Fall and baking

I love love love fall, and could describe every color and smell and damn tiny feeling that sends shivers down my spine...but I'm pretty sure everyone else is probably doing the same. In Portland, cars are plastered in big beautiful wet leaves. There's Halloween. My anniversary is Nov. 1-until Election day. This year is the Elections, and our 8th year together. (Side note, we had a cute date today filling out our ballots over lunch and dropping them off at the library.)
Forget winter, there should be fall themed carols about this time of year.
Something about candy apple red leaves, picking out pumpkins, and baking bread. 
I saw this on pinterest, and thought, yay, another bread recipe. I love baking bread, but this was trickier than I thought it would be, mostly on my end of the whole cooking thing. One, I don't have the fancy cookware that seemed to be the best to use. She mentions crockpots as being ok, but my lid handle isn't heat resistant, not at 450 degrees. I found that out the hard way. Funny, when I thought I smelled burning plastic, I just assumed it wasn't from MY oven...oops. Also my crockpot insert is tall and narrow and generally awkward to fit into the oven. Something I should have worked out before I turned on the oven.
However, the bread smells great, looks beautiful and tastes wonderful. I prepped 2 batches of plain bread, and have baked one so far. I think I read that you can proof it for over 24 hours, maybe 48? I'll double check, because we've got even more cooking to do. For our anniversary weekend sunday dinner we're having steak and potatoes and cider.
This cider, from allrecipes. We made a test batch last night, and are making one more today. It's very good, but I noticed with my smaller (1.5 quart) crockpot it takes a lot longer than an hour to boil. So I put it on High for at least 2 hours. Maybe longer. I gave it a stir here and there and taste-tested it, serving when it tasted good. Oh, and I just threw in the spices, instead of wrapping them in cheesecloth.
All in all, I prefer kneading bread, and cooking it in bread pans or on a cookie sheet like I did this last summer. The steam thing is cool but I'm too poor for fancy stuff and clumsy to boot, and personally I like my crock pot anywhere but in the oven. I'll happily post a simple bread recipe (that involves kneading-hey, it's fun and therapeutic) and tutorial for those out there who haven't done it before.
But enough blogging for today, gotta get to cooking some more. Maybe I'll remember to take some pictures and post tomorrow?

new-ish crafts

I know I was supposed to update a while ago, but I've been too busy doing all sorts of crafts. New skillz include woodburning and soap making (insert "squee!" from me here). Most of those pics aren't available yet, due to making them for a swap, and having yet to mail them.
But I promised pictures from the last swap, and so here they are! These were for a Lammas themed swap last month on craftster.org.:

Lacey altar cloth, knitted in summer/fall-type colors, merino wool.

cute leafy stencil, soy based paint on canvas

Lavender besom-lavender from cool herb shop around the corner

Hoopy! Corn in heart and tree embroidery

Also I have cleaned the kitchen, and used it for baking, crafting, soap and lotion making, and lots of cooking in the last month! Let me dig up pictures...
Clean-ish kitchen (Kay, so the only good pic I had of the clean stove had to be nixed, due to my BF playing guitar in the background in his undies. I nearly left it up, because you could barely see him, but felt considerate to his feelings, and erased it. :P) Look at my neat freshly cleaned kitchen shelf instead!

I love my crappy apartment if only for this old rickety kitchen shelf. The Uhura mug and Ghostbuster car and owl pic are all new finds.

The reason for cleaning: baking bread. 2 of 3 loaves made in one day at the beginning of August.

One of my new passions. Forgot to take a picture of the 3rd special loaf, but it's there wrapped in foil in the back.

My birthday was last weekend and this is one of the best presents ever, outside of craft related presents and cupcakes.

Anyone remember Twin Peaks?

So I'm due to send out my craft items for the Mabon swap at the end of the week, hopefully I'll get the pics of those up as soon as he receives. Any new non-swap related crafting I do in the mean-time I'll put up when I can. I've done some soaps and lotions, and a couple beginner woodburns that I'll end up keeping, so maybe those will be up soon.
On a side note, I had to buy a new set of knitting needles because I lost an entire project, the Noro scarf! WTH! My apartment is eating my stuff! I also bought a ball of special yarn last weekend that is no-where to be found.