Odd Ball Knitting

... and one more thing ...

... almost forgot!  Go here, read, leave comment ... don't mess with the knitters!

Alcohol required ...

Recently I got hold of some Paton's Cascade in a wonderful bronze colour on eBay - this is a mainly viscose chainette type DK weight yarn with a heavy feel and drape (like heavy silk without the price tag).  Decided it would make a great Chanel-style jacket, as seen in Sally Melville's Purl Stitch book.  I have sufficient of this yarn to do it (yippee!), and enough Twilleys Goldfingering in the stash (to be used double thickness) for the stripes.  Have nearly completed the back, and all is well ... EXCEPT ... that now I have got this far, I can see that she has not centred the chequerboard pattern that she's using, so in fact the photo in the book, which shows mirror image chequerboards up the middle of the front of the jacket is a complete lie, because they could not have got that effect from using her pattern as written.  Dilemma Time - Should I rip it/re-jig it, bearing in mind that that's 3 days worth of knitting, as I'm only knitting in the evenings during the heatwave, and in any case, I'm not convinced that I can make the pattern work out, as the repeats can't easily be moved, or shall I carry on and try to act like it should Look Like That (ie as though the central stripes have interrupted the overall pattern), or shall I just try to think of something else to do with the yarn instead.  Hmmm.

Decided to stop while I cooked lunch, and am considering the problem meanwhile.  In the meantime, something I've been meaning to mention is a recipe for home-made Limoncello.  With this drink, you can make the world's fastest syllabub, whipping up this pudding only takes 5 minutes start to finish, instead of the 3 hours or so given in most of the recipe books (this is because you normally have to steep the lemon in the alcohol, but by using the Limoncello, this is already done for you). 

To make the Limoncello, you need 3-4 large unwaxed lemons, 4-6 oz sugar (according to taste), and a bottle of vodka (the cheap supermarket own label stuff will do fine for this - I'm not suggesting you should use your good Stolly ...).  With a very sharp small knife, pare the rind off your lemons thinly, try not to get any of the white pith if you can avoid it (or you make it very bitter).  Put the parings into a large screw-top jar with the sugar, and vodka.  Shake it for a few minutes every day for a month.  Strain it into a bottle.  You can drink this very chilled, or with mixers if you like, but I use mine for Syllabub.

So to the syllabub, which serves 5-6 (as it's rich).  You need the juice and grated rind of a lemon, a couple of ounces of sugar, 2 tablespoons of the Limoncello, and half a pint of double cream.  Put it all into a bowl, and whip till it's stiff (but before it turns to butter).  Serve in small glasses and if you want to be posh, some of those nice Cigarettes Russes biscuits or Langues de Chats.  Alternative toppings that also work well are finely grated chocolate, or raspberry coulis trickled over the top. Ta-da!

Interesting response after hi-jacking

An interesting repsonse received from Blogger regarding the hi-jacked blog

Thanks for writing in. When you change your blog URL, the old blog URL
becomes available for other users to take. In this case, it seems like
another user has now claimed the blog URL http://mlqknits.blogspot.com/.
Unfortunately, Blogger does not reassign blog addresses
once they have been taken. I'm sorry about the inconvenience

to which I can only reply - gahhhhhhh! (not impressed)

However, it is the speed of what happened that really disturbed me, and also what they're saying doesn't seem quite right.  In following the instructions from Typepad to save to a new filename, so as not to overwrite the main index, surely this is akin to saving a Word document with a new name, ie.  you end up with two versions of the same document ...?

Think I probably have made the right decision to move blogs, though my timing is somewhat off (nothing unusual there really) - this couldn't really have happened at a worse time, what with the Steek Boa appearing in July's Simply Knitting magazine (due in UK shops tomorrow) ...

Thanks for the photo here go to Bronte, who won the 3rd prize with a gorgeous pink beaded scarf.  if you've found me by now, all I can really say is, change your book-marks accordingly!

Meanwhile, had better get on with finding out how to update the sidebar here, am missing all my links quite badly, and it's all looking a little bare ...

fed up ...

Am condsidering moving this blog ... have been unable to post pictures* for quite a few days now, and I really don't think that's good enough. Am quite prepared to pay for the privilege of running a blog, so cost isn't a problem - what I do need, though, is some help/advice. Assuming I do move the blog, where should I get it hosted? - I quite like the look of Typepad, but are there any others I should consider? I am still on dial-up at the moment, though we are hoping to go over to broad-band as soon as Talk Talk gets it's act together, so that may be something I have to bear in mind as well. What I am most looking for is ease of use, and if it's possible to transfer over all my previous postings that would be nice too, and perhaps the chance to keep important things, eg free patterns, or other files attached as separate pages within the blog.

So come on you people, there must be some of you who've already experienced this frustration ...! - suggestions or help please!

* - to save any confusion, I don't upload photos from my computer, they are stored on Flickr here, and then I post the URL to Blogger ... sadly, this hasn't been working all week, and as far as I cna make out, I'm not the only one it's happening to