Making Monday - The 2 B Cake

We now have an abundance of beetroot at the allotment. It was planted by my inlaws, but as they are on holiday I have been harvesting it before it gets too big. It is not ordinary beetroot, it is (I think) Chioggia beetroot and is striped inside like a candy cane!

This seems to mean that when it is boiled and pureed it turns into pink mush rather than dark red mush! (However it doesn't stain your hands, which has got to be a bonus!)

I was looking through the Abel & Cole website for ideas of what to do with all of these beetroot and decided on Sara Blackmore's beetroot cake rather than another chocolate cake.

It is certainly moist, and is nice enough, but isn't the best cake I've ever made. A little too sweet and, despite the mixed spice and nutmeg, possibly needs a little something else.

However, it still hit the spot at 11am this morning whilst Thomas slept after a hectic morning at Tumble Tots!

Making Monday - A Wolves Scarf

It is football time again, and my team are sitting at the dizzy heights of 5th in the Premier League (we were top for a short time on Saturday).
This scarf, made for the Stephen West KAL, is my new football scarf. I am hoping it is lucky.

This was a mystery knit along and after much deliberation I decided on Wolves colours and I am very glad I did. I am not sure any of my other choices from the previous post would have looked as good. I was hoping the pattern would be more like his stripey shawls such as daybreak - however this helped me overcome my intarsia fear and I quite like the end result.

The yarn is The Yarn Yard Clan in Saffron, Soot and Tanzelope. The Tanzelope was a club colourway, the Saffron was a recent purchase and I got the soot from someone destashing on Ravelry.
Clan isn't my favourite sock yarn, it isn't hard wearing enough for me. However it is perfect yarn for a shawl; lightweight, warm and soft.

I used the whole skein of Saffron, bar a few metres. However I have about 1/3 of a skein of Soot and over half a skein of Tanzelope left. Socks for Thomas maybe?

Making Monday - Fruit time

This week has seen me starting to collect the fruit from the gardens and allotment.
I came home from the allotment with a few blackberries and a handful of tiny yellow plums. These were joined by some damsons and a couple of pears from my FIL; and some raspberries from the canes at the bottom of my garden.

Now, what to do with this random assortment of fruit. There wasn't enough of any one thing to do anything useful; so I stewed it all together with a tiny bit of sugar and ended up with some kind of tart fridge jam



It seemed like it would be the perfect filling for a cake. So I spent yesterday perfecting my sponge recipe. I have 8" cake tins, and a normal sponge recipe is never enough. Yesterday I used 4 eggs which weighed 270g. I used the same amount of butter, sugar and flour and it seemed to work perfectly.



Now to find some friends to eat it.

Making Monday. Too many courgettes.

I have ten courgettes plants at the allotment. This, I have discovered is probably eight (or maybe even nine) too many. It is not possible for one family of three, their relatives and friends to eat the volume of courgettes produced by ten plants. It is courgettes with every meal here. I have even resorted to baking and can tell you that the Green & Blacks recipe for courgettes loaf is very good indeed. This is of course due entirely to the courgettes and has nothing at all to do with the bar of dark chocolate it contains.

Cupcake Shrug - Sirdar 1239

I give the credit to Kate and her bobble obsession for my latest knit.
The FO below is Sirdar 1239 from their Sirdar 397 Cosy Little Knits pamphlet. I was led to this book from Kate's bobble cardigan. I first fell in love with pattern 1240 and I managed to find the booklet online for little more than the single pattern would cost.
I have been swatching for pattern the cardigan for Thomas, I am planning on using some sock yarn so I needed to do a bit of maths as the pattern is written for DK.
In the mean time, I cast on the bolero for a special soon to be one year old.

I used The Yarn Yard Crannog, a laceweight yarn, doubled and got gauge straight away.
It is a gorgeous pinky-purple semisolid and works very well doubled.

This took about 5 evenings to make. I messed up the increases on the right side, so just mirrored my mistake on the left - so the top and bottom of the cardigan are not symmetrial. I sewed the garment together and then picked up all of the stitches at once and knit the edging in the round - a much simpler way of doing things. However I am not convinced about the edging cast off - instructions are " cast off all stitches in rib as follows:- *rib 3, knit into st 3 rows below next knit stitch, rep from *. This should create a scalloped edging. I wasn't sure what to do after I knit into the stitch 3 rows below - should I drop the stitches down to this one? Should I knit the stitch on my needle with the one 3 below? That is what I ended up doing, where I think maybe option 1 would have been correct. It does have a slight scallop, but doesn't really look like the pictures in the book.
Most importantly, it has been gifted, it fits (with growing room) and it is the perfect colour. I couldn't ask for more!

Another Mystery - my options

Yeehaw! The first Westknits Mystery Shawl KAL: Earth & Sky starts August 1st!

You need three colours, one as the anchor and then two others.

The colour choice advice is:

Snap! High Contrast - Combine light, medium, and dark shades with contrasting
colors.
Crackle! Tonal - Choose 3 shades of 1 color.
Pop! Tonal with a little extra somethin’ somethin’ - Select 2 shades of one color
combined with an accent color.

I have bought the pattern, and am trying to decide what combination of yarns to use. I pulled out the stash last night and came up with the following:

1. The soft option - Nimu Helvellyn ( a silk/cashmere mix that is the softest yarn possible), The Yarn Yard Lochan (merino/tencel) in beachglass, and The Yarn Yard clan (merino) in nude - but I may substitute a double strand of the Zephyr laceweight I used for my wedding shawl.


2. The nautical option - YY Clan in Midnight, Artist's Palette Sweet Feet " Garden Wall" and YY Clan Nude - I would probably need another skein of the Midnight to make this work.

3. Gold and Blue - YY Clan in Haystacks, Artist's Palette Sweet Feet " Garden Wall" and YY Clan in Midnight

4. Shady Garden - YY Clan in Kale, YY Toddy greens and browns, YY Clan Haystacks.


What would you choose?

A day at the embassy

It seems a birthday shrug is the perfect thing to wear with your posh frock when visiting the British Embassy in Paris.