Week 41 - Stromsburg Spinning Retreat

It was a nice week with quite a bit of socializing during the week and then was capped off with our annual spinning retreat, which this year was at Spindle, Shuttle and Needle yarn shop and wool mill in Stromsburg. But before I get into Saturday, here's what went on during the week.

One of the things I found when sorting through my death pile last week was a stack of recipes that I intended to write into my keepers recipe binder, one of which was Firecracker Brownies. We'd had a brownie bake off in the office years ago and my old supervisor from my HR days had brought these, which were his mom's favorite brownie recipe. They didn't win but I thought they were the best entry so had asked for the recipe, which he gave me on paper. Ick. Anyway, when my friend Lorri asked me to come to lunch at her house on Tuesday, I offered to bake these. They were delish and we had a lovely lunch on the deck but it got me thinking. 

I worked with a woman named Lila at Brown and her brownie recipe has been my go to for decades. Since I wanted to compare them to the Firecracker Brownies, I made a pan Tuesday night and brought them both to work to have people do a taste test. Well, it was totally inconclusive with votes split pretty evenly. I left with a plan to combine the 2 recipes because I prefer using cocoa but also wanted less sugar. I'll share the results when I get to that.

Here's the recipe for Lila's Brownies if you want to try them.

2 squares baking choc

1/3 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

½ cup flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp vanilla

½ cup chopped walnuts

 

Put butter and chocolate into microwave to melt. Beat eggs into sugar until creamy. Add melted choc/butter and mix. Add in rest of ingredients and mix. Pour into greased 8x8” pan and bake 25 mins at 350.

After the brownie taste test, I had a nice lunch with Dodie at Bison Witches, which is going to be our new lunch place. Yay! I heard from Honda that my rebate was approved and then went to Aldi after work. I went home for Survivor and enjoyed tetrazzini, which was my last casserole from the freezer, with wine for supper. It was all delish but I don't know if it was too much rich food in one day or what but I was up in the wee hours puking. : (

On that note, let's move onto spinning. Since I was going to Stromsburg for the retreat, I decided that I should take the sheep fleece I had in the basement and have it spun. I had gotten it years ago from one of the ITS programmers I worked with whose dad was a meat sheep farmer who had no use for the fleeces. I had prepped some of it years ago and it was worthy of spinning but I have no plans to spin anytime soon so called the mill owner to ask about options. When I found out she could blend it with nylon so I could use it to knit socks, I was in. I was afraid of what I'd find but when I pulled the bag out from under the basement stairs but it was fine. I spent lunch hour on Friday sorting the poopy bits out and ended up with a big bag of yarn to drop off. It won't be ready until February but I'm excited to get it. I'll have fun dyeing it with Kool Aid for sure.

The actual retreat was fun. Janet came to my house and Andrea picked us up. We stopped for coffee at a wonderful, little coffee shop in Osceola and got to Stromsburg right at 10:00. Other spinners were late so we were delayed getting started dyeing but I spent that time choosing yarn, sock of course, to buy from her shop. We did a bunch of dyeing using all different techniques, walked down the block for a yummy lunch at the cafe (burger and tots - my fave) then went back for a tour of the mill. After a stop at the grocery store on the square, which has all kinds of fun Swedish items, we headed home. It was a long day but fun and look at the fabulous yarn I dyed!

Sunday was a catch up day of chores and cooking plus some knitting on my cousin's birthday socks. I'd been on the lookout for a baker's rack to use in front of my slider this winter for overwintering my plants and starting seeds. I found one on Facebook, contacted the seller and drove to Cedar Bluffs to pick it up. It was perfect and even folded up. The trip there and back only took an hour so didn't take too big of a chunk out of my day. Totally worth it

Fun week! Baking, yarn, friends... all good. And I have several pounds of yarn to look forward to this winter. Maybe it'll be ready to make it a birthday trip to Stromsburg but that's a long way off. I hope you are all enjoying the cooler weather as much as I am. Happy fall.