and he set off cutting stencils from a sheet of thick transparent plastic. By now he has made three of them. The result of the application of the last one is pictured above, worn by Timur himself.
I used this easy recipe for scalded dough pancakes a few times already, with several different flours, and it always work quite well, so here goes.
Ingredients, in order of appearance:
Beat eggs with a whisk of fork, add sugar and salt, beat, add milk, beat, add flour and baking powder, beat till smooth, add boiling water, beat, add oil, beat.
Let stand for 20 minutes or so.
The dough will be liquid, that’s normal.
Heat a pan (or two or three) well, spray with oil or wipe with kitchen towel with a bit of oil on it. I generally find it’s enough to do it once.
Figure out the amount of dough needed for your pan to have a thin pancake. It takes very little time, literally a few second on each side. Mix the dough a bit every time you go in with the spoon or what have you, I found that some flours tend to sink to the bottom.
That’s all there is to it.
Enjoy!
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| Here it is |
As we continue living in Canary Islands, my need for knitted garments is minimal. On the other hand, I still have some balls of yarn bought years ago, purely because they were beautiful. The knitting process pleases and soothes me, so I keep making stuff I don’t need.
This time, I decided to make a one-ball project with the last remaning Schoppel-Wolle Laceball. At least I think, I may even say hope, it was the last one. As the name indicate, it is lace-weight self striping yarn, 100 grams per ball.
The project itself was extremely simple — knitting in rounds, ribbing 1x1, till I had very little yarn left. I divided the remains in two to make straps. I still have about 10 grams worth of yarn left.
Things I learned while making the project:
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| Casting off with a needle |
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| Finished edge |
Details were joined together with a crocheting hook.
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| Possible styling |
As the vest is just a cylinder with some straps attached, it can be worn as a circular scarf.
And that’s all for now.
I still have a few balls of yarn left, so stay tuned.
Knitting pics on Shutterstock — here.
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| How cute is my model? Well, he is of unbearable cuteness, if you ask me. |
I can't explain why I keep knitting those scarfs. We still live on the Canary Islands, and this winter, for example, presented no reasons to muffle up.
One possible reason is that I still have some Schoppel Wolle Lace Ball yarn. I still have some left, btw, so there might be more scarfs coming up, who knows.
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| In process. |
As before, the tendency of stockinette stitch to curl in and the reverse stockinette stitch to curl out was used to create ribs of different colors. The scarf was knitted in stripes of stockinette stitch and reverse stockinette stitch from two different balls of yarn. One has a gradient from cream to very dark brown, another bright teal to grey. Each side of the scarf has its own main gradient but I can twist it so that they both show.
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| Like this. |
Height of each stripe is 7 rows. Two 100 g balls were almost completely used and I ended up with 27 stripes altogether. The circumference of the scarf is about two meters. It can go quite a few times around my neck.
Our teddy is wearing it wound three times around his.
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| Just a couple more pics |
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| And here I stop |
Knitting pics on Adobe stock — here
Any idiot can publish a book, I thought, so why not me then.
For ten years now, I’ve been posting language-related observations on my blog, sólo algunas palabras. Then, last summer, I had a brightish idea: to collect all the posts dealing with various aspects of Russian in one document, to add some extras and then publish it as a book. Tamara supported the idea and provided the “extras” in the form of illustrations. The manuscript started to take shape in June 2019. However, with this and that, I returned to editing it only in December.
I like the idea of self-publishing as well as that of print-on-demand. The latter means that only those who want your book will buy it, and the book will never be out of stock. While there is no shortage of e-book self-publishing services, only a few companies will make a physical book for you. And in terms of worldwide reach, it’s hard to beat Amazon. What other company would print your book in demand in the USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, Mexico or Brazil? So we decided to give it a try.
This one is even less serious than the previous project, but here goes.
More or less at the same time as Kirill finished writing his story Flor, I’ve started an avocado seed germination project. The illustration in the story was drawn from life. I was really surprised how fast it went – the seed cracked next day already, and a little root appeared within two or three days. We, along with all of Spain, were in quarantine situation, so a lot of attention was paid to small things. The speed may have something to do with the fact that the pear was local, ripe and that we live in appropriate climate.
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| It is still drying. It has been drying for a day now. |
I can’t explain why I made this model of the virus that brought the most of the planet to a standstill. Maybe it is an attempt to domesticate the wild and fearsome, sort of like like what we do with bears, having teddies in our houses. I thought about making at night, and when I woke up, went and checked, and yep, some people thought of it first. Made it anyway, ибодабы.
The pattern is simple and based on usual 6-ray symmetry knitted ball. Ball is knitted first, and then the tentacles are crocheted on. I will record here the process and numbers, so that my next attempt, if any, has better proportions.
I am not a huge fan of marmalade, but Kirill likes it. So we had a go at making it. The recipe came from this page; I will post it here with my remarks lest the page disappears. First remark is that is should be called marmalade, and not “jam”, as it contains peels.
There is a stretch of El Confital beach full of sea glass. Every time we go there, we end up bringing a few kilos home.
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| Playa del Confital |
Sea glass is beautiful and just begs to be collected. Now we know one more use for it. We’ve created some images and an alphabet out of sea glass.
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| The description that follows is for brown rabbit on the right |
I keep thinking up and trying out various types of 3D-knitting where the volume is created by the tendency of stockinette stitch to curl in and the reverse stockinette stitch — not unexpectedly — out. My previous attempt to utilize this property of the basic knitting stitches can be seen here.
This time I decided to do something a bit more complicated. I find the result interesting and reminiscent of a Renaissance ruff, but I think I need to a) overcome my dislike of knitting samples next time and b) generally work more on the idea. As with the previous version, it is reversible. Explanations to follow.
I have a strong suspicion that I already wrote this recipe up somewhere, but I can't find it, so here it is again. The proportions got gradually modified over the years and the result is now much more chocolatey, so it not completely the same anyway. The "original recipe" was found in one of the blogs under livejournal umbrella; there it said that it was copied (also modified, I think) from a book.
Anyway, here it is as I make them now.
Much as I like cinnamon rolls, their sweetness is sometimes a bit too much for local temperatures. So, when I saw a video of "tray rolls" on skillshare (can't locate it just now), I decided that I have to have a go at various different fillings for the rolls; also to make them stuck together as they suggested. Two reasons: one, mentioned in the video, is that you hide most of the edges of the rolls as you stick them together, so they don't dry out in the oven.
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| For this banana cake it is best to take overripe bananas — even riper than on the pic |
I never can quite understand if there is a banana season here on Canaries. Maybe not — bananas, mostly local ones, are available all year round. We can never guess how fast they will be eaten though, and often have to throw away some. This is a way to utilize some overripe bananas.
This cake is delicious. The recipe is based on this banana loaf, but I've changed the proportions somewhat, reducing sugar, adding lemon juice and generally adjusting to my taste and presence/absence of ingredients. Plus I've changed the process slightly (never could understand the need to cream the butter with sugar, so, none of that)
Ingredients:
Process
Start the oven : 180 °C non fan-assisted
Line whatever baking form you have with baking parchment
Peel and mash the bananas
Beat the eggs with the pinch of salt till foaming
Mix butter and sugar well
Combine eggs and sugary butter, beat with mixer
Add mashed bananas and lemon juice, mix and beat
Add flour and soda, mix and beat till lumpless
The mixture will be not pour-able, you will have to scrape it into the tin and level the surface.
Cover with aluminium foil, to prevent the top from going completely black.
Bake for 30 min, take the foil off. The color will develop really fast; test the readiness with a toothpick (if it comes out dry, cake is ready). The original recipe say to bake for 30 minutes; in my case I say 40 minutes is closer to the truth.
Enjoy :)
Baked stuff pics on Shutterstock
Last time I wrote about pancakes, I was complaining abut how I couldn't find kefir here. Since then I discovered the food court of El Corte Inglés. I don't know why I didn't check it out earlier, I guess I have a blind spot for basement departments.
Point is, they do have kefir. They have a good range of products from the Pastoret company and kefir is one of them.
So, here is another recipe and another set of pictures. As you can (hopefully) see, they are thick, fluffy, uniform in texture and have a very mild flavor, so can be used with both sweet and savory toppings. (Our older son prefers sweet, and the younger one savory).
Because of the way they rise and then keep their volume, the amount I end up making is always high, but they go really fast, there is so much air in them.
This is my second attempt to make a two-sided scarf using long-section dyed wool. First time I tried to make one, I bought just one 50 g skein, which was enough to make a collar, but it was not what I wanted.
First time I made this cake without consulting any recipe, but vaguely remembering that I had made something similar in the past. It turned out so well, I thought I'd write down the recipe next time, if I ever manage to reproduce it. I did reproduce it, so here is the recipe:
Ingredients, in order of appearance:
teaspoonful orange zest
juice of one orange (measured, it amounted to about 100 ml)
2 eggs, medium
1/2 teaspoonful salt
3/4 cup* white sugar
teaspoonful cinnamon
60 ml sunflower oil (refined, so it doesn't smell of anything much; can easily be replaced by other refined non-smelly oil)
100 ml milk
1 and 1/2 half cups plain flour (approx)
teaspoonful baking powder
There is a lot of recipes for pancakes around, and I experiment periodically, though I still can't recreate the taste and general feel of the thick pancakes ("оладьи") of my childhood. I suspect it is mostly due to the fact that dairy products are different everywhere, and some of the stuff readily available in Russia ("кефир", for example) is not so readily, and sometimes not at all available where I live.
At some point when we were in Finland, I had ordered a bag of hollowfiber stuffing from amazon. I honestly don't remember what sort of project I wanted to do at that point, and the bag was laying unopened for a few months. When Kirill had left for Gran Canaria in the beginning of June, I suddenly had an urge to finally use it for this little critter that later proved to be an excellent breakfast companion — not very talkative, but who is in the morning?
