Inside and Outside

I think I took these photos on Wednesday, but I can't remember for sure. It was a really weird weather day: One minute it was storming, with pouring rain, booming thunder and lightning dancing through the sky, and the next minute it was bright and sunny. And so the cycle went. It's hard to know what to do on a day like that. For some reason, I decided we should make soft pretzels. We had a lot of fun and they were really yummy. For some reason, though, the dough didn't rise. I have baked about a thousand loaves of bread, dinner rolls, bagels, and countless other yeast doughs in my time-this was not my first experience with yeast. I know it was active because it got lovely and frothy when added to sugar water. But the dough stayed in a big lump for two hours, never growing. In the end it didn't matter because the pretzels were really yummy and soft. Hopefully next time the dough will rise!


Nora had fun and did an excellent job of rolling blobs of dough into snakes. I love her outfit selection here: She is wearing a Christmas dress one size too big for her. It has a velvet bodice and a three layer skirt that is poofy and so long it touches the floor. And you can see her swimsuit peeking out from underneath. What a combo!



The girls posing with the unbaked pretzels. I twisted the traditional looking pretzels, and Nora made the heard and the ribbon style one. Dana was in charge of salting them, which she thoroughly enjoyed. Zak came over and shared the pretzels and lemonade with us. Yum!



During a lull in the rain, Nora and Dana invented a game where Nora pretended to be rain (hence the hose) and Dana danced around under the "raindrops" with her umbrella. Pretty fun! I love the mischievous grin on Nora's face.



Dana dancing. What else is new?



I have been knitting up a storm this week, trying to use up washcloth yarn I have had sitting around for as long as I can remember. All of the partial balls stressed me out for some reason. Something about unfinished business I guess. I have knit 10 1/2 washcloths this week. Is that ridiculous or what? I am down to one partial ball left and this bit on the needle. Time to buy more washcloth yarn, right?