I'm sure you're tired by now of all my excuses so behold:
One Very Annoying Strap.
The strap above is made entirely with slip stitches and that is why it took for-freaking-ever. But now it's... done? Maybe? We'll see when I start to attach things. I also started a similarly slip-stitched loop for the top of the mushroom cap! I've been working on this bag for so long that I keep losing track of how to do things, but if you look up the "secret project" tag, you can find the whole pattern up to this point!
I've also been struggling a lot to try to structure this project. You see, crochet thread? it's super duper floppy. It won't look good in glamor shots if it's super floppy, so how do I hold the mouth of the bag open? I tried so many ways to do things - wires, strengthening things with plastic, and even zip ties! And yet none of them worked well.
Today I just went ahead and did it - I added wire.
Fortunately I had some cheap $1 jewelry wire that I used on the mouths of the lower part of the bag, and then I used thin copper wire around the bottom of the cap. The thin wire is purely aesthetic - I'll be stiffening the base of the cap with thin plastic of some sort (or possibly craft foam if I find some), and that will hold it against various things being stored in the cap!
The plastic tie failure - they were only top-closure, I'd need side-closure
The jewelry wire is still quite pliable so I doubled it up!
And I attached the wire using single crochet through each dc from either mouth
I think it came out pretty well!
The copper wire was harder because it's thinner, softer, and I measured wrong! Measure twice! Cut once! Then you don't poke yourself with twisted wire lol
The bag assembled & reinforced!
Hopefully today's blog has helped someone trying to figure out how to create structure in a project. Here's some additional advice: grab sandpaper to round off the cut ends of your wire so it hurts less when it pokes you.
So now we just have a few more things to do!
Finish/attach straps
Make and attach spots for the cap!
Add the final structure elements
Make a closure for the stem (maybe a braided cord?)
That doesn't seem like so much when you look at it that way!
And that's gonna do it from me for tonight. I'm pooped!
It's been a long project with the Mystery Project aka Mushroom Bag.
And it'll be a few more weeks yet I fear.
See, it turns out that slip stitching 420 stitches by 12-24 rows is... a really long and boring process.
So if you have access to canvas straps or ribbons you like? USE THOSE.
Seriously. Use what you've got because it takes forever to slipstitch.
This is what 10 rows looks like:
It may look pretty decent, but I assure you, it's only about... 0.5" or about 1.3cm wide.
It's also fairly thick, though, so it should be very comfy to carry on the shoulder once it's completed.
And as for the zip-tie situation to hold the mouth open? I'm uh... I'm still working on that lol. I haven't gotten one from the basement yet, but I know that it should, theoretically, work.
We'll see!
Sorry this week's is short, but it's been insanely hot (85℉/29,4℃) for the last couple days and today was the first break from the heat that we've gotten.
Honestly, the rain was welcome and lovely, even if I did feel a bit cooped up and craved a walk.
If I don't have the project 100% finished by next Monday, I'll try to have another little One Day Make to show off instead, just so there's a little variety!
Maybe some flowers!
Tomorrow I'll have my thoughts more together, I think - today has been... very scattershot for me, so I'm not going to be able to write too much beyond my instructions for a slipstitched strap:
Make a row of chain stitches as long as you want your strap to be, then make one more as a turning chain
Slip stitch from the second chain from the hook to the end of the chain, chain one, turn your work
Slip stitch in every slip stitch - do not do what I suggested last week and slip stitch through both loops, the stitches will be waaaaay too tight, so just slip stitch in the back loop only! At the end of the row, chain one and turn your work
Repeat the previous row until your strap is wide enough.
If, like me, you find yourself getting highly distracted and cranky, pour yourself a glass of water. Every time you get cranky, pour yourself some water. It might not make your work less frustrating, but you'll have built-in breaks as you keep having to run to the bathroom and you'll end up well-hydrated as a bonus lol.
I think I should probably call it a night before I start losing what's left of my mind. Braincell number 3 may have retired today. I'll know better tomorrow.
In which I attempt to make a tasty English Breakfast
I'm not a very well-traveled person. The most exotic locales I've wandered are Nova Scotia (for a day) and Niagara Falls (also for a day). Besides that' it's mostly just been the occasional trip to Boston with my family. I've never left this continent.
So I've never had a true Full English breakfast.
Which means I don't 100% know what's in one.
I just know what I've seen on the internet, and those components seem to me to be:
Fried Eggs
Toast
Beans
Tomato
Mushrooms
Sausage
Bacon
Sounded simple enough to me! So I set about trying to make a Full English Breakfast, or, as I'll be calling it from here on out, a Fry-Up.
My first step was cutting and frying my sausage. I've never worked with sausage in a tube before, so that was interesting. I was too impatient to let it thaw completely, so my hand-cut patties were... well, the were a mess. Eventually, though, I got them fried up in my big frying pan and started in on my toast. I nicked a couple of English muffins from my bread cupboard for this, but I'd guess any bread product would work.
I used some of the sausage fat to fry up my "toast". It was lightly buttered, too.
Do not attempt this kind of breakfast if you've got cholesterol issues.
Or if you'd like to have a regular digestion for the next few days.
Regardless, I fried up my toast and stuck it on a plate next to the sausage.
Mmmm.... grease :P
All told, though, it looked really good at this point, and I could've easily just scrambled the eggs and served them like this.
A much more glamorous shot of the toast and sausage.
But I'm nuts, so I decided "time to cook" and got to work on that bacon.
Thick, thick bacon.
I also made sure my other ingredients were close to hand:
A couple of eggs for frying later.
I cut the stem out of the tomato.
I also salted the cut portion generously - which was the only salt I used at all!
The mushrooms were inspected and washed juuuuust before I cooked them!
Then I turned my pan onto the lowest heat and added my bacon!
Moments after adding the bacon to my pan, this happened!
I let the bacon fry until it looked moderately crispy, then set it aside while I cautiously fried the tomato and mushrooms.
And it was a harrowing experience.
See, when you're cooking with grease, the last thing you ever want to introduce to the environment is water. Tomato is about 90% water, by my estimation. The purpose of the salt (and laying the tomato out on paper towels) was to draw some of the water out and to make the tomato as dry as possible. There was every reason to believe that the tomato would cause the hot bacon fat to explode all over me when I added it.
Thankfully, this was not the case, and I let the tomato and mushroom sizzle together for a while until the mushrooms were soft and the tomato skin began to wrinkle and split. I took out the mushrooms, but I let the tomato keep going and flipped it onto its skin, so the skin became slightly blistered and discolored. When I figured it was done, I took it out and immediately added an egg to the pan.
Also mere moments after being added!
I never raised my pan above a "2" - so, I'd strongly suggest leaving your stove low if you're making one of these. Will it take a longer time? Yes. Will you burn foods as much? Absolutely not.
While I had been preparing most of the meal, I'd emptied a small can of baked beans into a pan on a back burner set to the very lowest setting. While I'm aware that a proper English Breakfast uses beans with some sort of tomato sauce, that's not very common where I live, so baked beans it was!
Sausage, Egg, Toast, and beans!
The overall breakfast was incredible. Each element was tasty on its own (except maybe the tomato, but I'm not a huge tomato fan), but together, they became transcendent. The biggest shock for me was probably the tomato itself, since I figured I'd hate it. I was wrong. When I cut it up and ate the small pieces with beans or sausage, it went from just a tomato to a sliver of bright, acid morning in the slick midnight of the greasy sausage and bacon. The acidity actually helped boost the sweetness from the beans, too!
Actually, I'm pretty sure this meal had all of the flavors: sour and bitter from the tomato (tomato seeds are always bitter to me), sweet from the beans, salty from everything, and umami from the meats and egg!
Also, it was so much food that it couldn't fit on two plates!
My dining companion and I each had a plate with egg, sausage, toast and beans
and we put the bacon and veggies on a third! Good heavens...
So if you're looking to enjoy the food of another land, but you don't have the money to do it, I strongly suggest looking at their culture breakfast first!
That being said, I don't know how England still exists if this is what they eat for breakfast. Even if I'd been a sane person and just had two sausage patties and a couple strips of bacon, the sheer volume of food was overwhelming, and I shudder to think what calories I consumed...
