Zucchinis, broad beans and one happy tomato! ^^

We had another great weekend (it's the third one in a row)!

On Friday I've been at my parents' allotment and I brought some vegetables with me. ^^
Zucchinis, squashes, 5 small cucumbers and 4 tomatoes out of which 3 are still not ripe (these are not the happy tomatoes from the title! *^v^*).
I made squashes for lunch on Sunday, cut into halves, topped with meat, cheese and tomato sauce and cooked in the oven. ^^

Broad beans still in the pods. They were delicious, cooked and served with some butter melted over them! ^^

On Sunday we went with Anna to the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle and saw the works of Darren Almond - his beautiful Fullmoon series photographies and the film trilogy exploring trains.
Another exhibition was Concrete Heritage. From Corbusier to blocks of flats, works of Polish young artists exploring many forms of human habitat in the Polish cities. I got especially enchanted with the projects by Julita Wojcik - she crocheted the whole big apartment blocks! ^^

After the cultural part we went to the swimming pool, had lunch at our place and finished the day with some ice-cream, coffee prepared by Robert and some drinks.

I hope you all had a great weekend! *^v^*

And tomorrow I'll show you some knitting (finished and in progress), and a happy Tomato will be revealed. ^^

Knitting again. And finishing!

Yes, it's true. I may have some knitting FOs very very soon. *^v^*

Last night I finished the first of the Mamluke Socks for my friend (proper pictures next week when he comes to get them). I still have about 12 cms of the other one to knit, and the most important thing - I am sure now that I won't run out of yarn (I was afraid it might be the case). More thoughts on this project next week.
(do you like my clever use of Winter brushes for Gimp? ^^ I thought that snowflakes correspond well with the thick woolen sock!)

Last night I had some difficult and unpleasant things to think through, so I engaged my hands into some mindless knitting and I almost finished my Opal anklets - I really need only a few rows, so I may finish them today, in between cooking dinner and washing up. ^^

I've recently joined a new knitting community, namely The Knitting Daily, issued by the people from the Interweave Press. I really liked the tone of the first few emails I received from the editor, Sandi Wiseheart, and the website kicked off on Friday, 15th June, with lots of free knitting patterns and knitting tips & techniques.
My point is, I started to consider subscribing to the Interweave Knits magazine and I'd like to ask you if it's worth it? I believe I've read many blogs with enthusiastic opinions about the IK patterns, can you recommend it to me?

Now I'm off to my sewing project, but I'll leave you with some frugality advice:
- because money is always an issue in our household, Green Minded Witch says: "You can save some money on electricity bills."
How?
Here are some tips of mine:
- change the light bulbs from the traditional ones to the energy saving ones wherever you can around the house
- before you turn on the tv/radio think whether you are really going to watch it/listen to it - I had a silly habit of turning the tv on with the moment I entered the flat and it was on all afternoon and evening when I was doing different things even in another room; my parents sometimes have two tvs and a radio on in three different rooms!..., you don't really need this costly "background noise",
- the same goes for the light - switch it on when you're in the room but remember to switch it off while going out, don't leave all the lights on in the whole flat/house all the time, it's your money burning out!
- turn the appliances like a washing machine, ect off right after they finished their job, when they are on "standby" they do use some electricity, and as we know, even the smallest bits count

Busy (cooking) bee

I've been stuck behind the loom for the last few days, because weaving the blue-green fabric turned out much more difficult and time consuming than my previous project. The yarn seems to be more fuzzy and the threads catch each other all the time and don't want to be lifted or lowered with a heddle easily, so I have to separate them with my fingers all the time. Whew... But I hope to finish it today, so photos tomorrow.

In the meantime, let me share with you something
Straight From The Cauldron of the Green Minded Witch
(yes, because it's a frugal cooking recipe! ^^).
Have you ever got rid of the bananas because they got too ripe to eat? Here is the solution:

Banana Bread

3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup of flour

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F. With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

I found the recipe here, and I used two small loaf pans instead of one. I also used three fresh bananas and one froze one (I defrosted it before adding to the mixture, it's a great idea to freeze bananas for later if you know you won't be able to eat them and they might go stale, and then use them in puddings or a banana bread!)

I like it very much and next time I'm going to experiment a bit and substitute the white sugar with the brown one and add some more spices. *^v^*

Another great dish is my favourite Spring vegetable:

Young Cabbage with Dill

1 Spring cabbage, shredded
1 bunch of dill, finely chopped
2 cups of water
salt (about 1 tsp)

Pour the water into the pan, add salt and a shredded cabbage. Bring it to boil, then simmer on a very low heat for about 1 hour stirring occasionally.
At the end, when the cabbage is soft, add dill and some salt to your taste if necessary.
Serve with cooked young potatoes and pork chops or roasted chicken.

Smacznego! ^^

Saturday outside

Beware! There is a monster at the end of this post! ^^

We started our Saturday at the car wash, and then we went to my parents' allotment to help with some gardening. The weather was really beautiful yesterday and we even caught some sun (I'm not so pale anymore, yikes! *^v^*).

My parents wanted to sow the grass but they forgot to take the boxes with the seeds with them... so we just weeded the plots and then had a nice barbecue! ^^
Some flowers were in full bloom and some just started to wake up after Winter (like roses).




Green Minded Witch
On Friday we did something very important to our financial situation - we went to the bank and took a three year credit.
And it wouldn't be anything unusual because people do it every day, but this wasn't just a whim to buy something - the purpose of this credit is to pay off our credit cards. Where is the catch?
We had three credit cards, used full up (because for the last three years we had spendings connected with our wedding, and then with opening our business), and the monthly installment was huge. In fact we could only afford to pay the smallest amount required and even then we had to use the cards again during the month, so it was a vicious circle.
But then my wise husband did some math and decided that it would be better to take one big credit with smaller interest rate (14%) instead of three credit cards at 19% or more, which allowed us to cut the monthly installment to half of the amount we had to pay before. The other half is going to stay in our pocket so we won't have to use credit card again during the month (in fact we are going to give up two of them and keep one of them just in case anything happens and we'll need some extra money, but hidden deep down the drawer and not in the wallet with an easy access to it!).
If you are in a similar financial situation think about this solution - the benefits are great: the interest rates and the monthly installments are smaller so more money stays in your pocket for food and bills, ergo you don't need the credit cards anymore! This really makes me happy because I can see the real date of getting rid of this debt (even if it's in 2010... ^^), and with the credit cards it was a never ending story.

Knitting
I started the Muslim knee-high sock on Friday and stopped at the the point you see in the picture because I need my friend to try it on and check whether I I should or shouldn't add six more stitches at this very point (that's the best point, on the white lines, just before I'll start another pattern). It's the beginning - the top part just below the knee (the original was knitted toe-up but I didn't feel confident enough to try it like that with such a complicated pattern so I'm following direction from Nancy Bush's Folk Socks), and I decided to knit both socks simultaneously, because there is nothing worse than the second sock to start from the beginning when the first one is finished, brrr....

And here is the promised creature found under the water tank, beautiful! *^v^*

Finished and started

Rho, that's true that there is nothing to beat some good old horseradish, especially with a homemade pate (pasztet) or smoked ham (my father made some himself this year). And the cheesecake is a must - the very traditional version, a thin layer of a shortcake topped with cheese with raisins, yummy (not the raisins, I don't like them and I always leave them out! ^^).

Over the weekend I finished the "Burgundian Dance" tapestry and I'm sending it to Helene tomorrow. ^^
The pattern comes from an old issue of "Anna" craft magazine, the technique is a cross stitch, I used cotton mouline on cotton fabric and the size of the finished picture is 37 cm x 62 cm (plus some fabric for mounting).

What's next? The anklets from the leftover yarn I used for my Opal socks - they are almost ready, I've knitted past the heel on one sock and I'll knit the heel on the other today, and then there will be several rows above the heel to fish them. I decided that in order to avoid the 'second sock syndrome' it's easier for me to work on both socks almost simultaneously, and not knit one completely and then start another one. ^^

And I'll be starting soon a very serious commission - my friend asked me to knit for him a pair of knee-high socks based on the medieval Muslim socks. It will be a challenge for me because I once started to knit these for myself (I have the pattern in Nancy Bush's Folk Socks), but I didn't get much far past the heel in the first sock - the size was too small for my ankles, so I frogged some of it, felted it and turned it into a nice cellphone cozy! *^v^*
But this time I'm going to approach this pattern again and it'll be a real challenge because my friend is a man with big feet and wide calves, so I'll have some serious stitches calculating to do. I'm buying yarn tomorrow. ^^

Green Minded Witch
Inspired by many wonderful blogs about eco-friendly, frugal living I decided to keep adding some "green" tips, ideas and links from time to time in the posts under the label of the Green Minded Witch. (Living in a big city, I'm not very eco-friendly, but I'm trying to be.) I don't intend to preach but to give some hints from my own experience which can be useful to some of you, as they turned out useful for me. ^^
I'm going to start today with something simple and obvious, or is it really?
Laundry detergent.
I used to buy bottles of it and use it in "splash" quantities. By this I mean I just opened my washing machine, splashed some of the washing liquid into one drawer, splashed some of the softener into the other drawer, closed it and turned it on.
Of course in this way I used much too much of it, especially when I had those concentrated detergents, and I had to buy more of them quickly.
Then one day I applied the famous RTFM rule* - I turned the bottle and checked the amount of the liquid that was suggested for a 5 kilo washing - and it was a surprisingly small amount! Much smaller than my "splash"! Now I know what the caps on those bottles are for - these are the measuring devices! ^^ (okay, I knew it before, but just didn't pay attention to them...)
It's really worth to overcome our laziness and have a look at the manufacturer's dosage suggestions, because:
- you use exactly the amount needed for a single washing, so the bottle lasts longer,
- the bottle lasts longer so you buy another one only when you really need it,
ergo
- you save money, because you spend it less often
- in general you use less detergent (less of it goes down the pipes and into the environment)
Isn't it a nice result? *^v^*

And some green minded links for you:
Stop the Ride by Stephanie, very inspiring blog about frugal life
Sew Green, a blog by several green-minded artists,
Another Woman's Treasure by Celeste
10 Commandments for a Simpler Way of life

BTW, if you want to take part in my bloggiversary giveaway there is still time to leave the comment on the giveaway post - I'll be drawing the winner on 12th April and the prize pool grew from just a cross-stiched sheep to some additional surprises! *^v^*

* RTFM - Read The F(ascinating) Manual, as my hubby says! *^v^*