Laurabelle’s Blog

Several years ago Jeff's mother gave us a pasta maker. I think we used it once, though I don't actually remember doing so. (I do remember trying to roll pasta dough by hand, which didn't work terribly well.) The machine has sat in the closet for at least as long as we [...]

Four years ago, I knitted gloves for Jeff. These were not just any gloves; they were fingerless, with a mitten-top that could flip forward to cover the fingers. I even made the thumb flippy by means of a large buttonhole. (I have never seen either gloves or a glove pattern with a flippy thumb; I [...]

Today, I went to Stitches West 2009. For those who aren't in the know, Stitches is a sort of knitting convention with a bunch of classes but also a large marketplace of knitting vendors. I didn't sign up for any classes (I haven't yet found a knitting technique I couldn't learn on my own), but [...]

For most of my life I've worn the same kind of socks, the white cotton sport socks one picks up in a pack of twelve at Target, Wal-Mart, or the like. Jeff would call them quantity one (1) socks; they fulfill the purpose but could stand some improvement. In college I tried to change this by [...]

I have a ton of catching up to do on this blog. I'll start out of order, with Christmas. I spent the fall in a frenzy of gift-knitting. This was part of the reason for my hiatus from blogging; I felt I couldn't blog these projects for fear of giving away the secret. Not that [...]

I finished two long-waiting knitting projects today. These weren't particularly big projects; one of them was quite small. They had just been sitting for a while. The smaller project was a steering wheel cover that had been sitting for a few months; I knit it in a week or so at the beginning of July but [...]

I finally finished my Zara Cabled Tunic. This is a free manufacturer's pattern, using Filatura di Crosa Zara yarn. The yarn is lovely, but in this case I got what I paid for as far as the pattern is concerned. For the first installment of the Zara saga, see my Knitting and Ravelry post.

I finally finished my Bonsai Tunic, which was supposed to be a summer project. I got hung up on (what else?) the sewing-up phase. Just before our last hiking trip (blog post forthcoming, I promise) I finished my newest project (which I can't blog because it's a Christmas present), so this week I decided to [...]

If you're wondering how my barbecue brisket turned out, take a look at this: The meat was falling apart; I used an electric knife so it wouldn't disintegrate completely under the blade. The Bone Suckin' Sauce I used is to the left of the meat; you can just see Jeff's cole slaw behind the jar of [...]

For a few weeks Jeff and I have been thinking about making pemmican. Last week I rendered beef fat, which I got from our regular butcher (you want to buy beef fat? we'll give it to you for free!), and yesterday we started drying beef. The recipe I have calls for brisket, so I bought one. [...]