rhiaro

Timezone: Europe/Tirane (25th May 01:16)

Currently is on an adventure (for 3 hours, 57 minutes, and 24 seconds)

You may know me from..

Last ate 1 day, 12 hours, 40 minutes, and 33 seconds ago (Spinach byrek (Furre Kosovo))

Last exercised 2 months, 10 days, 15 hours, 15 minutes, and 28 seconds ago

Monthly budget 3% used (last spent 100all on Ice cream (Kayak))

Words written this month (1255 of posts and fiction)

Week in review: 11 - 17 May

  • Rediscovered the elegant simple beauty of a single crochet (made a tshirt)
  • Curfew lifted for most of the country; started planning adventures while simultaneously being anxious about going out and making decisions again.
  • Swam in the sea EVERY DAY.
  • Wrote some scrapers for UK MP and counciller registers of interests.
  • Did some DID editorial and registries stuff.
  • Actually worked quite a lot this week, but also spent at least an hour per day anxiously checking local news sites for Albania and surrounding countries to try to figure out wtf I might be able to do at the end of the month. Results: inconclusive.
  • Watched a lot of Stargate..
  • Went out for ice cream!! (sorbet)
  • Made a really good chocolate cake, and other things.
  • More people seem to be moving into the building. Getting loud around here.

🏷 travel crochet week in review albania

🗁Added 17 photos to album Homemade food.

more >

Some burgers failed to hold together so I called it sloppy joe and proceeded (with homemade bread). After the mix had chilled the next day, with a bit more flour, I turned it into burgers.

A highlight was french toast with batter made from semolina, cinnamon and rice milk. With homemade syrup.

Made a really good chocolate cake. I wanted peanut butter frosting, but ran out of vegan butter. It goes really well with fresh cherries though.

Yesterday I left my pizza dough to rise pretty much all day and it turned out soooo good. I also think I may have used more yeast than I normally do, and I didn't oil the tray I baked it on because that usually makes it soggy - and it didn't stick anyway. Normally it doesn't rise much in the oven, and is either very slightly over- or under-cooked, or sometimes both... still functional as a pizza base and if you were eating it and weren't a pizza base connoisseur you wouldn't think there was anything wrong with it, but I know it's not perfect. Anyway, last night's was perfect and I hope to always repeat this in future.

🏷 pizza vegan food fedikitchen

Week in review: 4 - 10 May

  • Watched lots of Stargate SG1.
  • Finished The Successor.
  • Finished the bag and the jumper!
  • Worked on scraping data from politicians interest declarations.
  • Worked on DID Spec editorial stuff and thinking about how the registries should work..
  • Sat on the beach in front of the building.
  • Learned some new crochet stuff from patterns from 1944.
  • Made an extravagant lemon pie with blueberries and dark chocolate, among other things.
  • Started crocheting a summer top, half from pattern, half from my head.
  • Learnt the spider stitch which is tricky and takes 3x as long as a single crochet, but has a nice texture and fun once you get the hang of it.
  • Pondered future travel... Albania announced opening borders on the 18th of May, which gives me 10 days to leave the country before my visa is up, but not sure where else will let me in yet.

🏷 scrapers vegan food crochet week in review ods

🗁Added 35 photos to album Homemade food.

more >

This week's cooking a mixed bag..

  • A disappointingly dense orange, almond, ginger and cardamom cake.. I call it pudding cake I guess and pretend it was supposed to be like that.
  • Passable falafel, after a shaky start.
  • A good pile of gooey choc chip biscuits.
  • Curries and fried potatoes..
  • Lots of things with somun (simite).
  • Penne dishes.. an attempt at 'cheesey' sauce with carrots and potatoes; expensive truffle mushroom sauce from a jar.
  • A small batch of homemade seedy bread.
  • An extravagent lemon pie with blueberries (expensive) and dark chocolate.
  • An excellent pizza with fluffy dough that rose all day (and sweet potato fries).

🗁Added 8 photos to album Albania, March 2020.

more >

I finally finished my first ever crochet jumper! The holdup was being indecisive about putting sleeves on, but eventually I put half length ones (because typically I roll sleeves up to my elbows anyway). I started with this DROPS Design pattern, but started messing with it at once: I changed the hook size, yarn weight, sized the smallest size down a bit because I wanted a tight fit, changed the flower motif for dragonflies (which took an hour of crochet maths and pattern sketching on paper), changed the main body stitch from a loose double crochet with gaps to the trinity stitch because I like the tension, look, and it's a fun stitch to do a lot of. On the bottom edge I did some little puff stitch 'flowers' too. My sized down version only took about 170g of yarn :o which is less than 2 balls. It fits well, is perfect for temperate summer evenings, or keeping warm in my very heat-proof apartment, but a bit too cosy for wearing out in the sun (even without the sleeves - which is what made me decide it needed sleeves in the end).