Knit, Bake, LOVE!

This is the season for the things that I love to do the most. Fall weather just screams baked goods and handknits to me. Sure, I knit my way through the summer, doing sweaters even (fingering weight ones), but the baking really fell off. Truth be told it's been off for a long time, something about doing it as your job can put you off doing it at home too, and it hasn't come back much in the time since I quit.

I have baked since I was old enough to be trusted with the oven. I mostly baked sweet stuff, since that is so much fun to 'quality control'.  I learned early on to ask my dad if I could bake; his answer was never no.  Mom would always ask things like "Didn't you just make brownies?  Do we really need cookies too?" and "Are you going to clean up afterwards?" I totally get where she was coming from now, I would be asking the same ones, but then it was so much easier to just ask dad....

The most likely things to come out of my oven these days are scones, muffins, or cookies.  Still the sweet stuff. I get a kick out of the fact that my 5 year old will request scones. Chocolate chip ones, but still. Muffins are another go-to around here when the baking mojo is with me.  I have one recipe that I memorized a long time ago after making it dozens of times.  It can become chocolate chip muffins as easily as it can become the brown sugar and cinnamon that I made this morning.  Gotta love quick, easy and yummy!

I'm hoping to jump back onto the bread making bandwagon soon, there is nothing quite like bread fresh out of the oven with a little butter on it.  I'll have to wrestle the kids for it, and make about three times what I need so that I have some left for sandwiches or another snacktime, but it will be worth it.

To fall, when my loves shine :).

Mmmmmm Scones

I love these scones.  They are very yummy. I've tried lots of other recipes, but I keep coming back to this one. I got it from a mom at my daughter's school 4 years ago and it has been a breakfast staple here ever since.  There is only one downside - the non dairy creamer.  I really prefer to use natural ingredients whenever possible and let's face it, there is not very much that is natural about non dairy creamer, but they just don't turn out the same if I use half and half and add vanilla.  I will continue the quest to find the perfect scone recipe that uses half and half or cream, but until then, this is my favorite. Not all non dairy creamers are the same, I always use International Delight French Vanilla.  I've tried CoffeeMate's and it left a 'chemically' aftertaste that was not pleasant.

Chocolate Chip Scones

4c flour (or 1lb 4oz  - I prefer to measure this by weight since it's more accurate)
3T sugar
4t baking powder
1/2t salt
1/2t cream of tartar
1 1/2 sticks cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 egg, separated
1 1/2c non dairy creamer
1c mini chocolate chips (you could use regular, but the minis disperse oh so nicely throughout the scones)
 Raw Sugar or crystal sugar

In a large bowl, combine the first 5 ingredients.  Cut the butter pieces into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or two knives.

In a small bowl (or the liquid measuring cup where you have measured your creamer), combine the non dairy creamer with the egg yolk. 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.

Turn dough out onto a floured counter and knead about 10 times. Divide dough in half and shape each piece into a circle about an inch thick (7-8 inches across). Cut each circle into 8 wedges.

Brush scones with egg white and sprinkle the sugar on top.  Any chunky type sugar will do, it adds a lot to the scones.

Bake at 425 for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy some and then hide a few from your family or else they will eat them all.

Designer moment

I had a flash today of feeling like a real designer today.  I was starting to type my pattern into the final format that it will be published in and it really started to sink in that this is real and I will have a published pattern soon! 

Adding to the 'real deal' moment was last week, when my yarn support arrived.  I had been waiting on this package, and when I finally got to open it and see what color the sample will be made in, it was awesome.  A very cool feeling to have someone send you yarn to make a sample of your pattern. 

I am really happy that soon all of the secrecy will be over and I can show the gazillion pictures I have of the various stages of this process. 

Has it really been that long?

A month and a half, really?  It's been that long since I posted? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, we had a lot of life stuff happen.  As in, we lost half of our finished basement to an undisclosed grading/water issue and the water/mold issue that it caused.  Good times.  I've had my pity party about it and we are moving on.  I only occasionally want to yell at the previous two owners and their decision to not disclose anything, this is progress. I do wish the dryer hadn't decided to give up at the same time, but I *love* my new washer and dryer, so that's an upside.

On the design side of things, I have made progress! I actually finished writing the pattern and grading it into 6(!!!!) sizes. I was originally planning to make it into 4 sizes, but I found out that the patterns that sell best have a size range of 2-12, so I went for it. A couple of Sunday mornings spent at the coffee shop with my calculator, and it's done. For the most part anyway.  I still have to type all the final numbers into the pattern on the computer (I did my calculations old school on paper) and then check and make sure that my measurements of certain parts work.

I can say that I have never actually spent any time before now pondering the proper neckline depth of a size 2 versus a size 6 or 12. Or the armholes. Oh, the armholes. They are very important, but they are not always easy to figure out - how deep, when to start underarm shaping, how many stitches to cast on for the underarm. Especially when you have other factors to work around, like stitch patterns and chest circumferences.

The hardest part is behind me, I think.

I did it!

I did it.  I am still in a little bit of shock.  I created a sweater from an idea that I had and I knit it.  With no pattern. And it looks like a sweater and even fits the intended recipient!

I want to show everyone, and I mean everyone, this sweater.  But I can't. I'm not self publishing this design, so it is up to Three Irish Girls to release it for the world to see.  It might kill me to wait.

The knitting was just the first part, though.  I wrote down what I did as I went (thank goodness, because I would stand no chance of remembering all the tiny details if I hadn't). The next step is taking those notes and assembling them into a coherent set of instructions that someone else can follow to make a sweater that looks just like mine.  

My husband racked up major points by taking the boys to the grocery store to give me time to type up the pattern.  It went surprisingly well (the pattern typing, he isn't back with the boys yet so I will have to assume that they all survived the trip). I was worried that turning my notebook pencil scrawls into something that made sense would be impossibly hard.  It wasn't too bad.

It going smoothly might have something to do with the fact that I decided to just leave the number parts blank. Fully grading this pattern into the 4 sizes I want it in is still a bit daunting.   I have lots of the numbers worked out, really.  But it can start to make your head hurt when you are trying to figure out exactly how many inches and fractions of inches a neckline should go down or an armhole should be for a 4 year old versus a 6 or 8 or 10 year old.  I like the easy measurements a lot -- chest circumference and length, those make me feel smart (I am choosing to ignore the fact that at least half of my children could figure these out without much help).  The others, not so much.  I will get there.  When I am properly caffeinated and feeling rather brave.

For now though, I am going to relish my (albeit small) victory.

So that didn't happen.....

In true Nadia fashion, I piled WAY too many things on my to do list for Saturday and I didn't get to everything.  I neglected to factor in the 4 or so hours that I would be away from home for my daughter's friend birthday party -- a minor oversight.  All was not lost, the house was decent (a huge step up from it's usual I'm afraid), there was food and cake that turned out well, so I will call it a success.

The cake was new for us, my daughter wanted strawberry, so a recipe for strawberry cake I found here . It was good, and went well with the cream cheese whipped cream frosting I threw on there.  Strawberries and cream is a classic combination and it did not fail me :).

The pattern writing completely got skipped, so that is this week's project.  With all of the notes I have I can see what I did for each step, the hard part will be explaining it in a way that someone else can understand. Oh, and that tiny little matter of grading it into 4 sizes.  I am refusing to be scared off by this.  I have been told that I can be very stubborn (still not sure I buy this completely), so I am just deciding to be the boss of these numbers and bend them to my will.  No sweat. I hope.

Up for today: Pattern writing

Today is the day, I think.  As a fabulous way to avoid cleaning my house for my daughter's family birthday party tomorrow, I want to start writing the actual pattern for my design.  After 2 versions of knitting through, I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing (okay, that may be a stretch, but at least I'm closer than I was!) and I want to keep the ball rolling.

And the big thing: I need to get over my fear of grading (doing the math for different sizes). It's not that bad, I can handle it.  So I need to just do it. I already worked out some of the numbers, so let's get it done.

When I'm not working on that, I will be frosting cupcakes for the friend party today, baking and frosting the cake for tomorrow, thinking about what food I will be feeding people tomorrow, and possibly cleaning. Okay, definitely cleaning, but that is my least favorite, by far and I will put it off as long as I can.

This picture is from Three Irish Girls (copyright is held by her), it is her second colorway created to raise money for support for pregnancy loss. More information can be found here . It is just one more way that Sharon is awesome. 

My order is already in, and I would love to see more people order.  Great yarn, great cause, and that's that.

Designing is not for punks.

Seriously.  I have this cute little sketch (by cute little sketch I mean something that my 4 year old probably could have drawn -- I am not gifted in the drawing department) and know what stitch pattern I want where, but that leaves a lot in the leap to finished garment.

Especially a finished garment that is the intended size and will fit a person of that size.  That doesn't have ginormous armholes and sleeves.  Not that I would know anything about that. 

I had this romantic little notion of designing, that I would sit down with this gorgeous yarn and just have this garment develop on my needles just exactly as I had envisioned it.  I have been enjoying the gorgeous yarn, and it is proving to be very resilient as it is repeatedly frogged. 

But I'm enjoying it.  Really. I had never created anything before, I was a die hard pattern follower.  This is opening up a new world that will never be untouchable again.  I *can* do this.  It is not effortless, it is not easy, and it isn't perfect, but it is.  Something is being brought into being because I thought it up and am bringing it into reality. 

New Title :)

I probably should have searched around a little before I chose the first blog title, since that one turned out to be popular and in use on etsy and Ravelry.

This one fits me better anyway, it's a nod to Eat Pray Love (loved the book, the movie not so much) and encompasses more of my life.  I am not completely back into the baking swing of things, but I'm getting there.  Doing it as a job for a while meant I wasn't baking much, if anything at home.  Now that I'm not working, it's time to bring the baker back!

Frogging -- it's good for you.

Really, it is. 

I'm trying to completely believe this after my latest test knit involved no less than 4 (or was it 5?) froggings.  I wanted to bury them somewhere and pretend that I had never started them.  But you know what? I'm glad I finally got them done. 

I am the first to admit that in my own projects, if it isn't some glaring error that is going to stare at me every time I look at the finished object, I will let it go instead of ripping back.  It always seems so much easier to just keep going.  Let's face it, though, those can come back to bite you sometimes. 

So you should have started the decreases a couple of inches back, no problem, it'll work out fine. Or the armpits of your sweater will be hanging down around your chest and you will have to rip back a lot more than you would have if you had rectified the situation sooner.

You missed that tiny line in the pattern that read 'At the same time'? Knit on. So the neckline that was supposed to be just below the collarbone, it'll look just as good on your throat, right? I think many a knitter has cursed the 'at the same time' line.  I pledge to make sure that any pattern I write draws attention clearly to this line, I know I always appreciate when it is bolded or in caps to yell - HEY, you!  Yes, you!  Look at me or you will be soooooo sorry!

I hate the idea of ripping stuff out, but really, the decision to do it is the hardest part.  After that, it's not bad.  Unless you totally screw up getting it back on the needles.  Not that I have ever done that.  Or figured out my new system for avoiding that problem: Rip out one less row than you need to, then undo that last row one stitch at a time as you put your work back on the needles.  Yes, I am sure I am not the first one to figure that out and I could have saved myself hours of cursing by perusing Ravelry for tips, but it was quite the Aha! moment for me.  Sad, yes, but true.

My Hail Mary Paid Off!

I got a response to my design submission a couple weeks ago. It thanked me for submitting, which had to be was the first sentence of a 'thanks, but no thanks' rejection.

But it wasn't.  The next sentence told me my design had been selected.  I almost fell off of my chair.  When I thought I had regained the power of speech, I wanted to tell someone, but my 4 year old wasn't interested and my husband was trying to get the baby to surrender to his nap, so I just sat there in shock.  I'm not 100% sure that I'm still not in shock.

So here's the thing: now I have to WRITE A PATTERN!  One that will produce a product that resembles the design that was accepted. In 4 sizes. Sizes that should fit actual human children, be proportional and everything.  That's not overwhelming at all.  No siree bob, it's a piece of cake for someone who has never written a pattern for anything before. 

Part of me is freaking out about not being able to pull this off and letting down my favoritest yarny company in the process causing them to cut me off from their beautiful yarn (Three Irish Girls would never actually do this, but in my freak out moments, it seems highly likely).

The other part is looking at it as a good thing because, let's face it, I probably wouldn't have gotten around to actually writing up the pattern if I didn't have a reason like this. 

I am on take 2 of knitting a size that will fit a little person who lives in my house.  I learned that knitting something you are making up using a new knitting technique and a new knitting style (continental vs. English) is not the best idea.  Take 2 involves using my trusty English throwing and a proven technique.  It is going much better.