When Things Come Together

Not long ago I decided to make another beret for  Jim's mom.  She really enjoyed the first beret I made her a couple of years ago and wears it constantly.   I had in my mind what I wanted, and being that this time of year there are lots of toques, slouches to be found, but that wasn't her style.

Once I started reading the Ravelry notes from other knitters who made this (this is the part that can confuse me)  it appeared that this hat might be big.    So I followed one persons suggestion to knit the brim in the small size and increase to adults size later.  So glad I did as I can see it would have been too big for my mother-in-law.  To be honest I feel I could have gotten away with making this all in the smaller size.

Pattern:  Cashmere Beret by Churchmouse Designs

Yarn:  Jamieson & Smith together with Rowan Kidsilk Haze

 My Notes on Ravelry

I was so happy to get such a great photo of Lillian with her new Beret it looks so great on her !   Very soft and feminine.  Lillian is very happy with it, bonus ! 

  

Alice

p.s. it just happened the day she received her beret..she was wearing the exact shade of lilac as her hat. Perfect photo.

Pink Beret

Beret for Baby it`s a free pattern on Ravelry.

My notes:

This is the baby beret that I made to go with the baby cardigan I posted about yesterday.  This was not the design I had in mind originally.   I had thought of finding a toque that I could use some of the lace pattern from the sweater and incorporate it.   But at that time I thought I was on a time restraint and decided on this instead   I also wasn`t sure if I had enough yarn leftover from the sweater.   But I  did.    It`s amazing how much yardage are in the Madelinetosh skeins.   

I`m very happy how this turned out.  Glad I didn`t try to get to matchie with the set.   It`s a bit bigger size that the sweater so it may fit up to 6 months.   I`m going to request that I get some pictures sent with the baby wearing her gifts from me and then I can show you.

Just need to wrap everything up and just wait for the birth announcement and sent it off to Europe. 

All the best to you today.

Alice

Waiting for Baby

Waiting for Baby is what is happening now that I finished the gift I started a couple of months ago for a relative's daughter.  I found out she was having a girl and got promptly into making something girlie like.  I was initially told that the due date was in January but after completing  the gift I'm told that it's  February, thus the waiting.

This sweater i chose was done as a store sample at the local yarn store except it was done in a dark green and it looked fabulous.   I did not have yarn so I knew that I'd better use something machine washable and decided on Madelintetosh.

  Pattern:  Maile Sweater by Nikki Van Der Car

Yarn:  Madelinetosh Sock

Needles:  3.5 mm - extra notes

The pattern is Maile Sweater by Nikki Van Der Car.   I decided to work with the Madelinetosh Sock Yarn as I knew it was wise to select a machine wash yarn for the baby.   There was a lot of frustrations around this pattern on the instructions.  It definitely is not a beginners baby sweater, with the lace pattern and all.  It's a knit bottom up in one piece and you knit the sleeves flat and then join to begin the yoke.  This is another area people had issues with in the joining the sleeves.  It was so tight to join the stitches of sleeves that you  thought you were stretching things out of shape.  After much perseverance and 3 - 4 rows later you were back on easy knitting. 

The sweater looked so tiny to me at that I lengthened the body by 1 " and also the sleeve.  I could now see that you could have gotten away with going all the away to 2" to get more wear of the sweater.  It's probably only going to fit for a couple of months.

I

An adorable newborn sweater.

I also made a tiny little tam that a fellow knitter Cathy Wong had suggested.   I used the left over yarn I had from the sweater and  just finished with a couple of yards left over.  I'll share the picture on another day. 

I have been itching to find a cardigan/pullover n to knit in January with 10 balls of Rowan Felted Aran that I purchased from a sale a couple of years.  That is my knitting mission right now, besides finishing a couple of little things I have on the go, that are not giving me any excitement.

Happy Day to you.

Alice



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Look Who's Coming to Town

I bet you thought I was talking about Santa !  Well, for some of you who have little ones this is important news, but I do believe Santa has been in town  and in full action for several weeks now, but I'm not talking about him.   I'm talking about The Minimalist.   I've been reading their blog off and on for the last 6 months and really enjoy their writing and insights.    I found out they had been in Vancouver in the summer and was disappointed in the not getting to see them, but now I found out in  plenty of notice they will be on tour in December in Vancouver.    I thought it would be fun to go and listen to them speak and share in their journey.   Passing this along to any of you who may live in the area and may be interested in having an interesting, inspirational evening out. 

Alice xox

Creamy Totato Soup

I had been looking at the very large bowl in the fridge of the leftover tomatoe juice that I did not  use when canning the tomatoes on the weekend.   I had removed all the tomatoes and now I had all this liquid.    I had told myself I  would do something with it.   So I decided I would make tomato soup.  A first for me on that too.   I make lots of soup  just not tomatoe.  Not sure why, must be something about having the canned stuff when I was younger.

Today I searched for a recipe and found a Martha Stewart Creamy Tomato Soup and then checked Joy the Baker and found she  used the same recipe. So I knew this was the one I wanted.  Plus I didn't want to go shopping for any ingredients.   


Here is Creamy Tomato Soup, from Joy the Baker

Creamy Tomato Soup
adapted from Martha Stewart
serves 6

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, finely diced
course sea salt and fresh black pepper
splash of red wine vinegar (just over 1 Tablespoon)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 dried bay leaf
2 cans (14 1/2-ounces each) low sodium chicken broth
2 cans (28-ounces each) whole peeled tomatoes in juice (with basil if available)
1/2- 3/4 cup whole milk or cream

In a large saucepan or Dutch oven melt butter over medium heat. Add oil, carrot and onion and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the onion is translucent and the carrots are well on their way to softening, about 7 to 8 minutes. Add the splash of vinegar at stir until cooked off.

Turn flame to low and add flour. Incorporate into the onion and carrots. Add tomato paste and cook for 1 minute to distribute the paste and cook off the flour taste.

Add chicken broth and bay leaf.  With clean hands add the tomatoes to the pot, breaking the whole tomatoes up with your hands as you add the tomatoes and the juice. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from heat. Using an emulsion blender, puree soup in pot until you’ve reached the desired consistency. Maybe you like more chunks than some folks! If you don’t have an emulsion blender, let the soup cool for about 30 minutes and, working in two or three batches, puree some of the soup in a conventional blender until smooth. Place pureed soup in a bowl and puree the remainder in the pot.

Return pureed soup to the pot and stir in milk or cream. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Let cool to room temperature before dividing among airtight containers or jars (leaving 1 inch of space at the top) and freeze.



I have to say that my recipe is also adapted.   I probably had 6 cups of the liquid from the tomatoes, so I did not add canned tomatoes or the broth as the recipe called for. I also added my own tomatoe paste I made from here.    Somehow I felt it need some rice.  So I added about 1/2 cup of brown rice (uncooked).   I  let the soup cook for at least 1 hour to make sure the rice well cooked.

You can adapt this recipe to whatever you have around in your kitchen that you want to use up.make it yours.


Delicous !!!  

I`m very proud of how many home grown ingredients went into this soup.  There was the onions, carrots, tomatoes, and the thyme.  Now how can the soup possibly go wrong.

Alice

September Review

Just the other day I looked at the date on my last post here and realized that it was the end of September and I didn`t post once in the month.

These are a few things I did in September.

Starting first with some canning.  I had received from mother-in-law who did a lot of canning over many years, her canning equipment.  

We bought 20lbs worth of peaches and decided to give it a go.  My husband gave me a hand and it was definetely a two man job.   I had followed instructions as per my mother-in-law, as well checked out some websites.   The first time it seems like you have so many pots and equipment going on at the same time, but I could see this being enjoyable once you know what you are doing.

We blanched the peaches and removed the skins packed them in the sterilized jars and then poured a syrup in the jars (2 cups of sugar to 4 cups of water)  I put my syrup in a kettle on the stove, it made it much easier to pour into the jars.  We used pint sized jars,  as it suited  our needs better.   We made approximately 18 jars in total.  Which I`m sure  will be sharing.

We had planted  approximately 12 tomatoe plants in the garden this year.   We had a couple cherry tomatoe plants as well that gave us lots of tomatoes (all at once of course), but the regular tomatoes took a long time to blossom and then to ripen.  We brought all of them in recently and put them in a box covered with newpaper.  Also lined our kitchen window with some that were nearly ripened.

This Sunday I decided to give canning a try..   After checking out some sites on canning, I found that it was recommended after removing the tomatoe peels to put the tomatoes in a pot and bring them to a 5 min boil.   Since I had never canned tomatoes before this is what I did.    We put as many  tomatoes we could in a jar along with some hot tomatoe juice and lemon juice, it was starting to look more like tomate sauce.     Next time I will cook down the tomatoes and make tomato sauce.   Ideally the best tomatoes would have been Roma tomatoes for this, but that is not what we had.

All in all I`m very happy at how much we made.  Not sure how many pounds we had, maybe 8-10 lbs.  

Onto some knitting.   This is Current.  I have had this pattern for awhile and once I had the right yarn I decided to make this for the summer.  It`s a super light summer weight  and the only thing I can say about it, is that I have to stop knitting cardigans in light blue colours in Madelinetosh yarn. This one looks so similar to this one.  

This is one pattern that I had made many times.  This I made for my nephew`s  5 year old daughter`s birthday this summer.  I had made her mom one and then her oldest sister, so it seemed  right that she would get one too.  These bright colours were exactly what  she liked.   I found one skein of yarn that had them all !!!    The family was so impressed that I had all her favourite colours in that one beret.   Here are my notes.    

I could have shared all this with you in one month instead of fitting it all on day, but like they say `better late than never`   Today is the first of October so I`m starting my month in a good way.   My first post.

Alice

Most People

 

Most people don't care enough to make a difference.
Most people aren't going to buy that new thing you're selling.
Most people are afraid to take action.
Most people are too self-involved to do the generous work you're hoping for.
Most people think they can't afford it.
Most people won't talk about it.
Most people aren't going to read what you wrote.
Fortunately, you're not most people. Neither are your best customers.

by Seth Godin


Once in a while I read Seth Godin's Blog.  He writes from a marketing/business point of view but alot of what he says is easily applied to every day life.

I like this particular piece he wrote , whether we are thinking of creating something to sell or just to see who do you really want to be anyways.   Because  most people or  "average" person  will probably not be the one  would appreciate that beautiful Cladonia Shawl  Or those  crazy stripped socks.   Be prepared to not get the reaction from the àverage`person, that you might expect because most people just won`t get it.

Remember  those people who will pay a hefty price for a piece of art, because they can recognize when a piece of art has been created from passion.

Something to think about.

Alice