WhichCraft

All You Need: 1 1/2 - 2 lbs strawberries, fresh or frozen (hulled and halved) 1-2 Tablespoons white, granulated sugar 2 cups heavy whipping cream 1 can (14 oz) Sweetened, Condensed Milk 1-2 teaspoons vanilla some sort of storage container, 7 cup capacity freezer food processor or blender a hand or stand mixer helps, too What You Do: First things first, we need to heighten the flavor of the strawberries while also removing the majority of the water from them. I do this in a two-step process:  I started by mixing my strawberries (I've used fresh and frozen) with sugar and placing them in the fridge to macerate. With fresh strawberries, this process can take 8-12 hours (or up to 24). With frozen strawberries, you're also wanting them to thaw, so it's best to give them a full 24 hours.  After they have sat in sugar for 24 hours, drain them as much as possible. But do not rinse them! And blend them in a food processor or with a blender. I have blended them...

The Wordy Bit It's all wordy bit today. I know I haven't posted in a few weeks, and that was not intentional. I took a brief sabbatical from social media (and a lot of the internet, to be honest) over Mother's Day weekend. I needed the break from all the bonkers things I was seeing. I, instead, focused on my family, making phone calls, tending my garden, and taking in the quiet.  If you follow me on social media, I've shared my garden before. Even before all the pandemic madness began, my husband and I wanted to try our hand at gardening. We have an amazing portion of our backyard that gets sun from the moment it rises until just before it sets. We figured we would plant there, and since we didn't know how things would go, we decided for a raised garden. We used cinder blocks as our base, and on top of that we placed grow bags and surrounded them with a cedar frame (to help them hold their shape). We started with four plots that were 4' by 2', as well a...

Materials: Yarn of choice Hook size recommended by yarn choice The Wordy Bit A couple weeks ago, I went over how to tie a slip knot, how to chain, and how to perform the single crochet. If you've got those down, and are ready for more complex stitches, then read on.  Slip stitches (which I haven't covered because they're still difficult for me) and single crochet stitches are "short" stitches. It takes lots of rows to get length. More complicated stitches like half-double crochet, double crochet, and treble crochet, are taller. This means is takes less rows to get height, but it also means an airier fabric, as the gaps in the yarn will be larger. Look at it this way: it take roughly 2-3 rows of single crochet to get the same height as you would get from 1 row of double crochet. The row heights and fabric density plays a huge role in designer's reason for choosing different stitches. We'll get into that more once we've discussed how to perform...