Owlings to the rescue

I am generally a very organised person, but for some reason I leave knitted presents to the last minute, which means that I:

1. Get a bit flustered when trying to decide what to make and
2. Have to knit like a maniac to get the project done.

I was very happy when my friend asked me to knit her something for her birthday rather than buy a gift. But, as per above schedule, I started thinking about it less than a week before the gift was due. Again, as per above schedule, I looked at loads and loads of patterns of fingerless gloves (at least I had half settled on a type of gift) and even started making one until I decided I didn't like it.

So, its Tuesday night and the gift is due to be given on Saturday. You continue being overwhelmed with patterns. What do you do? Go back to an old faithful! I have made Fetching twice already, and you can tell how popular it is from the fact it has been made over 20,000 times (and that's just on Ravelry). It's just an easy, quick and very satisfying pattern, and rightfully deserves to be so popular.

I have also made its other incarnation, Owlings, once before, and being an owlette I decided that it was fate.

The beauty with making patterns that you have knitted before is that you don't need to think about it too much. I should have checked my  gauge because I was using a different yarn (Manos wool classica) but I just assumed that decreasing the cast-on stitches from 45 to 35 would still be fine. I must have small hands or knit too loosely, but 45 was just huge on me the first time I made these, and I have stuck to 35 ever since.

I also modified the pattern to add a thumb gusset because I think they work better. I wanted to think about it myself but it was 10pm and my brain was fried - thankfully, another raveler had already posted some instructions, so I based mine on hers:

1. Knit two rounds following the rib pattern after the owling cable is complete
2. K2, place marker, m1, place marker, follow pattern to end of round
3. Knit 2 rounds in rib pattern
4. K2, slip marker, m1, knit to next marker, m1, slip marker, follow pattern to end of round
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are 11 stitches between the two markers
6. On next round, k2, slip the 11 stitches onto waste yarn, join and follow pattern to end of round.
7. Knit 4 rows in rib pattern
8. Follow owling cable pattern
9. Knit one row on rib pattern and bind off loosely

I tried doing 8 rows instead of 4 in step 7 but they just looked a bit odd to me, too long.

For the thumb, I picked up the stitches plus and extra three from in between to avoid holes, and knitted 4 rows. I was a little drunk at the time, so they were purls rather than knits (I must have been going the wrong way round), but I though they looked quite cute so left them like that.

Shocking pink pair of owls

Owl close-up 

And a happy customer!

Peanut butter chocolate squares (brownies-ish)

I have concluded that each year I find a 'weird' baking type to follow and stick to rather than regular cakes, possibly because it sounds more interesting and challenging, possibly because I associate some sort of health benefit to it. Last year it was the vegetable cakes, and now this year it seems I am becoming interested in raw and vegan baking.

I decided not to buy yet another cookbook, but I had a look at the Post-punk kitchen website, as their recipe books seem to feature very heavily on Amazon while I was researching vegan baking books. There, I came across a recipe for a peanut butter blondie, and just the mention of peanut butter for me means it is love at first sight!

As usual, I did not follow the recipe as written, because what could be better than a peanut butter square, but a peanut butter and chocolate square (mmm, peanut butter and chocolate...). There is something insanely delicious about this combination that works even with slightly disgusting ingredients in things like reeces peanut butter cups.

Anyway, here is my modified recipe:

230 gr crunchy peanut butter (I used Meridian, which is a natural one)
30 gr coconut oil (the original recipe called for rapeseed oil, so I am sure that would work fine too)
100 gr brown sugar (for my non-sweet tooth, add more to make them sweeter)
60 ml almond milk (apparently any non-dairy milk would do here)
150 gr flour
Half tsp baking powder
Half tsp salt
3-4 tsps cacao powder
chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
2. Mix the peanut butter, sugar and coconut oil in a bowl. I didn't bother melting the coconut oil first but it may have made the mixing a little easier.
3. Add the almond milk and mix through
4. Add the dry ingredients and mix until it becomes like a dough. At this point it resembled more of a cookie dough than a brownie mix, and so I mixed it further by hand.
5. Line a small dish with baking paper and spread the mixture as evenly as possibly, using your hands and then a flat spatula to even it out at the top. Try to stop yourself from eating the raw dough.
6. Bake for around 20-25 minutes, until the ends look slightly crisp. The top will have coloured slightly but the inside will still be very soft.
7. Cool on a wire rack and then cut into squares.

Slightly crispy on the top, gooey and soft in the middle

Verdict: really yummy! As noted above, I had to stop myself from eating the raw dough (no eggs for those who are concerned about these things, so bonus).

Some crumbling issues, which I attributed to the lack of eggs, but after reading the comments at the bottom of the original recipe it sounds like the kind of peanut butter used might also have a role - they seem to suggest that a creamy peanut butter like the ones you buy in the supermarket is better at holding these together. If you do make them with a different kind of peanut butter and get no crumbliness, let me know!

Adventures in raw cooking, and a raw lemon-lavender cheesecake

My yoga journey has taken me to another yoga retreat, this time a day retreat (does it really count?) by the lovely Natasha Kerry.

What intrigued me about this one is that it included a raw food lunch followed by a raw food demonstration. When I booked this, I had no idea what raw food meant (other than the obvious of course) and had not dabbled in it at all, unless you count salads and other raw assemblies. I realised later that the healthy chocolate treats I made are actually a raw food and a variation of a raw brownie.

I now know that raw food involves not heating food above around 115 F (around 40 degrees C) so it doesn't have to be cold food. This however means that you can't have any pasta, rice or quinoa (yes, really, no pasta! This is never really going to work!). Although you can use a dehydrator (or apparently attempt this with an oven) to make crackers and other crispy things like kale chips to add a bit more texture. And weirdly, it involves a lot of soaking of nuts that are then blended to make cream fillings or cheese. 

Our lunch was actually surprisingly delicious and filling:

Warmish smoky red pepper soup with kale chips

Salad of rocket and figs stuffed with macadamia nut cheese

Carrot 'pasta' with asparagus and macadamia nut 'blue' cheese

Cheesecake with mango chutney

Although I do not see myself replacing my beloved pasta with carrot ribbons or courgette spirals, I can see the benefit of introducing a few things from the raw diet into mine, in particular the deserts and possibly the cheese (I have just ordered a cloth, let's see if I ever use it now!).

So, in the spirit of raw, I decided to attempt a raw and vegan (I think, apparently honey is not vegan though!) cheesecake that I found on this lovely website. This is a lavender cheesecake with lemon and honey, and thus a great opportunity to use up the 'cooking' lavender that I was gifted over Christmas.

The idea is to use creamed cashews instead of cream cheese and a nut/date mixture for the base instead of the crushed biscuits. I was a bit dubious about the cashews serving as an adequate substitute for cream cheese, but actually, after soaking in warm water for an hour (does that still count as raw?  I don't know!) they could be blitzed to a lovely creamy consistency.

Its not a looker, I agree, but still tasty! Need to get better with the parchment paper placement

The verdict: I think cashew cream flavoured with your chosen cheesecake topping can serve as an excellent substitute for cream cheese and has a really nice consistency. In this particular case, I thought that the lemon was overpowering and I could barely taste the lavender. Now, I will admit that this may be partly my fault, as I got confused with the cup measurements (why can't everyone just use grams??) and just ended up adding what I thought was correct - I should have just done it to taste instead.

The other issue I had is that the base didn't really stick together. I thought that perhaps more dates were necessary to hold the mixture together, and might try and experiment with that next time. It might also again be partially my fault, as I used a mixture of hazelnuts, pecans and ground almonds, and perhaps the ground almonds were a little too fine to hold together.

You can see here where I tried to cut a slice and the base crumbled off

Anyway, this was an interesting experiment, and I am looking forward to trying out more raw/vegan cakes!

I have been cheating (with weaving)

It was almost a year ago that the weavers in Peru fascinated me with their fabulous yarns (all dyed naturally) and their intricate weaving techniques that I really could not get my head around. Using fairly basic, and rather unwieldy, instruments, they were able to produce fabulous fabrics and ultimately bags, wall hangings and other lovely things.

And so I cheated on knitting for two weekends while I learned to weave at the Handweavers studio and gallery on Sevens Sisters road in North London, by expert weaver Melanie Venes. And I felt bad while I thought that weaving is so much easier than knitting and could be used with much finer yarns, ones that I would never ever use to knit because they would probably reduce me to tears (see previous post on Damson shawl). In fact, all it seems to involve is passing yarn over other yarn and repeating.

Of course I am over-simplifying, and the set-up is much much more complicated than picking up your needles and casting on. You can have a four-shaft loom that can make complicated patterns,  an eight-shaft loom that can make even more complicated patterns or a floor loom with ridiculous numbers of shafts to make super creative textiles. You can set up your loom in specific ways so that you can get specific patterns when weaving by lifting different combinations of shafts, and use different colour threads to generate interesting combinations. The possibilities are truly endless, and we were shown a spectacular array of fabrics that can be made, and experimented on different looms with different pattern combinations (which is why all the samples below look a bit crazy, but the idea was to try out everything!).

My first attempt on the Ashford eight-shaft loom

After I got a bit more confident, I started experimenting by making patterns up

Using eight shafts to make a sort of quilted fabric with a different pattern in each square

And finishing with something pretty that I would wear in scarf format, mostly experimenting with different yarns

And then we get to the yarns - there is an unbelievable array of yarns available, from the regular wool and cotton that we are all familiar with as knitters, to the smooth and soft rayon, tencel and silk, to fuzzy novelty yarns and to crazy things like paper, latex, stainless steel and banana! I could have spent hours in the shop feeling the different yarns (in you can really call them that) and wondering what you could make with them.

Lots of yarn!

But you have to be careful with novelty yarn, it can lead to hideous results!

So I am going to have a proper affair with weaving? Well, as much as it all sounded fabulous when presented by an expert weaver, I don't think this will be a sudden career change for me, nor do I envision making my own clothes from scratch and my own curtains or rugs, and so I am reluctant to fork out over £500 for a fancy loom.

However, I did learn a lot in this course about how fabric is made (I do keep looking at people's clothes and guessing how they were made) and I am intrigued by the possibilities. So I am seriously considering taking a baby step towards weaving by purchasing a little rigid heddle loom, a type of loom that can't easily do fancy patterns but can still be used to make nice fabric with a bit of creativity and some interesting colour combinations or fancy yarns. Scarves for everyone next Christmas!