A Bluestocking Knits

I

This was edited by playing around with the Creative Filters on my Rebel T5.  On our old PowerShots, you get these effects by setting the camera to the effect you want and taking the photo, but with the T5, you take the picture first, then edit it in the camera.  A little confusing, but the plus side is that you can not only try out the different filters -- grainy black-and-white, soft focus, fish-eye, toy camera, and miniature-effect -- but also some different degrees or contrasts of the effect you choose.  The highest degree of fish-eye was also pretty close to the sensation I was trying to convey, but I liked the miniature-effect best, of not so much disorientation (my head is surprisingly clear at two o'clock in the morning) but just that hyper-awareness of the hour.

 

H

"Hobbity".  And of course, "hobbit tea" (see what I did there?!), though for a hobbit this is probably the bare minimum for elevenses.  Still -- it is comfortable and appealing, being indoors and eating a warm scone with a cup of tea on a cold, bright winter afternoon, and what could be more hobbity than that?

Here is the recipe for the pumpkin scones, translated into American for us benighted non-metric folks, and adapted only a bit to my own preferences from Lady Florence Bjelke-Petersen's famous one --

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar (you can certainly use white, as in the original)
1 egg
1 cup mashed pumpkin
2 cups all-purpose flour + 1 tablespoon baking powder + 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt OR 2 cups self-rising flour

Preheat oven to 425° F.

Cream the butter and sugar.  Add the egg, then the pumpkin, mixing well, then stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Mix until just combined.

Turn out onto a floured board and cut as you like.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until done.  (I usually use a stoneware tray, which takes a little longer.)

All of the versions of FBP's recipe say "cold pumpkin" but I'm pretty sure this is because the recipe is from the days when a housewife grew her own pumpkins and made the mash, and you would want to have the mash well-cooled so that it didn't start cooking the egg just from its radiant heat.  And there are never any spices in the recipe, but you could certainly add nutmeg, cinnamon, etc. to good effect.

G

D, E, F

"Orbital" in pink, and "Double Bump" on the needles.  I am still a rank amateur at crochet, and find it difficult to know what it is I'm looking at, so this took three or four tries before I got into the rhythm of it!  Still not pleased with the jog, but there it is.

We've been having a bit of summer in February lately, with temperatures in the 80s (pushing the 30s C), but yesterday morning it was suddenly foggy and cold -- by the time I went out for my daily walk, it was beginning to clear but still clinging to the valleys and dips in the landscape.  Unfortunately, it had all burned off by about 9:30 ...

Postcards, Roses, ABCs

Today is the 7th, and my tally is at six for the "Month of Letters" challenge, so I am pretty much caught up after the late start.  Yesterday I sent a Postcrossing postcard, a long-delayed Christmas thank-you, and a postcard to a young family friend who baked a cake for our get-together Sunday afternoon.  (I of course stitched willfully ignorant through the ostensible reason for the gathering ....)

And this afternoon I sent Julia's photo in her Rose Parade band uniform to the grandparents and honorary auntie --

I started to read Nancy Enge's blog a few months ago because of her miniatures, but a recent post struck a chord, albeit one in a minor key, talking about being in a bit of a funk -- I recognize that feeling of vague disappointment in everything one does, the paradoxical combination of restlessness and general fatigue, even the buttery-fingers part.  I had a very stressful Christmas, and have already suspected that my starting a dozen or so new books and projects in the weeks since is both a symptom and a sort of self-cure.  It's just that the restlessness tends to be a bit frustrating, too, when what you need is to relax, to re-focus.  I have been tempted now and then to start up something along the lines of Blackbird's "Show and Tell Friday" -- but more immediately, Nancy wonders if an "arbitrary and not-too-difficult challenge practice might help" to jump-start the creative energy -- thus the ABChallenge, to take a photo of something representing each letter of the alphabet in order, something simple and really not demanding at all, just to blow those cobwebs away, as it were.  I took these photos the other day -- yes, the same day I decided to do the Month of Letters, that's what I mean! -- and I have to say right up front that I like Nancy's watermark/caption so much that I have promptly lifted the idea for myself!  Here is A, B, and C --