Baking Break: Lussekatter

Taking a break from knitting themed posts to share my most recent baking adventure: lussekatter.

Lussekatter is the traditional breakfast roll served on St. Lucia's day in Sweden.  Since I'm part Swedish, and hadn't made this since I was really young, I thought it would be fun to make it for my co-workers on December 13th.  It is a saffron bun, which I didn't realize at the time would be relatively expensive to make.  I don't bake with special spices very often, so I had no idea that I would be spending $19 on 1.7g of saffron when I set out to make them.

But, you know what, it was totally worth it :)

Anyway, I worked off a recipe from food.com.  The night I went to buy ingredients, I bought based on the mass necessary by the recipe.  The night I planned to cook, I had to calculate all the directions from measurements of mass to measurements of volume since I don't have a decent scale at home.  Since that calculation differs from ingredient to ingredient, I had to research each one separately.

Then I set off to work.  Since my team at work is having a bacon themed 12 days of eating, I had to cook some bacon to add as a garnish (instead of the traditional raisins) on at least half of the buns.  So that went into the oven.  While that was cooking, I measured out all of my ingredients at one time, so it would be easy to just grab and add as needed.  This included grinding down the saffron strands into powder and praying that I didn't add too much and ruin the whole batch.

Next step was what I felt would be the most difficult part: melting the butter, milk and saffron together to the accurate temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  Apparently, this is important.  I bought a cooking thermometer just for this step and started freaking out when the red line didn't seem to be moving.  My incredibly fast thought process went something like this:

"What a piece of junk!  Why would the store even sell this.  I should take it back... later.  Okay, what do I do now?  Do I just wing it?  I'm supposed to get it to 100 degrees.  The recipe says this is 'very important'!  Maybe if I set the oven to 100 degrees, I can see what that feels like and then see if the mixture is the same temperature.... No, that's stupid.  That's a ridiculous idea.  Seriously, why isn't that red line moving?  This is such a piece of crap, why do I even still have this thing sitting in the pot?  It's not doing anything...  Maybe if I move it, it will work better.  Nope.  Nothing.  Stupid 'good cook' brand.  I'll tell you something, 'good cook', good cooks don't even use your brand.  How's that feel? - OH HEY, IT'S MOVING!  IT'S WORKING!  YAY!"

After getting that mixture to what my thermometer told me was 100 degrees, I poured the mixture over the yeast I had placed into my roommate's KitchenAid, and then proceeded to add the other dry ingredients until everything was in and I could set the thing to start mixing into dough.  Once that's finished, you have to let it rise for 30 minutes.  That gave me a nice break :)

I couldn't help but take a little peek though...

 

Eventually, it looked like this!

So then, I got to knead the dough.  That was kind of fun.  Little bit of a work out for the arms.  Definitely needed after eating the extra bacon from the oven...

Then I separated them into little balls, which needed to rest some more.

Next was the fun, but tedious part: rolling them into long lines and creating the traditional S shape.

Added the raisins and/or bacon and then let them rest some 40 minutes longer...

Then, just before the oven, it was time for a quick egg wash!

After cooking just about 9-10 minutes, they came out looking like this:

I won't lie, I was pretty darn impressed with myself.  I really thought they were going to turn out awful.  But they were delicious!  And the bacon ones (pictured above), were especially fun.

I challenge all you Swedes and part-Swedes to try making it for your own St. Lucia's Day celebration next year!  Or, if you can't wait, or you don't really plan on ever celebrating St. Lucia's Day, try Christmas!  They go great with some morning coffee whilst sitting next to a roaring fireplace :)

Christmas Countdown

Christmas is just around the corner!  It's so crazy!

I think I have just about all my knit gifts either made or at least planned.  And, this might be a horribly naive statement, but I think I've actually got enough time to finish them all!  I've already completed my really complicated, time consuming projects that I need to finish before Christmas day.  I have one gift in particular that I'm now insanely excited to make and might take some more time, but luckily I have until New Year's Eve to complete that.  I can't post any photos here since the recipient often reads this blog, but I can give a hint to some of you Ravelry surfers - it's a popular hat pattern for a certain female wizard.  Hmmmmm.... :)

Meanwhile, I've also been working on several items for my work's craft fair which is in just 2 days... Well more like 1.25 days now...

Here's a sneak peek for any of my co-workers reading this:

 

And if you don't work with me, you can find some of these items at my online shop: starfishknit.etsy.com

Grab em before they're gone!

Holiday Sale!

Hey everyone!

It's now officially my favorite time of year!  To share the love, I'm offering 10% off at my Etsy shop when you use coupon code HOLIDAY10 at check out through this magical season :)

I've already sold quite a few things, but am planning to make more so keep checking for more fun, handmade stuff!

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving and are starting off the Christmas season well!

Holiday Crunch Time

It's that time of year!  When everyone starts thinking of the holidays!

What does that mean for me?  Extra projects.  I have found myself full of special orders, ideas/plans for my work's craft fair, and on top of it all, I'm hoping to get some Christmas presents finished.  Luckily, I started working on Christmas gifts as early as last January, so I've already got a fair amount of them done.  Now I'm just on the last minute ideas.

Meanwhile, I have 3 orders I'm trying to finish up before Thanksgiving (if possible).  I know they are for Christmas gifts, so I want to try to have them completed early.  I'm feeling pretty good about them, as long as I get some time to finish them.  Gotta buckle down.  My friend Mary is in a similar situation, so we're going to hang out soon and have a knit night.  We did it once before and it was pretty fun.  Find some cheesy movie, catch up, and finish a project.  My favorite quote of the day from her: "If I wasn't married, I'd want to be your roommate so we could knit."  Apparently my certifiably insane work ethic provides great motivation for completing projects :)

Speaking of completed projects, I recently finished a pair of baby alpaca gloves, just like my gray ones, except this time in purple.  My friend Sam bought them on the spot the day after I finished them.  I hope she likes them :)  She's the sweetest cause she even agreed to purchase them through my etsy shop!

One last thing before I finish this post... I recently commissioned and purchased a tote bag from my co-worker Judy.  It's so absolutely adorable that I just had to post a photo of it here.  I've started using it to hold all my IP projects.  I needed a big bag to fit them all!

 

You can check out more of her work at her etsy shop and blog!

Organized Chaos

It's not a secret that I have more yarn in my possession than I know what to do with.  I have this awful habit of falling in love with some fiber and figuring that I'll have a project for it later.  Obviously, with such beautiful yarn, ideas should just come flowing, right?  Wrong.  I think projects take so long that by the time I finish one, I generally decide to start something completely different than what I originally had in mind when I bought some new yarn.  Usually that requires different yarn, so I buy yet more yarn.  The yarn section of my closet is a great example of "organized chaos".  Anyone looking at it would have no idea what they're looking at, but I know!  I know that there is a system!  Actually I think that's the general theme of my entire room and closet right now...

But lately, I've been trying to use up my current yarn stash.  One of my recent projects was a pair of striped fingerless gloves.  I love the combination of black, gray and red.  It's a great mix of cool neutrals and the red provides a nice pop of color.  These will be going up on my etsy shop once I can get some good photos.

I recently discovered I'm allergic to a particular medication, and I had such a bad reaction that I had to stay home from work.  Gave me some time to think of my next project, and I finally decided to unravel that purple scarf and create something new.  A friend of mine had been admiring my short cabled fingerless gloves, so I figured I'd make another pair of those.  The baby alpaca is GREAT for it.  So soft on the hands and it really is a dream to work with.  Here's a look at the IP project.

Still needs a thumb, but should look pretty good when it's done.  I am glad I made them again, I was able to improve on the last pair and take better notes to turn into a proper pattern.  I might try to post it on Ravelry soon.  After these, I believe my next projects will probably be Christmas gifts.  I can't believe it's already November!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Open for Business!

Hi blog followers!

My etsy shop is officially open for business!  Click here to take a peek!

Here's a look at some of the items I have for sale:

 ...And that's just a couple of them.  I have some other items also for sale at the shop (including the one pictured on the right)  I also have plans for more items.  I'm in progress on some striped arm warmers right now.  I already have some pseudo requests for fingerless gloves.  I would have posted my finished ones on the shop as well, but they were bought before I could post them!  Haha!

Anyway, major thanks to my friend, Danielle, for helping me take all these beautiful photos.  We found a local park and then found some great locations to really make the colors stand out.  I especially love this one to the right of the Men's Rustic Scarf.  I loved this little bridge that was at the park and knew right away I wanted to photograph this item there.  We had a lot of fun trying to be creative in finding interesting photo spots.  A woman even came up to me asking about the Green Twist Infinity Scarf.  There was a kids' soccer game going on at the same park, so I'm sure it was eye-catching to see two girls carrying a dress form all around.

Lola (yes, I named my dress form) was the best prop.  We had a lot of fun taking photos near random signs.  We already have big plans for taking photos with some old soda pop signs and highway entrances.  I think they would actually be kind of cool if we could pull them off.  But that's for another day....

Vote! Keep or Unravel?

Hey everyone!  I need some help.  I recently finished this scarf, but I'm not sure whether or not to keep it as is and sell it or unravel and make something new. 

Here's my story:  I started this scarf a while back.  Originally, I was doing a simple 2x2 rib, but then I found this awesome pattern and decided to make myself a baby alpaca scarf with the new pattern.  It was so incredibly soft to work with, and I couldn't wait to have this scarf for myself.  I only had a little bit of time each night to work on this, so it took a while but I finally finished.

And then I put it on.  It was prickly.  I couldn't believe it.  The softest yarn I had ever worked with, and it was prickly on my neck.  I didn't have the heart to undo it because it was so incredibly pretty, so I decided to hold onto it until I found some other project to use the yarn for.

I started making fingerless gloves with my gray baby alpaca yarn and absolutely love them.  The yarn is perfect for them and I have already worn my pair several times.

So now I'm at a crossroads.  Do I unravel the purple scarf and make some more fingerless gloves, or do I keep it as a finished scarf and try to sell it?  I obviously can't wear it, but I've met and read about several people that really love it as scarf material.  I suppose my neck is just a bit more sensitive.  Anyway, I'm still deciding, and could use some outside opinions. 

What do you think?  Keep or Unravel?

Knit Trends for Fall

It's officially fall!  I think I've been saying that every day for the last 2 weeks or so.  So happy!  Not that you would know it in California.  We had a heat wave for a while.  Luckily, the weather finally started to turn this week.  There are leaves on the ground, all brown and orange colored.  It's magnificent.  Not quite an east coast fall, but good enough for me!


Anyway, I've been knitting away like crazy because I'm getting ready to open my own etsy shop!  Actually, I knit like crazy anyway, and that's more the reason why I'm opening the shop, haha.  Anyway, I was super excited to see chunky knits, scarves and fingerless gloves, in the upcoming fall trends, since those are some of my favorite things to make.

I've been looking at photos from the recent fall collection shows from Milan, Paris and New York.  I've been noticing all these great knit details like shoulder wraps, chunky scarves and "snoods".  All from the likes of Marc Jacobs, Chanel, Oscar de la Renta and many others.

One of the other trends I've noticed becoming really popular this season from all the runway shows is gloves!  Leather, metallics, knits.  Lots and lots of gloves.  I just started getting into knitting fingerless gloves.  I didn't think that I would like them as much as I do, but after some complications with my baby alpaca scarf, I decided to find a new use for my yarn stash.  After seeing some fingerless gloves in the Eileen Fisher fall collection, I was inspired to design my own.

Another specific knit trend I noticed is detail.  Lots of cables and specialized stitches - seed stitch, honeycomb, ribs, etc.

I enjoyed seeing some knit trends listed in Lauren Conrad's October Style Tips.  She's definitely one of my favorite everyday style icons. 

Seeing all these photos has provided me with lots of inspiration for new projects I want to finish.

I end up with so many finished projects, I don't know what to do with all!  I've been working on Christmas gifts all year, and now I'm building a collection to sell at my work's craft fair, and like I said, online.  I'll be posting a link to my store on here the same day it launches, but for now you'll just have to sit tight with some sneak peeks at what I am working on and have finished for the fall.  I just sold my first scarf of the season.  It was a great start to autumn!

Here's a sneak peek at what I've been working on and what you can expect to see in my store when it opens later this month:

 

 Happy October! :)

Making of an Hermès scarf

Going off my usual knitting themed topic here...

My friend, Elyse, and I were walking around the city the other day and came across this awesome Hermès demonstration tent.  Designers and artists from the clothing/fashion company were showing how they make some of their extraordinary products right there in the tent.  Everything from purses to ties, to scarves.  Elyse and I enjoyed an hour long demonstration on silk printing.  Here are some awesome photos!

Before the scarf makes it to this point in the process, it has already been designed by a designer and an engraving of the design has been finished by an engraver.  One design example they showed us took 2000 hours just to engrave!  After the engraving is complete, it is placed on top of a white mesh with solar blue paint which seals together when hit by the sun and drops off in shade.  The engraving has been put on a clear sheet which uses black areas to create the shade and then the blue paint seals under the clear area of the engraving.  Once that is complete, it is attached to a steel frame and is finally ready for the silk painting process.

First, the silk is laid out flat and taped down on a heated table.  The heat helps the dye to dry faster.

 

Next, the painter places the steel framed screen on the track and places over the area of the silk to be painted.  Then he adds the proper dye for the portion of the scarf he is currently painting.

 

Then, he takes a giant squeegee type thing and pushes the paint over the screen with equal amount of pressure on both sides in both directions.  The paint that lands on the sealed area stays on the screen and the paint that lands over the open mesh seeps through to the scarf.

 

Then he lifts up the steel frame and moves it to reveal the completed first screen.  This particular scarf requires 15 different screens for 15 different colors.

 

Here's a look at some of the other finished screens as he went along...

 

 

 

And the finished product!

It really was an amazing process.  It's so cool to see the artistry and focus that goes into making these.  Makes you appreciate the craftsmanship that much more! :)

 

Starfish... Crochet?

That's right, I can crochet now.  Yeah, baby!  I just learned how over lunch.  Thanks Sarah!

Let's see how I can use this to up my knitting game :)

Cozying Up For Fall

I love fall.  When I was younger and still in school I felt quite the opposite.  Probably because fall meant the end of the summer and therefore the beginning of the new school year.  Now that I have a year round job, it really doesn't matter what time of year it is because I still have work everyday.  My new daily schedule has given me a greater appreciation for fall.  The weather starts to cool down just enough that you can begin wearing boots, scarves and jackets again.  The leaves begin to change color and if you are lucky to live in a more seasonal climate than California you get to enjoy the colors much longer.

A personal favorite part of the return of fall is the hot drinks.  Hot chocolates, tea, coffee, and cider become popular again.  Heck, even mulled wine starts to make a comeback as the weather cools and Christmas is right around the corner.  Plus, knitting finds its place to shine.  Warm scarves, wraps and blankets.  I can combine two of my favorite things with one of my newer completed projects: the coffee cozy.

It's not necessarily just for coffee, but I guess that's just how I've grown up saying it.  Anyway, I'm really happy to have it and hope to make some more as the weather cools down even more.  I realize it's still early September, which for California still means summer, but fall's right around the corner and I couldn't be more excited :)

Eyelet Cotton Cloth

As promised, here is my personally designed pattern for an eyelet hole cotton dish cloth.  Enjoy!

Using Sugar & Cream 100% cotton yarn.  1/2 skein in color of choice.

CO 34 st., size 8 needles

Row 1: *(K1, P1), *repeat until end of row
Row 2: *(P1, K1), *repeat until end of row
Row 3-4: Repeat above two rows
Row 5: (K1, P1) 2 times, K1 to last 3 stitches, P1, K1, P1
Row 6: (P1, K1) 2 times, P1 to last 3 stitches, K1, P1, K1
Row 7: (K1, P1) 2 times, *(K2, YO, K2tog), *repeat until last 6 stitches, K2, (K1,P1) 2 times
Row 8: (P1, K1) 2 times, P1 until last 3 stitches, K1, P1, K1
Row 9: (K1, P1) 2 times, K1 until last 3 stitches, K1, P1, K1
Row 10: (P1, K1) 2 times, P1 until last 3 stitches, K1, P1, K1

Repeat rows 7-10 until the entire project measures approx. 6 inches lengthwise.

To finish, repeat rows 1-4.  Bind off and weave loose strings of yarn back into the project.

Voilà!  Your very own cotton eyelet dish cloth!

To prevent curling when finished, block with a hot iron and a damp towel/cloth: wet a cloth/towel and wring it until it just just damp.  Place over the flattened knit cloth.  Use a hot iron and go over the entire area until all of the covered knit cloth have been ironed.

Recommended care: Wash in cold water, tumble dry low-medium.  They actually work best after having been washed a few times and hold up well to the washing machine and dryer, so don't be afraid to use them!


Looking for another project with great design?  Check out this fingerless glove pattern!

Thank you, baby alpaca

Last night, I realized I had left some of my unfinished projects at work, so I grabbed all my knitting books and decided to try and figure out what my next project might be since I'm just about done with another iPhone cozy.  I saw a pattern for a simple scarf and was reminded that I have yet to use some of the most luxurious yarn in my stash: baby alpaca.

I purchased 2 skeins of the ultra soft, ultra expensive stuff back in March while on a church retreat in Marin.  I had every intention of one day making it into a scarf, and that day has finally come!  It's so incredibly soft to work with and knits up fast, and I think that's why I became so anxious to use it.  Lately, I've been working with a lot of acrylics on small needles, and I knew with this, I'd be using the good stuff, on size US10.  Awesome.

Anyway, I'm already looking forward to wearing it later in the fall and winter.  I would've loved to have tried a more lacy or creative pattern, but after a handful of attempts, I've realized that it's just a bit too fuzzy to really express a pattern other than a simple 1x1 or 2x2 rib.  That's okay.  I love it anyway :)

iPhone Cozy

I've been trying to find fun little projects to use up some of my yarn stash.  One such project I discovered is an iPhone/iPod cozy.  It's been a great project to use up some of my more colorful yarn.  It turns out pretty cute looking :)

If you are interested in purchasing a cozy in a color of your choice, just email starfishknits@gmail.com. 

Blankets

One of my good friends is finishing up a baby blanket and it looks amazing!  It reminded me of some of the blankets I have done for my friends' babies in the past and thought I would post the old photos here.  I seriously don't know how I ever had the patience.  I'm still working on gifts for my family and friends, but I have managed to find some time to design some new projects including a washcloth design.  I'll try to get that up here soon.  In the meanwhile, hope everyone who reads this is well!

For my friend's son, Grant

For my friend's daughter, Lilly