Thimbleanna – Page 137 – My little online diary.

Maybe WordPress Will Like Chocolate

29 Comments / August 18, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat

Well, apparently my WordPress and my Webhost don’t know how to play nice together and I can’t get any more comments on the last post. My Webhost says its WordPress’s fault. Any guesses on what WordPress will say? I’m hoping to scare the darn thing into submission by having another post just one day after the last one. We’ll see. If you can’t comment on this post either, we’ll know it didn’t work and I’ll just talk to myself!

A few very funny things that might be of interest:

Poor Molly was horrified that I would actually make a chocolate cake in the microwave, so she’s written a very funny post aimed at saving me from myself. She’s included a GREAT looking recipe for a chocolate cake that you might want to check out. I’m definitely going to try this one!

I think sweet Vallen also took pity on my desperate attempts for chocolate and she’s posted a YUMMY looking chocolate pudding with raspberry sauce. Holy Cow — I LOVE chocolate and raspberry! Can you feel your hips expanding???

And then there’s Brigette. My clown friend extraordinaire! When I wrote the post about my Aunt Annie’s Sweet Rolls, Brigette fell in love with my Patisserie Dome and has been, well, shall we say obsessed with it? Her efforts to obtain one have, so far, been in vain, so she has resorted to making one of her own until she can get a real one.

Now, the funniest part about that (only I’m crying while I’m laughing) is that almost at the same time she was posting about her new dome, I broke my dome while washing it. Oh, the anguish! So, Brigette’s temporary solution was perfect for me and I hurried and made my own temporary dome last night.

Of course, mine had to be made in Brigette’s honor. And mine really isn’t a dome and doesn’t have apple strudels in it — only my oatmeal cookies. But it will have to do for awhile. And, notice how all the words on mine are all frenchy sounding. That totally wouldn’t work if Brigette’s name had been oh, Mabel or something.

So, thank you for the laughs and recipes Ladies! Blog friends are pretty cool!

XOXO,
Anna

Oh, and last, but certainly not least! Happy Birthday MeMum! I hope you’ve had a wonderful day! I’d show everyone another of your beautiful quilts in your honor, but {ahem}*someone* hasn’t looked into recovering the pictures from the crashed hard drive yet!

Whistle While You Work…

14 Comments / August 17, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Around the House, Quilting

Well hello there! Did you all have a mighty fine weekend???

It was all work here in Thimbleannaland. I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I rolled up my sleeves and started cleaning on Friday and cleaned all weekend. Sadly, there are still a few rooms that need attention, most notably the sewing room. I think I had sewing stuff in almost every other room so all that junk got dumped into the sewing room. That will be another weekend down the drain of productivity.

The motivator that got me cleaning was the departure of the kids last week. I started with their rooms and now that they’ve taken all of their stuff I have my guest room back. When SweetiePie came to stay a year ago, I packed away my quilts, so I put them back on the beds this weekend.

I made these quilts for the boys when they were very young and shared a room. The colors matched a cute little toy soldier wallpaper that covered the walls. (Thank goodness we moved before they got older and I had to remove all that wallpaper!) I’ve always loved the pinwheel block so I knew I wanted to incorporate it into their quilts. I also wanted to use the same fabrics on each quilt, but make them each a little bit different because they boys are both different.

This block above, was made for TheSecondChild’s quilt. He was a little wilder as a little boy (and funny, that’s still true!) so I wanted a pinwheel with a little more “movement”. The block below is the block that I chose for TheFirstChild who was a little more calm and reserved.

Both quilts are hand quilted, but not by me. I’m still working on a wall hanging that was started around the time I pieced these quilts, so it was a very good decision to have someone else quilt them. Sadly, in spite of a window blind that is constantly drawn, TheFirstChild’s quilt is fading badly. I now keep that quilt covered all the time with extra sheets, even with the blinds closed.

I’m off to NJ for my monthly trip tomorrow, so I won’t be around to enjoy my almost clean house. But maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some blogs!

XOXO,
Anna

Chocolate and Knitting

42 Comments / August 13, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Knitting, Recipes

Gosh, you guys are all so sweet and kind! Thanks for all the sympathy for my empty nest. I enjoyed reading all of your comments. Sweet Molly even left me a nice bit of prose from Erma Bombeck on her blog — if you haven’t been there, run over and read it. Thanks Molly, I love it!

So, while I sat around wondering where the last 24 years went, I managed to log into Ravelry since so many of you are participating in the Ravelympics. I always forget to check in on Ravelry and I think it’s partly because it just confuses me. There’s SO much going on there — it’s like it’s own separate blogland. One click leads to the next and pretty soon you’re lost. Today’s very short session got me lost somewhere in a food thread and I found this recipe for a 5 minute chocolate cake. Sign me up! Anything for a beeline to chocolate!

You make this cake in a coffee mug and the recipe goes something like this:

Stir 4 T cake flour (not self-rising), 4 T sugar, and 2 T baking cocoa into a mug and mix well. Add 1 egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in 3 T milk and 3T oil (several people commented that this seemed to be too much, so I only added 1 1/2 T oil) and mix well. Add 3 T choc. chips (optional — I opted not) and a splash of vanilla and mix again. Put the mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.

Here’s how my cake looked through the microwave window at about the 2 minute mark. It grows way out of the mug, but the recipe said not to worry about that.

When you remove the mug from the microwave, it will shrink back into the mug. Allow it to cool, run a knife around the edge and tip it out onto a plate to serve.

There was a lot of discussion on Ravelry about all the possibilities for this little cake. Add ice cream, sauces…the sky’s the limit. I decided to sprinkle mine with powdered sugar.

How’d it turn out? Well, I thought it was a little rubbery. Maybe my microwave runs hotter than 1000 watts? Maybe it needed a little less egg? Proportionally a whole egg is a lot — doesn’t a whole cake usually only take 2 or 3 eggs? Maybe it really did need 3 T oil??? If you try this cake, I’d love to know what you think of it or if you found anything that made it be a little less tough. TheManoftheHouse ate it but I only had a bite. I guess I’ve just been spoiled by MeMum’s awesome chocolate cakes that are moist and delicious and loaded with great frosting. I really missed the frosting option about this little mug cake.

And while we’re talking Ravelry and knitting, here’s the precious little knitting that’s been happening around here. I was working on this dishrag a little bit at the rehab hospital when visiting BigDaddy, but then MeMum and I discovered that we can play Hand and Foot while we’re sitting around, so that shot my productivity all to pieces! Anyway, this pattern is called Washcloth Sampler and the quilty peeps got it from The Idea Studio in Chicago when we went there for the April quilt show. It was a freebie and there isn’t any kind of a copyright on the pattern so I posted it over in my projects section (here) for anyone who might be interested.

I sure hope you’re out there getting more done than I am!

XOXO,
Anna

If You Set It Free…

61 Comments / August 10, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Family

Long time, no blog, huh? I seem to be having a bit of trouble keeping up these days. Do you ever feel like you’re doing a lot but not getting anything done? That’s how it is here in ThimbleannaLand, plus it feels like things are falling down all around me. I could probably write my to-do list in the dust on the furniture! Ah well, busy is happy, right?

TheFirstChild had his orientation for medical school this weekend and families were invited to attend the White Coat ceremony. We arrived early and I was glad we did because it was cool to see all of the white coats neatly laid out on the student seats before the students started arriving.

It was a wonderful ceremony and in a tradition that we saw when TheFirstChild went to his undergrad orientation at a different college, the Dean of Admissions spoke about the characteristics of the students in this class. He spoke of the diversity of their gender (56%M/44%F), race, age (19 – 41), and home countries, states and counties. As you can imagine, they come from very different backgrounds and some have overcome hardships to make it to med school. He read excerpts from a few essays by the students — my favorite was from a young man who had been an army medic and had been to Iraq three times. They are also an incredibly talented bunch — among them they have enough musical talent to form an orchestra, with the exception of a bassoon. The Dean read a list of a few of their hobbies and at the end he said they had knitters, crocheters and sewers among them who would hopefully use those skills in surgery. That comment got a lot of laughs!

There are approximately 305 students in this class which, I think, is the largest med school class in the US. Each student walked across the stage and handed his white coat to his dean who then helped him put it on. One of TheFirstChild’s friends since kindergarten (and a groomsman) is also in this class so we had the added bonus of seeing him receive his white coat too. Before we knew it the ceremony was over and it was time to go. We had dinner with the newlyweds and then sent them on their way.

I suddenly find myself joining Isabelle in the ranks of the melancholy. The newlywed’s wedding and their move were small potatoes compared to this. This time it’s real. They’re off on their own now to work long hard hours in pursuit of their dreams. My little butterfly slipped out of my grasp when I mistakenly had my palm open. What was I thinking? I should have held on tight.

XOXO,
Anna

Not Much to Report

29 Comments / August 4, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Recipes

Unlike those of you who were moving, notcamping, and road trippin’, we had a nice quiet weekend here in ThimbleannaLand. The weekend was spent doing fun, oddball things around the house. There was much weeding (finally!) in our PERFECT Saturday weather, along with some sewing (working on the cupcake swap, so I can’t show you), sock knitting, and reading (I’ve started a fun new book, Three Bags Full, recommended by Kristy).

And a bit of cooking was thrown into the mix. I managed to finally try the famous No-Knead Bread recipe.

I Loved it! The crust was crispy as promised — my favorite kind of bread. The only problem I had is that it doesn’t seem to me like the bread rose very high. Could be one of two reasons: 1) even though the recipe said to use a6 to 8 qt pan, my 5 1/2 qt pan seemed awfully big, or 2) the recipe called for instant yeast which we couldn’t find, so we got rapid rise yeast. Have any of you tried this recipe? Does anyone know the difference between instant yeast and rapid-rise yeast? (I could probably google that, but I’m having a case of the lazies.) Anyway, volume or not, I loved it — it was easy and I’ll definitely be making it again. I’ve heard there are variations to this recipe too, has anyone tried one they’d recommend?

I hope you’re off to a good start to your week. Mine will be busy — BigDaddy had a knee replacement today (everything is going great — he’s amazing!) and I’ll be in some goofy training until 8 o’clock tomorrow evening. So, have a nice relaxing cup o’ tea (er, diet pepsi?) tomorrow for me!

XOXO,
Anna