Bake Day Wednesday is back!

Tonight is the first in the new series of The Great British Bake Off, so I am celebrating with the return of bakes on a Wednesday (I can probably manage twelve weeks of bakes...).

First off was meant to be a battenberg, but I forgot that I had lemons that needed using, so I went for a lemon drizzle cake instead. Classic and very lovely.

We also made chocolate brownies at my son's request, and he made them pretty much by himself (I did help with the weighing out though, otherwise he would have added all the flour, all the sugar, all the butter, quite a lot of eggshell, possibly not that much egg, and no chocolate as he would have eaten it all). He had a lovely time mixing all the ingredients together, even if he did cover himself in batter, and an even better time washing up afterwards - I think that was mostly the bubbles. He did an excellent job, they're delicious.

Clearly we couldn't wait to get started on these!

Fingers crossed we'll be back next week with something a little more ambitious.

Speed knitting a dinosaur

Let me introduce you to Fergus, the friendly dinosaur. Isn't he adorable?

 

One of my knitting friends announced that she was three months pregnant just before Christmas, so after all the festivities were out of the way, I emailed her, saying that I would like to knit a present for her new baby, and would she prefer unisex or gender specific, pastels or bright. She responded saying she'd like a bright, gender-neutral present. I then sat on this information for about five months, before finally deciding when she was 38 weeks pregnant that I really ought to order some yarn and cast something on!

From a conversation we'd had one evening at knitting, I knew I wanted to knit her a blanket with a dinosaur on, but hadn't got much further than that. As time disappeared I realised that knitting the blanket in chunky weight yarn was inevitable if the blanket was to be knitted on time, so started looking through lots of online yarn catalogues before eventually plumping for King Cole Big Value Chunky, mostly because it comes in an amazing shade of green that would be perfect for grass. Handily I had some of this yarn in my stash, so managed to get a tension square knitted before the yarn arrived, allowing me to chart the dinosaur. This blanket required a large chart, and as I like to chart on paper, I had to spend an hour or so wrestling with some chart paper and quite a lot of magic tape, but I got there in the end. 

I knew in my head how I wanted the dinosaur to look - nice and plump, with a friendly face, very child-friendly. It didn't take me too long to sketch the dinosaur out and make a rough chart, and as I was running short on time I decided that I'd just work from the enormous heavily taped chart, rather than making a nice chart on the computer.

This blanket was a real joy to knit. The intarsia is simple once you're past the toes, so I sped through him in under a month. I even managed to finish just before the baby arrived (kindly this baby decided to be rather late, thank you!), although slightly annoyingly I did have to start a new ball of blue just for the cast off. It could have been worse, I could have run out of yarn just before the cast off - I am very grateful I over-ordered on this occasion (over-ordered by so much that I have three un-started balls - one each in red, green and blue - and about 550g left on balls that I started, so I used less than half of what I ordered, oops).

 

So here he is, my friendly, chubby dinosaur. Now I want one!

Way(le) behind schedule

So, work (and life in general) is currently getting in the way of blogging. So I'm quite glad to be able to sit down now for five minutes to say hello. The past couple of months have been exciting, with no less than five new babies to coo over! Five! That's more in two months than usually arrive amongst my friends in a year. And there's another due in a few days time. Very exciting.

All these babies arriving does mean I am a little behind on the baby knitting schdule though. The recipient of the whale blanket arrived on Saturday, on his mum's birthday (thank you - just a name to remember and not anohter date!), and this is the current state of play of the blanket: 11 squares complete (including three whales, although they don't have features yet, so technically they're not actually complete, but close enough), 5 squares and a border to go (and some seaming and swiss darning). I have sent chocolates, a card and an IOU - just keeping up with tradition, their wedding present was six months late!

The two babies that arrived last month already have their presents: robot and dinosaur blankets. Neither of which I've written about yet, but I'll get there in the end.

 
My son's nursery worker has had her baby, hope she liked the blue and green Beyond Puerperium.

And the other baby is a co-worker who is not expecting a present, so I don't have to make something if I don't have time, and if I do I can just make something small, possibly some cute baby boots.

A month in knitting: June 2015

It's been a while, sorry! Being back at work has completely thrown me. I've been doing lots of swatching for submissions, and ploughing on with baby blankets, but once I've spent half a day at a computer for work, and the other half of the day trying to keep the family and house in order I barely have time to breathe, let alone blog. So here, belatedly, is my yarny summary for June.

Finished

Hitchhiker

A very enjoyable project, perfect for a single skein of pretty sock yarn.

 

Dinosaur blanket

A present for a friend's new baby. I finished it about half an hour after the baby arrived. And I've left writing this post so long that I can even show you a picture as I have met the lovely little baby and he has recieved the blanket.

 

WIPs

Hermione's everyday socks

The socks of the broken needles. I cast these on for May's SKA Sockdown challenge and have obviously failed to finish them on time.

Whale blanket

I might be up to about five squares now. The baby is due at the end of July, so I'd better get knitting.

Socks for my husband

They have heels, but the feet are taking ages!

Charity mitred blanket

Using up the leftovers from the dinosaur blanket (I over-bought by a bit. Quite a bit).

A cardigan for my daughter

A new pattern I'm working on. It's looking pretty so far.

Ruffle skirt for a friend's daughter

The second one of these that I've made, it'll be going to a friend's daughter for her third birthday. I thought it was finally time to use up some of the ruffle yarn from the stash.

Yarn in

200g Doctor Who yarn from The Yarn Tree

A little disappointing as yarn parcels go

 

400g sock yarn from eBay

Lovely stripy sock yarn, and it's thicker than usual, so I should be able to make some slightly speedier socks than sometimes

150g 4ply for swatching for a submission

50g more 4ply for a swatching for a submission when I decided the original colour wasn't quite right!

And I ran out of time to make the actual swatch...

100g to swatch another idea

Thicker yarn, so I got this swatch done!

200g ruffle yarn

No, I don't learn!

Yarn out

119g Hitchhiker

564g dinosaur blanket

 

+367g. I don't learn, do I?

Plans for July

Get the WIP list down a bit. Six projects on the go is too many.

My first Hitchhiker

In May I cast on my first Hitchhiker scarf. It's a pattern that has been on my radar for a long time, both through my assorted knitting groups and Ravelry. It's regarded as an excellent pattern for variegated yarns as the row lengths are constantly changing, which avoids pooling, so I cast it on with some of my Mother's Day yarn when I needed a straightforward project.

The scarf was a delight to knit. I could knit it whilst paying virtually no attention while at knitting groups or when I was the passenger in a car, or I could relax and watch the colours emerge in quieter moments. I didn't even mind when the rows got longer and longer, with each 'tooth' taking longer to emerge. I knitted the final two teeth while on a car journey to Somerset, and was a bit sad when I cast it off and was out of knitting.

Now it's done I just need to wait for some colder weather so I can wear it. I'll definitely be making more of these! Having knitted this one I know that one 400m ball of sock yarn will make 39 and three quarter teeth, which is a pretty good size for the scarf. It's always nice to have another suggestion for those balls and skeins of sock yarn that seem to just keep appearing around my house.

Yet another Granny's Favourite

A few months ago I bought my daughter an adorable outfit from our local Sainsbury's: a pair of yellow leggings with a pale blue tunic top decorated with daisies. Perfect for spring. The outfit did have one downside though, or, more accurately, the country I live in has one downside: the weather. Beautiful spring clothes don't always get that much wear in the UK as the weather is often stubbornly cold, even when the calendar suggests it should be otherwise.

So I decided to make a cardigan to go with the outfit, and went for the obvious choice: Granny's Favourite. I've made several before, and they fly off the needles. The cardigan is seamless, has just a little lace, and the use of only three buttons down the front means the cardigan lasts for ages as it doesn't really have to fit properly.

I was going to cast on in yellow as I have loads spare in the cupboard (a blanket's worth. I have twice tried to cast on a blanket with it, and both times given up after a few rows. This yarn is ill-fated.). Then I stopped and thought. No. A yellow cardigan should not be worn with a pair of yellow leggings, unless you want your child to look like a banana. So I went for navy blue instead.

The knitting was quick. The yarn (Stylecraft Lullaby) was lovely to work with - nice and squishy, and a little thicker than standard DK, which I liked. I even had the perfect buttons: little white daisies with yellow centres. This cardigan is lovely! No modelled photos I'm afraid as within seconds of putting the cardigan on she split something down it. Oops!

And this outfit was clearly destined to be as my sister has bought the same outfit for my daughter, but in the next size up. This cardigan will be getting a lot of wear!

Super special brownies

For my day job I have been lucky enough to travel to the U.S. several times, and one of the things I was really excited about was trying some American sweets.  I am a big fan of sweets, and can tell what pretty much any UK sweet will taste like (I am led to believe that this is normal if you are British, but pretty weird if you're from anywhere else in the world). 

I tried several sweets with varying levels of success - American chocolate coated malt balls (Whoppers) are not the same as Maltesers, they were massively disappointing - no creaminess to the chocolate, no melt in the mouth texture! I really liked trying all the different varieties of M&Ms though - pretzel, peanut butter, shiny minty Christmas themed ones. All amazing. So I was very excited when I popped into B&M (a shop full of bargains) and discovered that they stocked several varieties of American import sweets, including the peanut butter M&Ms, which were my favourites.

After the success of my M&M blondes a few weeks ago, I thought I'd make some peanut butter M&M brownies. I used the Hummingbird Bakery brownie recipe, and threw in two 'video' boxes of the M&Ms, then cooked the brownies as normal.

One box?

Two looks much better!

And the result? Delicious, sweet, sticky, rich brownies. Really delicious! I can't eat more than one in a sitting though! They are pretty decadent.