Helleborus Yoke Cardigan

The Olympic sweater is finally finished!

I ripped out the bottom edging last weekend and reknit it with a larger needle size to eliminate the 80's-esque gathering on the bottom. Then I tackled the collar on Wednesday night and made lots of adjustments to get it to fit my neckline correctly. You can read about my adjustments to the pattern in ravelry if you're interested (craftr's Helleborus Yoke).

I finished up the buttonbands and attached the buttons on Thursday night. The sweater hasn't been blocked yet, but that's not stopping me from wearing it! The cabling pattern is gorgeous and I love the thick and nubbly feeling of the moss stitch throughout the sweater. I was really intrigued with the side to side knitting construction with this pattern and it was fun to try a new construction technique for this.

The Universal Yarn Classic Chunky Tweed yarn was great to work with, but I did find 1 knot in one of the seven balls that I used. It's an acrylic and wool blend that is mostly acrylic, but it has a nice give to it and all of the tweedy chunks give some nice texture to the sweater.


Here are the details:
Pattern: Helleborus Yoke from Knitscene Winter 2010
Yarn: Universal Yarn Classic Chunky Tweed Burgundy, 6.5 balls
Needles: 9 and 10.5
Started February 13 and finished March 11 (with a brief hiatus in between)

Ravelry link: craftr's Helleborus Yoke

PS...yes, these photos are extremely cheesy but they crack Jon up so I'm keeping them :)

Mediterranean Olive Bread

Here's the recipe for the delicious bread I made last weekend. I love all of the olive, sun-dried tomato and walnut bits in this bread and the olive oil makes it especially tasty.

Mediterranean Olive Bread (from The Joy of Vegan Baking)

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons ground flaxseed (equivalent of 3 eggs)
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
3/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup nondairy milk
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/3 cup chopped pitted kalamata olives
1/3 cup chopped sundried tomatoes

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease an 8 or 9-inch loaf pan
3. Whip the flaxseed and water together until thick and creamy
4. Combine the flours, baking powder, rosemary, basil and salt.
5. In a separate bowl combine the flaxseed mixture with milk and olive oil
6. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and fold until most of the dry ingredients are moistened
7. Add the walnuts, olives and sundried tomatoes and fold until combined and all of the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter will firm and sticky.
8. Place the batter into the loaf pan and spread evenly.
9. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean (40-45 minutes)
10. Let cool for about 5-10 minutes before removing from pan and placing on cooling rack.

afternoon treats

- Talking to Jon on his way to class

- catching a cat nap


- Discovering a new brand of Peanut butter (and a dairy free recipe for homemade Nutella - thanks Jodi!). I will definitely be trying the Cinnamon Raisin kind next.


- Finishing up another quilt top (in all it's wrinkly goodness) - made using this tutorial

quilting bees

Here's a few blocks that I've made as part of the Common Threads and Bee Beautiful Quilting Bees. Joining a quilting bee is such a fun way to learn new techniques and try out new ideas on a small scale!


Book Quilt block for Carissa


Modern/Right angle blocks for Angela


Red cross blocks for Jacquie


Modern simple blocks for Nadia


String Block for Rachel

catching up

I spent Sunday catching up on life around our house. Now our pantry is stocked, laundry is finished (and put away!), soups are stored in the freezer and my head is clear and ready for another week. It feels good to get things accomplished.


I made the most delicious loaf of Mediterranean Olive, Sun Dried Tomato and Walnut bread from The Joy of Vegan Baking. So delicious! I'll share the recipe later this week. The second favorite recipe I made was the Pickle Soup from Love Soup...so yummy!


I started working on my failed Ravelympics project again. It's coming along much better now and I hope to have it finished by this weekend.


Jon and I have been burning the candle at both ends, so it was nice to have a day to get caught up on things and relax before the start of another busy week.

Greek Pizza

My mom made us this delicious pizza a few weeks ago and I wanted to pass along the recipe. In keeping with my mom's style of cooking, it's a quick and easy recipe, but there are no measurements or exact ingredient amounts included. :)


Greek Pizza
Ingredients:
Pizza Dough
Tomato
Cucumber
Red Onion
Avocado
Kalamata Olives
Greek Dressing


Directions:
1. Divide pizza dough of your choice in half and form into a circle. Bake the dough in the oven.
2. Chop one tomato, a cucumber, and a red onion and combine.
3. Slice avocado.
4. Cut olives into thirds.
5. When the pizza dough is finished cooking, spread the vegetables on top and drizzle with Greek dressing.

creatively procrastinating

My ravelympics project was the Helleborus Yoke Cardigan from Knitscene and knit with Universal Yarns Classic Chunky Tweed yarn.  I put all of my eggs in one basket, so to speak, for the Ravelympics and things did not turn out so good. I let lots of things slip to the side as I crammed in knitting time and things ended poorly on Sunday night (poorly, as in me throwing an "I'm never going to knit anything again, ever!" tantrum at midnight). Needless to say, I did not finish the sweater in time and it needs a few more modifications before it's wearable.



After sleeping on it, I've realized that things aren't so bad and everything is easily fixable. The body of the sweater went great and I found the perfect buttons yesterday. But, I made the bottom edging a little bit too tight, so the sweater looks like an eighties sweatshirt, instead of a relaxed cardigan. The collar turned out awful too. I read about a lot of complaints about having to reknit the collar multiple times on ravelry, so I should have known that I would have to also. I'm going to add some additional short rows to the collar so that it lays flat and does not gape out so much. Hopefully I'll be able to spend some time reknitting the sweater this weekend to make it wearable.

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To make things better, I did some playing around with a fun photography website that has been around for quite a while now, Tilt Shift Maker. Why I didn't try this out when I first learned about it, I don't know. But, I'm glad to have had a chance to play with it today. You upload your picture and tweak the settings and it makes your photo look like a miniature scene.

Brussels


Bikes in Berlin


Paris rooftops


Our little garden


Foliage in Ometepe, Nicaragua


Granada, Nicaragua with Mombacho Volcano in the background


My favorite garden and restaurant in Kyoto, Japan


Ryoan-ji temple in Kyoto


Shibuya intersection in Tokyo


adorable and quaint Bamberg, Germany