Happy Christmas and Happy 2017

Yesterday I finally got around to stringing up some of the shells we found on the coast this summer. All pretty things end up on the Christmas tree if there is nowhere else to put them! Like seashells with holes in, and even taps.

I think I won't be blogging till January. Arthur is back from university; Christmas dinner has been planned; flat in London booked and ready for us! I just need some knitting.

Ho ho ho, and all the best to all of you!

Baking for the holidays

Not much knitting going on, but I did get some sweet things baked. It's sort of silly, since Stephen and I are not really supposed to eat the stuff, but poor wee Arthur has been away from Mom's baking for months and Elaine has to have something in her lunch since she has to go to school till the 23rd... 

Chocolate thumbprint cookies with sprinkles and kisses

The kids always enjoyed making the pink and green cookies. You make dough, put green sugar in half and pink in the other half, make balls, squish them together, roll them in even more sugar and then flatten the balls with the bottom of a glass.

They use only egg yolks, so of course one has to make meringues with the whites.

We are not into piping bags around here 

Yum yum.

Pinky yarn becomes a hat

This is Odessa, by Grumperina, made with two strands of pink/orange sock yarn held together. One of the great pre-Ravelry popular patterns, as you can see from the gallery. We were show-offs before there was Rav.

Funny, in that gallery, my previous Odessa is very close to the top. That was made in the summer of 2007, and I joined Ravelry in October of that year. And so did everyone else, I guess, and we lost interest in things like designer-kept project galleries.

It is still a great hat pattern. I love the swirls, and looking back at that previous post I am reminded how great it looks with stripes. I wish I'd read that before embarking on this one; I would have contrived a stripe or two somehow! 

This will go to one of the Scrabble ladies for Christmas. Now I just need to think of something Arthur would like...

Got some new old magazines

Someone on Ravelry was getting rid of these old magazines, and wanted scraps of yarn to make cat-toy mice with in return, so, double win for me. I had a bag of small balls I had been keeping in case the kids wanted to do spool knitting, but since they hadn't, for several years, I gave her that and got a big bag of goodies. 

Lux, the soap, made super fashion-y knitting books. Love this outfit for watching the races. 

Even a pattern for a knitting bag! I doubt it would hold its shape in actual use, and it looks like it might get unbalanced and tip all your stuff out, but it's a nice idea.

Another book had these great kids' patterns: a little dress, a coat and a hockey uniform!

There were also several Vogue Knitting magazine and other things.

Sad news... The woman who makes toys for cats has cats, and all these gems were covered in cat dander; just flipping through them gives me sniffles and headaches. I might scan a few things, but I can't keep them.

At least I got rid of those little scraps...

Knitting news

I started a cowl with this orangey pinkish fingering wool. I think it's actually a wool/silk blend and it is very nice to work with. This is my second attempt because it turned out I didn't like the first thing I tried.

It is a lace pattern with yarnovers and knit-three-togethers, something on every row; no plain knitting. The pattern repeats every four rows, and it's not hard to visualize or remember, but on every row after the first two I found mistakes, and the final straw was when I came to a point where the whole K3tog had apparently not been done at all and the stitches had dropped down several rows. (I know, it's only a few rows, maybe six pattern rows, but still...) Some people can fix their lace without frogging*; I am not one, and if I'm going to rip out four or five rows, I might as well rip the whole thing and go back to my mitten... which is what I have done.



*There is a happy ending.
Thanks to someone on Ravelry who found that post when I asked about it. I thought it was in the last 5 years; it was 10 years ago!

What happened with the jelly

Jelly. In a mottled glass bowl. Well, you can see it is red, but that's about all...

You can't really see that there is a layer of horseradish on the bottom. I think this could have been avoided if I'd waited for the jelly to stiffen up a bit more before adding the other ingredients. I imagine that in a perfect jellied beet salad, the horseradish is evenly distributed, but what do I know?

Here it is on an orange plate.

There was a bit of an issue with the unmoulding. You have to warm it up a tiny bit to liquify the jelly on the outside so it slides out of the bowl nicely. You can get thin metal moulds to do this properly, but I don't have one, so used a glass bowl. So, we had to warm it quite a bit, got carried away and warmed it too much = a bit too much liquid jelly on the plate. 

I think the layer of horseradish is a bit off-putting. It doesn't glisten with lovely beet colour the way it should, I think. 

But people ate it, a bit. My neighbour had some of the leftovers today and said, "that taste was great and refreshing!!" And that's good enough for me!

A hint of things to come

Once upon a time, I picked up a cookbook that my neighbour was getting rid of. It was the Centennial Year Cook Book of the Timmins chapter of the Hadassah Daughters of Isreal. (Second edition!)

My neighbour's onetime mother-in-law had contributed many recipes, but this lady, Mrs Mark Hoffman, was very generous as well, especially with the "things in Jello" recipes. I can tell you now that I couldn't find julienned beets in a can, and had to julienne canned sliced beets. I can also tell you that a canned beet has virtually no flavour. I assume the horseradish and lemon jelly will be sufficient!

It's all a bit hard to photograph, but somehow when I unmold it tomorrow, I'll show you in all its glory. (I hope!)