My Valentine

I just finished knitting a lace scarf called My Valentine.

Details:
Start: 6 Feb 2010
Finish: 20 Feb 2010
Pattern: My Valentine on Ravelry
Yarn: Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 4ply in "Ruby"
Needles: 4mm

Notes: This was a great pattern,very clear, charted and written out. It comes in 3 sizes, a small for a scarf, medium and large for a stole. I would knit this again.

White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

250g butter, softened
250g soft brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
460g self raising flour
pinch of salt
250g white chocolate chips

1. Pre-heat fan forced oven to 190 degrees celcius. Lightly grease 2 baking trays, or just line with greaseproof paper. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten egg.
2. Sift the flour and salt into the creamed mixture and blend well. Stir in the white chocolate chips.
3. Roll a teaspoon sized blob of mixture into a ball, place on baking trays and flatten slightly. Be sure to give the cookies room to spread out.
4. Bake in oven for 10-12 minutes or until just golden (I check at 10 minutes and find they are done). Cool on wire rack, or eat them straight away. :)

You can also add 50g of chopped brazil nuts or macadamias to this mixture if you've got them, but they are pretty good without them. Add them in when you add the white chocolate chips.

Strawberries and Cream

I just finished knitting and felting myself a new small projects bag.

Yarn: Two balls of Lincraft "Cozy Wool". One in solid pink, the other in variegated pink and white.

Needles: Instead of using 5 DPN's, I used 2x 40cm 4mm Addi Turbo circular knitting needles. I placed markers on the needles to simulate the 4 DPN's, and did the increases at the start of the needles and immeditely after the centre markers. It worked brilliantly!

Notes: This bag shrunk by about half and the pink faded a little, but it is still nice and bright. I felted this in my front loader washing machine at 90 degrees celcius for the full length of the cycle. I added a towel for friction. I let the bag dry with a small plate in the bottom of the bag to make it sit flat.

The gorgeous crocheted flowers in the picture were lovingly supplied by my baby sister Joanne. :)

Whisper Cardigan

I recently finished knitting a Whisper Cardigan!

Pattern: Whisper Cardigan (Interweave Knits Spring 2009)

Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fine (4ply) in "Cavern" - 3.5 balls

Needles: 4.5 mm, 3.5 mm, 2.5 mm

Modifications: I knitted the back so that it was longer. I also added another 10 rounds to the sleeves after the decreases and before the increases so that they were longer.

Notes: This was a really fun pattern to knit. The longest and most time consuming part was the ribbing around the opening of the shrug.