Jay Girardot

Nicole Alderman wrote:I'm pretty sure that yarn is not wool.

Oh no the person who gave it to me said it was, and I must have interpreted my burn test wrong (this was my first attempt at doing a fiber burn test, so not too surprising). Thanks for pointing it out. I guess my next project will be a scarf with different yarn!

This scarf is made with a soft and fuzzy wool yarn (I'm not sure exactly what kind, I got it secondhand without a label but the burn test indicated it's some kind of will). I used size 8 needles and a stitch I've heard called moss stitch or seed stitch - the pattern is you cast on an odd number of stitches and alternate knit and purl, starting each row with a knit stitch, so the end texture is a series of small textured bumps. It worked really well with the softness of the yarn. The end length ended up being about 72" long and about 6" wide.

Gravy #1: Onion gravy
This gravy goes with a dish my mother calls "Swiss steak" - venison round steaks that are lightly floured, seared, and then baked in gravy and served over mashed potatoes. It's also a very easy gravy to make.

Ingredients: Pan of drippings from venison, some butter, sliced onions, flour, water.
Process: Melt the butter in the pan of drippings. Cook the onions until soft and beginning to become translucent. Add flour to pan and stir until onions are coated. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour water in the pan and cook until desired consistency.

Gravy #2: Sausage gravy

Ingredients: Crumbled and browned breakfast sausage, milk, flour.
Process: Brown sausage in pan. Add flour and stir until sausage is coated. Add milk, reduce heat, and simmer until desired consistency.

Decided to go simple with my first attempt at foraging - a salad with dandelion greens (as well as lettuce and cheese because my partner was not enthusiastic about having a salad with no lettuce at all). The dandelions are from an overgrown lot near where I live, and I got to hunt around through a bunch of plants I have yet to identify to find enough for dinner. I have no idea exactly how much I picked, but the bowl I used holds roughly 4 cups of water, so more than a cup!

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Jay, I used sisal (that's sold as twine or rope) for crocheting such scrubbies. Did you try that (with the melted cheese)? It's a plant fiber, made of a tropical plant, some kind of Agave.

I never considered using twine instead of yarn. That's a brilliant idea!

Submitting about 15 minutes of work (so I think 0.25 Oddball points?) crocheting a scrubby for washing dishes.

The yarn I used is unfortunately a cotton/polyester blend, but I couldn't find a natural fiber yarn that had enough texture to scrub dried-on melted cheese off dishes (a common problem in my house). This yarn is specifically called scrubby yarn, and it has extra fiber twists coming off of it for extra scrubbing. I basically made a circle with split single crochet and chained a small loop for hanging. I'm a pretty accomplished crochet-er and it took me about 15 minutes start to finish.

Got a secondhand shirt that had a grease stain on the front but was a really good shirt otherwise. The stain wasn't incredibly obvious, but still too obvious for me to be comfortable wearing out of the house. And since it was a patchy stain, I decided to hide it with a patch of flowers. I used a wooden embroidery hoop, a needle with a large eye, and an assortment of cotton embroidery threads, mostly in red and yellow because I wanted to stick with warm colors to go with the orange shirt.

I don't own a stud finder and I grew up knocking on the wall and using the sound to locate studs. It hasn't failed me yet, so I hope it counts!

Discovered a hole in the front of my favorite cardigan, so invisible mending was the obvious choice. I used a tapestry needle and some black wool yarn, but I ended up unraveling the yarn into a single strand to match the width of the yarn in the cardigan. I've never done a knit-stitch darn before, but it didn't take too long to get the hang of it and I'm happy with the results.

The upper of my work shoes started detatching from the sole - the sole is unfortunately not leather, but the upper is, so I hope that still counts! I used an awl to pierce holes in the sole and the upper and a cotton/wool blend thread (not sure the exact percentage of either, but it's strong) on a curved needle to whipstitch the upper back to the sole. It's holding up fine so far!