Knitting: Heart Baby Blanket

Not too long ago I was emptying a binder of knitting patterns...ones that I decided I was never going to knit up so I did not need to keep them anymore.  One pattern caught my eye: it was titled Heart Pattern.

Since I had been given some lovely soft yarns I thought I would give it a try. After all, it was around Valentine's Day...and what is not to love about heart patterns?!

When I tried to find the creator of the pattern I found a very nice lady named Stephanie.  She has a blog called And She Knits Too! 

Look to the right side column for the Heart Scarf pattern.  It turns out to be very simple and easily memorized.

What I did differently is that I held two strands of worsted weight yarn together and used US size 15 needles. I did three pattern repeats in the body of the work with garter stitch edges.  For some reason I started out with K2, P2 ribbing for a couple of inches.  No idea why, but after the first pattern repeat I decided not to rip back and start again. Usually I do rip back.  Anyway, this will be a lovely baby blanket for some baby who is coming up.  I will probably do 8-10 pattern row repeats, depending on how it looks.  I also have several different colors of yarn and will just work in the new yarn as I finish each skein. There is one sort of golden yellow which I will use as the ending yarn.  In between are some browns and greens. I think it will look unusual and maybe nice.  Hopefully nice.  If not, I will donate it to the animal shelter for a soft cat blanket....

You can see that this is not block and that I have just added in the first strand of brown at the top.

Knitting Today: Heart Dishcloth/Washcloth

Around Valentine's Day there are many very cool knitting patterns using the heart pattern.  Usually I see these and get very excited to make some of them as gifts.  Unfortunately, there is almost always no time to knit up the projects in time for Valentine's Day (or Easter or St. Patrick's Day or Halloween or Christmas...).  This time, however, I did get a gift made.  This time a two-day snowstorm which left a foot and a half of snow made driving to the intended recipient impossible.  The day having gone by, I will probably put the gift in the gift-waiting-to-give drawer where I keep knitted gift-items-to-be.

This wash cloth/dish cloth was knit with Sugar 'n' Cream cotton worsted weight yarn.  Peaches 'n' Cream yarn could also be used, or any other cotton worsted weight yarn.

My heart cloth did not look fat and happy like the one shown on the pattern, but then, I thought I was out of time so I stopped knitting increases early....shortcuts often are not worth the saved time!

The pattern is found here.

It only took an evening to get it knit up.

Food: Chocolate Cookie Heart Treat Boxes

A couple of weeks ago I found a Woman's World magazine at the check-out counter at Hannaford''s Supermarket.

There was an advertisement on the front cover about the paleo diet, a topic in which I am somewhat interested...imagining that it is instructive of healthier eating, something we could use here!

Inside I found a recipe for Chocolate Cookie Boxes!  Ever so healthy!  Not really, but a nice treat for young people.

Finally, several days after Valentine's Day, I found the time to make these cookies.  I think you could probably use most any sugar cookie for this.

My cookies did not turn out very beautiful and sleek like the ones in the picture.

 Things I did differently:  I could not find my icing squeeze bottle nor any of my decorating bags and tips...having done too much moving of stuff around recently...so I just used a teaspoon to dribble the "glue" frosting on the cut-out hearts.  The icing with the meringue powder worked really well to harden up and hold the cookie layers together.  Looking at the box of meringue powder makes me think I could have used one egg white instead of spending a fortune on the powder!  Next time.

The final different thing I did was that I used Wilton's Candy Melts for the icing on top.  I microwaved one $2.50 package (12 ounces) in a glass bowl in the microwave.  I used the defrost setting on the microwave and cooked for 30 second intervals, stirring in between intervals, until the disks were melted and smooth.  At that point I spooned on the melted candy and spread it around the cookie box tops (and on the tops of the small cut-outs) with the spoon.  It worked but is not beautiful.

This is another recipe that I am glad I made,  but having made it once, I think I will not make again.

Perhaps yours will be much more beautiful.  Even with their ugly duckling/Velveteen Rabbit appearance they were well received by the recipients.