screaming green socks--again

I can't remember if I mentioned that I had a few socks to repair or not the last time I wrote.  I did.  I had 3 pairs.  One pair needed darning to shore up a thin heel.  One pair had a hole that needed a patch and one pair.... well I should have probably pitched them.

This pair of socks, I had patched before and they are not even that old.

The socks in question are my screaming green socks, which as you can see from the ravelry project page I linked too were completed in July of 2011.

I featured them in an entry on darning.  I wrote about them multiple times (including here when I thought they might be too big.  They have felted slightly). And again, they had both a hole and a place that needed some darning.  I fixed them, but this is it.  This is the LAST time I am fixing this particular pair of socks.  They get another hole, and I'm .... doing something else with them.

The problem is, that I have a lot of the yarn leftover. I usually do have sock yarn leftover after making socks.  Usually not enough for a full pair.  And I've toyed with making multi-yarn socks, or fraternal twin socks, or something from all my leftovers.  But I don't know what.  I do know this, even though I have 49 grams of this left, it will never be a sock, as I cannot imagine that I'll ever be happy with a sock made out of this--even if I had enough for a full pair.  I still love the color, and I'd like to have something that bright and lively.  

sock it to me.

I almost forgot about rainbow loom. My girls both got rainbow looms for Christmas, and we had a fun fun time over their break watching youtube videos, and making things. Our favorite tutorials have come from Made by Mommy if for no other reason than we can pause it after a direction is given and say "yes, Mommy!" Cracks us all up. I only have one picture of a charm we made, but hopefully the girls will give me more of the gazillion pictures they took.

And yes, I did need my own loom. But it was good one on one time for each girl to do a video tutorial with me. And I gave the other girl whatever I made, so win win. Unless someone wants to buy me one of my own (along with 1 billion rubber bands).

I mentioned that I started a sock on the driving portions of our vacation. I finished one:

I love love love the colorway. Although you can not see the silver. I don't care. They match my favorite ugly green sweater and so I am looking forward to finishing the second sock. I probably should have made the cuff a tiny bit wider and longer. Oh well maybe the second sock!

The yarn is Kraemer yarns, silk and silver. Estate Green is the colorway name. I'm using my US 1 needles. I called them on ravelry, "Socks to take my mind off things" which is pretty much what they are doing. I need to make another big sock repair push though. One of my pairs recently blew a big hole and I fixed it right away and then felt so virtuous about it, I vowed to fix the other two socks that need repairs.

the great caramel post

One of the terrible things about my dropping off the blog map for the month of December (while everyone around me did Holidailies and wrote DAILY) is that I'm not really sure where to start back up. It would be great if I had a finished item to show, but I do not.

I wanted to finish the dahlia cardigan in time for Christmas. And I did, sort of. I am not crazy about the fit, and I have some adjustments to make, but I am also majorly frustrated, so I put it aside and picked up a sock to make it through my post-holiday travels. I have one sock done and the other started, so I'll report on that next time. Let my initial report say, this yarn has silver in it and it is exactly what I have needed to get through the dark days of winter. SPARKLY!

Mostly I wanted to deconstruct, mostly so I'll remember it, my sea salt caramel adventures.

This is the second Christmas I have made a batch of caramels from this recipe I clipped out of the Oprah Magazine. And yes you can mock me if you want. The recipe is here and they are really good. But I have learned some things about this recipe and so I'm putting them all out here so I'll remember them, and maybe you won't make my same mistakes.

Ok, I have made three batches of this stuff and they all had two things in common. First, they take a way bigger pan than you think. My best result came with my second biggest pan. Although I tried it in my biggest pan and that wasn't too shabby either. The reason? I guess all caramels do this, but that cream and sugar just acts like a huge volcano. Second, they all burned to some degree. I think I have a solution for that, which I will get to later.

First the differences:

Batch one did not set right. In fact batch one was more like a caramel spread than wrap up pop in your mouth caramels. And in making batches two and three, as well as reading on the internet, I have discovered why.
Batch one on cookies covered in chocolate--if like gives you gooey caramel, make these puppies (you can sort of see the burnt bits in this)
Have you clicked over to Oprah and seen the recipe yet? Well, if you had, you might have noticed that one of the ingredients it calls for is "one can of evaporated milk." But it turns out that Meijer at least sells 2 different sized cans! (and yes, I saw the comments section on this issue--and they are just WRONG). So this year in preparing to make batch two, I went to Meijer and bought the supplies, which mean that because I do not usually do the shopping, and I easily get overwhelmed at the store when people are pushing me (yes really--today I kicked an old lady's cart because she rammed into me in the checkout line) I bought what I thought was the only size can they made--a 7 oz size. ANd Lo and behold, batch #2 set.

Now, batch number two also was a little bit of a learning thing for me, because when the hot lava of sugar and cream threatened to boil over in my second biggest pan, I TURNED THE HEAT DOWN. Oh yes, this was an epiphany for me. It still had burned bits on the bottom, but not as many as batch one AND ironically as many as batch three. In fact, I was able to isolate the burned bits to one side of my pan and so eatprevent gift recipients from receiving burnt bits in their caramel. And also amazingly, the caramel set to a great texture.

Then we ran low on salted caramel for some reason, and I was implored by my husband to make another batch. And so HE bought the evaporated milk and he came home with the standard 14oz can. Now, I know the Oprah comments say the 14oz is what they meant, and one commenter says she raised the temp and used 12oz, but honestly I really think 7oz probably works better. I did some internet searching on this and found out that it isn't always the temp that effects the texture, but the milk products, which I guess makes sense. So for batch 3 I used 7 oz of evaporated milk. I got the consistency I wanted, but sadly, batch 3 also burned a bit more.

I think though, that the problem with the burning is something I can control. You see every other carmel recipe I've found has two steps, 1) you get your sugar syrup up to close to temp, and 2) you add your warmed but not boiling milk products and get it up to temp. So batch 4, which is coming as soon as I can justify eating so much caramel, perhaps after the dental work I need is complete. And I'll be trying a two step method. Hopefully, I'll remember to report back.