Hey! Want to see a picture of an almost done sweater? This Little Oak for Charlotte has been blocked, kitchenered, and has all the ends woven in. Guess what is not quite done?

Yup. Those buttons are just placed there for show. For some reason, having good intentions about finishing a project isn’t quite enough to actually finish the project… It’s also 80+ degrees Fahrenheit here, so the chances of her wearing the sweater this week are limited. The yarn is Manos Alegria in Magenta and I used just a little more than one ball. I will weigh it at some point and make sure it’s accurate on the Ravelry page.

Y’all, I took a major nosedive into baking this past week and a half. Matt joked that I was going to turn into a bread blogger. I started out slowly with the NYT No Knead Bread Recipe. Knowing myself, I really wanted to get my hands into things, so that was just a quick foray into bread while I learned how to make my own sourdough starter and go for the full mama jama. I kept diving deeper into blogs and articles about bread and decided that conquering the Tartine Country Loaf recipe using my own starter would be the bread version of some kind of holy grail. So I made a starter using the instructions in the Tartine Bread book. Her name is Ursula.

I cheated a little bit and used some pineapple juice for a couple of days to get her going (not strictly by the book) after reading that as a repeated suggestion online. It worked. She’s vital and up and running. So far the bread count for the past two weeks is up to 13 loaves (two still proofing in the refrigerator), and 6 of those are Tartine Country Bread attempts. I’m not happy with my oven spring, so I’m still working on that. Last night I prepped four loaves, but let two finish bulk rising in the fridge and did two on the counter. We will see what happens. It’s fun to experiment and throw myself into an obsession that gives my wrists a break from knitting. My wrists are feeling a lot better now, so I’m sure once I get a loaf that satisfies me I’ll be right back to knitting. I just like to know how to do things and make them come out the way I want, you know? Here is a loaf that came out this morning, but I haven’t tasted it yet…

I promise this won’t turn into a bread blog, but I just had to share a bit.

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