Me? A Professional Baker?

Sure, I make great pies!  

But I think if I were a professional, I would have someone to clean up after me, right?

If not, forget about it...




Look at this beautiful pastry!

Do not look behind the curtain...I mean at the Pillsbury box. So, yes, I don't make my own pastry, and I suppose no self-respecting bakery would hire me.  

But I do make great pies!



Have a Happy Thanksgiving---with lots of pies, of course!  

Scandinavia Photos

which I said I would post ages ago, but honestly, photos on Google are so much better than mine!

So here goes:  

The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. Isn't she large?  Isn't she beautiful?

This is not my photo of her.

This is:

Surrounded by tourists. Some on land, some, like us, on a boat.  

She's not all that large, and she's not way out in the water. I think she should be and then she wouldn't have been beheaded at least twice in the past and she wouldn't have had a bikini painted on her during a conservative era in Denmark.


Next:

According to the exhibit at the hotel in Fläm, this was traditional dress in Norway at some point in the past. I never saw anyone wearing these clothes, not a surprise, but what was a surprise was seeing a number of people wearing what was probably traditional dress in Sweden, even whole families of people walking along in traditional dress. Maybe it was some sort of holiday; it was a Sunday, so maybe for church? I don't know, but it was fun to see.


Culture shock, says the caption.

But I think it's genius.

While it is no surprise to see two single beds pushed together to make one king-size bed, it was a surprise to see separate covers for each, and it's brilliant!  Neither sleeper gets strangled by the other one yanking (ahem) the covers over to HIS side of the bed. Once we returned home, I made our bed the same way, but with our existing king-size mattress and one bottom sheet, but two duvets, twin-bed size, for each of us. Success!!!  No more nighttime fights over the covers; no one gets strangled.  

This sculpture in the Vigeland Park is one of the most popular and most photographed. I suppose it is meant to celebrate woman, but when I look at it, I see a woman about to tear her hair out.  (H-is this you?)  Vigeland Park is the world's largest sculpture park by one artist, and has over 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. It also has more rose bushes than I have ever seen in one place and they are beautiful. I suspect that long days of summer sunlight are the biggest factor in their blooming. 

Once again, I took a photo of a strange sign, this one at a gas station in Sweden. Anyone know what this means?

Is it racist?  Is it misogynist? Is it whatever word makes fun of yokels?  Are there yokels in Sweden?

It remains a mystery.

If all else fails, read the instructions, right?

Right. 

Rats. I had to give in when I tried to sew yesterday. I couldn't remember how to thread this machine and how to fill a bobbin. I think everything should be intuitive, but after years of not sewing, I realized that my intuition just didn't work.  

Where were my grandchildren when I needed them?! For them, it would have been easy, just like everything computer-related is easy.

Now, you might ask, why is Knittergran sewing? She's a knitter; it's right in her name.

It's a matter of mission creep. You know--- how you paint a room and then the room you can see from the freshly-painted room suddenly needs paint too? Mission creep.

My mission creep started with this:

My Instant Pot. I've made several meals using it, and they have been great AND fast!

This 15-bean soup, for example.

What does soup have to do with a sewing machine?

After the Pot arrived, I was cruising the Instant Pot Facebook site for recipes when I came across this cover:

I can do that, I thought. 

I put out a bat signal to the hive mind of my contacts, asking if anyone had seen this fabric, and within minutes, minutes, I tell you, Sallyknit found the fabric at a shop in Ohio.  

I ordered it and it was here in just a couple of days. Now I need to make the cover. 

Ooops.

I forgot that I don't really enjoy sewing; I did enjoy it when my daughters were young and I could quickly sew up the cutest clothes for them. I even made them matching outfits, so clever am I. (As adults, they informed me that since they are almost seven years apart in age, my outfits meant that one of them was guaranteed to be wearing age-inappropriate clothing. hmph...CUTE age-inappropriate clothing, says I.)

Too late I realized that I need to MAKE MY OWN PATTERN for this cover.  Yikes! 



And BONUS!  Mission creep wasn't over with this sewing project. I have been asking, pleading, begging for years for a food laminator aka vacuum/sealer thingy. While I do realize that I put a hex on any gift needing a plug, couldn't my family figure out that this was an exception? Apparently not.

Now that I have the means to make many, many leftovers with my Instant Pot, I need a way to store the food without freezer burn.  Hence, the food laminator.

I ordered it my own self:

No, of course I have not read the instructions yet.

I'm counting on it to be intuitive.