Baby Swing - Before and After

I updated our hand-me-down Fisher Price "ocean wonders aquarium" baby swing using fabric I bought ages ago from Superbuzzy and Amy Bulter's cherry full moon polka dot from her Lotus line. Although relatively simple, creating a pattern from the existing seat cover nearly contorted my 9-month-pregnant brain into a pretzel. The fish on the mobile don't really go with the fabric, I don't think the baby will notice.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Homemade Ginger Ale

Rachel just tried making her very own ginger ale. It tastes great! Here's a recipe. She used a Nalgene bottle instead of an empty 2-liter.

Infusion

Infusing alcohol is so darn easy. Inspired by Martha Stewart, and by Nick and Jess's blog, I tried lavender vodka, cucumber tequila and rhubarb vodka. I let them sit in a cool, dark place for a week, filtered them through coffee filters and they came out great. Margaritas with cucumber tequila are delicious.

The Lavender Drop

aka "The Lemon Eye Pillow," or "The Purple Scurvy-Buster."

Recipe

1 serving

1 1/2 oz. lavender infused vodka*

1 1/2 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 Tbsp. (or more) sugar or agave nectar

Add ingredients to shaker with ice. Shake well until ice almost dissolved. Rim martini glass with sugar. Shake. Serve. 

*Lavender infused vodka:

Wash several sprigs of lavender. Place in jar and cover with high-grade vodka. Let stand for 4-7 days. Sample flavor to determine strength of infusion. Remove lavender, filter vodka through a coffee filter into a decorative bottle. Enjoy.

Plant Dyes

This morning was my first trip to the Kingfield Farmer's Market. One vendor was a lovely woman, Kim Christiansen, who experiments with natural dyes and yarn. I was mesmerized by her booth, perhaps because it was 50 degrees and I wished I'd brought my handwarmers. 

She explained that the color of a dye is a result of the dye substance, a mordant and the yarn itself. The mordant sets the dye on the fabric and different mordants can produce different colored results.

Pink yarn: Dyed with cochineal, a bug native to Latin America.  Cochineal was used by the Aztec and Maya populations, later coveted by the Europeans. Cochineal are now cultivated on cactus plants and you can mail-order them from Oaxaca, Mexico. The mordant for this yarn was Rhubarb leaves! I don't understand what it is about the chemical properties of these two substances together that works, but Kim does.

Yellow yarn: Dyed with rhubarb leaves and stems.

Brownish yarn: Dyed with ivy berries and "unknown berries."

Green yarn: This one is my favorite. Kim was leading a group of middle school students in a chemistry of dyeing class to gather experimental dyes. One kid wanted to try buckthorn berries. This invasive shrub attacks yards and public lands in Minnesota. Its berries are a deep blue and are guaranteed to stain your sidewalk. but, when used as dye on merino wool, buckthorn berries leave a beautiful green. Another wool skein dyed with buckthorn was a lighter green due to the specific reaction between that wool and the berry.

Party Cheesecake

Summer parties deserve luscious desserts. Last night's early summer gathering inspired me to try a lemon cheesecake. It was my first attempt at the dessert - surprisingly easy once I got over how uncooked the cake actually looks when taken out of the oven. Lemon curd is delicious, but might have overpowered the delicate dairy goodness of the cheesecake. Next time I might not use all of the curd. A nice blueberry topping helped offset the cake's lemony tartness. I candied half a lemon leftover after juicing - nice garnish and delicious to eat.

Rosemary Box

Deck garden season has arrived. I found a collection of $2 terra cotta pots at the Salvation Army (yeah!), along with this little wooden crate. I didn't weatherize it, and expect it will last only a season. But with some holes drilled in the bottom it makes for a nice little rosemary planter.

Homemade Yogurt

Homemade yogurt. Here's why: 

I like tangy plain yogurt of the variety sold at my local co-op. 

I can't possibly re-use all of of the plastic yogurt containers that are piling up in my cupboard.

The containers aren't recyclable. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

Yogurt in bulk. What could be better?

I've made 3 or 4 batches of this with varying results. The most important secrets seem to be the use of milk solids and incubation time. Thanks to the assistance of not one but two yogurt gurus, I have a darn good recipe.

1 quart milk

1 packet starter culture (or 1 Tbsp live active culture yogurt)

1/2 c. non-fat dried milk powder

Heat milk in a double boiler (don't let it boil). When it reaches 100 degrees scoop out 1/2 c. and put it in a separate bowl with the starter culture. Set aside. Note that temps above 120 degrees will kill the culturing bacteria.

Add powdered milk to warm milk and continue heating until it reaches 180 degrees. Hold temp at 180 degrees for about 20 mins and then quickly bring the temp down to 116 degrees. In the winter this can be done by placing the milk pan in the snow, or just use a sink full of ice water. The temp will drop surprisingly quickly so watch it.

Add the 116-degree milk to the starter culture until you have about 1 1/2 c. Then add the starter to the milk. This split process might give the culture a chance to acclimate to the new temp.

Put the milk into a sealed container. Ideally you'll culture it at a constant 100-110 degrees. Without a yogurt incubator, you can warm your oven and leave the oven light on. You can put it in a cooler and wrap a big blanket around it. I tried monitoring a crock pot, intermittently turning the heat on and off. Skip this - unless you have nothing better to do that watch yogurt incubate for 7 hours. 

I put the milk in a jar and into a styrofoam cooler. Ideal incubation time is 7 1/2 hours. 5 hours will make it sweet but not solid. At 9 hours it starts to get a little sour. This still might taste good with middle eastern dishes, for example. I tried Doogh, a savory Persian yogurt drink, for the first time last weekend and immediately thought of homemade yogurt.

After incubation, put to yogurt in the fridge right away and chill for a day. The yogurt will firm up more as it cools. My yogurt has tended toward a thinner consistency, likely because I incubate below 100 degrees. But it's tasty and is great in smoothies. 

* Recipe thanks to Jamin Johnson's decades-long yogurt experimentation. Additional tips from Lauren Dee. 

Baby Monster Onesie

I bought a book called Sukie Iron-Ons, which looked cool, but my first iron-on attempt failed to yield a satisfactory result. Instead of wasting the bad onesie, I gave it some felt baby monsters instead.

Cable Hat

This pattern started as something more complicated: alternating ribs and cables (I actually needed help with the math to figure out the sizing). After seeing the thickness of my ribs, I went with all cable ribs.  I doubled-stranded Frog Tree Alpaca yarn, which everyone at the yarn store insisted I'd "just love." Turns out, it's the tiniest bit itchy - perhaps because, after all that math, it's one rib too tight. But I still like it. I can't figure out why my casting on seems to scallop at the end, but it makes for a nice effect with this hat.

Photo courtesy Benjamin Pofahl, who would like to share that he's just about had it with his lipomas.