Monthly Archives: February 2012

Hey, Look at that, I finished something

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Here you go, something that isn’t food or school related. I’m definitely still knitting.

My Shetland Shawl

I started this shawl back in October and finished knitting it a couple weeks ago and blocked it on Wednesday, when it was a beautiful 65° outside. To refresh your memory, this is Granny Cheney’s Shetland Shawl from the book Wrapped in Lace by Margaret Stove. I knit it out of KnitPicks Bare merino lace weight and used two full skeins and size US2/2.75mm needles. I had planned on going up a needle size, I thought it would look better with a looser gauge, but I’m glad I didn’t. The shawl is delicate enough as it is and I would have run out of yarn a lot sooner. I’m pretty happy with how it looks.

Border

You can kind of see here and in the photo below where I ran out of yarn and had to grab some Jaggerspun Zephyr in white to finish up. It’s just in the areas between the center and the big border, where the double rows of holes are. It’s not a glaring difference, you can see it in person but it really doesn’t look too bad. I just hated to order and extra ball of yarn for that little bit of knitting.Close up of the Center

This was a lot of knitting. A lot, a lot. First, you cast on about 20 stitches and knit this super long edging, it was about ten feet, I think. Then you pick up some stitches, knit one side of the border, knit the center, then you pick up the rest of the stitches around the edging and knit the other borders (or you can do each border one at a time and sew them together, you’d pick up less stitches at once but have more seaming) and then graft the tops of the borders around the edge of the center and sew up the seam from the beginning and end of the border and the beginning and end of the edging. If it sounds fussy, it was. It wasn’t nearly as confusing as it seems.

This was actually one of the most well-written patterns I think I’ve ever followed. It’s about ten pages, mostly charts, the written directions were short and assumed you knew what you were doing most of the time, but everything was very clear and easy to understand. The only mistakes I ran across ended up being my own fault, from losing my place in one of the charts (which are huge) and trying to just skim the directions (stupid!).

So, what’s next? Well, I do have something on the needles, Freewheelin’ by Lee Meredith, and it is almost done, I think. I think the next lacy thing I want to make is the Crown Prince Square Shawl by Nancy Bush, I’d still like to have a black cardigan of some kind, and the sock bug is nibbling, so I may need to make a pair of socks. Now I just need some money.

Bread

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I didn’t have time last week to blog or do much of anything. I was busy, busy all week. But one thing I did is bake some bread. I didn’t have class this past Monday but last week we spent the morning making bread from scratch and it was so much fun. I’ll be doing this a lot more in the future.

Challah Bread

First we made some Challah. I’ve actually never had Challah before but I’ve seen recipes for it online and I’ve wanted to try making it for a long time, so I was excited about this. We did three-strand braids for both loaves and I topped one with some black sesame seeds and left the other plain. This bread didn’t last long at my house. It was a rich, soft, chewy bread that was good hot with a little butter. It was a lot easier to make than I thought it would be so I’ll be making this again soon.

Baguette

Then we took the poolish we had started the week before and made baguettes. These are a good dense bread with a nice crispy crust and they would make a really good sandwich. I liked these a lot but not as much as the Challah.

So, bread was fun and now I can’t wait to take my bread class next fall. Next week in baking we’re doing laminated dough and making pinwheels and turnovers and the week after that is pies. Yum.

I had my savory cooking class today and we broke down chicken, made stock, and then we took some of the chicken breast and sautéed it, made a supreme sauce and served it with our choice of starch and a vegetable. I made some boiled new potatoes with a little salt, pepper and fresh parsley and stir-fried some asparagus with lemon juice and a tiny bit of garlic. The potatoes and asparagus were good but I didn’t taste the chicken. The sauce was pretty good, though. It’s really hard being a vegetarian in that class. Not just because I don’t get to taste much of the food but I haven’t cooked meat in a long time and it’s just as gross as I remember. The class is fun, though. Next week in that class we’re doing sandwiches and bound salads (these are salads that have a thick dressing, like a potato or chicken salad or cole slaw). Maybe I can sneak a vegetarian meal in there.

Now, I’m also blocking my shawl today and I’ll try to post something about it Friday.

What a Week

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I feel like I’ve been running a thousand miles an hour this week, it has flown. Today in school I made some Béchamel sauce that I turned into Alfredo sauce and served up with some fettuccini and pan fried chicken (my cooking partner made the chicken and I didn’t eat it). The Alfredo sauce was delicious and super easy to make. I actually felt a little like this:

noidea

the whole time I was cooking, but it came out okay. Today I learned that Béchamel sauce is totally not as hard to make as it looks when you read the directions.

Monday was a whole other story. Get me baking and I’m fine, in the savory part of the kitchen I’m lost even though I cook at home all the time.

Double Chocolate Bread Pudding

Case in fact: double chocolate bread pudding. This stuff is yummy. It’s like a super rich, moist chocolate cake. Actually, it started out as a dense fudgy cake that was broken into chunks and soaked in chocolate custard sauce, topped with cinnamon and sugar and chocolate chips and then baked. Holy crap this stuff is amazing. It’s a little crisp on top and then moist and soft inside. I could eat a huge pan of it every day.

I am still loving school. Everyday after class I come home and I’m so happy and so full of adrenaline that I just can’t sit down, so I’ve been cooking at home, too. Small things usually, heating up something quick for lunch Monday and then a big pot of soup yesterday. I finally have the feeling that I’m where I belong and I never would have dreamed it would be in a kitchen.

I’ve been knitting at night, too, and I’ll try to have some kind of update Friday. Have a great rest of the week!