...I just said I was nearly done washing it. ;) It was an awfully LARGE bag of fleece, you know--the size of an average kitchen trash bag, I would guess, when it was full. This is all that's left to wash.
My spectacular inability to take a nice picture of anything in this house unless it's in a light-tent sort of interferes with my hopes of making an aesthetically-pleasing image of this here bag of fleece. Well, it doesn't matter, I suppose; I'm just excited to finally have it Washed and Done.
...
What do you mean I have to spin it now?!
And that is pudd'n.
It's not very pretty. I wish my food pictures were prettier. But it is Pretty Fabulous. It's actually pots de creme (yes, aren't I fancy?); I don't have a proper double boiler, but I do have a stainless steel bowl of a good size to fit over my medium saucepan, and that does fine for all my double-boiling needs. If the bowl also serves as my weighing-out pan for yarn and fiber...well, that's what soap and water is for, is it not? So many uses.
I get my pots de creme recipe straight from The Joy of Cooking, although I present it here slightly adapted, as I made it last night. It is 2 C whole milk (up to half of this could be cream), 4-8 ounces (by weight) very nice semisweet chocolate, grated [chips, discs, or even chunks is fine too]; melt the chocolate in the milk in your double boiler, over darn near boiling water, until the chocolate is thoroughly melted and the milk scalded. Stir the mix while you're melting it, to incorporate the chocolate and such. I use a whisk for this, because whisks are necessary for this recipe anyway. While the chocolate is melting, separate five egg yolks and beat them lightly; when the milk is hot, SLOWLY add about a half cup of the hot milk to the eggs, whisking the whole time. This brings the eggs up to temperature and thins them out a bit so that when you add them to the milk, they won't curdle into scrambled eggs! Then SLOWLY add the egg mixture in a constant stream to the milk and chocolate, stirring the whole time. Add a teaspoon of vanilla, or maybe of rum; keep stirring the mix with your whisk until it begins to thicken noticeably. It shouldn't be as thick as one normally wants pudding to be--it will thicken an awful lot once it's cooled!
Once it's ready, pour it out into a good Pyrex or other heat-proof bowl, or maybe a whole bunch of supercute little dessert dishes if you wanna be fancy, and let it cool to just about room temp before putting it in the fridge. It is delicious.
Now this last is very nice. Margaret Stove's Handspinning, Dyeing, and Working with Merino and Superfine Wools is going for fairly high prices in the used book market, but a fellow member of a Yahoo fiber group was selling hers very inexpensively. I have lots to learn about superfine wools, so I snapped it up and am happy I did! While we're talking about Margaret Stove books, I'd like to point out that her book on original lace patterns is actually in print and available for about $30 from Lacis and Schoolhouse Press. No need to pay $50 and up to the used booksellers!
Underneath the Stove book is a Tony Millionaire graphic novel called Uncle Gabby. Maybe a lot of the folks who stop by here don't read graphic novels, but really, they're an amazing medium. The best graphic novels and comics are like films, but slowed down...the art will be evocative and beautiful, and the words just right. This is part of Millionaire's Sock Monkey series, which is drawn a lot like the wonderful comic strips by Winsor McCay and other early-1900s artists. So beautiful, and in the case of Uncle Gabby, so poignant. The Sock Monkey series is generally safe for all ages, although I think adults will catch the humor and bittersweetness of them better than young people will. Millionaire's weekly comic, Maakies, is a pretty foul affair, although it's also drawn with incredible skill and delicacy. An amazing dichotomy, really.
That's it for now! Knitting and spinning continues slow, as always.
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