This always makes me smile

I'm really, really excited.  Why?

Another Ravelry member made a dish cloth using my pattern and posted a photo.  I love sharing them here!  Super awesome!  Great color!

 

In other news, I'm in the process of trying to come up with some cool, quick and easy knit ideas for raising money for my work's AIDS Walk team.  I think I may have thought of something and I'm going to see what I can do tonight after work.  If it works out I'll try to post a photo here...

Hope everyone's doing well!  Thanks for reading!

The Samantha Fingerless Glove

Hello all!

I promised I would finally post this pattern online and I have!  It's now available on Ravelry for purchase!

I've dedicated the pattern in name to one my dearest friends who has inspired me to be creative in my craft and wears a pair of these all the time in cooler weather.

Here's a link if you would like to give it a whirl!

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-samantha-fingerless-glove

Lesson Learned: always use a winder... or at least a friend

This past weekend, I received some yarn in the mail that I needed to complete a gift for one of my managers.  Unfortunately, when you purchase specialty yarn, it never comes already wound.  Usually you can have the store you bought it from wind the yarn for you, but if you order it online, you're outta luck unless you personally have a winder or know someone who does. 

I do not own my winder (why not, I'll never know), but know some co-workers who do.  However, I was feeling a little ambitious and stubborn this last Saturday so I decided to try and wind the yarn myself, without a machine, and without even a friend to help hold the yarn.  I figured I could go slow and keep my eye on it.  WRONG.  Terrible decision.  The yarn began to tangle up faster than I could keep up with it and before I knew it, I was spending the next 3 days untangling yarn. 

Looking back on it, I suppose I could have draped the yarn on the back of a chair to keep it from tangling on itself, but a friend or an actual winder would have probably been the best way to go.  In the end, I finally ended up with a nice ball of yarn.  Full of love... er... frustration.

March Knitting Madness

What a busy month it's been!

My work's knitting circle is already nearly halfway finished with our March knit-a-thon to knit hats for chemo patients.  I'm about 3/4 through a cool cable knit hat right now.  Our goal is to have 20 hats completed by the end of the month.  We'll see how it goes!

Meanwhile, I also finally finished my friend's hat, using this pattern from JL Yarnworks.  Here I am modeling it horribly:

 My friend texted me shortly after she got it and said that she was planning on wearing it that night, despite warmer weather.  Ha ha!  So glad she liked it.

I am also in the middle of knitting another gift, so I'm juggling that along with my hat projects.  I have an upcoming trip and I'll need to figure out what the heck I want to bring to knit while on the plane.  The project I really want to finally start (my sweater), will have to wait just a little bit longer.  At this rate though, maybe it will at least be ready for next fall!

And lastly, I found another photo of someone's finished dishcloth pattern on Ravelry.  I'm so happy that people are using and liking my custom pattern!  It's so exciting!

I promise to have my glove post up and available soon.  It's been a busy winter/spring so I haven't had much time to make it nice.  Anyway, hope you are all well!  Thanks for reading!

Getting Active and Giving Back

The later half of January and this beginning to February has been invigorating!  Maybe it's the winding down of projects so there's less pressure to knit particular items?  Maybe it's the start of a new year?  Who knows.  Whatever it is, I've just felt so motivated lately to be my best self - for God, for myself and for all those around me.

How, you may ask, am I trying to do this?  Well, several ways... 

First, I'm finally getting some late Christmas gifts finished.  I'm nearly done with my last one.  One of my recent gifts was actually a birthday gift for my brother.  I had given some beanies to my three teenage nephews and they all loved them.  My brother expressed that he would really like one, so I made one for his birthday.  I'm happy that they loved them so much.  It was a true sense of pride to know that my teenage nephews really loved a gift I'd given them.  Made for them, especially!  The last of these gifts are late Christmas gifts, and I'll have photos up as soon as they've been shipped to their recipients.

A pretty neighborhood photo from my most recent 5k walk

Next, I'm FINALLY getting back into a regular work out routine.  No more of "maybe that day, maybe this day", but just a solid, "today's the day!"  One of the greatest motivators I've found for that is using some of my daily exercise and activity to give back to charity.  Anyone who knows me knows that I've become an avid user of the mobile app Charity Miles.  This nifty app will track how many miles you run, walk or bike and then donate money from a collection of corporate sponsors to a charity of your choice.  Lately, I've been walking a lot for Autism Speaks, Stand Up To Cancer, and Feeding America.  There are several other charities partnered with the app, too, including the (RED)  Campaign for AIDS research, World Food Programme, ASPCA, and more!  If you have a smartphone and you haven't tried using Charity Miles in your daily walking/running/biking, I highly recommend it!  It's the simplest way to give a little to others in need.

On a side note, here are some cool ideas from Ravelry to make for winter weather runners/walkers/bikers:

The Morning Walk Headband and Earwarmer

Runner's Watchcap

 Velomeisters Socks

And last, speaking of giving back, my work's knitting group has decided to dedicate the month of March to giving back to chemotherapy patients in the form of hand knit hats!  We're still working out the minor details, but we plan to see who from work is willing to pledge some knitting time during the month of March and then we will set a goal of how many hats we want to complete by March 31.  It's pretty exciting.  With World Cancer Day just a couple days ago (February 4), it's a cause that's definitely on my mind right now.  We felt that this could be a great way to do some stash busting as well!  We've all got so much yarn tucked away in our closets, and this way, we can get through some of it and help others at the same time!  It's a win-win!

So, between those three things, I'm feeling extra motivated these days to get up and do awesome things!  This youtube video might also have a little something to do with it...

Also, be on the look out for my cabled fingerless glove pattern on Ravelry soon! 

 

These have been one of my more requested items, so I figured I might as well share the pattern.  This pattern will only be available on Ravelry, however, so I'll post a link to that here once it's up.

Hope you are all having a great day!  Let's make 2013 awesome!

New Year, New Projects

It's been quite a while since I last posted here.  Now that my holiday break is over, it's back to business.  I have a few (late) Christmas gifts to complete and one more order that I hope to finish over the weekend.

In the meanwhile, here's something really cool.  I posted my cotton dishcloth pattern on Ravelry and someone posted a picture of their finished product.  How cool!  Here it is pictured below.  I love the variation in color.  it turned out great!

Anyway, I promise to have more posts soon as I finish more projects.  Pretty soon I'm hoping to start on my first piece of real clothing!  I've got some great plans for 2013, so I'd better get started! :)

Happy New Year!

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 :)