attack of the finals

um, for all 3 people who read this... sorry, its been busy with final papers and finals and graduation and alll of that good stuff.

soon. i'll post something interesting soon. in the meantime, entertain yourself with this week's postsecret, especially the one about guitar hero.

Mrs. Weasley?

yay! i finished the gryffindor scarf that i was making for Stacia. I will try to take some better pictures, especially of it on someone so that you can get the full effect but for now this is the best that i have. The pattern is from Charmed Knits that i got from Rachel! I used (as recommended) Cascade 220 yarn, which comes in a lot of great colors and is relatively cheap. Even though knitting a whole scarf in stockinette got a little old after awhile, it was nice to do something that required almost no attention. no fancy stitches to keep track of, simple color pattern. The pattern doesn't even require you to weave in the color-changing ends because it's knit in a tube, they just hide inside!

As far as food and baking goes, i am guilty of buying the latest Martha Stewart book, which is ALL COOKIES. Look, i know that i can probably get all (at least most of) the recipes online, and i told myself a month ago that this book is unnecessary, once i saw it i couldn't help myself. not to mention that i had a few Border's gift cards in my wallet...



By far the coolest thing about the book is that the table of contents is made up of pictures of the cookies! They are divided into "chapters" like "crisp and crunchy" or "rich and dense" and you can see them all easily at once.

Within a day we (me and Stacia, the aforementioned roommate) made the cookie on the cover of the book, Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies, and within a day they were all eaten. They are pretty much like a Gingerbread/Chocoalte chip cookie hybrid and although i think they would make a better Christmas/Winter cookie that spring cookie, they were still delicious!

Knitting comeback!

I have really been slacking in the knitting department lately. I'm not really sure why, but in order to get myself quickly back in the habit, i picked a project that i knew would be really quick (that way it wouldnt just get lost in the sea of procrastination).

Luckily, i've had some Rowan Big Wool yarn around forevvver and could never decide what to do with it. So, i whipped out an Aspen Hat from Twinkle's Big City Knits.

I used size 15 needles, instead of 19, and subsequently added a few stitches to the pattern.

ALSO, i finally started knitting a Gryffindor scarf for my roommate. As she puts it, she cant have lived with 2 roommates who knit and leave without any knit accessory. I've been meaning to knit one of these. I'm using Rowan 220 Wool yarn, 2 skeins of each color. As you can see, i haven't finished yet, but it's nice to knit something so straightforward; it's knit in the round so i don't even have to purl!



May i add, that i recently became a Ravelry member! its a very cool site, and i would recommend it, it makes finding other people's FO's so much easier than scouring blogs and flickr accounts. Plus i'll probably put more pictures of FO's there, instead of here.

easter (not wester)

For easter last week my roomates and i made a nice, delicious easter lunch. Sorry, i'm not going to go into much details but here are a few pictures!


mmmmm potatoes au gratin



salad with blackberries, almonds, and green beans

DEVILED EGGS

grilled asparagus and corn

Also, there was a ham, but i guess because i don't eat meat i forgot to take a picture of it? i really didn't leave it out on purpose, and it smelled really good! all in all, it was quite a treat and we had leftovers for dayssss even with 8 people eating it!

"you're really taking that ape class seriously"

I think i am going to post two things today, this one right now because its easy, but check back soon because we also had an easter feast yesterday with tons of delicious food.

But i couldn't go without acknowledging one of the coolest things i got for my birthday last week: chimp cupcakes! Allie and Ankit made them for me! very cute, they are decorated with chocolate frosting, vanilla wafers and colored icing. Probably a lot easier than the monkey cake that Alex and i made for here birthday, which you can read about on Rachel's blog here. Actually, you can track the history of apes/monkeys in my and my family's crafting history in Rachel's blog. For instance there was the sock monkey "costume" i made with a pattern from knitty. Then of course there are sock monkey zombies... basically we have a long standing interest (obsession?) with primates in general in my family (i'm even taking a class this semester called "the ape within") .

After mentioning that i also got a book about Nim Chimpsky a boy i know said "oh, you're really taking that ape class seriously"

...

i think this post has shown that that might be a bit of an understatement...

spring deliciousness

soo its been a little slow with the posting.. i blame spring break as i haven't been near the computer much. BUT that doesn't mean there haven't been fantastic food goods around so let's get started:


1) i actually didn't have anything to do with any part of the baking process, but since allie probably won't post about her cupcakes, i may as well do it since they were too cute to ignore. and tasty.

Anyway, believe it or not the recipe is from the Martha Stewart website and can be found here. They came out really well, and the frosting is maybe the best we've tried. it's really light, but just chocolately enough. also, the cupcakes have toasted coconut on top, and i usually hate coconut, but it went perfectly with the frosting and vanilla cupcakes. I would recommend them to anyone, even though they were a little labor intense.

2) Alex, Hannah and I had an Ecuadorian night, and made Locro, a potato and cheese soup topped with avocado (mmm) then watched Que Tan Lejos, a completely Ecuadorian movie, filmed there, their actors, etc etc.



and finally, I didn't make this, but for my birthday, i ordered myself a lemon raspberry cake from Flour Bakery (where i used to work, probably the most delicious place on the planet. I took a picture just for fun

mmmmmmmorning muffins (even Stacia likes them)

I am a big fan of the Whole Foods website, because it features a well-organized and excellent list of recipes. last night while looking for dinner ideas i instead came across a recipe for some morning muffins, so i went ahead and got the ingredients for them and made them this morning before my roommates got up. I dont know that it made me more productive or anything, but it was a nice way to start the morning and they are delicious. Also in the picture you can see the silicone baking cups that i got for Christmas from my friend Alex! they are really nice to use and easy to clean.

I made the Granola & Applesauce Morning Muffins, only i left out the flax seed because i was too cheap to buy it and added a little bit of cinnamon because it seemed like a good idea. It says you can use your favorite granola, and i think the one i chose is what made them so good, although i'd like to try them with a different type some other time. I used one Trader Joe's and it has little bits of blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. Usually i dont like fruit in baked goods, but i make an exception for berries in muffins, especially because these ones are really small pieces, so you get the nice flavor without huge chunks of fruit in the muffin, which is a plus for me.

Even my roommate who (seriously) hates healthy food liked them!


Plus, i'm a sucker for "cute" marketing. c'mon, that's cute.