Another Busy One Done

I thought weekends were for lying around and doing nothing? Sunday's in particular lately seem to be the day I fill up. Once again I barely left the kitchen.

I got some bread baked.

It's  a new recipe for me that requires a corn meal base to ferment over night. Hopefully it is as good as it smells. The molasses is giving it a rich heady smell. I always worry over bread. Always. I don't know why, I have rarely had bad bread. The two loaves with the cratered tops worry me here. No idea shy they did that but I'm sure they are fine.

While I was waiting for the loaves to proof after being placed in bread pans, I also whipped out a batch of cookies. The oven was already on, right? the Guy made some of those pre-mixed toll house cookies last night. They were nasty. So I threw them away and replaced them with a cinnamon tinted chocolate chip. They are wonderful. I am not bad mouthing nestle toll house pre-mixed cookies. Some of them are quite good and an easy fix for the sweet cravings. Just the triple chocolate ones are not.

At least one of the loaves is for the Guy's sandwiches this week. I was told this recipe made a wonderful sandwich bread. We shall see. I'll let you know how it goes. It's called Anadama bread. I wasn't up for making the requested rye bread. I mixed one rye flower in to give it a bit of that flavor so we shall see.

When I had mentioned before about the new Hansen Crafts E-spinner I purchased with a Wool-Lee winder, someone asked me about the Wool-Lee winder. I tried to explain what it was for but as they are a non spinner I think they continued to see it as a huge waste of money. I mean, you can buy yarn at Wal-Mart, right? Actually, I heard you can't anymore, though I would never heave gone there for my yarn anyway.

So, I figured a picture would be a better descriptor of what the Wool-Lee winder does.

This, is the single that I spun on my Sidekick. Which, will remain my main spinning wheel by the way, so no, I do not plan on selling her. You can see where the hooks on the flyer lay down the new yarn as it is spun onto the Bobbin. This requires monitoring the yarn building up on your bobbin, stopping the spinning, moving the yarn to another hook and continuing. As you can see, the one to the left is larger than the rest because I wasn't paying close attention. That's not unusual and to be honest, little differences like that is normal. Rarely do I really mess up and have one of those ridges get so carried away that  it collapses, but it does occur. That however can cause a spin difference in the affected areas yarn, so it's is preferable to not do.

When one is plying, or taking more than one yarn and twisting it together to make a larger and more durable strand of yarn, the build up of these ridges is even faster and should you not pay attention, the collapse happens even faster.

Enter, the Wool-Lee Winder. This is the same yarn now a 2-ply yarn on my Hansen. Which will become my plying wheel. Firstly, the bobbin holds almost 11 ounces of fiber. See in the lower right hand corner the bobbin of my sidekick? It only holds 4. But also, see what the Wool-Lee Winder did? There are no peaks and troughs to speak of because as you spin the geared mechanism moves the yarn smoothly up and down the bobbin to lay it out evenly across the bobbin. It is more effective in the fitting of the yarn on the bobbin, but also a more effective way managing my time as I ply. Not that I did so yesterday since I played for over 7 hours total between this yarn and the other one. I know, let's not discuss it.

Anyway, I'm off to fix myself some turkey leftovers for dinner. Hope you all have a more restful holiday weekend than I did for myself.