Swiss Chard Pancakes

Believe it or not, these pancakes are Delicious! You just have to disassociate "pancake" from the breakfast food it usually is. Think of it more like a savory flatbread. You with me? Ok.

I created this as a way to get a very tough to eat veggie like chard into a form my daughter could feed herself, but we all like them. They are an amazing match with roasted chicken and are particularly tasty topped with sour cream and maybe some diced up chives.

Ingredients:
1 batch of pancake mix plus whatever ingredients your box wants you to add + a little extra mix

However much water your mix tells you to use.
4-5 leaves of chard (if you have a wimpy blender remove the stalks)
1/4 onion
1-2 cloves garlic
Whatever seasoning you want, I just used black pepper

Method:
Put the water and all the vegetables and seasoning in the blender and blend till it's green and soupy
Mix with pancake mix and other ingredients the mix calls for. Since the veggies release water, you will have to use a little bit of extra mix. Get it to the consistency you look for in a pancake batter.
Make pancakes as you usually would.
Enjoy!

I like to measure so every pancake is the same size because I burn fewer that way. These are very tiny pancakes each made with just 1 tbsp of batter. Note the size of the onion in the picture, and that there are about 40 pancakes on a regular size dinner plate.

Mom note: these freeze and defrost in the toaster (or in the fridge overnight) absolutely fabulously with no discernable loss of texture or flavor. I plan to always make a nice big batch. The tiny ones go really easily into the baby's lunchbox too, and are easy for tiny fingers to manage (although I usually rip them into 4 pieces anyway).
No, they are not "hidden" vegetables, but my kid is not yet at the picky eater stage so we haven't had to have that battle yet and she eats these just fine. Plus, with only a couple teeth, this is the easiest way for her to eat chard!

Baby Surprise in Action

Here are some shots of the BabySurprise Jacket in action! I opted for mismatched bright orange buttons... Actually leftover from my baby shower decorations!! Tip: if you use mismatched buttons a button is easier to replace if you loose it and don't keep extras for every outfit lying around...

The hat was crazy simple and made from some bulky stash noro I lost the band for. All there is to it is a rectangle long enough to go around the head folded in half, then seamed together end to end and along one side. The "ears" are just the corners... Flat and off the head, this just looks like a garter stitch rectangle. I actually made it on a plane flight after realizing at THE LAST SECOND that we were leaving somewhere warm and going somewhere cold and my child did not have a warm hat.

Here's the kiddo getting a shoulder ride from her dad!

And experiencing cold wind for the first time in her little life.  She was delighted and laughed and put her arms up, this is one of the best shots I got of the emotion.

Here's a better look at that hat and the fun orange buttons. They really take the sweater from "nice" to "incredibly cute" in a split second.  I sewed them on with an orange and magenta verrigated cotton yarn, which also helps in the cute department.

While a hat could be knocked out in nothing flat... I am very glad I had realized a week earlier that she also did not have warm pants and knocked out a pair of worsted weight footed longgies... Details and photos to come in another post!

Baby Surprise Jacket

This is the first thing I knit for the baby. I'm tragically behind on updating the blog, this growing a baby thing is had work! I'm due in ONLY FOUR WEEKS, so i don't know how well I'll do on updating it AFTER that either. Still, writing down details makes me happy, so I'll keep on with it.

This was a stashbusting experience knit with three different colors of Rowan's Yorkshire Tweed DK. I just followed the Baby Surprise Jacket pattern. Here's a ravelry link to the project: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/clairecreates/baby-surprise-jacket-so01b

This jacket is really warm and I'm hoping it fits for her second or third winter. She'll barely be a newborn for the first winter, so I know it will be way to big for her now.

All finished (but less the buttons):

Halfway folded up:

Even though garter stitch takes FOREVER because it's so dense, the fabric sure looks nice!

socks again

This is the second pair of socks I ever knitted, and my third ever knitting project (the first was a ribbed scarf). I got the chance to "visit" with them again when my mom brought them over to be darned.

They are a very basic pattern, I think it was a "knitting pure and simple" pamphlet. Both this pair and the first pair were the same pattern, same yarn (although different colors). The yarn is the Brown Sheep Wildefoote sock yarn. It's pretty darn durable considering these are a few years old and were knit on size 2 needles (now i usually use 1s or 0s for socks).

more socks

Another pair of socks knit quite some time ago... These are out of the Cascade handpainted sock yarn, I forget the specifics. I bought it on impulse since I was on a "yarn crawl" event and totally unsuccessful at NOT buying at least one thing at every store. I think I was also trying to convince ellie that I was capable of buying yarn that did not include in some way teal, lime green, or dark purple. What can I say, I have a problem, at least lately, with overpurchasing of items in these colors.

Anyway, these are a garter stitch rib (2 knit x 2 garter) with 2x2 ribbed stitch cuffs and are pretty uneventful otherwise. They do fit me nicely, and I am working to get over the extreme pinkness, but they're still fun.

Birdseye view:


From the side, showing the very simple/basic heel, the flap is knit in the same rib stitch as the rest, and I find that picking up the side stitches in garter leaves absolutely no ridge on the inside of the sock, unlike when I try to pick up a stockinette or slip stitch selveage:


Closeup of the stitch pattern. I have convinced myself that the small amount of yellow in there is enough to keep them from being too girly:

Lots o' socks

I've been busier knitting than posting as of late... Plus since March I've been growing a baby, which seems to take an incredible amount of energy.

Anyway, I've been knitting up a bunch of socks, on and off, and finally got around to uploading some pictures. I think, in order to get them up, I'll do them a pair at a time :)

First, blue socks I made for hubby. These are in Dream In Color sock yarn, which is DELICIOUS. Knit on size 2 needles (a bit bigger in gauge than I typically like for socks). I hope they last a while. So far, it's been a bit over a month and they're looking OK. I also have a ton of extra yarn, so I can darn if I need to. A basic ribbed leg and top of foot, a square heel, and a basic toe. All improvised, no pattern. Hubby likes them very much.

everything is cuter when it's for a baby

I have a feeling that I'm going to be doing a lot of gifts for babies and small children in the next few years, so I'm delighted at how well these came out. Sooo cute! I started these before I knew if they were for a boy or a girl... figuring that if it was a boy I'd buy an incredible hulk T-shirt to go with it and call 'em an outfit. It was a girl though, so no incredible hulk t-shirt.

This is the elizabeth zimmerman pattern for knit longies, done up as pants. They were a very easy and straightforward knit. They are super stretchy and seem like they'll be comfy for baby. I did them up with the elann.com esprit, which is almost all cotton with a touch of elastic. Should be comfy and somewhat easy care.

The elastic kind of crinkles up the cotton, so the knit fabric has a really nice texture. I also knit it at a pretty firm gauge, the yarn recommends a size 7, but I used a 4. Hopefully that will also add to the durability.

I bought a ton of this on a "full bag" sale, so I had 10 balls of each color. Plenty for a ton more baby pants, but I think I'll be waiting for something else to call to me as the perfect project.

Knitting tip: When I switched from the purple too the ribbing at the bottom edge, I did the first row of green in plain knit which gives a plain clean line on the transition instead of the color breaking you get on the purl side of the fabric when you do stripes. It makes the top and bottom ribbing both look equally clean and tidy.

squirrely squirrel sampler mittens

I finished the Squirrel Sampler Mittens! Yay! I really had a lot of fun with this pattern, but I'm not sure how often I'll be knitting lined mittens. They are very warm, but it's quite a bit of extra work... plus I don't live in a climate where you need wool mittens that often, let alone lined wool mittens.

In either case, they are super duper adorable! I knit the outside of the mittens with KnitPicks Palette which is a fingering weight 100% wool and knit the lining with KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud wich is a lace weight 100% alpaca. They are pretty luxurious feeling on the inside and pretty hearty feeling on the outside, which is why I guess lining mittens can be pretty awesome. They are knit on size 0 needles. They are extremely snug on my hands, but they aren't for me. This is the first xmas gift completed for 2010 and the giftee has much smaller hands than me. :-)

and here are some shots that show off the lining. First as it's being knit:

and then what you see once it's finished:

So soft on the inside.

I am thrilled to bits with these mittens. They are adorable and they make me happy. It's probably a good thing they don't really fit (that's me wearing them, but there isn't enough ease for them to be comfortable).

spinning on a WHEEL!!! YAY!

I'm borrowing a wheel and chugging away. I've actually spun up quite a bit of yarn, but taking progress pictures of all the steps isn't going so well. Here are a few I've managed to take.

This is the yarn as singles (before becoming 2 ply). It's from lorna's laces wool top and it's the "tahoe" colorway. Also in process is another batch of the same wool top in the "bittersweet" colorway.

I spun about 1/3rd of the tahoe on my top whorl spindle, and the remainder on a spinning wheel. I can't decide which I like spinning on best, but I do know I like plying on the wheel much more. The wheel may be marginally faster (but right now, not much). I'm not sure if there's a trick to it or what, but I can't seem to get an even consistent yarn at anything thicker than a sport or maybe DK weight in 2 ply. Is there some secret to spinning bulkier yarns? In any case, while I try and figure that out... here's what I've got for the singles. This is the very first batch I did on the wheel:

More to come... including pictures of it all plied up!

bagels!

My friend and I decided to have a bagel cooking day. We teamed up to make a batch of homemade bagels. They were DELICIOUS. For sure something I'd make again. The particular recipe we used was from Vegan Dad, but I think if I make them again, I'll pick one that takes you from start to finish in one day and see if they work just as well. I'm less likely to do something that you have to do over two days. Anyway, they were dense, chewy, and absolutely delicious. In my opinion the best two were the plain one and the one I topped with smoked sea salt. I like a salt bagel and the smoked salt was truly fantastic.

here are pictures:

regular salt bagel is in the top right corner, the smoked salt bagel is in the bottom left corner. The others are two sesame seed and two plain.

here's a glamor shot closeup of one of the plain ones. It sort of feels silly to take pictures like this of bagels, but it seems to be what you do.