Saturday, March 21, 2015

Hot cross buns and the butt-must-be-bigger project

The days have slowly been getting colder. The couches are now all strewn with blankets to snuggle under while watching TV and when she wakes me up at 5am to come under the doona (!!!), Lucy's feet a teeny tiny cute kitty ice blocks. Rather than feel depressed about the inevitable change of the seasons (winter sucks oh so so much), I have decided to approach the cold head-on by using a never-fail strategy: increasing my personal insulation by eating lots of baking.



Step one involves picking a recipe for delicious hot cross buns and then doubling the amount of sugar the recipe suggests to compensate for not putting in any fruit.


I did the usual knead, rise and rise thing but as you can see I was too lazy to pipe on the cross (it's just for show anyway!).


While they were baking, I went outside the house about fifteen times so I could walk back in and smell the delicious spicy aromas.


Look at how lovely and fluffy the insides of the buns are! They are super delicious, especially when toasted and smeared with lots and lots of butter. Winter definitely still sucks (and it would be nice if Lucy would stop waking me up ridiculously early every day) but freshly made hot cross buns definitely make the seasons passing just a little bit easier.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

WIP Wednesday: Lazy and cheap edition

Hello my dear neglected blog! How's things been? I am afraid I've been not paying you any attention because: 

1. I've been having fun.

I went up to Queensland to attend a graduation ceremony, which was a different but good experience.



The graduation was at Bond University, which is a tiny university of only about 4,000 students. Each of the universities I've attended has been huge (50,000+), so it was a completely different experience.


The campus was gorgeous - it seemed like a really nice place to study.

2. I've been super busy at work

And of course, being busy at work means lots and lots of stockinette stitch.


It may look sunny in all of these photos but we all know that a) winter follows summer and b) it sometimes takes a while to get a winter scarf knitted, so I have started this year's scarf early. It is inspired by Turnstile but is not Turnstile because as much as I want to support designers I just could not bring myself to pay $6.50 for a pattern that is just a knitted tube grafted together (although the comments on the pattern are all very positive, so maybe I'm just being precious). With this scarf, I have cast on 80 stitches provisionally and am just knitting any colour I feel like for 7.5 inches (it was supposed to be 8 but apparently I am either impatient or can't measure properly). I am using up all of my odds and ends of Patonyle (terrible sock yarn but lovely for scarves) so it's another stashbuster. All in all, a very pleasing way for me to destress after another 10-hour day.

Back soon, I promise!