GorlitsaKnits

My father and I have always spent the month of December attempting to make fudge.  It’s taken 20 years, but we have the technique down well enough that it turns out fairly well each time.  When I was little, we started right after Thanksgiving and made several batches so that we had time to make one come out right.

You see, the secret to great fudge isn’t the taste — it’s the texture.  And getting a good texture requires you follow a few rules.

We have always used the recipe on the side of the Hershey’s cocoa can, but it doesn’t seem to be there anymore.  A quick search turned it up:

2/3 c cocoa

3 c sugar

1/8 t salt

1 1/2 c milk

1/4 c butter

1 t vanilla

You start by putting all of the dry ingredients in a big, heavy pan.  I use my pasta pot, but something a little smaller would probably be better.  The ideal pan has a very heavy bottom and straight sides so that you can easily clip a thermometer on it.

Next you stir in the milk.  The recipe calls for milk, and my dad and I always used what we had on hand — skim.  It turns out that was our first big mistake.  Not only does a higher fat content make the fudge taste better, it also reacts with the cocoa to help with the texture.  This time I went all the way and used heavy whipping cream, but I’ve had good results with whole milk and half & half.

Once you’ve added the milk, put the pot over medium heat.

And now you stir.  And stir.  Do not stop stirring.  I had forgotten how much stirring there was to this, and how nice it is to have someone to trade off with.  You must keep stirring until, as the recipe puts it, you have a “bright, bubbly boil”

This is not enough of a boil.  Keep stirring.

There it is.  You want the fudge to be boiling fast enough that there is no chance of the sugar burning.  That means you are getting bubbles big enough to burst open, and that stirring it faster doesn’t bring down the boil.

Now clip on a candy thermometer and you can leave the fudge to boil.

Use this time to prepare the next ingredients.  Cut up the butter into small pieces so you can scatter it around the pan, and have the vanilla ready.  If it’s been awhile since you opened the bottle, you might want to crack it now, since it tends to get sticky and hard to open.

Butter a 8″x8″ pan.  Really slather the butter in there, and be sure to get the corners.

Now, check your fudge.  When the temp hits 234 F, pull it off the heat.  Some thermometers might have a marker at this point that says “soft ball stage”.  That’s what we’re shooting for.

Pour in your vanilla, and scatter the butter.  The butter will sink, but as soon as it melts…

It rises to the top and makes a thin layer over the fudge to keep it from drying out as it cools.  Neat, eh?

Now, you have to be very patient with your fudge.  This is the second place we used to make mistakes.  The fudge has to cool down to 110 F, and you want it to do it as slowly as possible, and you cannot touch the pan while it cools!  This took nearly an hour in my house, so give it time.  Don’t stick it in the fridge (or out in the snow) to cool it down faster.

This all made a lot of sense once I took organic chemistry in college.  In the lab, we would crystallize substances, and the trick to getting a fine, pure solid was to let the liquid get as cold as possible before letting it crystallize.  Once it was cool enough, a touch or stir would be all it needed to crystallize all at once.  If you let it crystallize too early, the crystals formed slowly as the liquid cooled, and you ended up with larger clumps rather than a fine powder.

We’re not exactly looking for a powder here, but we do want a very fine grain.  And so, let that pot cool down very slowly, and don’t jump the gun and start stirring at 120 F.

Once your fudge is cool enough, it’s time to jump into action.  Pull out the thermometer, grab a clean, strong spoon, and start stirring.  It’s hard to stir.  It’s supposed to be.  Give it all your strength, and keep stirring until it starts to be less glossy — the butter has all been worked in, and it’s starting to crystalize.  I don’t have any pictures of this step because I was way too busy stirring to think of the camera.

Once it’s pulled together and loosing that gloss, spread it into the buttered pan.  You will have to spread it — it shouldn’t pour easily at this point.

As you scrape the pan, don’t be too zealous.  Here you can see two different types of fudge that I purposefully didn’t scrape up.  The really shiny goo in the corners of the pan never got mixed, so it isn’t crystallizing yet.  You don’t want that in with the good fudge, or it might not every completely set up.  If you’ve ever seen fudge that “melts” or “sweats” a little, it wasn’t stirred enough.

The stuff on the bottom of the pan has already set up, and I don’t want that either, because it won’t really mix in with the fudge I’ve already pulled out, and you end up with fudge sqaures that fall apart.

This doesn’t, of course, stop me from scraping that stuff up and eating it right then and there.  It’s hard not to when the kitchen smells this good!

The fudge in the pan should already be setting up.  Wait until it doesn’t appear glossy at all, then cut it into squares.

I absolutely love knitting socks.  They are quick, beautiful, and have many options for different styles.  Ever since I bought New Pathways for Sock Knitters by Cat Bordhi, I have been making most of my socks using the style of heel she developed in that book.  My Slalom sock uses this type of flap heel.

As does my Pinophyta sock.  These socks have increases worked into the bottom portion of the leg, and the flap-style heel is worked by using up these extra stitches, rather than the standard flap heel which produces extra stitches that then have to be decreased away.

I never had much luck with the standard flap heel because I always ended up with holes where I picked up stitches and began working in the round again.  I have always wanted to make nice pretty heel flaps, though, so I thought I should try again.  A new sock pattern in the works seemed like a good opportunity.

Isn’t that just the prettiest heel flap?  Perfect picked up stitches and no hole!  The pattern is still a secret since it will have a limited release, but I will post details as soon as I am able.

While it doesn’t get very cold in Tucson, we still like to put up Christmas lights and pretend like it’s chilly.  We took the little munchkin around Winterhaven.  It was past his bedtime, so he was very sleepy.  I found this hat I had made a few months ago; it’s a little too small now, but it did the trick.  I need to update the pattern for the hat and post it soon.

The people in this neighborhood don’t care about their electric bills.  This house was one of the darkest.

I saw this in a lawn and started taking pictures before I even understood why it was there.  Any guesses?

Does this help?

It’s the 12 days of Christmas.  here you can see the 4 calling birds, 10 ladies dancing, some geese a-swimming off the roof, and 5 golden rings from a giant cell phone in the corner.

You may already know that Mr. Gorlitsa is a police officer, and this gives him a good excuse to pursue his own obsessive hobby — collecting guns.  He has never once said a word about the cost of my yarn and needles, because he spends far more on things that get far less use.

The police department here in Tucson is undergoing a change in leadership, and it is very likely that the new chief will allow officers to carry rifles in their cars.  These would of course not be used very often, but there are a few very serious situations in which a handgun just won’t do.

Mr. Gorlitsa seized upon this opportunity to build the rifle he plans to carry as soon as the chief is in office.  He spend months planning and researching, choosing the best options.  Surprisingly, the actual rifle was not the most expensive item.  I think the sight was the costliest, but I would have to check.

So now we are the proud owners of an evil-looking black rifle.  Since Mr. Gorlitsa rarely hunts, I doubt this will ever be shot outside of a firing range.  I don’t really get the point.  But then again, no one really needs a wine cozy either, do they?

Oh, and in case you are uncomfortable with guns, or just the worrying kind, please know that this rifle lives locked up in the gun safe, along with all the other guns that Mr. Gorlitsa is not actually carrying with him at the time.

The sock yarn blanket is coming along nicely.  I seem to be averaging two blocks per day.  Each one takes a little less than half an hour.  I don’t work on it every day, but one good long movie can put me ahead 3 or 4 days!

I am committed to using every bit of yarn I can, so I decided to keep the tiny balls of yarn that are too small to make a full block.  I use those to make a tiny block, four of which make up one large block.

The picture below shows all of the yarn I currently have for the blanket.  I have divided the yarns into those I expect can  still give me a full block, and those that are too small.  It’s guess work, but typically if a ball is the size of a golf ball, that’s enough for a full block.

Here is a close up of the smaller balls.  I need to pick four to make a full block.

I looked at the surrounding blocks and decided on these four yarns, to be arranged as shown.

I start with the bottommost block.  Since my large squares are 20 stitches to a side, I need to make the smaller ones 10 stitches to a side.  I count up from the bottom of space 10 stitches, then pick up those 10 stitches.  I pick up one stitch from the block below, like normal, then pick up 10 stitches up the side of the next block.  I should have 21 stitches on the needle.

I then work a garter block as normal, double decreasing at the center of every right side row.  In this case I actually ran out of yarn before the block was done, so I used my secondary technique of using up scraps — I just switched to a different yarn.  More on this in a later post.

I now need to make one of my second tier blocks.  I start by picking up ten stitches from along the side of the block just made.

The center stitch is now picked up.  This is the biggest difference from the full size blocks.  The center stitch is the tenth stitch on the large block to the left.  This stitch was already picked up once for the first small block.  Pick up this stitch again to be the center stitch for the second small block.

And then I pick up ten more stitches along the side of the large block.  I should end in the same place as I normally do, since I have picked up all 20 stitches along that block (10 for the first small block, 1 of those again for the center stitch of the second small block, and 10 more for the second small block.

I finish the block.

And repeat the process on the other side.

The final small block is worked just like the others.  This time the center stitch is picked up from the small block directly below.

These smaller sets do take a little more time than one large block, but they seem to go faster because you get the reward of finishing four times instead of one.  It’s a great way to use up the tiny scraps, and adds more complexity to the blanket.

Mr. Gorlitsa and I are big believers in the broken windows theory of sociology. The basic idea is that if the government focuses fixing broken windows, cleaning up littering, and enforcing minor laws, people tend to respond by being more law abiding, and so more significant crimes are also reduced.

Mr. Gorlitsa gets to practice this nearly every day as a bicycle cop.  He’s out there on the streets, able to deal with things as he encounters them, rather than being sent on calls.  It’s a nice gig.  Almost everyone in the neighborhood knows that he is a cop, and we occasionally get random knocks on the door for advice.  Luckily we live in the county, not the city, so we can just tell them to call the Sheriff rather than getting involved ourselves.

Most people seem to like having a cop on the street, but a house a few doors down doesn’t.  The get a lot of foot traffic, especially right after school gets out.  The kids walk back down the street in a rather different state of mind than when they walked up.  (If that wasn’t obvious enough for you: they sell pot)

We can only assume that the neighbors (or more likely, one of their customers) are responsible for this.

I like to think that the tagger was out of ideas.  “TTE” is the first three characters of our license plate, which is right next to the trash can.  Mr Gorlitsa noticed the tagging, and went out for spray paint right away.

All better.  Let’s hope it doesn’t come back.

Since I have taken a break from designing for my own line, I have taken on several projects for “real” publication.

The only published so far is Wine & Money in the Winter issue of Knotions.  A simple wine cozy and a gift card holder make holiday knitting a little easier.  Even if the recipient isn’t into knitted things, these quick add-ons make a generic gift much more personality.

The winy cozy was quickly taken by my husband as a gift for his friend Nate.  We drink a lot of this friend’s very good wine, so this was a very appropriate gift.  Requests were made for several more, but it takes a lot for me to knit something twice.  I might make another with a different lace pattern, since I have another skein of silk to use up.

I have several patterns in progress for publication, and I will leak info on those as they progress.

Mr Gorlitsa and I have been down to one car for several months, and while I have adapted quite well to being stuck in the house a lot, it does place a rather large burden on people who loan us cars and drive me places when we don’t plan very well, so Mr Gorlitsa has been working off-duty jobs to bring in some extra money.  This past paycheck was over double his normal take.  We should be able to afford another car soon.

We do actually own two cars, but one of them has been sitting in our carport for months.  It was a gift from my mom, and it’s a good little car, but it every once in awhile it wouldn’t start.  I insisted I wouldn’t drive it, since it seems safer for a cop to be stranded with a dead car than for a pregnant lady.  Eventually it stopped starting altogether, and it’s been stationary ever since.

Mr Gorlitsa gets teased at work for not fixing this car, so last night he decided to at least get a new battery for it and see if that was the problem.  I thought we had already checked this, but apparently not.  The new battery made it so that the lights and radio worked, but the car still didn’t start.  So this morning we arranged for a tow truck to take the car to a shop.  Mr Gorlitsa was at work, so I handed the key over to the tow truck driver, and went back to scrubbing the bathtub.  A few minutes later the doorbell rang again.

The car was running.  The driver said it started right up for him.  He turned it off and turned it on again.  The car works.

It’s filthy, but it works.  I’m still not driving it.

A few months ago, the designing gig was beginning to feel more like work and less like fun, so I decided to take a break so I wouldn’t burn out.

I had a few designs to work on commission for some magazines, sock clubs and whatnot, but I still needed some knitting to fill my time. I decided I needed something incredible simple that would give me a constant sense of accomplishment, but I also wanted something substantial.

I had seen The Heathen Housewife’s Blankie of sock yarn, and decided to start one of my own.  Mitered squares on size 0 needles.  Oh joy!

This project is reminding me of the importance of blogging regularly, or at least putting projects into Ravelry as soon as I start.  I can’t remember when I cast on, so I don’t know how long I’ve been working on this.  Probably close to two months.

I love how the squares resemble farmland.

It turns out that when you work charts the right way, they turn out correctly. I should know that, right?

This hat is nowhere near perfect. The original chart was square, which of course lead to a hat that was too short. The distortion isn’t too bad, but it will look better next time. I’ve also improved the shaping to be more gradual.

I’ll tackle the southern hemisphere soon. It should be easier – the Mediterranean was a pain!