I took photos, but . .

this has been really quite a splendid day. I finished the latest orphan sweater and took photos. Ooo, it turned out so NICE! And then I loaded up a few books I could bear to part with and headed for Powells downtown. Sold books. Bought books (one for DH, and The Art of the Discworld for me.) and then I meet LG for lunch and giggles and guffaws and knitting. It was too brief. LG and I are identical twin daughters of different mothers. Except she got the good hair. Waist-length, thick, glossy, strong. If she weren't so adorable, I could hate her just for her hair alone, but she's also funny and sensitive anda gifted writer. We got the knitting straightened out. (Why don't they show diagrams of how the finished pieces look before you sew them together?) She gave me a wonderful cup, and three knitterly lapel buttons (Which I immediately had to pin on my chest right then and there because I loves them.) And she laughed when I offered to grab the waiter by the booty, which made me feel young again! The waiter never got within reach of the table after that.



Lunch breaks are too short. Maybe I can begin getting her to my writer's group somehow.



After that, I bought vanilla wafers, a primary ingredient for rum balls. It's time to start my Christmas cookies. I spent the rest of the afternoon listening to "The Beak of the Finch" and grinding 14 boxes of 'Nilla wafers to dust.



To make rum balls, first crush vanilla wafers to a fine powder. You can do this by taking the tea towel embroidered by your aunt Honoria, pouring the wafers into it, folding it into a nice package, and running a rolling pin back and forth over it for about twenty minutes. If you don't crush the wafers to a powder, you will get lumpy rumballs and the only thing worse than lumpy balls is a cold cockle. Good rumballs will warm the cockles of the heart of the crustiest curmudgeon.



If you are making more than one batch of rumballs, you could take the pillowcase embroidered by your aunt floradora, dump in three boxes of wafers, tie the case closed and throw it on the floor. Then put on your wooden soled shoes and practice clog dancing on it for about twenty minutes. Stomp on all the corners, and fluff the pillowcase once or twice in mid-process to be sure you thouroughly crush those cookies.

Once you have made and shared these rumballs, all your friends will be wanting some. So take the king-sized bedspread that was tie-dyed by your aut Euphoria, dump in fourteen boxes of cookies, fold up the edges and secure the package wit bungee cords, then visit your friend Max the tap-dancing elephant, and let him rock out on the bundle for at least twenty minutes. It's important to completely pulverize each and every crumb.

I ran all fourteen boxes of cookies through my good old hand crank meatgrinder. You can never find a tap-dancing elephant when you need one.

for a single batch:

6 oz choc chips (1 C.)
1/2 C. sugar
3 Tbs light corn syrup
1/2 C. rum
2 1/2 C finely crushed vanilla wafers

Melt choc chips . Add sugar and corn syrup. Mix. Add rum and cookie crumbs. Mix thouroughly and form into small balls. Allow to ripen in an air tight tin several days.

No baking. The hard part is shaping all those little balls. I bought a tiny ice cream scoop and saved myself hours of work and mess.

I mix everything in a big glass bowl. That way, I just dump in the chocolate chips, and stick the whole thing in the microwave to melt them. Saves cleaning the double boiler.

I use different kinds of alcohol for different batches. Bourbon is nice, as is Amoretto or Grand Marinier. Be creative. What doesn't go with chocolate? OK, gin leaps to mind as an appalling option. I would NOT make a batch of chocolate gin balls. but Drambuie or Bailey's Irish Cream could be nice.

So my shoulder is sore from an hour of cranking - the meat grinder - for the cookies, you filthy-minded pervs!But finagling photos onto blog just hasn't happend today. Tomorrow, with any luck . . . then I can also show off the scarf I'm whacking together out of bits while I decide what to knit next.