The cat is up!
Cats are great listeners.
Monthly Archives: July 2011
Around and A Round Recipe
Round things look good in twos.
A Pair of Dish Cloths.
They taste good in twos too.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Too good not to share.
My New Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies
You’ll want your hand mixer for this one – it’s tough to get the flour incorporated with a spoon. We’ve made these two times in the past two weeks.
1/2 c. unsalted butter or Earth Balance
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. vanilla
3/4 c. and 3 T. all-purpose flour
1/8 t. baking powder
1/2 c. chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 300F.
Beat up the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla and beat some more. Put in the flour and baking powder and beat patiently. At first you’ll think it’s going to be a crumbly mess, but stick with it. Everything will come together. Stir in the chocolate chips (with a spoon).
Divide the dough into 6-8 golf ball size balls. Arrange on a cookie sheet and gently squish with your hand (Ellie’s favorite part after eating all the chocolate chips) to about 1/2″ thick. I like to sprinkle the tops with kosher salt.
Bake them for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and delicious on the edges. Let them cool on a wire rack.
These are crispy cookies made for dunking.
V is for Victory!
I’ve got the Official Pattern of Dish Rag Tag V worked out.
Round, uncomplicated, great for scrubbing.
When I started working on this thing, it was no fun. No fun at all. Repetitions took too long, I had to spend all this time counting and it was just all around boring boring boring without a complicated lace stitch. Even without the lacy stuff, a 23-row pattern repeat with short rows is just too intimidating for a newer knitter. I was getting ready to abandon the round thing altogether when I had a Design Epiphany.
If you haven’t had a Design Epiphany, they are kind of neat. All of a sudden you say, “Oh!” and you’ve solved your problem.
After the Epiphany I felt much better about round. There isn’t even any counting if you use a stitch marker. You can put the whole thing down at the end of a row, walk away and when you get back you can tell where you left off! If you’ve never used short rows, this will be an excellent place to start.
I’ve written up the pattern so Mom and Great Gran can give it a test run. I’ll have to let you know if I enjoy it as much after the fifth or sixth starter cloth. Even if it doesn’t hold up to multi-cloth binge knitting, Dish Rag Taggers only have to knit it once!
I Promised You Dates
I have consulted the calendar. I have estimated how long it will take to make starter dish rags. I am ready to announce the dates for Dish Rag Tag V.
Sign-ups for Dish Rag Tag V will open Monday, August 15, 2011 at 9am central and stay open until there are 100 knitters signed up (10 teams of 10) or 9am on Sunday, August 21, 2011. Whichever comes first. If capacity is reached within 24 hours, we will extend participation to 120 knitters (12 teams of 10). If for some reason this race is much more wildly popular than I anticipate, I’ll think about opening sign-ups to 144 participants (12 teams of 12).
The race will begin Friday September 2, 2011 when I mail the starting boxes to the Team Captains. The Labor Day Weekend start worked great last year, Team Captains should receive their boxes the following Tuesday.
To keep the playing field even, this race is only open to folks with addresses that are actually, truly, physically in the United States.
Specific information for Dish Rag Tag V will be announced immediately prior to the opening of sign-ups. But here are a couple of answers to the questions that keep you up at night:
What size box?!
We’ll be using the USPS Priority Mail Small Flat Rate as the Official DRT Box again this year. Postage rates went up again this year so the Flat Rate boxes for $5.20 (Doesn’t it KILL you? that’s the online rate +free tracking) is the most predictable rate available.
Sign-up fees this year?
I am going to continue with the $1 sign-up fee to offset all the shipping costs and weed out the less committed players. (PayPal is preferred, but other arrangements have been made in the past.)
Further questions specific to Dish Rag Tag V? Ask and I’ll answer in the comments so the responses are there for everyone.
If you have no idea what Dish Rag Tag is, there are plenty of ‘Rules and Regulations’ posts from past races for background reading. This year will be exactly like last year, so you probably want to start with
Revenge of Dish Rag Tag
Full Up
Just as a personal aside:
I might have too much on my plate.
Do you think Dish Rag Taggers would freak out over a ’round’ Official Dish Rag? With short rows maybe? Yeah, you’re probably right. Last year’s cloth doesn’t have a lot of hearts on Ravelry but it gets downloaded a minimum of once a day. I’m not sure I can beat that. I’m not sure I should try. But dish rags are on my mind.
I’ll announce dates this week.
Postcard from the Beach
Wish you were here.
The shovel is her paddle.
Roger Again
“I hold him by his paw.”
Me: No stuffed friends in the bathroom.
Ellie: Him not stuffed! Him Real!
Me (stalling for time to counter that): Already? What made Roger Real?
Ellie: You did. Every bit.
Roger got to sit on the shelf while Ellie had her shower.
The Cat is just about ready for the test knitters. But are the test knitters ready for the Cat?