A Different Kind of Craft

For Cindy's birthday on Thursday, I made strawberry and raspberry parfaits. They were actually better than usual because I didn't scrimp on the raspberries. Then today I made a cake for when she had her friends over. I make this cake every year, but this was the first time I actually used cake flour, which is what the recipe says to use. It turned out just right. Both of these recipes are from Cook's Illustrated. They figure out the best way to make everything.

Winter Knitting

I don't know if this scarf is technically winter knitting - I don't remember when I started it or when I finished it. It was approximately last fall into winter, so I'll say it counts.

The sweater below was started and finished this winter. It's for Cindy's birthday, which is tomorrow. I have to say a few words about this sweater. It's knit in a beautiful Noro yarn that I saw at the yarn store in Rockport, Maine when we went on the last knitting cruise. I ordered five skeins online. Every skein had at least one knot, and the pattern was broken at the knots. So I carefully took apart all the skeins and wrote down the colors of each piece, and I was able to get the front and back to repeat the pattern continuously (though they did not match). Then with what was left, I arranged the sleeves to look approximately the same and more or less continuous. I only had a few feet of yarn left when the sweater was finished. It was tricky, but the result is just what I wanted. I sure hope my girl likes it.

Finally here is a red scarf. I thought winter would surely be over by the time I finished it, which was a couple of weeks ago. No such luck. A few words about this scarf, and the orange one above. They are knitted along the long edge on circular needles, always starting at the same side, leaving enough at each end for a six inch fringe. Fringes are knotted together every four rows. Every other stitch is slipped purlwise with yarn forward, alternating slipped stitches on alternate rows. It's called linen stitch, and it's very easy, though it looks bad if you accidentally slip the stitch with the yarn back. Also impossible to fix if you get out of sync with the slipped stitches. Then it has to be un-knitted. I used leftover sock yarn and very small needles for both scarves, casting on 450 stitches.