Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Knit Content

I've now got as link into my blog, from who wouldn't love a hand knitted gift/ KAL, so I ought to blog about knitting, just a little bit.

I learnt to knit when I was 7 - Mrs Philips taught me at school. My mother knits beautifully, complicated lace and colour work, so I grew up with knitting around, and she would help me make things.

The first thing I really knitted though was a blanket, which I did all by myself in my teens. It was in a huge range of scrap yarns, of different colours and weights. Each square was made by casting on 20 stitches on UK size 8 (4mm) needles.

Other things followed, toys and sweaters for example. Then I went through a bit of knitting wilderness, caused by the wrong projects, but now I'm doing lots of it. However most of the things I have done in the last few years have been for other people: time to do things for me.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Herb bread, made in a breadmaker

Sometimes the Gods smile on you: and they did today.

I made toasted cheese for lunch, and as I pulled the grill pan out from under the grill, one of my slices slid off the edge and onto the floor. Bye bye tasty, toasty cheese-on-toast.

But my luck was in:


  • the toast landed cheese side up

  • the floor had been cleaned yesterday, and that makes it clean enough to eat from

  • the toast was made from herb bread, and a visual inspection only showed black bits that were from the herbs in the bread.


It was very yummy.

To make herb bread in my breadmaker:


Starting with a very low heat, warm 60ml of olive oil in a saucepan.

Meanwhile, squash a clove of garlic under a knife blade and cut in half: add to olive oil. Add herbs, perhaps a bayleaf, or a sprig of rosemary, and also some dried ones: 1/2 - 1 tsp of oregano, sage, basil, and thyme. Put the timer on for 2 minutes. When the timer rings, switch off the heat and go away - do some shopping, or knitting, or make a quilt.

After several hours, get out the breadmaker. Put in 1.5tsp of dried yeast (ie normal breadmaker yeast), 12 oz bread flour, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar. Then add 60ml milkand 120 ml of water, and finally the oil: take out the bayleaf, rosemary or similar first, but leave in the rest.

Set the breadmaker for medium loaf, medium size and white bread, and wait for it to cook.

Feed to hungry children and grateful husbands.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

I am ... Einstein

OK, this may be totally inaccurate, but I rather like being compared to this famous leader.



It came from here.

I'm not so keen on the famous film I am, so you don't get to see that. Or rather, it is yet another classic film, that I haven't seen, so I don't know whether I mind or not.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

You covered what?

I wonder if the makers of the the Bowflex Ultimate™ 2 Home Gym (a total-body solution) are surprised at the number of people comning to them from a knitting website.

The crafts council's knit 2 together exhibition had the ultimate cover up though, with their "domestic interior": a sitting room where every item was covered by white aran knitting.