The Stresses of Knitting.....

on double pointed needles…..

I've been off work since last Monday, so I thought I’d show you one of the things I've been up to. 

I’ve been making these cute little bunny huggies to a pattern very generously posted by Sandra on her blog Cherry Heart .Now I spent half the day trying to get to grips with knitting on double pointed needles! Never having done it before, I’d watched my mum in the past, and I figured “how hard can it be!”….Wrong!! After quite a long while struggling to figure out how to start I eventually dug out an old magazine with some instructions, and still didn’t get it, but I found out why I had 5 needles instead of the 4 I thought you should have! I was about to throw the whole cat’s cradle across the room but resorted to good old Google and YouTube! 

In the past I’ve always managed to teach myself most things from a book, but this one just escaped me… I don’t have as much patience these days as I used to either! There aren’t any pictures of my progress, suffice to say it looked like a dogs breakfast!

Why did I find it stressful? Well, I was just petrified that one of the needles would slip out of the stitches while they were flailing about as I knitted on just one of them! However, eventually I managed to finish one…and of course it doesn’t look a bit like the one in the pattern. For some reason I had one ear longer than the other…but hey, no bunny’s perfect are they?  The second one (the lilac one in the photos)  was much better!

I seem to have accumulated quite a few eggs of different sorts over the years, and they all get brought out at Easter and displayed in this pretty spring egg holder...hope you like the photos, and thanks again to Sandra for the pattern

More Marshmallow Madness....

Photo from original book...in other words what they should look like!

OK, so I've made my first attempt at marshmallows!  Not particularly successfully, as usual, my first attempts usually aren't very successful. Some of it may be my fault and some of it may be down to the fact that the book is written in "American" .  I don't mean that unkindly, but there are certain things that we don't have over in the UK, or the equivalent is not necessarily the same  as that available in the US.

What mine looked like!

To start with Light Corn Syrup is not easily obtainable, and although Golden Syrup works, it does impart it's own flavour to the finished item, espcially as marshmallows are quite a delicate flavour in their plain vanilla state.   The other thing I had a problem with was the gelatine....now this may be my problem, but the recipe stated 4 1/2 teaspoons of powdered gelatine, mixed with 1/2 cup (125ml) of water.  Now the sachets I had contained 4 1/2 teaspoons but the packet said that a sachet would set 570ml of liquid.

Aaah...I've just re-read the packet and it does say to dissolve the sachet in 120ml of water, so I misunderstood and added extra water because I thought it would be too thick or set too quickly....Oops!

So apologies, the only real problem is the Light Corn Syrup, which probably is available by mail order if necessary. That probably accounts for the fact that I couldn't beat it to what was described as the right consistency, and once left to set, it was still quite sticky in the middle and considerably gooey-er than I expeected them  to be.  Definitely have to try again  now!  I did get quite frustrated with the whipping time, as it didn't seem to be going well.  The book describes a freestanding mixer with 10 speeds, and I only have a hand mixer with 3 speeds, so after almost 15 minutes you can imagine how my shoulders were aching!  All in all not as difficult as I anticipated, and probably a lot  easier if I'd got that gelatine thing right! They tasted great though and I took some round to a friend to be guinea pig, and she and her brother said that they tasted brilliant!