Gluten Free Banana Bread Baking and Threading the Loom

    This is my second post for today, the one before is a video of Missouri's 200th birthday fireworks party.

    I know it is way too hot to be baking, but we had 4 bananas left and they were on the way towards getting over ripe so I decided to search for a new recipe to bake us up a banana bread.

    Here is the recipe I used. The title says super moist and it is. I think this is one of the better gluten free banana bread recipes I have baked up.

       Of course I did make some changes-I almost always need to for the both of us. Instead of sugar I used half coconut sugar and half keto brown sugar sweetener, instead of all butter I used half butter and half coconut oil, instead of chocolate chips I used 1/2 cup of raisins and dried sour cherries that I soaked in warm water first. I added 3/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract and banana extract. I also had picked up a jar of dried banana and added around 1/2 teaspoon of that too.

  well it seems blogger decided to load my photos in reverse haha

  

This is a bread baking pan I bought from King Arthur Flour many years ago now, that they designed for gluten free breads to help them rise better-being ridged and a bit more narrow across

  Since it is way too hot and humid again for either of us to be working outdoors, Larry is taking it easy-which he Never does-and I decided to start threading my loom for the next towel project after the bread was out of the oven, cooled and taste tested.

   I took a short video to show that I started to sley the reed than I will thread the pattern in those heddles.  This is a very very old reed. It is a size 10 and I needed a size 20 so I just need to sley two ends (threads) in each slot.  I did take the time to really dust each slot, but this also needs new tape added on the reed's sides too.

  If you are super hot and humid too-stay cool. Happy  mid week

Ready for Next Weaving Project

    You may remember me mentioning that I ended up short of 100 ends (threads)  8 yards long for the warp. I had decided to go with 8 yards so I could get extra towels, not thinking to calculate the yardage I needed.  I have waited over 2 weeks in hopes Webs will get this 8/2 Valley Cotton in stock. Talked with them Friday and they just have no idea when it will arrive-was due  end of June.

    So, I decided to just use the very light grey that I have and make two stripes in the towels-will save me money in the end. I think it will add a little design element and be ok.

   I think these will weave into thicker kitchen towels as I will be putting two ends (threads) in each slot on the reed. This seems to be a popular towel pattern, as several in a weaving group on Facebook I am in, said they really liked this pattern.

   I decided to do a little video.

and a couple photos

    This is the first section of warp I did. I needed 490 ends total, which would not all fit onto my warping board. So I did the rest in two more sections to distribute the grey threads

This is allot of warp to get onto the loom-to keep it clean, I put it in this big canvas bag-perfect.

  The lake is very very busy with boats today (Saturday). Saturdays are usually the busiest in the summer months.

   Poison ivy saga update---I have two more days of the steroids, and I still have a mild rash and burning. I am not familiar with the steroid pills they gave me-but they have made me sick. Am very light headed and my chest even hurts, probably helping with the asthma as well-ugh   I really hope this will finish clearing up on it's own. I do Not want another dose of these pills.

  I don't know how to swim, don't do boats, but Larry's fishing boat he bought around 5 years ago is really nice-wider and sets up above the water allot more than some. It's been very very quiet here during this past week, so I got brave and took a boat ride to see all the lake homes around us. I really enjoyed it, no one on the lake when we were out-so I didn't freak out haha.  Wow I can see now that this end of the lake has many very high dollar lake home properties-beautiful. I am guessing many of these very large homes with allot of property are into the millions. I am thankful and feel fortunate that we found this one at a reasonable price. Our lake home needed allot of work which I think scared off some of the buyers.

   Have a good weekend everyone. oh and if you missed it-previous post is cast iron Saturdays baking cakes in dutch ovens.

Rainy Tuesday & Follow up Weaving Video

   We woke up this morning with winds and a little rain now we have lots of rain coming down.  Good thing the mowers came yesterday to mow and trim our lawn.

   This is a man-made lake designed to make electricity that we live on-Lake in the Ozarks-and for some reason the authorities are allowing ocean boats on this lake-it's all money making I think as they are continuing to build more and more high end Condos here. Sad as this has always been a family fishing lake.  In the end if this continues it will wear down the rocked shorelines.

As I was taking photos, a hummingbird flew in-second photo-We now have a pair that visits every day and this morning the male was defending the feeder from another male.  I would like to be able to put up a second feeder.

This is a very expensive houseboat I guess I would call it, at least this one moves slow and doesn't make huge waves that hurt the docks

  I did a second video just now, to show the threading. This is much more tedious and time consuming to thread, since there are 4 threads per dent (slot in reed) which must stay in order from the cross.  I haven't been weaving steadily for a few years now so my thought process is slow-thinking things through. It is going much smoother now but this will take a bit of time-which is really ok with me-part of setting up the loom to weave.

                                

note: correction in video I had said 4 ends per inch-should have said 4 ends per slot-this is set up as 24 epi (ends per inch)

Weaving Video

   I was taking a little break to stretch my back and decided to take a little weaving video. This is about sleying the reed on my floor loom

and here is a  photo I took previously on what each set of two threads looks like-they must be in order and slide freely

There are 408 ends (threads)  5 1/2 yards long which will make 6 kitchen towels

Good Morning Weaving Video & Progress

    Good morning everyone and Happy Wednesday,

I wanted to make more progress on the shawl this morning so was weaving for about an hour and decided-I need to play with the tie up a little more-on the pedals- so I can get the harness's on the one pedal to rise more even.

Success  I have to pat myself on the back for this as I am not someone that is good at figuring out puzzle situations like this. So I am happy for being able to figure out what I can do for a smoother-and faster weaving.

  This room is off the kitchen and main door to the house and has turned into a little bit of everything that didn't fit into my craft room or elsewhere-so ignore the messy background

This is where I found handmade shuttles, they also have other weaving tools and knitting tools that they make-and are all hand sourced from dead trees on their property or nearby 

   It's around 12:30 in the afternoon now and I have made enough weaving progress that you can now see what the back side of the shawl looks like as the finished cloth winds on to the front. This is really a pretty pattern

    When I was learning to weave back in 1978 in Denver Colorado the teacher suggested picking up the book Handweaver's Pattern Book by Marguerite Porter Davison I have one of the first editions of this book and has been re published many times since.  Just about anything one would want to learn about pattern options for a 4 harness loom is in this book.

Seeds in Bottles & Buttermilk Biscuits & Loom

   Lots of wind and rain last night-so yep feels like Spring and March.  Over the weekend it was a little warmer with full sunshine. I decided to start making up some bottle greenhouses to start a few seeds.

   Here at the lake I don't have much space for a large veggie garden like I am used to having, but I am going to start being a little more creative this year. We are still waiting for the sewer project to get finished-they will be digging up some of the yard to do that so waiting on them to get this done. They started this project last fall.

   We do use allot of gallon water bottles for distilled water, which I use in our commercial coffee maker. This was designed to be serviced as it is quite a process to take apart-so with this one I only use distilled water so I won't have the lime build up.  I try to recycle when I can and making some of these bottles into "greenhouses" is perfect.

  I learned this technique from fellow blogger Carol that also lives in Missouri several years ago. I have tried different methods of starting seeds over the years and this is the best ever for excellent results.

I had saved 8 bottles and filled these with tomato, peppers, herbs, eggplant, and flowers, I will save more and start a few more herbs and flowers.

  Once the dock project is completed, and the sewer project is completed we can straighten out some things and hopefully start on my bricked outdoor cooking area this summer too.

   We had help over yesterday for the dock project so I made a big pot of homemade soup, apple-pear crisp (needed to use up that fruit) and I had buttermilk left over so decided to try a new recipe for homemade biscuits.  When I opened up the oven my eyes got wide and Wow  finally perfect biscuits. and I have never been able to make perfect ones. I forgot to take photos but mine looked exactly like the photo. Here is the recipe-a keeper.   and here is the photo from that site

I think what helped as well is using fresh buttermilk. I usually keep the dehydrated around that you mix up with water. and researching one can freeze fresh buttermilk so I will be doing that.

   Have an awesome day!

Update: I have been weaving for a couple hours this morning, and the harness's not going back down in place was getting to be a hassle-so I thought of a way to change up the tie up in the pulley system-and worked yeah  so I did a quick little video.  this room has turned into a "catch all" room-spinning wheels, a wall of shelving and vintage cabinets, and trunks with spinning and weaving supplies that did not fit into my craft room-and a big area of things to go through as well-so tried to keep the video views away from all the hodge podge of items around this room