Monday, November 26, 2007

Burnt Brownies

A's Knitting
It seems that switching to the yarn that he will be using for the mittens did the trick. He's doing a few purl rows now and then I'll have him do a few rows of stockinette stitch so we can see his gauge before he'll try the ribbing.



My Knitting
I tried to get away with the largest dpns I had to make but they weren't big enough. So I've been knitting it on circular needle which is going OK but a bit awkward. I've knit the first set of repeats and trying to decide whether I should undo it and add some more stitches. If it shrinks I won't get it on my head!

N's socks are finished. I think that my kitchener toe turned out quite well.






Food
Yes Mrs. Worthington, she did burn the brownies. A and I have decided to try baking on the weekends that he is home. We're thinking of alternating cookies and cake/brownies/squares/loaves. I usually use, what I refer to as, Mrs. Worthington's Brownie recipe. She was my home ec teacher in high school and so that makes the recipe more than cough, cough, cough 30 years old. The only change I've made is to use cocoa powder instead of chocolate because I usually have cocoa powder. We kinda decided that we would try less sugar next time because they were rather sweet.

Oh yeah. About burning the brownies. I turned the oven on and didn't look at what temperature. I put them in the oven when it was ready and still didn't look at the temperature. After half the cooking time had gone I wondered why they smelt like they were burning. Then I checked the temp. Way too high. I turned it down and left them in for a bit because I wanted to make sure that the eggs were done. They were rather gooey but we ate them anyway.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Blue Christmas Trio

Crochet
Yikes I'd better spead up. My plan of doing one decoration a month has fallen behind. I don't even have any ideas for any more.




My Knitting
This hat just has to have the yarn pulled through the last stitches but I'm leaning towards undoing the whole thing and starting over. There are an odd number of cables and so it means that two of the cables are decreased beside each other instead of alternating. Also the top is looking funny. I'd have to undo what I just did to make one set of cables shorter because the place where I've decreased them makes them look longer than the rest in the column. Confusing?

I bought some Isoveli to make Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's The Unoriginal Hat. I'll have to double the yarn up. My next step is to learn how to make a ball on a paper towel roll. I just found knit's with balls' post on how to make a center pull ball.

'A''s knitting
See previous post. He's still aiming to have them done early enough to have them sent off for Christmas!

Food
I saw a recipe for Zucchini Carpaccio but not having some of the ingredients (leeks, ricotta cheese, mint or any of the herbs except dill) I just made it with what I had and I liked it enough that I've made it several times since. I suppose it could be made with cottage cheese or feta too.