C in DC

I quickly got tired of knitting my scarf-sized Kinetic, so I made three buttonholes, cast off, sewed on some wood buttons, and called it a neckwarmer.

I saw a recipe for vegan pumpkin bread on a local knitter’s blog and decided to give it a try, but since I’m not vegan I used regular eggs instead of egg substitute. I decided to make the bread gluten-free while I was at it. The recipe yielded 4 mini loaves and 18 muffins, perfect for distributing to friends!

Citrusy-sweet orange-honey butter was the perfect compliment to this bread; all you have to do is take a softened stick of butter and mash it up with orange zest and a drizzle of honey. If it’s not orangey enough you can squeeze in a little juice as well.

Here’s a reprint of the recipe from s i x o n e s e v e n, with my modifications:

Ingredients:

2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. each allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon & cloves (I used much more)
1 bag Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Flour

1 c. granulated sugar
1 c. dark brown sugar, packed
4 eggs
1/3 c. walnut oil
2/3 c. unsweetened applesauce

2/3 c. water
15 oz. canned pumpkin (not canned pumpkin pie filling)

3/4 c. each chopped walnuts & raisins, plus extra walnuts to sprinkle on top

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly spray & flour loaf pans or muffin pans.

Whisk together all dry ingredients (baking soda through flour), set aside. In a separate bowl, mix oil, sugars, and eggs until combined. Add water, pumpkin, and applesauce. Keep stirring until mixture is uniform. Stir in dry ingredients a little bit at a time, just until the dough comes together. Fold in raisins & nuts. Divide mixture evenly between the prepared pans and sprinkle with chopped walnuts. Bake 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely. Freezes well.

Apple Cupcakes
These were really good and went quickly. I added cinnamon to the cream cheese frosting, which made it irresistible, though it may have overwhelmed the apple flavor in the cupcake. I omitted the marzipan apple decorations since I’m trying to cut back on unnecessary expenditures, and marzipan apples are not exactly a necessity.

Autumn Farmer’s Market Salad
Like Autumn in a bowl. Instead of roasting the butternut squash with crushed red pepper, I used cinnamon and a dash of curry powder. So good! I also diced up a couple pears and roasted them with the squash. I was not so crazy about the dressing– really, there’s so much going on that you don’t need it– and in the future I would just squeeze some fresh orange juice over the salad instead.

Kale and Roasted Vegetable Soup
This soup was perfect and I would not change a thing!

I did this one in cheerier colors for my sister. Which do you like better?

Very easy and inexpensive to make! The tutorial can be found here. I think it would also be cute as a barrette or a broach.

Yesterday I cast on for a scarf-sized version of Kinetic:

When I bought the yarn for Porom I got two skeins just to be on the safe side, but didn’t end up touching the second skein. Since S really likes the color of this yarn and since I’m not good at returning things, I decided to make her a scarf out of it. I would have chosen something a little softer, but this does show the stitch pattern extremely well. I dropped down to size 4 needles because my gauge is way too loose to show the pattern on the recommended size 7s.

Despite the easiness of the pattern, I got off to a rough start (I had to frog it– twice!) because I’m so unused to reading a chart for something that’s knit flat. But once I got the hang of it the zigzag motif really started to pop out! I’ve calculated that if I do 20 rows a day (not hard since I’ll be traveling quite a bit) I should have a 48″ scarf by her birthday on the 29th. Of course, I still have to finish her vest in the meantime.

What do you do on a Friday night when you’re stuck in Alabama?

If you’re me, you buy cardstock and glue at Walmart, download an audiobook from the library, and settle in your hotel room for a night of crafting!

This pop-up lotus card has been on my to-make list for a while, and I am really pleased with the results. I’m sure I will be constructing more of these this week.

It’s done and I love it!

Yesterday my flight to Mobile was overbooked and I got bumped to a later flight. As a result, I was stuck in the airport at Charlotte with five hours to kill. Since I had two books, three knitting projects, my homework, my laptop, and a free meal voucher from the airline, the time passed pretty quickly. I spent a good chunk of time online, shopping on Etsy for birthday presents. Here’s what I got:

For S: A vintage Scorpio necklace from 19Moons. We’re both Scorpios and like to celebrate the fact, so I thought this was perfect. Check out the seller’s other items– I really like her steampunk jewelery with the exposed gears and other mechanical parts.

This beautiful necklace from lauralidesigns is for my sister. The sterling silver filigree leaf is made from an actual Cottonwood leaf, and the double strand necklace is made from freshwater pearls. The seller has lots of similar items in her shop– it was hard choosing just one!

So I finished slicing up the vest last night:

I was finally able to try it on, and was amazed by how perfectly it fit! Good thing the person I’m making it for is the same size as me!