Delicious

It is Fall again. A time that makes me think of apple pie and cinnamon and delicious things. A way I like to celebrate is to make Chocolate Dipped Caramel Apples. And this one is one of the most requested. A fairly simple recipe that gets a lot of oohs and aahs.

The Apple Pie Apple.

Ingredients:

-5 medium Granny Smith Apples ( I prefer Granny Smith. The tartness counteracts the caramel, chocolate and sugar you are going to put on it)

-A package of caramel wraps or caramels. (I find them near the apples this time of year. It is a package of 5 sheets of caramel you just lay over the apples. Fairly simple. Or you can buy the caramel and dip the apples. Up to you.)

-1 bag (16 oz) of White Chocolate. (I like the Vanilla Candy Coating you can get from craft stores. Easy to melt and tastes good)

-1/4 cup brown sugar

-2 tbsp white sugar

-2 tsp cinnamon

-1/4 tsp cloves (optional)

-1/2 tsp nutmeg (optional)

Clean off the apples, remove stickers and stems and dry very well. I try to pick apples that sit pretty straight and look nice and round. Put the sticks that come with the caramel in your apples. Now follow the directions on the caramel wraps or the caramels to coat the apples in caramel. Put on a tray with a non stick lining (silpat or parchment paper) and put in the fridge to get nice and cold while you melt the chocolate and get the sprinkle ready.

Mix the sugars and spices together in a small container. I prefer the taste of brown sugar but I add the white sugar to make the mix flow better. I say the cloves and nutmeg are optional because it depends on your taste. We love the taste of cloves. Some don't. But you get a good effect with just the cinnamon. You will be sprinkling the sugar/spice mixture over the apples once you dip them so you will need to have a surface you can sprinkle over and the use it to pour what falls off back into the container to sprinkle again. Parchment Paper works really well.

Melt the chocolate according to the directions on the package. I melt them in the smallest container that will still allow you to stick the apple in and move it around a bit. Take the apples out of the fridge and dip one of them in the chocolate, leave a small ring around the top so you can see the caramel. Then before the chocolate sets, sprinkle with the sugar/spice mixture. Try to get a light even coating over all of the chocolate. Place on the lined tray and do the rest of them.

To cut the apple: A complicated procedure. I have found the best way is to cut the apple in thirds, twice. Cut the apple into thirds, your cuts should be on either side of the stick and core of the apple. Rotate the apple 45 degrees and cut in thirds again.You will end up with 8 pieces of apple to eat with the core at the center ready to pull out.

Now this method works really well with many versions of toppings. Or change the chocolate. A nice Dark Chocolate dip with a little bit of salt on the outside would give you a nice Salted Caramel Chocolate Apple. I like Milk Chocolate dipped in pecans. You really are only limited by what is in your pantry.

This is Heidi's "why do you never share your food with me" face.

Dana

Dana was here. Yay! Unfortunately she is now back in Arizona. But we had a great time while she was here. Well, I know I did.

Thursday involved me picking her up at the airport, doing some shopping and going to Stitch and Bitch. Thank you Justin for taking this (my favorite picture) even if it was with my crappy camera. On Friday, she dragged me into work so she could talk to students about finding a job. Then we went and worked out (yay for motivation), then we went home and sat on the couch for a while. Here Dana tries to out adorable Heidi. A pretty close competition I would say. Then we went to the Pumpkin Festival and undid all that working out.

I was very much looking forward to Saturday. Lot of knitting/spinning/fiber people time. The Kanawha City Yarn Company in Charleston was having a Spin In. So we traveled en masse to help take over the shop. I stole this picture from Haley.

Speaking of Haley, we had a sneaky project going on. After Dana left (last November) we decided we wanted to make her something to remember us by. And no comments about how it took us nearly a year to complete. She got a blanket for goodness sakes. But Haley did a ton of work in the past week or so getting all of the blocks sewn together. Of course we waited until the last minute. Haley was sewing it up in the car when we got to the Spin In. But Haley's Blog has a great account of the blanket giving. I think Dana was pleased. I hope it keeps her warm in Arizona. What? They have airconditioning there.

Sunday, I relaxed and got some knititng in because Dana has other friends in Huntington besides me and it is only fair she should get to see them.

Monday she went to the airport :( Her flight was delayed, which meant I didn't have to drop her off at 5 am. But I was still sad to see her go. I miss my knitting buddy, but it was great to see her. And it is good to know that she is happy in Arizona.

Julia turns one

Julia turned one-year-old last weekend. It was great to go up and celebrate such a special day with everyone. That little girl has quite the fan base. And I got to hold her a little bit, even though both sets of Grandparents were there.

I stole a few pictures of the big day from Lauren's sister's facebook. Katie takes wonderful pictures. As evidenced below.

Blowing out her first candle with a little help from her parents. I am ded from teh cute. She also had that very serious look on her face for the entire weekend.

She started out very lady like, using her hands to demolish her cake. But then she started using her face. Yup, that is her about to go face first into cake (which was delicious, but don't worry everyone else shared a different cake, this one was just Julia's).

I was teaching her a healthy love of yarn. I had finished with it, I promise.

Julia's present was a little labor intensive. It involved a lot of felt, embroidery and sewing. But I definitely think it was worth it. I made her a Color Book. I'm not sure if the pages are in the order they actually are in the book, except for the first and last pages.

I did sketches for each page and cut out the felt based on those sketches. I tried to get a more cartoony basic shape for each animal. And I cut pieces so that I could layer them and they would have dimension.

Then I embroidered the felt onto the larger pages of felt. I used stuffing for some of the pieces to add more dimension.

I also embroidered details on the pages to make them more interesting and cute.

To do the lettering, I used water soluble interfacing. I slowly and neatly wrote the words on the interfacing. I pinned it into place and embroidered through it. Then I used water to dissolve the interfacing. Yay for perfect handwriting I couldn't do freehand.

Then I sewed the finished pages right sides together with my sewing machine. Then I turned them right sides out and Blanket stitched around the outside.
Then I sewed them all together at the spine and covered that edge with a ribbon. And Voila! All done.

Country Living Fair

Last weekend (well, the 24th of September, it was last weekend when I started writing this post) was a wonderful trip to Columbus. I have family that lives there and it was high time I got around to visiting them. They invited me to the Country Living Craft Fair. It was loads of fun. I forgot to carry my camera around though so I didn't really get any pictures of craft stuff or of us doing fun things. But I did get pictures of what was apparently important to me. Eating food that I can't get in Huntington.

We will start with Jeni's. I had long heard of Jeni's from other knitter's blogs when they would go to Columbus for TNNA or Knitter's Connection. I had heard great things. Jeni's did not let me down. I had a scoop of Salty Caramel and a scoop of Dark Chocolate. Best ice cream ever. Ever. I have discovered that I can get Jeni's ice cream in Huntington. It is $10 a pint. At first I thought that was crazy for a pint of ice cream. After trying it, yeah, kind of worth it. I might arrange some sort of Jeni's party. Get a bunch of people together and we each buy a different flavor.

Chipotle. yum. Yeah nothing really close here in Huntington. Besides Taco Bell. But if you have ever eaten at a Chipotle, you know what sort of comparison that is. I think it is all in the rice.

Tim Hortons- Parkersburg had several while I was in High School. I love TimBits. They are perfect. I often find a whole doughnut overwhelming in sweetness (except for white angels and a McHappy's doughnut that is split like a hot dog bun and filled with white cream and topped with coconut. Yum). Also they are much less messy and more portable. Of course it means I end up eating more than I would with regular doughnuts. Oh and I love their vanilla cappuccinos.


And my family was nice enough to send me home with a can of pumpkin after I complained about my difficulty finding some here. I believe it was a combination of the stores not wanting to put out a lot of stock in case there was another shortage this year and now that there isn't a shortage, Pumpkin festival is October 9th so it is all being snatched up for the cooking contests.
So thank you Cindi, Rachel, Ashley and Davey. It was great to spend time with you. I need to do it more often.

Paw Paw Festival

We went to the Paw Paw festival last weekend in Athens, OH. We are very fortunate that Bill and Lauren live there so we can go to all the fun stuff they have there. As it turns out, I'm not a huge fan of paw paws. They taste good, sort of like a mango-y peach-y thing, but the texture is a bit custardy for my taste. So while I didn't actually like the paw paws themselves, the paw paw ice cream was delicious. Beyond the food, There were lots of things to do that were fun.

I apparently missed my calling as a champion Atlatler. That is me in the black and white celabrating (I also stole this picture from either my SIL or her sister). I hit the target animal on the first time out. It is essentially spear throwing with a wooden thrower.

They had a tent with snakes. Honestly surprised I got this close. The tower had three snakes on it and one that had crawled off onto the table. I liked the rattlesnake the best because it was the most secure in its cage. It was creepy the way they stared everyone down.

There were sheep. A merino, two shetland, a coopworth, a romney and a border leicester. I wanted to take them all home. But Bill did express interest in how many sheep he could keep on an acre. Might have to nudge that idea along. But the sheep were all there for a sheep to shawl demonstration. More of a "here are the sheep, this is what we do next, this is what we turn it into" rather than the normal competition you see at most wool festivals. It was great. I really enjoyed the natural dyeing portion of the teaching. I hadn't seen an indigo dye vat in action before. Such pretty colors and the color change is cool.

There was also lots of Julia time. Gotta love the Julia time. With two aunts and an uncle present she got lots of love. In addition to all the people Bill and Lauren know who also wanted a bit of the Julia love. She is just adorable. Who could resist?

I think she had a good time. She was a bit tuckered out by the end of the second day. I can't blame her, I was too.

::snerk::

So instead of stepping away from the crafts and trying to lessen my load, I've added to it. I've decided to join a fellow crafter in having a booth at the Ceredo-Kenova Autumn Fest. Why, yes. I do believe I have lost my mind. But I will be taking my Etsy store inventory, adding to it a little bit. Getting rid of knit stuff that I've never worn and has sat in a basket waiting for a loving owner. I might do a bit of embroidery.

But I did finish a lot of things that were on that giant list of things I needed to make. I'm down to just the things I need to make for Christmas and one thing that needs finished by next weekend. So that has helped out on the stress. What you want proof I've finished things? Very well.

Cup Cozy Embroidery- I want to make these for the craft fair and maybe for my Etsy store. But I wasn't sure how well the felt I already had would work for these. So I made a test sample. I had promised this coffee cup cozy to a coworker but I decided that I could convince her to test it out if I made something even better. This has "Hot Coffee" embroidered on it in binary. Yeah, it is that geeky.

Lumberjack Hat- A commission made for a friend. I think it is hilarious and kind of want to make one for myself for this winter. It doesn't really get cold enought to wear a hat with a facemask, but I think it would be funny enough to suck it up.

Needle Rolls- Which are currently winging their way to Canada. Yay! Hopefully to be seen soon at Shameless Twist. I am feeling pretty honored to be featured among other indie sellers. And Jodi's yarn is pretty scrumptious too.

Too much

I have entirely too many projects going at once and I don't feel like I am getting anything done. Blech. Add to that, new pretty shiny birthday yarns that I want to play with now and me deciding to get a jump on Christmas knitting and I am just overwhelmed. I have made a list of stuff that I need to do and tried to prioritize it. I think that has helped lessen the crazy feelings. I have also tried to take a step back from the Christmas stuff to work on things that need done soon. Unfortunately Christmas will be upon me before I know it. So I can't put it off for too long. I've also had a few good business ventures come along. Those will definitely be the first projects in the works. I'm super excited about the prospects of the extra crafting money. I have big plans that I hope I can follow through on.

But I did manage to get some stuff marked off of my list recently. So it isn't all bad.

Mom's scrubbies- an order from a co-worker of hers. She really likes the tulle dish scrubbers I make for my mom and wanted some to give out as Christmas presents. As these things, even in the larger version her friend wanted, take about half an hour to make, I said sure. (and as a side note, I've written a pattern for these and have apparently not made it available. I need to work on that)

Mom's bath poof- My mom is dangerous in a yarn store. Possibly even more so than I am. She was walking around the store picking up yarns and adding them to the pile. I asked what they were for since she doesn't knit. Oh they are for her. After I have turned them into something. :) And someone wasn't very helpful in the store who showed her a bath poof made out of cotton and who so helpfully offered to give me the pattern. So she knows she is getting the bath poof, but I also had enough left over for a washcloth for her face. Yay!

crochet scarf- When all my making stuff craziness has died down, I am making another one of these. I also got the pattern for this scarf from the yarn store in Charleston. Everytime I wandered by the scarf on display I stopped and fondled and admired it. So the owner gave me a copy of the pattern. For my first attempt, I grabbed a box of handspun yarns that my mom had found at a yardsale for $2 (go mom!). It was full of smaller balls of worsted to bulky weight. So I went up a hook size and worked the pattern, changing yarns when I ran out of a color, and ending the pattern when I ran out of yarn. I love it and want it to be cold so I can wear it. But I did underestimate how going up a hook size would effect the size. If I drape it around my neck, the ends just touch the floor. I made giant scarf. But I totally want to make more of these with some pretty varigated yarns.

sandals- These were a tutorial on Etsy's blog a while ago. You take an old pair of flip flops and an old t-shirt, an exacto knife and some good glue and you make new sandals. I think if I were to do this again, I would change the back from a tie on to a sling back shoe. Awesome. How often do you get to say "I made my shoes!"