Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 1: Bake Off is back!

I started this blog in 2014 to share my baking efforts, which generally coincided with The Great British Bake Off being aired in the UK on a Wednesday, hence the name. Since then the blog has evolved (read, gone off in a totally different direction), and very rarely features baking. The name still remains though, and Bake Off starts again tonight, so for the next twelve weeks this blog is heading back to its roots and will be featuring a bake every week on a Wednesday (partly so I have something delicious to eat while I'm watching Bake Off; for those of you who are here for the knitting, don't worry, that's not going to disappear).

Week one is Cake Week, and running with the theme of the show seems like a good plan, so first up, we have White and Dark Chocolate Marbled Loaf Cake. The recipe is a modification of the Mocha Marbled Loaf Cake recipe from The Great British Bake Off: How to Turn Everyday Bakes into Showstoppers, with 100g molten white chocolate added in place of the coffee, because my children are unlikely to eat anything that tastes of coffee (which is a good plan as far as my getting to eat all the cake is concerned, less good in terms of getting a quiet life). The book was a present for my 30th birthday a few years ago, and I'm not sure it's even been opened before; it definitely hasn't been used in the kitchen as it's pristine! The recipes are all a little showier than I would usually make, and I've chosen one of the simpler recipes to start with.

The cake will look like this. It will!

Making the cake was easy, and I'm sure the instructions were excellent, but I realised halfway through that I was winging it and not actually reading the recipe beyond the amounts of ingrediants required as I know how to make a basic sponge. I did make a bit of an error adding the cocoa powder - I tried creaming it with amount of milk specified, and when that didn't work I read the instructions and realised that I was meant to add the cocoa to the cake mixture, then add the milk. Oops. As a results there are a few lumps of cocoa in the chocolate portion, but not enough that anyone else will notice. The cake baked nicely enough; the crust was a little crisper than ideal, possibly because I didn't compensate for the extra sugar in the white chocolate (adding too much sugar to a cake can make the crust crispy), but we got round that by slicing the top of the cake off and eating the offcuts with custard. Yum.

Marbling: before and after cooking

The ganache was a different matter. This afternoon it was 30 degrees, and I have no idea whether this is the reason, but the ganache *would not set*. I followed the recipe exactly, and it ended up like a pouring sauce, even after full cooling. So we have marble cake with sauce. It's delicious, but not quite what I was aiming for, not terribly photogenic, and nothing like the picture. Does anyone have a better recipe for white chocolate ganache? One that sets.

Not quite what I had planned...

I'm off to enjoy Bake Off now. If anyone else is baking along with the Bake Off, say hello in the comments, I'd love to see your bakes. And Happy Baking!

Shake it up mitts

It's the summer holidays and things are crazy busy, but I have just managed to add my Shake It Up mitts pattern to my Ravelry store. And until August 18th 2016 it's available at the bargain price of £2, including VAT, where applicable.*

The original sample (above) was knitted in Aretsano yarns alpaca blend DK, a lovely cozy yarn that came in a beautiful selection of handpaiinted colourways. Unfortunately Artesano recently went into recievership, so I have knitted a second sample in Patons Extrafine Merino DK Colour (below), which has beautiful stitch definition.

This pattern will work in any DK weight yarn, and is especially good for hand dyed variegated colourways. My testers knitted some beautiful examples (below), I am espeically excited by Aleximmie's bright yellow mitts, aren't they cheerful!

Mitts in Madelinetosh DK Twist, knitted by Aleximmie. Image copyright Aleximmie.

Adina (RainFallGirl on Ravelry) knitted her test mitts in record quick time (I think she was done within 24 hours of my posting the test notice!). I really like the colours in her yarn choice (Skeino Splendid in Peacock; below).

Adina knitted her mitts in Skeino Splendid in Peacock. Image copyright RainFallGirl.

Hope you enjoy knitting your mitts. I would love to see what your finished projects, either here or on Ravelry - just link your project to the pattern page. Happy knitting!

*After this the price will increase to £3.60.

New pattern: Flying High

The school holidays have started! And it feels like summer might finally be here, woo hoo! And I have a new pattern out: Flying High baby blanket.

This blanket is a quick and easy. It's knitted in chunky weight yarn, so knits up quickly, and the intarsia only covers a quarter of the blanket with only two colour changes per row; the tail is added with duplicate stitch at the end. The ribbons are knitted separetly and sewn on, and stitches are picked up round the edges to add the border. The first half of the blanket is also good car knitting, if you have a long journey planned where you get to be the passenger!

This blanket has been in my head for a long time - I sketched it for a submission in late-2013 - but I only got round to knitting it when a friend announced that she was pregnant, and I knew the design was a good match for her and her husband. I love anything rainbow coloured, so making this blanket was a lot of fun; if you prefer something a little more subtle, you can easily substitute the bright colours for more subtle options.

If you want to knit your own kite baby blanket, the pattern can be found here. Happy knitting!

New pattern: Busy Buzzy Bumble Bee

Last autumn my friend had a baby. I have been friends with her since I was two, so it was only right that I knitted something really special for her newborn. I had already knitted a large blanket (my Nature's Way blanket) for her first child, and decided that I wanted to knit a smaller blanket that had something in common with the first, so went for a bright bumble bee knitted on a bright green background.

Busy Buzzy Bumble Bee

I loved knitting this pattern. The chunky weight yarn means it knits up quickly, and the intarsia is straightforward, which large blocks of colour. I stitched the trail on at the end using duplicate stitch, which is a great technique for very small blocks of colour, or lines of single stitches, and saves a few ends!

Running on a theme: Nature's Way was given to the new baby's older brother when he was born

The pattern (Busy Buzzy Bumble Bee) is available now in my Ravelry store, and is included in my storewide sale - all patterns have 30% off until the end of June. Happy knitting!

Summer Socks KAL 2016: Getting ready

Whatever other knitting is happening, there are always some socks on the needles. Having learnt to knit socks last year, they are my go to portable project. I have knitted socks for my siblings, my mum, my husband and my children, as well as several friends. So I was very excited to hear about the Summer Socks KAL, being organised by Rae (@psychoknitter on Instagram), where the aim is to spend the summer having a lovely time knitting socks and sharing the experience with fellow sock knitters around the world. The official cast on date is tomorrow (June 15th), and the Ravelry group* is becoming increasingly chatty.

One pre-KAL activity was a yarn swap. I was paired with Mel (@dubaimel on Instagram), who sent me this huge and wonderful parcel of goodies. There was a sock blank and some Crazy Zauberball in the parcel, so I have decided to knit up the sock blank as part of the KAL. The parcel only arrived this morning, yet I have already unravelled the blank, skeined it and given it a good soak to get the worst of the kinks out. I'm not sure it'll be ready to cast on tomorrow morning, but maybe by the end of the day I'll be lucky.

Beautiful yarn swap parcel

I have two other pairs of socks lined up for the KAL (as well as finishing a couple of pairs that are already in progress): simple striped socks with my first ever Fish Lips Kiss heel in self-striping yarn from Unbelievawool; and bright green Eidothea socks using Artesano Definition Sock Yarn in Mushy Peas.

Yarn all set for the KAL

Stripy sock blank

Fancy socks

Stripes ready for learning a new heel

If you fancy joining in with the KAL, use the hashtag #summersockskal on Instagram, or head over the Ravelry group. Happy sock knitting!

*You must be logged into Ravelry for this link to work.

Hello!

Hello! I am back!

I haven't blogged in ages as I have been working hard on my PhD thesis, but it is now done and submitted. Woo hoo!

To celebrate I am offering 30% off ALL the patterns in my Ravelry store until the end of June.* No code needed.

Right, I am off to enjoy the sunshine, but I will be back soon, promise.

*I'll be having a pricing resturcture at the start of July, so get a bargain before any price increases.

Ooh, purple yarn

Hello! It has been a while. I am still working on my thesis, but am getting there. For the past few months, knitting has been limited to socks, mostly vanilla ones as my brain is occupied with too many other things to work on anything complicated.

While I said no more blog posts until I submit, I had to tell you about my latest pair of socks, knitted in Debbie Bliss Rialto Luxury Sock. I had seen this yarn online, and added it to my birthday list, but when I saw it in my local yarn store a couple of weeks ago I had to take a ball home with me. I went for colourway 05, Mutek, a purple background with rainbows running through it. Essentially if someone had said 'design a yarn with colours that are perfect for Vikki', they may well have come up with this.

I was excited to get the yarn home and start it immediately. So much so that I decided to knit one sock from the outside of the ball, and one from the middle, two at a time, as the way the colour emerges from this yarn there is little chance of getting socks that match. This goes against my usual sock-knitting approach - I like my socks to match! For a little while I worked on socks with one purple toe and one green toe; I'm not sure I even made it to the end of the toe increases, it turns out I can't bring myself to knit completely mismatched socks.

I unravelled what I had knitted (easier said than done; this experience reminded me why I like my yarns neatly plied - this is much looser, almost a single, even though it clearly has two colour plies), and carefully rewound the yarn into two balls. This yarn does not want to make matching socks. It does have a repeat, but the repeat has mirrored rainbows with different colour main threads running through them (pinkish for one rainbow and a much bolder purple for the other), and weighs about 30g! And the colours change very gradually, making it very hard to find identical sections of yarn, even in good light. In the end I gave up trying to match them and went for a rainbow going up one foot and down the other, but both socks having purplish toes.

Occasionally the socks matched, for a row or two!

Progress was fast, in some ways necessarily so - while I love the colours in this yarn, I didn't terribly enjoy the knitting experience. The yarn dyed my hands faintly purple, and frogging was almost impossible, partly because I found the yarn rather splitty - if I didn't knit these fast I was never going to finish them! I made change from my usual heel-type, which requires being able to accurately measure the row gauge for the gusset placement, and went for the Fleegle heel instead, which relies on you trying on the sock and starting the gusset at the point where your foot meets the base of your leg, far easier than trying to measure row gauge on this yarn. The heel was a nice change. The construction is somewhat curious and you end up with a triangular heel flap. The heel uses a surprisingly small amount of yarn; I quite enjoyed it.

I whizzed through the rest of the socks, and ended up with a pair about 10 days after I started them. They are really warm and cozy, and the colours are beautiful. I shall reserve judgement on their durability - the yarn is very loosely plied, and was a little fluffy in places once I'd finished knitting them. The yarn does contain 25% nylon, which should improve durability, but these might become bed-socks as I'm not sure they're going to stand up to the abuse of being worn in shoes. The socks had a good soak last night; it took three rounds of water before I got all the loose dye off them. I might use this yarn again, but probably for a shawl or scarf rather than as socks and it's definitely going to be washed before use.

Back to the thesis now. Normal knitting, designing and blogging service should resume soon. In the meantime, you can keep up to date with my knitting progress by following me on Instagram.