Another tiny knitted bear and more bread

I made another batch of "French" bread.  This time I used Julia Child's recipe, which is very similar to the other recipes I've used, except that it calls for longer rising times.  The rising took about 8 hours, in total, I think.  The recipe certainly isn't more difficult, it just takes more planning.  As I'm in a cabin all day, I don't have that hard of a time in scheduling bread baking, believe it or not.  Here are the finished loaves.  I'm not sure why the tops are so dark- maybe too much steam?

And look, a nice uneven crumb!  I probably could have let it rise a little more, but I've been scared by horrible collapsing bread events at this altitude.

For Christmas, Carolyn and CR gave me a little knitted polar bear ornament.  I was intrigued by its construction, and set about to duplicate it.  The brown bear in the picture is my attempt to do that.

Isn't he adorable?  And really easy to make, too.  His bottom is a toe-up sock toe.  Then his shoulders are shaped like the toe of a top-down sock.  His head is shaped with a typical sock heel, and then his nose is just simple decreases!  The arms and feet are just little tubes.  In short- simple to make if you've ever made a sock.

Another book that I picked up from the library- A Blessing of Bread- has yielded lots of recipes that I want to try (Israeli Pita Bagels, anyone?).  At the moment, I have a batch of Lithuanian Challah rising in the oven.  Unlike most Challah recipes, it's made without any eggs, except for the final egg wash.