Now that it’s out of the house, we’ll see if my sneezing fits were an alpaca allergy or something in the air ducts that gets feisty when heated.I ended up with 1 untouched skein of the green yarn but did get into the last skein of every other color, so I didn’t wildly mis-estimate supplies, as I often do with no-pattern projects. If I’m not allergic to alpaca, I’ll have to find something to do with ~400 g of green/purple/taupe/black mostly acrylic, somewhat fuzzy worsted, but into the box it goes for now.Now to finish the millstone sweater I claimed was going so zippily. The blanket was more immediately rewarding, and since my dopamine maker is broken, I have to hunt chemical reward wherever I find it to avoid withering from the lack.Millstone will be less cute than I imagined it would be, but the fit will be a better template for future sweaters than the boxy, drop-shouldered things I’ve done previously. Corrections to Ugly Stash Sweater led to Millstone’s good shoulders, so it’s all about evolution. Someday I’ll have enough experience to make a nice piece of clothing!
I had to make a birthday cake with only a sad assortment of ingredients on hand. A ton of eggs but very little flour and sugar calls for chiffon cake.
King Arthur’s recipe uses AP rather than cake flour, so that was the winner. Very lightly chocolate; next time, I’d bump the cocoa up to the 1/2 cup used in a different recipe. The cake is, however, very fluffy. (As one reviewer mentioned, COOL COMPLETELY in the inverted tube pan. It’s extremely tender, and trying to handle it while it’s at all steamy inside is a good way to end up considering what else you have on hand to throw in a trifle.)No powdered sugar posed a frosting problem, and no sweetened condensed milk meant no “When There’s No Powdered Sugar in the House Frosting” (yes, that’s the name written on the recipe). No cream for whipped cream. I didn’t even have enough granulated sugar left to make marshmallow fluff. There was, however, a tub of Cool Whip in the freezer, and I have an old recipe for “French silk” pie filling that calls for same, so I beat up some of that for the schmear. Also very fluffy.It was demolished within a day, so pretty successful despite my complete lack of preparation.This was otherwise a month of crushing deadlines, sickness, crises in every sphere, and being all things to all people at all times, so I’m looking forward to giving December and the year it rode in on the boot.