Sprigs

The last blanket of 2009 was Sprigs.



And now it is a free, frankenblanket pattern for you for the new year. Frankenblanket, because I patched together two existing stitch patterns; I give credit where it's due at the end of the pattern. Also, thank you to my friend Initsox2 for the Mary Shelley allusion.

PDF link to Sprigs.



The blanket is for friends of my dad who helped us sort through his estate. I originally dubbed it Mud Lace Afghan for its color; I was trying to masculinize (a real word?) the lace and ruffles. But maybe it just looks like I'd dragged it through a puddle.

No matter what it looks like, this blanket is heavy, squishy, and warm. Lion Brand Wool-ease Thick 'n Quick, baby!

From The Year of the Blanket...

In 2009, I knitted six blankets (well, the Lizard Ridge was mostly done, I just finished it this year). I also knitted as many pairs of socks, but they didn't take nearly as much yarn as the blankets.

New techniques I tried this year:

• Tunisian Crochet on a big scale (a big, fat failure)
  
• thrummed mittens (a big, fluffy success)
  
• knitting cables without a cable needle (link is to a video)
  
• kntting strung beads
  
• CROCHET
  
• blocking lace
  
• (my most awesome and scary accomplishment) writing a pattern for my Off Road Socks as well as a square shawl still being tested. I never in a million years thought I'd DESIGN knitwear.
  

After doing the math, I figure I burned through 15,791.6 yards of yarn in 2009. Some of this yardage did not come from stash I had on hand at the beginning of the year. So, as far as living up to my 2009 Yarn Consumption Plan (I can buy one yard of yarn for every two yards I use from stash), I was a failure. I kept to the plan for several months...until sometime in the summer, I think, but then I began to BUY. So, yay for me that I lasted as long as I did.

...to The Year of the Sweater

According to the patterns I have waiting in my Ravelry queue, it looks like 2010 will be the Year of the Sweater. I've got a lot of sock patterns in the queue, too. THOMY may even get something this time around the sun.

I don't have noble pledges to knit only from stash in 2010, but I do plan to keep an account of what I buy and use. I've got a ledger book for that purpose. I'm in the process of recording ALL the yarn in my stash, whether or not it's labeled, so I can have a full idea what there is to work with. The yardage count is staggering. In one lace weight yarn alone, I have almost 23-thousand yards. Yep, I sure do.

I don't have resolutions for any other area of my life, either. Not that I'm aimless concerning the coming year; I have a few goals, just not the kind I want to blog about yet. Maybe after the fact.

So to you and yours, please have a safe, happy, and productive new year.

The Christmas Card Recipe

I sent out a dozen Christmas cards this year--a dozen more than I'd sent in probably the last ten years. I also resumed my practice of including a favorite recipe in each card. This year the recipe is for Cranberry Upside Down Muffins.

That's right. CRANBERRIES. Surprising, no?



Cranberry Upside-Down Muffins

1 C cranberries, stems removed
½ C butter, melted
½ C firmly packed lt. brown sugar
2 C all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 T sugar
½ tsp. salt
¼ C raisins or craisins
1 egg
1 C milk

Cut cranberries into halves; divide evenly into 12 greased, 3-in muffin pans. Spoon about 1 tsp. of the butter into each. Sprinkle evenly with brown sugar.

In a mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, granulated sugar, salt, & raisins or craisins. In a smaller bowl, beat egg; mix in milk and remaining melted butter. Add liquid mixture to flour mixture, stirring until dry ingred. are just moistened. Spoon butter over cranberries in pan, dividing evenly.

Bake at 400-F until golden brown, about 30 min. Let muffins stand in pan on wire rack for a few min. until bubbling stops. Turn muffins out carefully and serve upside-down.

Cranberry Candy

I like to experiment on others. With food, ok? Around Christmas, I make candy I've not tried before and give it out to family, friends, and strangers like I knew what it was I was doing. This year I found a recipe called Coated Raisins. It's pretty straightforward--butter, vanilla extract, powdered sugar (enough to make an elephant diabetic), cream cheese (food of the divine), and raisins.

Ugh. Really? Raisins?

Why use something so bland as...dried up, wingless fly carcasses? Raisins are for those too timid to use CRANBERRIES.

Not I. And it turns out that the tartness of the cranberries balances out the super sweet coating. The original recipe claims that it makes 4 dozen candies, and it does if you doll out heaping teaspoonfuls onto the waxed paper. I think that makes the candies too big, with too much sweetness in one serving. So I opted to use a 1.25-inch spring-operated cookie scoop. Doing that yields 100 candies. Just the right size.



Cranberry Candy

2 cups dried cranberries/craisins
8 ounces cream cheese
1/4 C butter
6 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1. Place craisins in a steamer basket or strainer. Place over boiling water, but not touching it.
2. Steam, covered for 5 minutes.
3. Combine cream cheese and butter in heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir over low heat until butter is melted, cheese is soft, and mixture is well combined.
4. Transfer to large bowl of mixer.
5. Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time, until frosting is thick and creamy but not dry.
6. Add vanilla. Stir in craisins gently.
7. Drop by small scoopfuls from a 1 1/4-inch diameter cookie scoop onto waxed paper. (Or scoop small amounts with a teaspoon.) Let dry uncovered, for four hours or overnight in a refrigerator.

From gathering the indredients to sliding the cookie sheets of candies into the fridge, I spent an hour making the candy.

Thanks, everyone, who asked for the recipe and made this year's experiment worthwhile. Merry Christmas!

0.1 oz more chocolatey-er

THOMY's birthday was this week, so I made him a Chocolate Espresso Tart as his birthday cake.



I took the recipe from my new Family Baking Book by America's Test Kitchen. I'm a fan of ATK's shows on public television and I consider their word on foodstuffs as nearly gospel. According to one of their taste tests, the best bittersweet chocolate to use in a recipe like the tart is 60% cacao by Ghirardelli. The recipe calls for a 12 oz. bar, but we could find only the 5.25 oz bags of chocolate squares. Two+ bags later, the closest I could come to the recommended weight is 12.1. So I gave THOMY .1 to grow on.

I would like to register a complaint, though. I don't know what I did wrong, if anything, but the tart crust recipe didn't work for me. I followed it to the letter, but the dough would not solidify, gathering around the blades of the food processor, UNTIL I dribbled more cream into it than what was called for. I don't know how much I added, but I had to. Otherwise I was going to have a bowl of pretty pastry meal.



Even so, the tart seemed to please the birthday boy. And that's the important thing, right? I'm grateful he's been around for another year.