Chicken and pigeons

Robert and I have been in our new apartment just over a month now, and for the past two or three weeks, we've had a pair of pigeons attempting to nest in our juliette balcony. I say "attempting" because these two pigeons are extraordinarily bad parents. They built a nest, and the female laid two eggs (much to our dismay). Then all of the nesting material fell through the grate and/or off the side. Then one of the eggs apparently fell over the side. Then, last week, Robert noticed that the remaining egg is broken. But none of these misfortunes have prevented the pigeons from sitting on the egg, and the male(? - I'm not 100% sure which is which) pigeon keeps on trying to bring twigs to reconstitute the nest. This has been totally unsuccessful, because he's just a little too fat to comfortably fit between the bars of the balcony. He flies up with a twig in his beak, tries to come through the bars, flaps his wings a few times, drops the twig to the ground, and flies off for another one. Every time. It would be very amusing, except that the pigeons are kind of noisy and gross and generally annoying.

In other birdie news, my needle-felted chicken from a previous post is finally framed and hanging up in our kitchen:

Pink socks finished

Even though colloquium and CMS are on summer hiatus, I've been getting in some pretty good knitting time, and a few weeks ago I finished the pink socks. The pattern is from Cookie A's book Sock Innovation, and the yarn is from Claudia Hand Painted Yarns, purchased at Webs.
Two things I love about these socks:

1. The color. I don't really think either of the pictures captures the beautiful pink colors of the yarn. Pink is my favorite color.
2. The way the lace panel eats the ribs to arc across the top of the foot, as you can see in the first picture. Robert says this is "nifty," and I agree. Also, I really appreciate the symmetry of this element. The socks are mirror images of each other.
   

Bread Machine!

Many things have happened since the last time I posted. I will make an attempt to post them in the order in which they were done, but no guarantees.

First up, We received a breadmaker as a housewarming/"thanks Robert for dogsitting" gift. We have been enjoying it a great deal. The first loaf of bread Robert made in it was a simple white bread:

This loaf of bread was very delicious, and lasted less than 24 hours. We try to have a "special" breakfast on Saturday mornings, and the day after the first loaf of bread happened to be a Saturday, so I made vegan french toast. We devoured it with margarine and maple syrup.

Green Shawl Finished!

My green shawl is finally finished! I started it in the summer of 2008, when my family was on vacation in Flagstaff, AZ. We went on a day trip to Sedona, where we stopped in at the Red Rock Knit Shop. I fell in love with a gorgeous lace shawl displayed on the wall. The owner of the shop directed me to the online source for the pattern, and I bought the yarn right there and then (the yarn was Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace; this is not the yarn recommended in the pattern).

It has taken me nearly 3 years, but it is now finished. In the picture above, you can see it all pinned out for blocking. Here it is soaking in Eucalan wool wash first:
After removing it from the wash water, I squeezed it in a towel. It was so small!
Then I rolled it up in a bath towel and walked all over it before Robert helped me pin it out symmetrically. After it had dried, it was clear how much more orderly the stitches had become. The lace pattern became much more clear than it had been before.
Here, you can see the difference in size of the shawl before and after blocking. The first photo is before, and the second is after. For reference, the back of the couch folds down to make a full-sized bed.

Vegan Donuts

As I mentioned in a previous post, Robert and I have now made donuts twice. We use the Pioneer Woman's recipe, and veganize it by subbing flax "eggs" for the two eggs. The recipe makes about two dozen. For Robert's birthday brunch, we doubled it. This was kind of a mistake, since it produced 52 donuts and 62 donut holes, which took up just about every flat surface in my apartment until our friends ate almost half of them.

That said, they are DELICIOUS! Here you can see one frying. I recommend using crisco for frying instead of canola oil. The canola oil makes you cry when it heats up and starts to break down, but with crisco you're okay until you get too much residue in the bottom of the pot. It took 3 batches of oil to fry all of the birthday donuts.
After they're fried, the recipe says to glaze them with a powdered-sugar glaze. We did that the first time, but the second time we dredged about half of them in cinnamon sugar and glazed the rest. Both options were delicious, but we preferred the cinnamon sugar ones. Here you can see Robert glazing a donut hole:
I heartily recommend this recipe. It is kind of a big production, but it is not difficult. Just make sure you have lots of friends coming over to help you enjoy them!

The last CMS/Colloquium of the year

The last colloquium of the year was April 21st, if memory serves. This is where the second pink sock was at that time. Since then, many things have happened, including finals, finals grading, a camping trip, two rounds of homemade donuts (pictures to come), and a round of qualifying exams. Given all of that, I have not put much time into the pink socks. Instead, I've been working on my green lace shawl (it's almost finished!!) and a super-secret embroidery project which is intended as a gift.

Since CMS and colloquium are on hiatus for the summer, so are the weekly project status updates. But I will make an effort to post more UFOs and some status updates of various projects. Also, we're moving this coming weekend, so there might be some pictures about that once we get all settled in to our lovely new apartment (with a gourmet kitchen and washer/dryer!)

Yellow Rose Fiber Producers Fiesta!

A few weeks ago (okay, the second week of April) my Mom and I met up to go to the Yellow Rose Fiber Producers Fiesta in Seguin, TX. We had an absolutely wonderful time, except for when my gluten-free mom and my vegan self were walking around tiny, economically distressed downtown Seguin looking for lunch on Saturday and they didn't have ANY FOOD. None at all.

We took a few classes: a short morning intro to needle felting and a longer afternoon introduction to rigid heddle weaving.

You can see the finished product of my needle-felted chicken at the top of this post. I think it's absolutely adorable, and my plan is to crop it, frame it, and hang it in my new kitchen when we move (next week!). We took a copy of a page from a coloring book and traced it onto the clear water-soluble "fabric" you can see in this picture:

Then we took a bit of fluffy fiber and poke-poke-poke it into the fabric, with a foam block behind it.

The second class was rigid heddle weaving. I made a small table-runner-ish item:

Here's the almost-finished product. I still need to tie off the ends for fringe.

Here's a close-up so you can see the lovely self-striping color of this bamboo yarn:

And finally, I only made one purchase at the show, but it was a good one. It seemed like most of the exhibitors were alpaca farmers from Texas. So of course I had to buy some alpaca fiber. I got this custom-made batt from a booth where they had a bunch of fiber in different solid colors on display. I got to choose my colors (which were purple, white, and a bit of blue-green silk) and the man ran it through his carding machine to blend it all together in a beautiful way. Here it is: