for ICE CREAM!!
Look what we bought on the weekend!
Can't read the writing on it? It is a Cuisinart icecream maker. It's just the small one with 1.5L capacity and freezable bowl, but what's important is that it works!
We froze the bowl for a day and then started churning. I made one batch using the "basic" recipe (which is just milk, cream, sugar and vanilla) and 1 batch using the "premium" recipe which uses a custard mixture. I had some home-made strawberry sorbet sitting in the freezer so I tipped it into the bowl while it was churning and made strawberries and cream icecream with the basic batch.
Both were delicious. The basic recipe is lighter than the premium recipe. Not lighter as in lower in fat - both contain the same amount of cream - but lighter in taste and texture. The premium recipe is definitely smoother and more well-rounded in flavour.
I wonder now why I waited this long to buy an icecream maker!
Labels: cooking, icecream
Well, the original pattern called it Indian feathers - remember
this post?
I did finish it in time for the wedding and posted it. It arrived 2 days before the wedding! Talk about cutting it close! Well, due to the time constraints I did not get a picture of it between the blocking stage and the posting stage. So here's a picture of it blocking on the guest bed.
It's the first time I knit nupps, and I don't think I did too badly.
Labels: knitting, shawl
Recently I got involved with Project Halo, a charity organisation that made hats, blankets and small items of clothing for premature babies, and distributed them to hospitals and families in need. They have now merged with Little Angel Memory Boxes, but the work continues.
It was heartbreaking to see how tiny the hats were, and the blankets were barely the size of tea towels. Why do premature babies need hats, you may wonder. Babies have disproportionately large heads. Even full-term babies have heads that are very large relative to their body size, and this is the case for premature babies as well. The babies lose a lot of heat through their heads. When babies are taken out of their little cribs for skin contact with their mothers, hospitals put hats on their little heads to keep them warm. If the hats fall off, it is is replaced with a clean one. You can imagine how many hats they go through daily!
Yes, those are real eggs. I made these hats (and a few others) to donate to the cause. The pattern has been written up and tested and available as a
free download on Ravelry. They are called the Archie and Aubrey hats.
About a year ago,
Lara, pregnant with twin boys discovered that her waters had broken early. What followed was a mother’s difficult and heartbreaking journey to try to save her boys. She lost one baby in-utero and kept fighting to save the other. In November 2010, she gave birth to both babies. The second baby was born alive but lost shortly after. She named her boys Archimedes Hare and Aubrey Michael. These hats are in remembrance of the precious lives of these babies who are still loved and missed every day.
For these hats you need a small amount of fingering, sport or DK weight yarn. Depending on the size you’re knitting, you need needles ranging from 2.5mm to 4.5mm. Don’t worry too much about exact sizes and gauge as hospitals need hats of all sizes. Each baby is different. The hats are very stretchy and each hat covers a range of different sized heads. I urge you to knit them for your local hospital as neonatal intensive care units always need hats to keep the little heads warm.
Labels: charity, knitting
We celebrated Book Week for the first time this year. Alex's previous preschool/daycare did not have Book Week so I never had to do this before. This year is the first time that I had to make a costume for him to dress up as a book character.
Someone should tell the kids that they should let mum off easy the first time. Alex didn't get the memo. Let's just say he had decided and there was no way he was going to change his mind. After I bought the fabric I was hoping that there would be no way he would change his mind as I had bought what felt like miles of red fleecy. I decided to use felt and fleecy because I did not want to have to finish the seams properly. There was simply not enough time!!
2 full hours of cutting and sewing later, we have...
Can you guess
who he is?
Labels: costume, sewing
