Bread Making and Knitting

As most of you know, we were burgled the day after our anniversary trip back in March. We have been without a Tele for 6 LONG WEEKs(we have moved on from that ordeal and that's all I want to say about that incident). So, since the month of April has been so dark and wet, and not having a TV and all, what else is there to do but to knit and bake?

Two stories

I had a knitting nightmare/meltdown. As some of you know, I started a very expensive trellis shawl the month before I moved to New Zealand, so that was April 08. I wasn't very inspired to knit during the summer months so only just picked it up again about 2 months ago. Well, I've been really focusing on finishing this damned project before my 1 year anniversary of moving to NZ. I just discovered a week ago that I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH YARN to complete the F***ing thing. I mean, what are the chances???? Fortunately I found one place in Los Angeles that has the lot number that I need. Thankfully my Mom will be able get it for me and drop it in snail mail. I hope to receive it within 2 weeks. Problem resolved, right? I hope nothing else happens. I've attached a photo of what it will look like once completed.

My other project for this month has been mastering my bread making. I don't have a bread machine, only because I love the challenge of making everything from scratch (and making everything that much more difficult). Holming has been loving it as he usually takes a sandwich to work every day for morning tea. My biggest problem (very minor) has been the yeast. Any suggestions from those kiwi readers? It usually takes all day or all night for my bread to properly rise. So, that means that my bread making is a 2 day ordeal. I've tried Edmonds Instant Dry Yeast, Tasti's Active Dried Yeast, Edmonds Surebake and finally tried a packet of Fleischmann's Rapid Rise from America. Wouldn't you know it, the one from America worked the best. Maybe I'm just biased. On the serious side of this, I live in NZ and so I really want to use NZ products. I can't keep have my Mama ship things to me because once she moves here I will be Sheeait out of luck.

So, if I have the time (2 days), I start my bread on Friday morning and bake it on Saturday morning in time for our Cafe style breakfast.

BTW, I know my bread looks small but, it's not the size the counts. We get to enjoy this homemade bread all week.