Some Old Posts

Not a very exciting title, I know, but I have a ton of partially written posts from last 2-3 years. I'm taking the salient parts and distilling them down. So this might seem a bit random....


First, some of you may not yet have seen the cool video of EXTREME KNITTING by Rachel John, so here it is:

(Start it at the 5 minute mark to see the actual knitting)



Makes my size 50 needles look small!!!


Here's the best 'word of the day': omphaloskepsis. Ha ha haaaaaaaaa! Right. (Whodathunk there was a word for that?!)


S is for Seed saving! (Articles about this on that link.) I've never tried any of them to tell you the truth, but I've heard that saving tomato seeds involves rotting the fruit until it falls apart, then rinsing and drying the seeds. Sounds kinda messy, but what the heck? Worth a little dirty work to have the same yummy harvest the next year....

S is for Slipcover: check out this pattern to cover a run-of-the-mill plastic lawn chair! If you go to Ravelry you can see someone who is knitting cabled and lace and striped versions of this. I love it :)


Quilting is a fav pastime I used to indulge in a lot. I found a link to free block-of-the-month sites for people who like to quilt. I no longer do much quilting, but that may change again, who knows?!

And last but most random: BOTTLED WATER COOKING
For some reason, I just remembered all the uses to which I would put a bottle of carbonated water. I always used to keep a bottle of carbonated water on hand. These are some of our favorite recipes:

HOMEMADE SODA: My favorite use for sparkling water, when my kids were little, was to make our own homemade sodas for lunch. We would choose our favorite fruit juice, then mix it in a 2:1 ratio with sparkling water for a yummy fruit soda. No preservatives or colors, etc. Very healthy 'spritzer'.

AIM'S POP-ROCKS POTATOES: Here's a really fun recipe for people with children or grandchildren. This is something I came up with when we were living in a place where we would only drink bottled water. One time, I was making dinner, and realized we were getting low on the drinking water. I did not want to use the drinking water up for cooking if I could avoid it, so instead of regular water in the instant mashed potatoes, I substituted bottled sparkling water I had on hand.

The result was very interesting. My family and I were entertained by the sound of the snap, crackle, pop of the mashed potatoes all throughout dinner! They taste the same, but actually make noise on your plate! My kids and DH were highly amused by this invention :)

I tried making Jello with this sparkling water too, but it didn't make much difference in the end product (I know that they have a version of this recipe on the box nowadays).