Monday's muffins

Since it is the fall, and time for pumpkin stuff, I made pumpkin-orange muffins.

Not exactly like that, but close enough. Mine called for 3/4 cup of canned pumpkin, which is about half a can. What to do with the leftovers? Canadian Living seems to have just put the whole lot into a dozen muffins!

I just doubled my recipe and made it in a big flat pan. My recipe called for 1/4 cup of chopped raisins and 1/4 cup of walnuts, or perhaps you could substitute 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds. I put whole raisins and sunflower seeds -- wild, eh?

One is meant to top it all with pumpkin-pie spice, which I do actually own, and sugar. But I guess with all the excitement of making cake instead of muffins, I forgot that step!

They are very moist and delicious! I think chopping up raisins might actually be a good idea, because they can be a bit big. I'll try that another time. The sunflower seeds are a nice crunch addition.

Since I'm sure you know what a pan of pumpkin cake looks like, I will show you another beautiful tree.

A lovely sunny day

Today the sky is blue and the trees are yellow and I was glad to get out in the sunshine.

I'm keeping up my walking program, at least until it gets snowy! Then, I don't know what I'll do. But, according to the plan, I should walk 7 kilometres today, which, as it happens, is just about down to Romni Wools and back!

So I set off, thinking of some plain blue and some sort of golden yellow yarn for a hat or two. I remember a walk to Romni several years ago at the same time of year, and I ended up buying some reddy/orangey/purply yarn that matched the leaves on the sidewalk!

There's a little pumpkin dangling in this tree

But it was closed!

So, without any yarn, I turned around and came home. I thought of heading off to another yarn shop, but knew I'd spend more there, so I'll just go to Romni another day... another walk.

What I am (not) knitting now

I have piles of yarn surrounding my comfy chair in the living room. Tonight we are having people over, and they are not just the usual crowd who are used to yarn all over the place, so I have decided to put some stuff upstairs.

(Kiss of death; I'll never see this yarn again and projects will languish for years....)

I bought this single ball of yarn some time ago and meant to make a hat of it, to try it out. If I like it, I might buy $200 worth of it to make myself a Ceilidh. Will get right on that.... Isn't it a beautiful, tweedy, rich colour!

Why spend $200 when I have a bunch of yarn already? Like all these DK single balls. Surely I can just put them all in one garment? I actually think this will be kind of cool, but I got distracted. But I will get back to it just as soon as I can.

The Great Distraction:

Oh, I love and hate Stephen West's mystery knitalongs! I think this shawl will be quite nice when done. I like my murky, gloomy colours. But this is about half of the shawl! There is so much to do! The first two parts had interesting and challenging bits to them, but the last two are simply huge chunks of knitting.

Anyways, it was pointed out to me that Christmas is coming, so I have put this aside as well, to get on with a present I have to get in the mail in a few weeks. Which I am not showing you just now.

I'll be sure to do a similar post at the end of the month, and I hope that some of this will have been brought back to the comfy chair!

The end of the charity knitting year

Several times over the past year I have received bags of wool for free from people on Ravelry "for charity knitting." I can't actually remember what came from where after a while, but I have done a lot of knitting that I am giving to charity, and then I think I will go on a selfish knitting kick!

Today I took to Sistering a bag full of things!

Two big things, a blanket and a big wrap:

Some cloths, for babies or faces or dishes or whatever:

Three cowls, two warm and one kind of decorative:

A bunch of hats in a variety of sizes:

Scarves and shawls and a tiny neckwarmer for a child:

I guess the next step is to identify yarn to pass on to the next charity knitter, and to finish something for me!

I forgot all about NaBloPoMo

Here it is, November first.

I was thinking of NaKniSweMo, and though I don't think I can knit a sweater this month, I did finally remember that I could blog every day for the month. 

So, let's do this! 

It is the day after Halloween, so there is a pumpkin parade in our local park, but it is pouring rain, so our pumpkin is sitting on the porch, already chewed on by squirrels, and we are not going to join the festivities. 

When it is sunny, you can see beautiful things like this: 

I do love a fall garden, and some have been pretty spectacular around here this year. I'm pretty sure this rain will take most of the leaves off the trees, but stick around and I hope I can show you other delights. 

I am a medalist

Last Sunday I walked a half-marathon, and lived to tell the tale.

Me with kids and my medal after the race

Way back in April, I was looking for a holiday idea, something halfway between "arrive at the train station and turn right, trying to find a bed for the night" and the "if this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium" bus tour. Somehow I came across these tours where you walk somewhere interesting, and a tour company carries your baggage from quaint B&B to quaint B&B. So I told my sister and my cousin, and then everyone I ran into, and now seven of us are going to walk across Hadrian's Wall next May. 

When I first looked into it, I learned that the whole of the Hadrian's Wall path is 84 miles long, and that it is reasonable to do it in a week. That, I said to myself, is very nearly a half-marathon every day for a week! So, I said to myself, I had better be able to walk a half-marathon. 

As we discussed it further, we pared back the distance we are walking. The city of Newcastle is sort of in the way, so we are starting west of that, and we are ending in Carlisle, instead of going out to the sea at Bowness on Solway. So, we don't need to walk a half-marathon a day; I think our longest day is 18 kilometres. 

But I had paid my money and was committed to this walk! Here we go!

Me, ready to start

You can't see behind me, but there was a sign on the corner that told the time and the temperature, so I know it was 1°C as we were getting ready.

Stephen, dressed appropriately for the weather. 

That green jacket has probably been abandoned by someone. People come in their warm clothes, and shed them as they take off. Volunteers collect tons of sweaters, hats and especially mitts that get tossed to the side as the race goes on, and donate them to charity.

I am a walker

For the starting line, the runners get into different "corrals" depending on their speed. The people with red tabs on their bibs are off and running twenty minutes before us orange-tabbed walkers get to the start line. Here we are, the orange corral, ready to go.

There was a shower of orange confetti as the orange corral started, and off we went. I was very soon passed by a blind power walker and her guide, and by an old geezer with a walker! But I managed to keep pace with people who seemed to know what they were doing, although I lost minutes stopping in a porta-potty along the way.

Here I am at kilometre 4-ish

This is the only time I took my phone out of my backpack to take a picture. Those people in the opposite lane are running, and if they do the whole 42.2 km, I might beat them to finish line. This is as we are approaching the exhibition grounds, about kilometre 6 or 7, I guess. We walked west maybe another 4 km and then turned around into that other lane.

There were photographers along the route, and I know a couple of them took my picture, but my bib number was off to one side and so it's hard to find a picture of me. I looked at the millions of pictures taken by the official photographers of people in red... couldn't find any of me! Oh well, I did cross the finish line. 

The last 500 metres or so are up Bay Street, going straight towards the Old City Hall with its big clock tower. I knew that we had started at 9:10, and a half-marathon is "supposed" to take 3.5 hours. The big clock said 12:35, so I had to get to the finish line in 5 minutes. I did boot it those last couple of blocks! And got in with seconds to spare, at 3:29:14.9, officially! 

Lessons learned:

Funnily (yes, ha ha) I got blisters on my feet. I hadn't got any in my practice walks, so I guess it was just my lightning speed that caused them. I shall see what I can do about that in future. I'm going to need sturdier shoes than these for the big walk and I'll have to get them well in advance and break them in thoroughly.

It was cold! I had little mittens, which I took off once, but put on again once I got to the lakeshore where the icy wind was blowing! I could have used warmer pants. But, my idea of knitting a nice wool sweater to walk in might be wrong-headed. I just don't know. We won't be going fast; we'll be stopping for lunch and to take pictures and to gaze on fields of wildflowers and frolicking sheep. But it will be May and I hope warmer than one degree. I am not sure I learned anything useful about what to wear!

I learned about something called runner's trots. I did, on some practice walks, have to duck into a coffee shop or public library to use the washroom. Following advice gleaned from the ever-reliable internet, I ate white bread and jam for a couple of days, did not have a nice bowl of oatmeal and raisins before the race, stayed away from fibre and coffee, and had an uneventful walk. Phew. Again, I'm not sure this will be an issue for us as we stroll calmly along our route, but it's something to keep in mind as we chow down on our full English breakfasts!

This was the last of the season's marathons, and things start up again in early May, a couple of weeks before we leave for our big walk. Another "free" T-shirt with my $100 entrance fee... it's possible!

Some random photos

The other day I went to High Park. I was meeting a friend in a subway station and had some time to kill, and noticed a bank of three pay phones. Not a sight you see every day.

Nowadays, apparently, a pay phone has an alpha keyboard so you can ... text? Interesting. 

At the park there are pretty leaves on some of the trees, and woods to walk one's dog, and a little thing they call a zoo, which probably has about a dozen kinds of animals. Here is an emu. 

And here is a llama. Funny, I assume it's a female, but really don't know. Those eyes!

On the way home I passed this back fence. All my favourite colours!

Speaking of colours, I am knitting Stephen West's mystery knitalong, and this is my gloomy, murky effort so far. I'm not sure I like it, and I'm not having super fun doing Latvian braids. I do love a good short-row squiggle, though, so I soldier on.

I always think of taking pictures of knitting when it is dark out, and this morning it is raining, so you get an indoor picture. I hope that some day before next June I can take pictures outdoors!

It's Mystery Shawl time!

Stephen West is doing another mystery knitalong. This shawl is called Texture Time, so I am hopeful that we will do lots of different stitches.

We repeat the same rows over and over again. Some contain increases and some have decreases.

So far, it looks like a paddle blade more than a shawl, but it's kinda fun!

Muddy, swirly, gloomy. I do hope I get to make a big patch of the bright blue!

Muffin Monday in the fall

It is now officially the autumn, or fall, or Indian summer. The temperatures here have dropped away from summer, practically overnight... but this is not a weather blog!

Nor is it a baking blog just yet, but today is Muffin Monday so let's talk about muffins.

Before I went to California I bought a litre of buttermilk. It sat in the fridge for a week and then when I came back I looked for a way to use a lot of it at once. I could have made a few batches of Choco-Wheat Germ muffins, but I decided to make a "refrigerator batch" of bran muffins. This recipe makes about 3 dozen muffins, but you can keep the batter in your fridge for a couple of weeks, just spooning out what you need when friends pop by or for a special breakfast.

Oh, hello, let me just pop these muffins in the oven

I got sick of having a large bowl of batter in my fridge in a couple of days! It takes up a lot of room!

But the muffins were good and I now have a couple of dozen in the freezer.

For your information:
Moist Bran Muffins by Joan and Marilyn

1 cup shortening or margarine
2 cups white sugar (or 1/2 cup molasses and 1.25 cups of sugar)
2 cups natural bran
4 eggs
3 cups buttermilk
1 Tbsp baking powder
3.75 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking soda
1/2 cup hot water

In a very large bowl, cream shortening and sugar.
Stir in bran, eggs, buttermilk, baking powder and flour.
Dissolve soda in hot water, pour on top of first mixture.
After one minute, mix together.
Cover and keep cool in fridge for 24 hours before baking.
Batter will keep up to two weeks in fridge.

Tip: Add one cup or more of cut-up dates or raisins or currants or prunes.

Bake at 375° F for 20-25 minutes. Makes 3 dozen muffins.

Three pictures or maybe more

I was so sure I would get a ton of knitting done on this last trip.

Here we have the "before" picture. This is what I took to the airport Wednesday morning.

And this is the state at the end of that first flight. Not bad!

After a few days, I had not much more, but I got to the LA airport many, many hours early for my flight and knit and knit. When I got on the plane, I put the knitting away and tried to sleep!

So it is not finished, but I had a really good time in LA and Venice Beach.

I stayed one night in Silver Lake, which was really just a base for one night and I didn't really know why that's a cool neighbourhood. The next day we went to Sherman Oaks for a Saori weaving class. Now that is a nice neighbourhood!

I made this!

The piece is rather larger than that, and you can see more of it, plus our happy faces, on the instagram of the weaving instructor. I suppose I could take more pictures of it myself, but now this is the only one I have!

A few Uber rides later, and we were out in Venice Beach. We rented a house on a canal! There were originally a large number of these canals when Venice was first developed, but they were mostly filled in for paved streets for cars. There are 4 or 5 "blocks" surrounded by canals.

Nice reflections on a morning walk.

Palm trees everywhere.

We went to the beach. One of those dots in the water is our New Zealand friend swimming.

You're never too old to notice the pretty boys on the beach.

We went into lots of shops.

I got a tattoo with my friend.

On our last day, we had to be out of the house at 11, and could keep our bags there till 1pm. My plane wasn't until 10 pm! There were 7 of us, and after 1 pm, we broke into two groups. Some with early flights went to the airport while three of us went to Santa Monica and had a nice lunch, which we strung out as long as we could. The others had big rolling suitcases so it wasn't practical to go for a walk at all,  but we saw the beach and then went off to the airport around 3 or 4 pm.

I had plenty of time to play with my photo collage app on my phone.

The many flamingos of Venice:

I flew through the night and got in to Toronto at 6 am Sunday. Ugh, I'll take care to avoid the red-eye in future! I got in so early that the subway wasn't running, and I didn't have much cash left, so I took the UP Express train most of the way home and then picked up a bike-share and rode home as the sun was coming up! 

Ta-da, that's my California adventure!

All sorts of travel knitting

I travelled in August and can show you this, which will one day soon be a blanket:

I made some of it in the past months, and some on this last trip. I have to finish the strip I am working on and then see how much yarn I have left. There is another ball, tiger-striped, that Elaine is making socks with! Yes, indeed, socks unto the next generation!

So, when she finishes the second sock, I will grab the leftovers back and see if I can make a bit of a border on this wee blanket. This might be the last thing for the charity bag: I am taking it all to a shelter in October.

I shall be travelling this week! I am going to Los Angeles for a few days to see Helen and a few other of my mom-pals. I met some in NYC a few (um, eleven) years ago, and another few a mere five years ago in Niagara Falls.

I have a 5-hour flight there and another one back again, and I hope a few evenings of hanging around. There will be seven or eight of us in a house in Venice, so who knows what shenanigans we will get up to. I suspect there will be wine and finger food, but otherwise have no idea what we will do.

In any case, I will need some knitting.

I got this sock yarn about a million years ago (2006, to be exact) and I will now make a hat out of it. Portable, mindless, one more for the charity bag, perhaps, or maybe a nice fall hat for one of us.

Finally, I will be travelling next May (I think) and I wanted to make a new sweater for the occasion. I have settled on a vest of DK single skeins in a sort of beige/blue/green/yellow colour scheme!

It'll look a bit wacko, perhaps, but I have high hopes for it. I will tell you about my planned trip when it becomes a bit more planned!

Places to go and people to see, and things to knit!

It's September

It's so hot here! Sitting with a laptop actually on my lap is very uncomfortable because it just heats me up even more.

I did finish some knitting.

This was supposed to be a Yes, Checks hat. I'd seen something about increasing the stitch count for finer yarn, but when I actually cast on, I just thought, I will cast on 160 stitches, without consulting even the original pattern.

It is enormous for a hat but makes a fine cowl, so I just left it open. The yarn was in the latest charity-yarn-donation bag I picked up, and I think I will take a bagful of the gazillion things I knitted this year to a women's shelter pretty darn soon. Winter, believe it or not, is coming. And then I shall look at my yarn pile and give a bag of that to the next charity knitter.

I should have a few other things to show you in the coming days. Perhaps one of those oh, so helpful lists of the things I hope to accomplish in the coming month! First I just have to accomplish all the straggling things leftover from the summer.