Knitting Today: Midwinter Blanket Square Two

 A few months ago I decided that the time had come to really go to town on using up yarn in the yarn closet.  When the yarn is all gone then I can plan new knitting projects and buy new yarn with a clear conscience.  I have a feeling it will take me two years to complete this use-up-the-yarn project but I am confirmed in my idea to do it.  

Since I had a fair amount of the Hilda Yates yarn still in a bin I decided to make another Barbara Walker Learn To Knit Afghan.  I may have mentioned this before.  So I got started.  I started in with Square One which is a striped garter stitch block and planned to just knit as far as I got in the 63 squares from the book until the yarn ran out.

At one point I decided I did not need to knit every one of the blocks in order but could pass on the ones I did not like very much.  I knitted most of the squares up to number 12 then the Martin Storey Midwinter Blanket Make A Long was hatched out by the Rowan yarn company. There are six squares in that blanket.  The reindeer below is the second square.

You will notice that I am actually blocking this square, along with the garter stripe square (Number One in Barbara Walker's book), something I rarely do.  Because garter stitch is a square stitch, that square is supposed to actually be square and so is how all the squares in the book are to be blocked.

The reindeer came out okay but is not stellar.  It was meant to be knit either stranded or stranded and intarsia combined. I did not want to bother with the intarsia and all the hanging balls or bobbins of yarn which will explain the nasty vertical lines of blue yarn showing through the white.  Since I have such a high tolerance for error, I am just letting it go and will not re-knit the square.  It is just a blanket and will lie on a bed or over a chair after all.  

There is a lot to learn in knitting and even in these two squares.  I suppose I will need to do better in staggering the floats on the back of the next Martin Storey square so we won't have this mess again.  Still, I like it well enough to just leave this one.  At least, I think I do. We shall see.  Square 3 will be released this Thursday.  I think we are expecting it to be a heavy weather day so I can happily stay home and knit.  We shall see.

Food Friday: Pitiful (Nevertheless Cute) Reindeer Cookies

Somewhere online I saw some adorable reindeer cookies.  I decided to try them for early morning food.  This is how I proceeded:

Measured 2 cups chocolate chips and 1 Tablespoon coconut oil into a glass measuring cup.  Microwaved for 30 seconds, removed from microwave to stir, returned for 30 more seconds, stirred again.  They were nicely melted.  Your microwave might take longer.  Check EVERY 30 seconds or you will burn the chocolate.

Opened a package of sandwich cookies that I had found at the Dollar Tree. Dropped the cookies one at a time into the melted chocolate then turned over and lifted out with salad tonge and laid on a parchment-paper-lined pan.  After getting a dozen or so of them coated with chocolate I laid two small pretzel knots on top of the individual cookies, covered with a piece of parchment paper and a large storage container to weight down the paper.  It was my view that doing this would keep the "horns" happily in place on the cookies while the chocolate cooled.

Because it was below freezing outside, I put the pan on a table on the front porch for a few minutes. In the meantime I went through a container of M and M's, both plain and peanut, to find whites for the eyes and reds for the Rudolph noses.

By that time the cookies on the porch were solid!  Bringing them inside, I flipped them over so the "horns" were on the bottom.  I poured more melted chocolate on top of the top/face of the cookies then placed the eyes and nose.  It would have been good to use some sort of grabber or tongs for this job.  OH!  As I am thinking of this now, I should have found the sugar tongs my brother brought home from France where he served as a missionary decades ago.  They would have been perfect for this job.

Well, as you can see, precision is NOT my middle name.  However, I do think they look rather cute.  If you make them, they will be wonderful.

Even with the pitiful appearance, they are edible.  In fact, so edible that I removed leftovers to drop off with the local grandchildren so I would not inadvertently eat one.  Or two.  Or more.  (Have you ever noticed that if you have a treat in your house that is highly visible it is almost impossible to walk by without reaching out to it?  It is better to have a bowl of lovely kale salad sitting on the counter with a clear top on it.)

Perhaps the next reindeer food item will be more attractive.  There IS another one in the wings....