Sugar Hearts

We don't "do" Valentine's day at Chez Book.  I hardly need a Hallmarked Holiday to remind me to do something sweet for DH.

We don't do Valentine's day, but we do bake.  Maybe it's all the Ace of Cakes we've been watching, or maybe it's because What's New Cupcake is Sweet Pea's favorite book.  I'm not really sure.  But when Little Dude had a sign-up sheet for his preschool party, we signed right up for cupcakes.




It took some time, Jolly Ranchers, metal cookie cutters, and food dye, but we have 20+ red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, pink sugar cuffs and big red and pink hearts.

The cupcake recipe is from Pinch My Salt, and really quite tasty (even though I don't normally care for cake).  

I also have these:

lovely new potholders that I used to pull them out of the oven!  They were a great use of fat quarters and old scraps.  I used 2 layers regular batting leftovers, rather than getting a special heat-impervious batting.  They work well for pulling stuff out of the oven, but I'm not sure I'd want to hold something at 450F for a long time while using them.  I do, however, enjoy seeing some fabric that I've had hiding in my closet!

Flip-open Mittens

Cowls and flip open mittens.  These are trends that I've seen this winter that I covet.  There are some lovely patterns on ravelry for flip open mittens, but it was easy enough to make my own...

These are done with Palette held doubled (go stash-busting!) on size 5 needles.  It used 371 yards and made a nice, firm fabric.  I used a basic fingerless glove pattern, some basic colorwork, and garter edges at the tops:

I knitted the tops separately, almost like toe-up socks and grafted them to the mitt. This was where the colorwork came in really handy - it helped me get the tops on in the same spot on both of them!  These were a practice round, for a coworker.  They were so easy, though, I may make another pair for myself.

February?!?

Hello lovely readers.

It's apparently February, which means several things didn't happen in january.  They include, in no particular order:
a. Blogger did not successfully allow me to update my sidebar goals to include either the Elevensies or update 12 miles goals.
b. This hasn't turned out to be a huge problem because I've only finished ONE knitting project in January.  Eleven of anything is starting to sound daunting.
c.  A five day week.  Seriously, I love snow days as much as the next person, but my kids are starting to forget what it's like to not check the weather channel every morning.
d. Beginning of my self-imposed sock club to try new sock patterns.

But it's all okay, because I have this...

Yogurt Fail

I had this great post written out in my head, in which I extolled both the ease and the virtues of homemade yogurt.  Only to wake up the next morning to find that, for the first time, my yogurt did not, in fact, 'yog'.  (Really, I'm lacking for a verb here, and just abusing English).  I have no more yogurt based recipes, and am currently troubleshooting the protocol for temperature and concentrations.  Luckily, troubleshooting protocols is something I have experience in.  Stay tuned.

To distract you from the lack of yogurt recipes, here's an FO!

These are fingerless gloves to match this Multnomah.  I used the same laceweight, but held double and used 228 yards.  I improvised the design - it's basically knit flat in one piece, with a gusseted thumb that doesn't extend beyond the gusset (so you don't have to pick up extra stitches, or knit it separately).  They were really easy, and a last ditch effort to finish 12 miles in 2010.  However, they weren't bound off and grafted until January, so they get to be 2011's first knitted FO!