Thursday 28 November 2013

Banana Bread Every Week!

So there's this silent agreement with my boyfriend and I in regards to baked goods at home. Always have a banana loaf ready weekly. I have no idea how this tradition started but ever since I moved into this new house we are in back in July it had been a weekly occurrence.

Now, to spice it up I've tried both pumpkin loaves around Thanksgiving (Canadian version) and an apple strudel coffee cake but both were met with mediocre responses from my boyfriend and my roommate so banana seems to be it.

Banana bread is a classic comfort food. I actually buy extra bananas every time I go to the store to ensure I have enough for my baking needs.

The recipe itself is fairly simple. Usually it takes me about 10 minutes to put together and an hour or so in the oven.

Banana Bread

Prep time: 10-20 minutes
Cook time:1 hour

Ingredients

1 cup butter room temp
1/2 cup sugar
2 lrg or 3 med bananas mashed
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup flour (I like to blend the unbleached and the whole wheat so I can tell myself it's healthy!)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350F
With a hand mixer or stand up mixer cream butter and sugar together. Once pale yellow and fluffy, add bananas, eggs, and vanilla. Mix together. It will look separated or like it has curdled but that's fine.

Add in flour baking soda and salt. Mix until batter is smooth.

Grease a loaf pan with butter then sprinkle with sugar to prevent sticking and makes for a delicious caramelized crust to the loaf.

Pour batter into the loaf pan.


Put in oven and bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let cool and enjoy!



The best part about this recipe is that it is definitely versatile. I have used it to make mini loaves and muffins. I love adding toasted walnuts and chocolate chips to it too. If you were to make it what would you put in it to make it your own?

Thursday 13 June 2013

Stashbuster Adventures 2013 - The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief

In a search to create another lovely stash buster, I turned to always handy Ravelry to find my next mission

This project has been on my radarr for some time. My best friend has done one and said it was quite easy but the idea of the garter tab definitely caused me to shy away. But alas, I knew I had a skein of Berroco Vintage in a bold deep red waiting to be used.  Perfect yardage for this amazing project. So I started off.

The garter tab was definitely the biggest learning curve for me but the rest was fairly simple.


It was quite the easy knit and knitted up very quickly at first. 

Around this point I started slowing down.


But still the project took me not too long to complete it. Approximately 4 evenings as they were all days I worked. But I loved how it turned out.

The blocking took some time though. It took about 2 days because of the heavier yarn and the poor circulation in my house. I tried using my first fancy soak and it smell delicious!



Loved it so much here's how the finish product looks wore:


Couldn't be happier! Please check out the ravelry page for this pattern! Age of Brass and Steam Let me know what you think! :D

Thursday 6 June 2013

Stashbuster: The Last Minute Slouch

I love hats! I always end up spending $30 on a cute hat at the local sports store but not this winter! I plan on knitting myself a whole bunch so I have NO excuse to buy them and look amazingly cool this year! :D Ok so I hope I will look amazingly cool.

What better way to start of my stashbuster journey by starting my new hat collection!

This hat pattern was super easy to do. Took me a total of 2 days to knit it and no blocking involved! I think this might be on the holiday knitting list of this year's Christmas gifts.

I have never really experimented with colour changing before. I had 2 partial skeins of Cascade 220 kicking around left over from other presents I knitted for Christmas. I decided to combine the two and see what they would look like together. The first skein is a gorgeous deep turquoise colour. It is so rich and nice all on it's own. I had gone to the lys in Guelph one day in search of something to knit a scarf with. Being completely unsuspecting, the ladies there convince me to buy 2 skeins of yarn insisting that it would require both to make a scarf. Yup, wrong! I only needed one so I decided to make a cute beret with it which only required a bit more than half a skein since Cascade 220 is so much yardage. Great bang for the buck. The next one was a black that I used to do the black borders for 2 scarves I made which resulted in some leftovers still. Black is awesome because it can go with pretty much anything.

The result? You let me know what you thinks! :D Second hat ever is not too shabby!





Yup, winter is coming.... in like 5 months but still winter is coming and dammit I will be ready for you! :D

For the link to the actual pattern, check this out: http://madelinetosh.com/last-minute-slouch/

Onto the next project! :D


Tuesday 4 June 2013

Stashbuster Intro



I know I haven't written on here in a while. I apologize for it. It has been beyond hectic lately for me. Work has been insane with staff leaving, coming, blah! Working tons of hours and coming home exhausted. The up side to being that busy? The big paychecks! :D I have had the chance to go out and get myself some neat things and lately those "things" have been yarn! I love the lusciousness of yarn. I love how comforting it is and how soft and smooth and fluffy it is. I love the colours and how they brighten up my mood. I love walking into a lys and just being in awe of the walls and rows of gorgeous yarns and tools for me to drool over.

I have had the pleasure of going to Portland two months ago and the amount of lys in just a 1 block radius is unreal! I got to check out so many different types of shops and lay outs. There were so many different companies I never even got a chance to consider because I have never seen any of their products up close and personal.

I also found 2 amazing LYS here in the Lower Mainland. About a 5 minute drive from my house is the always lovely Black Sheep Yarns here in Port Moody. What a great little spot! If you didn't know it was there it would've just been another hidden gem tucked away from the main road. Then there's the gorgeous little fishing village of Steveston out in Richmond. I love it there because of the sweet village feel and the amazing fish and chips but now I have a great little yarn shop to browse through when I'm there by the name of Wool and Wicker. The ladies at this shop was super helpful and there were just so many brands I never considered sitting on their shelves that I just had to snap up some!

Now with the discovery of these little gems and more to come it's hard to not buy yarn. Except now that we are on the verge of moving to a more permanent area for us here in the Lower Mainland my boyfriend is not happy with having to move it all. Now I can't exactly blame him, I should be more controlled and knit what I have before getting more but darn it, they are so pretty and soft and I just wanted to HAVE them. So now he puts his foot down for me (Thank God!) and says I am not allowed to purchase any more yarn until I knit up at least half of what I already have or at least what I have wound up.

Good thing my needle set came last week! I got a set of Addiclicks. These needles are a dream! I will go more into detail in another post. But since I have have been dying to knit with them, this gives me a chance to play with them!



So please join me in my stash buster journey. I will post each item as I finish with how I felt about it and a link to the pattern I used! :D

Sunday 3 March 2013

Recipe Sundays: Lasagna

Cold dreary days always seems to call for big and hearty comfort foods. In the dead of winter when everyone is snuggled inside on days off, slow cooked meals are easily some of my favourites to make. Although, today has been bright and spring like, this past week here in Vancouver it has been rainy and damp here. Earlier this week I came home in an absolute torrential downpour. Even though I had a ride, the walk to the house from the complex parking lot was enough to make me feel that damp cold in my bones. As soon as I got a hot shower in me, I got set to work on one of my favourite comfort foods of all times, lasagna. 

Now the thing I love about making lasagna is that when I make it, there's always leftovers. I build it 4 layers high and I can always cut and freeze. It always turns out exactly the way I want it to. The thing that sometimes turns me off from making it though is that it is pretty time consuming. I do take a few short cuts to save time like buying pre made tomato sauce and then spicing it to my own liking and buying oven ready noodles to save time on the cooking process.

Lasagna

Sauce: 

1lb ground beef
1 medium onion diced
3 cloves of garlic minced 
1 tbsp italian seasoning
1 can of premade pasta sauce 

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan, brown off ground beef with onion and garlic. Once browned, add italian season and cook for another 3 minutes to toast the seasoning to bring out more flavour. Add sauce, mix well and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside.

Cottage Cheese Filling

1 500g container of cottage cheese
2 eggs
2 tsp salt
2 tsp pepper.

Beat eggs in a small mixing bowl. Add everything else and mix well. Set aside.

Assembly

1 pkg of oven ready lasagna noodles
Pasta Sauce
Cottage Cheese Filling
2 cups shredded cheese

In a rectangular baking dish spread a thin layer of sauce. This prevents the noodles from sticking and burning to the botton of your pan.

Place your first layer of noodles down.

Top the layer with 1/3 of the remainder of the sauce and 1/3 cup of cheese.

Place second layer of noodles.

Place the whole amount of cottage cheese filling spreading it evenly. Add 1/3 cup of cheese.

Place third layer of noodles.

Add 1/3 of the sauce and 1/3 cup of cheese.

Place 4th layer of noodles.

Top with remainder of sauce and 1 cup of cheese making sure to spread evenly.



Cover loosely with tin foil trying not to touch the cheese and bake at 375 for 45 minutes.

Remove tin foil and bake for another 15 minutes or until cheese is golden brown.



At the grocery store near my house they sell these garlic toasts that I just pop in the oven for about 5 minutes while the cheese is browning to add the extra touch.



What is your favourite comfort food?




Tuesday 26 February 2013

Knitting Tuesdays: How To Spot A Bargain




My obsession with yarn has really grown the more I learn about the world of knitting and crocheting. Everywhere I look I see inspiration and I find myself wondering how I could go about knitting/crocheting it. Lately the obsession has been cowls. In the colder weather they are chunky and squishy, in the warmer weather they are light and airy just adding a touch of class to whatever you are wearing.

With all these designs in mind I have to find the right yarn. Now I know I can't always go to my local yarn shop. The hours are sometimes incompatible with my work schedule or the prices are sometimes just too much. I am a bargain shopper wherever I go. I went scouring for some online sources. It meant I could shop any time any where and let's face it, who doesn't love getting packages in the mail?

Well, from what I have seen, here are a few sources I have found helpful! :D

1. +Etsy  - That place is a plethora of ides, gadgets and supplies. The important thing to remember with Etsy though is that the prices on there may not be such a bargain after factoring in shipping costs, especially to Canada. I love handpainted yarn and sometimes I lose track of how much I might be spending so I always dial it back and calculate in all the factors which includes prices of the yarn, price of shipping and how much it would cost me to get it locally. It's hard sometimes. The other thing I do scour for on Etsy is destash. Destash yarn is from people who realize their yarn collection is too big or that they really have no use for a particular yarn they have in their inventory. It is usually sold at a discounted price. Just again beware of the shipping costs.

2. DBNY - So many good bargains here! Many local yarn shops that go out of business will sell their entire stock to this website and they in turn sell it at a ridiculously low price. I have seen everything from Noro to Bernat in there. The only catch is once it's gone it's gone. I sign up for their newsletter so I know when new stock comes in and I can browse for it. The important thing to remember with this site though is that sometimes they sell vintage yarns and that requires a bit of look up on Ravelry. Also this company does calculate their shipping by the weight so watch out for that. Always get the system to calculate the shipping before you order because sometimes the shipping is more than what you are actually paying for the yarn itself!

3.Eat Sleep Knit - This is an amazing site full of delicious premium yarns. The possibilities are endless here! They don't have many sale items or bargain yarns but the reason I included this site is because they have something called the "Yarnathon". This program gives you rewards for the amount of yarn you end up buying. This can come in the form of accessories or gift certificates or discounts on your purchase. Some yarns have "power ups" which means the total yardage that you buy of that particular yarn is either counted towards the program by another half, double and sometimes even triple to get you to the next level quicker. I love that they offer this type or promotion for their customers because not many yarn sites offer any type of loyalty program at all.

4. Your Local Yarn Shop Website - I have visited many local yarn shops and after leaving decided that I needed more of what they have in there. It never hurts to call or ask the staff if they do shipping. The other day I was at Wool Is Not Enough and the proprietor told me she does flat rate shipping for $10. Cheaper than most sites out there by far! The Purple Purl in Toronto does a similar thing as well and they even carry my favourite hand dye artist Indigo Dragonfly.

Do you have any sites that you would recommend? I am always looking for new ones!


Thursday 21 February 2013

Knitting Tuesday: Crocheted Baby Blanket

Sorry for the late post! I really wanted to finish this project for my Tuesday post and ended up  finishing it late last night. But better late than never! It was still in my opinion a quick project. Took about a week and a half and the results were awesome!

Now I always believe that every baby needs a baby blanket. The reason is most kids still hold on to that very blanket like a favourite toy as time passes. They are and comforting at the same time. They are soft and warm. The love you put into a baby blanket for someone show through in the work and detail. Parents can never have enough baby blankets for the new little one especially here in Canada :D

Now I know that it says Knitting Tuesday but I recently learned to crochet and found this a quick and easy way to do up a baby blanket. I usually reach for chunkier yarns as well. This particular one is by Bernat Yarns a pretty inexpensive and easy to find brand of yarn. It is called Baby Blanket. Easily found at your local walmart or joann's. Now no one knows if the baby is a boy or girl so I went with a yellow base. The border is a colour by the name of "pitter patter". I love it because the colours remind me of cotton candy. I know the base does include bits of pink but should still be a gender neutral balanced out with everything else.


2 balls of bernat baby blanket in two different colors
8mm crochet hook
Scissors


Chain off 35 stitches
HDC 10 rows
Switch to second colour
HDC 4 rows
Switch back to original colour
HDC 10 rows
Bind off
Using your crochet hook pick uo stitches off the side of the blanket and begin to crochet the border. Crochet border for 4 round and bind off.



This blanket was so soft making it my puppy did not want to let it go! :D 

Any projects you like to do for the arrival of someone's baby? What is your favourite gift to give?

Sunday 17 February 2013

Recipe Sundays: French Toast Bread Pudding



Sundays and food have always gone hand in hand for me. Growing up, Sunday was church day. After service Sunday meant tons and tons of good food! Everyone always ate together after church. Several families including mine would all go out for lunch at one chinese restaurant or another. Some Sundays everyone would stay at the church and have a huge pot luck lunch. Kids would play, teenagers would look bored and gossip while scarfing down platefuls of food, parents would chatter and chase after their kids and the seniors would get a chance to catch up with each other. After lunch, the moms would all go to one family's home and prepare a huge meal for everyone with everyone chipping in for groceries. So big meals and big flavours were always huge for me on Sundays. 

Now that I am older and no longer living in that type of a community, I still try to incorporate cooking into this day every week if I am home to do it. Usually it's my big meal day. Lately at our house it has been chicken. It is also the one day out of the week I cook breakfast instead of just downing a bowl of cereal or eating a quick sandwich. 

While working for various restaurants, I have had the pleasure of making many a different bread puddings, everything from a sticky toffee caramel conncotion to a mexican chocolate version. The method is quite simple, it always involved eggs, milk and of course bread. The flavourings after that is completely up to the baker. It can be anything from savoury to sweet. One day I was making french toast for dessert and thought to myself, it is not that far off from a bread pudding! And voila! Recipe born!

Serves 4-6

8 slices of bread (hint I use bread ends that I froze from sandwiches great way to use it up)
4 large eggs 
2 cups milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 brown sugar

Preheat oven to 375F

Cube bread into 1" cubes and place into a greased casserole dish



In a bowl, whisk together egg and brown sugar, slowly pour in milk, vanilla and cinnamon.


Pour mixture over the bread and gently toss to make sure it is coated.



Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes or until top is golden brown. It should be super puffy as well kind of like a souffle.



While still hot, drizzle with syrup and scatter 3 tbsp of cubed cold butter on top. 
My trick is to always use a butter knife and try to poke some holes in the casserole so that every bite gets some syrup and butter.


Let rest until butter is melted and sprinkle with a dusting of powdered sugar.


Now I know all my dieting friends are probably going, ugh why?!?! This recipe can easily be done without the butter and try agave syrup instead of the regular syrup and powdered sugar for a lighter version of this. This dish is super rich so that's why it made so infrequently. Great Mother's Day or Christmas morning treat. When do you serve rich breakfasts? 

Thursday 14 February 2013

Valentine's Day: Easy Dinner for Two

As a cook, I work on days like this. Valentine's Day is the one night every restaurant expects to be busy. I don't think I remember the last Valentine's Day I had off was. We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day either. I go with the motto, you should show who you love that you love them no matter when.

Despite not celebrating it I did want my boyfriend to know I love him today so I decided to make his favourite meal, shepherd's pie. There's usually just the two of us for dinner so we always make sure there's enough for him for lunch the next day. This is my recipe for Shepherd's Pie for two!

Ingredients

1lb ground beef
1 medium onion diced
4 strips of bacon diced
1/2 pkg onion soup mix

3 medium sized potatoes (we like yellow fleshed because it's so buttery and sweet)
1/4 cup sour cream
2 tbsp butter
salt and pepper to taste.

Quarter potatoes cover with cold water and set to boil until tender.

In a separate pan sauteed onions and bacon until onions are opaque.
Add ground beef to onion/bacon mixture. Cook until beef is browned. Add onion soup mix and toss.
Place into a small casserole dish.


Once potatoes are tender, add butter and sour cream. Whip until mashed with an electric hand blender (yup my little secret for fluffy potatoes. Season to taste.
Spread potatoes onto meat let set for 10 minutes and serve!


Super easy and always delicious! You can always switch it up and add more veggies or another favourite mashed potatoes  combo of mine is roasted garlic and a touch of goat cheese. How do you like your shepherd's pie?

What did you make or had made for you this Valentines? Happy Valentines Day!

Miso Crafty Knits: ISLAND // Review & Giveaway!!

Miso Crafty Knits: ISLAND // Review & Giveaway!!: It's absolutely no secret that I'm a huge fan of both Jane Richmond and of her work .  If you've ever had the chance to meet her or to ...

Hey everyone! Check out my friend's review and giveaway for the stunning book, Island. Jane Richmond has outdone herself with this exquisite coffee table style pattern book that you would be proud to have lying around! The patterns are easy to follow and bears amazing results! Enter to win!

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Knitting Tuesday: The Knitted Bag

I love love bags. They are easily one of my favourite accessories and I cannot get enough of them. I love anything from a cute clutch to a huge carry all bag. I love reusable grocery bags and I love everything in between. There are not many things in life I would limit myself to buying. I am sure you all have yours and please tell me you do because then I don't feel like I am the only one. But bags, yup that's one thing I really try to limit myself from buying.

Now that I have started knitting however, I always find myself looking for "project bags". I try to use old purses but they don't fit into what I want to use that day so I leave those to my bigger projects. I go to my reusable bag stash but then I realize I need it for groceries and I didn't want to dump everything out. So then I thought to myself, what if I made my own bag. So off  I went to scour Ravelry. So many options but I decided on doing a variation of the Ilene Bag. So here's how I did it! :D

Materials:

1 skein of Cascade Ultra Pima
1 4 mm 16 inch circular
4 stitch markers
1 cable needle or stitch holder
2 4 mm double pointed needles



CO 40 stitches and work back and forth for 25 lines.
BO on rectangle.
Once bound off, use needles and pick up 25 stitches on the short side PM 40 on the long side PM pick up 25 stitches from short side PM then 40 stitches on long side PM. Be sure to keep it in the round.

A great video I found on youtube by +Knit Picks
Picking up stitches

Row 1- knit 25 PM knit 40 PM knit 25 PM knit 40 PM
Row 2- yo/k2tog until it makes 25 stitches PM yo/k2tog until it makes 40 PM yo/k2tog until it makes 25 stitches PM yo/k2tog until it makes 40 PM

Repeat until row 43

Row 44-50 Knit/purl

Row 51 BO 39 stitches. Place 26 stitches onto cable needled BO 39 stitches. Knit 26. Continue to knit 26 stitches back and forth into stockinette stitch. Make sure to have enough for 3 needle bind off.

3 needle bind off with the 26 stitches in the stitch holder.

3 Needle Bind Off

My end result?



It makes a great little project bag! Will have to experiment with more yarn and see if I can make it bigger!

If you were to make this bag, what would you use it for?

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Knitting Tuesdays : The Batgloves

Hey Everyone!

I thought it would be fun to start knitting tuesdays! I find that I always end up completing projects around now and let's face it, I love having something to look forward to after mondays! So welcome to Knitting Tuesdays! :D How was everyone's Monday? Any great projects started up over the weekend that you can't seem to put down?

A while back, a guildie of mine in World of Warcraft posed a great challenge to her friends on facebook. She said the first 5 people to respond to her post gets a present from her. It can be any time in the year but something in the mail. The only catch? You had to repost the ad on your wall and offer the same deal to 7 other people. A great idea for pay it forward. I always love surprising my friends with gifts anyways so I jumped at the chance to do it. Got 5 people who agreed to the challenge and away I went in search of the perfect little gifts.

First up, my college best friend, Stacie. Her and I have been friends since first year college and are still close like sisters. I knew she would be up for the challenge! The two things I do know about her for sure is a- she loves to game and b- she loves Batman. Girl even has the symbol tatooed on her arm! For Christmas I got her Arkham City. I had to give her a gift to match this. I thought to myself, how many times when I'm gaming late into the night does my hands get cold from holding the controller? Or when I'm out and about do I hate clumsily trying to text with my gloves on? So I decided on BATGLOVES!

The premise was simple, a fingerless glove with tons of mobility. Now I am still just a beginner knitter so I have yet to try my hands at DPNs. This is a simple pattern that knits up on straight needles and then is sewn together, eliminating the need for DPNs. Genius!

I used Mary's Merry Wristlers with a few modifications to it. First of all I used Cascade 220. If you have never used this yarn, it is AMAZING! So many colours, so easy to work it! Best go to yarn in my books so far! I knitted in worsted so it was a little thicker for cold Ontario bus waits. I switched it up to 4mm needle to compensate for the change in yarn weight and casted off at 28 instead. I was careful to make sure the number was divisible by 4 so it would make the perfect 2x2 ribbing. These gloves have tons of stretch for the 2x2 ribbing so I wasn't afraid of my need to round down the stitches.

Once it was all sewn up it looked like this!


Pretty bat- cool right? :D I love contrasting colours it gives the project so much oomf! What colours would you pick to do this in? What could you do with fingerless gloves?




Monday 4 February 2013

A Holey Surprise

I decided that I've mastered the rib stitch with my momentary love to knit fingerless gloves so I wanted to move onto a simple "lace pattern" Now when I say lace I am not neccessarily talking about the super intricate frilly things. No, those I have yet to attempt. I figure in time I will. I mean the simplest of lace knitting, the yarn over/knit together patterns. It's a simplistic pattern that requires more attention but bascially you make a line of yarn over and knit togethers which creates deliberate holes and then knit a row to seal the holes. Simple but requires counting.

So I started off with my very first handpainted yarn the Indigodragonfly 100% Merino Sock Wool. I really wanted a pattern that would show off all the awesome colourway of this gorgeous yarn.


Yea, I splurged on getting this yarn. I was at the Purple Purl in Toronto with my friend who lucky duck lived down the street from this fantastic little gem of a store. He said he saw it in passing and I begged to go. He needed my help in there to pick out a gift and after that I couldn't resist and had to buy myself something. That's how this little ball of yarn came to be in my possession.

So to find the perfect pattern. I scoured Ravelry for it. Finally I found it. Something simplistic but would showcase the colourway!

So I settled on the great Colosseo Scarf Pattern. Talk about a great knit! Took 3 weeks but it was worth it!

Then came the blocking. Granted this is my first go at it, but I think I did a pretty good job!

Now tons of websites out there on blocking. There's tons of tools to block with. But, right now I just didn't have the time or the funds to go out and buy blocking wires, wool soaks, etc so I settled for push pins and dish detergent. I made a luke warm soak with my mild dish detergent and soaked the scarf for about 30 minutes. As that was happening, I piled my extra throws on the ground. I stretched it out and pinned it to the size I wanted.


It was a very exciting process. I just absolutely hating to have to wait over night for me to pick it up and put it on!

I woke up the next morning and I rushed into the spare room to see my results. It was like Christmas morning! Boy did Santa leave me a gift! It turned out fanastic! Had to put it on right away and yup, it was what I wanted!


So happy with my first advanced beginner project!




My Knitting Obsession

So lately, I have been knitting like crazy! Whenever I find something I enjoy, I geek right out.

 Back in August, I "rediscovered" knitting. Now the reason I put that into quotations is because back when I was about 10 years old my grandma taught us that wonderful little thing called a garter stitch. At 10, it's hard to sit still and do this so after getting excited and doing this for a month or so I quickly dropped it in favour of piano lessons.

Lately, there has been a surge in the yarn craft industry. Everyone is wearing knitted/crocheted wear. I also have a friend, +Melissa Kwan  who loves to knit and seeing her creations online made me rethink the idea of knitting. I had a friend from work who was also interested in learning to knit so away we went. She learned her knitted stitch on Youtube and I remembered it from when I was a kid so away we went to Guelph's local yarn shop which my boyfriend to this day will say was probably the biggest mistake ever because it hooked us.

We bought our first skein of Cascade 220 and we were done for. We had both been knitting with yarn we bought on sale at Zellers when it was closing out or from Walmart. This stuff was so different! It was springy and soft and so much easier to knit with. Yup done for.

I was determined to get better so I started youtubing EVERYTHING. Soon I went from just knitting straight knitted stitch scarves to hats.

I started on cowls for christmas. They were so much fun!

And finally I went ahead with trying my first "lace pattern" scarf. Given, this is a super easy one but the yarn. Oh the yarn! It was a gorgeous handpainted fingering yarn from a local artist in Toronto. My friend was right, once you use the good stuff, it's hard to go back!


The results were stunning! After trying my first time at blocking on Friday, this is the gorgeous result!


So that's it! Right now I am working on a new project and it can only get better with time! Wish me luck! :D

Cheers!

The Domestic Geek Girl