Knit Lace Kerchief Project

I love that on the Oregon coast, I can wear my knit pieces any time of the year.  This is an idea for converting any triangular shawl pattern into a kerchief for your hair.  Using a shawl pattern that begins at the bottom point, simply follow the pattern until your piece is as wide across as the measurement from one ear, over the top of your head, to your other ear. Set this aside, still on your needles.  Begin making a 4 stitch i-cord with the same yarn on the same sized double pointed needles.  When your i-cord reaches 12-18 inches in length, you will begin picking up one stitch from your set aside shawl piece for each i-cord row (beginning at one end).  Knit as follows: knit 3 i-cord stitches, Knit 2 together (one i-cord stitch and one kerchief stitch).  Repeat until you've picked up all of the kerchief stitches, and then just continue the i-cord by itself until the two ends match in length.  Tie in your yarn ends and you're finished.

For this particular piece I used a Lotus Blossom Lace pattern. It was found in the book "Shawls and Scarves" from "The Best of Knitter's Magazine".  I'm sure you can find the charts for it, but really any triangular increasing pattern will work.  Get creative and use your favorite look.

Gluten Free Pizza Recipe

This is my most requested recipe - by far. There have been a lot of advances with recipes for gluten free pizza crust, but I still like mine the best (there are a few downright awful ones out there... think sunflower seeds.). If you are missing or allergic to any of the flours in this, don't hesitate to switch them out with something that has similar characteristics (If you need help with this, just ask me.).

Ingredients:

2 cups brown rice flour (white actually works even better, but is less healthy)
1 generous cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup corn starch
2 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp xanthan gum
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
sprinkle of your favorite garlic & herb, and/or Italian seasoning
2 Tbsp yeast

Mix these dry ingredients together before adding wet ingredients:

2 eggs
1 cup milk (may use alternatives)
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Mix in and then beat (I use a stand mixer) on high speed while you prepare your pans.  Yes, that's two full sized (16 inch, I think) pizza pans.  You may use nonstick spray or butter to prep your pans, but get them greased in some way.  By now your dough/batter should be smooth.  Simply divide it between your two pizza pans, and use a rubber scraper to begin spreading it out over the surface.  At this point I make the biggest divergence between other recipes that I've seen.  I've seen famous chefs on TV spray plastic wrap, cover their dough, roll it out, remove the plastic wrap, and then brush olive oil on the dough.  When I saw this I laughed aloud... Hold your hand over the partially spread dough, pour yourself a handful of olive oil, rub your palms together and gently slap out your dough.  That's it, no plastic wrap, no rolling pins and no awkwardly brushing oil on a dough that wants to stick to your brush.   At this point I place both pans into a barely warmed oven (turned off), and let it rise.

Let this rise for about 10 minutes or so and then remove them in order to preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Place one crust at a time in the oven to bake for about 12-16 minutes.  While the first one is in you can prepare your toppings. (Just as a note, I tend to dilute an Italian seasoned tomato paste and add fresh herbs for my sauce, and I always put mushrooms on right after the cheese, below the other toppings, so that they can absorb all of the other flavors.) This next photo is what my crust looks like when it is ready to be topped.

While you're topping your first pizza, you can bake the second crust.  The timing works out just about perfectly at my house. When the second crust comes out, it's time to slide your topped pizza directly onto the rack.  If you have discovered that your crust has stuck at all, just use a spatula to loosen it, and then gently support the pizza with your spatula as you tilt your pan over your pulled out oven rack and pull the pan away.  (This took me a little while to get really good at this, but if many of you complain about trouble with this step, I'll have to make a video or something.  Really I think you'll get it.)  Bake until your toppings are to your liking, and you're done... Well, bake your second pizza too, of course.  I cut my pizzas right away, and place the slices on a wire rack so that they don't sweat (This keeps the crust crisp instead of soggy).  My family would rather eat this than have purchased pizza any day.

A Long Time in Coming

To begin, I must tell you how I got my weird hair in the first place.  I've been married to my guy since the last millennium, and he never, ever used to give me any opinions on my style at all (no matter how much I asked). For years, however, he would joke that I should get dreadlocks, put sticks and stuff in my hair, and lead for a heavy metal band.  I never thought anything of it until one day it hit me that I was worrying to much about what other people thought (not something I realized I did at all), and not really caring about what he really thought.  Well I had married him, not all those other people, hadn't I.  I was suddenly convicted, and I mean really spiritually convicted, that my man was only joking about me getting dreadlocks, because he believed that I would never really do it. The next day, I started on my first dreadlocks.
I struggled a bit with my first batch of dreads, but now that I've learned a few things I'm loving my second time around with dreadlocks. This page will be all about helping you achieve beautiful dreadlocks with the least amount of fuss. I'll share pictures, tutorials and style ideas for locks.  Where I live, people stop me on the street to compliment, and ask me questions about my hair.  While that is fun, it matters more to me that my husband loves my crazy dreadlocks.
By the way, I still don't put sticks in my hair, but my man and I are working on a metal project that will be called Sorrows Ending... if we ever get it outside our studio doors.

I Used to Cry in the Grocery Store

Nuts and Berries for the rest of your life...

When I found out that I had to be strictly gluten free, fourteen years ago, I felt like I was destined to eat nothing but nuts and berries for the rest of my life.  The Allergen labeling hadn't started and this was long before being gluten free became a trend.  Going to restaurants was like playing russian roullette.  There were a few gluten free cookbooks... bad ones.  Did I mention that I've always been a picky eater?
Ok, so being gluten free is much easier now.  Scan the internet and find thousands of gluten free recipes that claim to be delicious. Well, some of them are good.  I can tell you that mine are.  I'll share my own gluten free pizza crust (I"ve never found one better), breads, cheesecake, and all sorts of advice about avoiding contamination at restaurants, potlucks and even your own kitchen. Maybe sometimes I'll even whine about my own food struggles, and we can help each other to be gluten free without resigning ourselves to eating just nuts and berries, or crying in the grocery store.

I Never Drink Kool-aid

I've shown these pictures to a few of you before, but never explained how dying with kool-aid works.  This blue yarn is something that I had spun myself with a mixture of sheep's wool, alpaca and angora.  After spinning my wool, I washed the natural oils out and dyed it with powdered drink mix. It is amazingly color fast and dyes a brilliant color. Here is what you can do:
Start with clean wool yarn or unspun fiber, and make sure that yarn is in a loose skein (not a ball, for obvious reasons, if you think about it). Place this in a large pot of room temperature water.  For most dye projects you need a non-reactive pot that you never use for food, but for this project that really isn't important.
Add your favorite color of drink mix (I think I used 2 packets of blue and 1 green.)
Cover, and bring this mixture to a boil. 

Do Not Pull Yarn Out To Check On It!  If you do, it will shrink before your eyes.  Turn off the heat and let it cool very slowly, leaving the lid on.  After this slow cooling period, all of the color that the fiber can hold will have left the water, and will now be in your yarn instead.  It's really kind of funny to open the lid to find the brightly colored yarn soaking in perfectly clear water.
That's it, dry and possibly wash your yarn as normal. This makes a great color fast, light fast dye... I've even tested it.

I love that my kids like to help card the wool.

Spinning is super relaxing.

My steampunk inspired vest as it blocks.

How to Make Your Own Dreadlocks

Starting your dreads can be a scary proposition.  It can be particularly daunting if you have hair like mine... Fine, straight, slippery.  I can offer a few words of advice from experience.

*Most salons don't know how to give you dreadlocks.  Even the ones that advertise that they do dreads often only know how to work with one basic hair type, so ask.  It's incredibly awkward to sit in a salon, paying good money to have your hair ruined by someone who looks at you like you're an insane blue eyed, blonde woman.

*Research different methods to see what you like best.  Yeah, I guess you're doing that right now, aren't you?
*Don't expect perfectly mature looking dreadlocks after the first day.  The dreads pictured here were photographed the day they were made. This takes time, baby.
*Remember that your dreads are whatever you want them to be.  Bangs, no bangs, big, small, messy, neat - You get the picture.

So, here's what you do:

Pull up all of your hair, except for the very bottom row at the base of your neck.  Divide this into sections of about the size that you want.  

One section at a time, back comb and roll (roll, you know, like a playdough snake in kindergarten) from top to bottom.  For this process, with each dread, I use a locking powder. There are multiple kinds out there, and it can be purchased online.  A little bit goes a long way, so you don't need a big container.  I purchased the smallest one I could find, and did my own dreads, worked on them until fully locked, and gave two more people dreadlocks with just the one little bottle.

With each dread, you'll find that the more you back comb and roll, the tighter the dread will be.  However, you'll still find annoying bits of hair that seem to want to be fluffy or loop out away from the rest of the lock.  Don't worry, this is great.  Put the tip of your finger through the loosest spots and simply pull the end of your lock through this. This looks the best if you aren't sending the lock through the middle, but instead through a smaller amount of hair at the edge.  This effectively makes that loop wrap around your dread, making it lock up better and look better.  If you do send the lock through the center, it will give it a bit of a braided look.  "Looping through" is a great way to help your dreadlocks lock up nicely near the scalp.  Just remember, use just a little of the dread for looping (probably keep it to less than a quarter of the locks width), or your locks may want to split into two near the skin where you sent the  lock through.  I've seen a lot of sights recommend using small rubber bands for the base of each lock.... I could tell you horror stories about trying this, but I think it's better just to say "Don't".

I like to blunt the tip of each dreadlock, so that I don't have a couple of inches of straight hair at the end.  Back comb all the way to the end, (locking powder really helps here) until you just have a tiny bit of hair sticking out the tip.  This little bit of hair is then pulled, end first, up into the dread.  Many people use a dreadlock tool, that looks like a rug hook, for this.  Not me.  I insert a sewing needle into the end of my dread until only the eye is sticking out.  I then twist up that last little bit of hair, thread it into the needle, and pull the needle through.  This very effectively locks up the end of your dreadlock.  The tighter the needle is in the lock, the more solidly you've just ended your dread.

After doing this to each section of hair in your bottom row, release the next row of hair above it.  Divide this into it's own sections, keeping in mind that you will probably want to center each dreadlock over the part line between two dreads below.  This will help all of your locks to be visible instead of your scalp. Gradually work your way to the top of your head, where you will need to remember to have your hair parted (or not parted, as the case may be) the way you want before you lock it up.

That's basically it.  I'll try to answer questions as they come in, but this should get you started.  After you first lock your hair, try to avoid washing it as long as you can (typically 2 weeks).  When you do wash it, you'll need to do a lot of maintenance at first.  This will be a lot of work in the beginning, but as your dreadlocks lock up, it'll take less and less time.  I will do a post about maintaining your dreads next time I work on mine.

This is what I call "Looping Through".  Be sure to split the lock unevenly, so that a small amount of hair ends up going around the rest.