Making candles.

We all have them, those odd bits that are left over when you burn a candle. I hate throwing them out so this past winter my mum and I have been saving up all those odd bits and today we turned them into new candles.

You will need:
- a bunch of leftover candle bits from 100% stearin candles
- a can
- a pot (for a water bath)
- something to protect your hands (gloves, oven mittens...)
- containers for your finished candles
- whick
- long matches (or something else to tie the wick to)
- coins with holes (or something else to hold the wick down)
- a tray or large plate
- newspaper to cover your work area

Fill the pot with some water and place the can in it. Make sure that the water cannot reach the top of the can. If water gets into the stearin your candle will not burn well.

Put candle bits into the can and let it slowly melt, keeping the water below boiling at all times. You can add more bits as they melt.

Prepare the containers with the whick while the stearin melts and place them on the tray.

Now you are ready to don your gloves and pour the fully melted stearin into the containers, don't worry about the whicks in the can, they will stay at the bottom. 

Make sure the whicks are still centered and bring the candles outside to set. 

Once the candles are cool remove the matches and untie the knots. Cut the wicks 1-2 cm long and enjoy your new candles. 

And the winner is...

First of all I want to thank Malabrigo for enabling me to do this giveaway. It has been so much fun and I have enjoyed every comment you guys have made. We made it all the way to 24 comments (excluding mimi's comment) and the winner is...

Which means that the winning comment is:

Please get in touch with me, Catherine on Ravelry, so that I can send the prize to you. I hope the rest of you will stay around and hopefully I'll be able to do another giveaway again.

Let's Review: Malabrigo Nube and Giveaway!

At the beginning of summer Malabrigo kindly sent me 5 wonderful samples (pictures are borrowed from their site) of their new spinning fibre Nube and lets just say I know why it is called 'cloud' because it was wonderful to spin. But I'm getting ahead of myself here so lets go back to the beginning. 

809 Solis

139 Pocion

48 Glitter

66 Lavanda

43 Plomo

I sat and petted the 5 samples time and again, trying to decide which one to give away and it was really very difficult, but I finally made a decision. 

Next I had to decide which one to spin first. I was torn between Lavanda and Plomo, these two are my kind of colours. Greys and purples are my big loves. There was another issue as well, I have never spun multi-coloured fibre before. In my 3-4 years of spinning I've never spun anything but solid colours. Additionally, I have no clue what I should use 113 grams of yarn for. I would love to get about 400m out of 113 grams, but that isn't a lot to play with when you look at what I normally knit. Oh, the knitting, I don't knit with multi coloured yarn either! But nevertheless I feel so drawn to the Nube. 

After staring at the Lavanda and Plomo for hours I noticed that it was really the same colours. The Lavanda is purples with some greys, the Plomo is greys with some purples. This is when I knew I had to make a swatch. So I grabbed 10 grams of each and spun them, then after a proper rest I plyed them together, one strand of each colour and it turned out beautiful in my opinion.  

The 20 grams total resulted in 90m of 2-ply yarn and if I spin the rest consistently then I'll have 990m when I finish all the yarn. This is enough to make a garment of some sort I should think.

So how was it to spin? Great! The darkest purples were a little harder to draft, but everything else drafted so easily, that it wasn't a concern at all. The colours faded into one another wonderfully and while my skills took a little while to get into gear, it was easy to spin consistently when I got into the right groove. I can't wait to spin the remaining of the Lavanda and Plomo.

But who am I kidding? I bet you have been sitting there going, "yes - fine, now what about that giveaway?"

You have a chance of winning the Glitter, 113 gr. / 4 oz. of 100% merino fibre. You can earn one entry    by following my blog on bloglovin or blogger and leave a comment saying that you do so. You can also earn entries by sharing this giveaway on your blog, facebook, twitter etc. and leave a link for it in the comments. Please only leave one link per comment. You can share the giveaway as many ways as you want, each way will earn you an entry.


A winner will be randomly chosen on Friday 11. October 2013, the giveaway is open to all nationalities.  This giveaway is now closed and the winner has been found.

48 Glitter

Say cheese!

 I browsed youtube to entertain myself and watched a few cheese making videos (you do that too, right?!). You know rennent and the lot, making it sound difficult and expensive. Add my lactose intolerance and the fact that you can only get a low fat lactose free milk here I had convinced myself that cheese making as with yoghurt making was not in my near future. 

Then I came across some videos where all they used were whole milk and lemon juice. And since whole milk is, at least in its raw form, milk with all the cream still in it, a lightbulb turn on in my head. You can get both milk and cream lactose free here. What if I add those two, heat it to the boiling point, pour in the lemon juice and it seperates into whey and cheese curds? Could it really be that simple? 

Well, a picture says more than a thousand words, right?!

It smells like cheese, looks like cheese and tastes like cheese ergo it must be cheese. 

Now I have a few questions for you cheese makers out there:
- What is this type of cheese called?
- When do you add seasoning, like salt or herbs?
- Can you make other cheeses this easily?

On the list for christmas

As we are drawing near to October it is time for me to start thinking about christmas and what I want to do for it this year. The presents aspect is actually very low on my list with my dad's gift already done and my mum's nearly there I don't have a lot left to do on that front. Christmas to me is more about the entire month of December. What cookies would I like to make? How should we decorate our home?

On the list is
- making candles out of leftovers
- making the starter for honey hearts
- deciding on 4 cookies, finding recipes and buying ingredients
- making salt dough decorations
- gather decorations from the woods
- making marshmellows

I'm sure the list will get a lot longer as we get nearer. What is on your list for christmas?
 

Gleanings from a fibre weekend

When I went to Fanø this weekend to take part in the knitting festival I thought I was going to a fibre festival. I was wrong. It was in fact a knitting festival, not a bump of fibre or a spinning wheel or spindle in sight, barely some crochet. To put it mildly it didn't live up to my expectations in any way and I won't be going back any time soon. 

But I still had a great weekend. I really enjoyed the company of my mum and 3 lovely ladies, although I was probably the youngest of us five by 30 years or so. I also enjoyed the scenery. The wonderful houses, the great Vesterhav and driving on the beach. 

 All I came home with were 2 silk scarfs for my hair and a tiny teak tree mouse from the 50's. 

 I did enter a couple of contests while there and actually won one.

 I have been knitting today and I'm making good progress on the pants. Being only a few cm. from letting the right leg rest and starting the left leg.

This old tiger

This old tiger of mine caught 2 birds the other day. 15-years-old and she still has it in her!