Happy Easter!

HAPPY EASTER TO ALL OF YOU! 

This Easter will be remembered by Gaby and me as the most baking we've done in the course of two days :)) We made our first home baked Easter cakes  - cozonac!!! And they are not only eatable, they are delicious and (almost) worth all the mixing, and kneading, and braiding, and baking until 01:00 AM last night, while simultaneously coloring the traditional eggs. Frankly, if it wasn't for Gaby's enthusiasm and hard work, none of this would have been possible, but her joy in the kitchen made the day!

One of them is made with a filling of Turkish delight and the other - with raisins, soaked in rum. Yummy!

And we also made (two) dough egg baskets. The test basket was eaten right from the oven - so tasty with butter, white cheese and mixed spices !!!, that we made a second dose of dough and formed it into a bread the next day:

The baskets were made following this tutorial and challah dough recipe.

A basket consists of a basket body, an upper ring and a handle, fixed with tooth picks. A few pictures taken in the course of preparation (I forgot to take a picture of the handle):

I've always shied away from recipes, requiring yeast and dough kneading, but ... practice makes perfect. Now, after two days of  baking I think I have a better understanding of dough and next time my basket will be even better looking :)

Easter Egg Tree

Super easy and fun decoration for Easter (which in Bulgaria this year, being Orthodox Christians, we'll celebrate not tomorrow, but on May 5th. I think having different dates for Western and Eastern Easter is silly, but I suppose some more centuries will have to pass for the clergy to figure out the issue).

I've used again the same scrap yarns and cushion filling as for the mitered square cushions.
Yarn: YarnArt Jeans, 50 % cotton, 50% acrylic, hook 2.5 mm (C).

After a dozen of tries I found that I like my Easter Egg best as follows:

A recipe for an Easter Egg:

 1 rnd: Make a magic loop, 6 sc in loop, sl st, pull the thread to close the loop = 6 sc
 2 rnd: 1 ch, 2 sc in each sc, sl st  = 12 sc
 3 rnd: 1 ch, (1 sc in first sc, 2 sc in next), repeat to end of rnd, sl st = 18 sc
 4 rnd: 1 ch, 1 sc in each sc = 18 sc
 5 rnd: 1 ch, (1 sc in first two sc, 2 sc in next), repeat to end of rnd, sl st = 24 sc
 6 rnd: 1 ch,  1 sc in each sc = 24 sc
 7 rnd: 1 ch,  1 sc in each sc = 24 sc
 6 rnd: 1 ch, (1 sc in first three sc, 2 sc in next), repeat to end of rnd, sl st = 30 sc
 8 rnd: 1 ch,  1 sc in each sc = 30 sc
 9 rnd: 1 ch,  1 sc in each sc = 30 sc
10 rnd: 1 ch,  1 sc in each sc = 30 sc
11 rnd: 1 ch,  1 sc in each sc = 30 sc

12 rnd: 1 ch, (1 sc in first three sc, 2 sc tog), repeat to end of rnd, sl st = 24 sc
13 rnd: 1 ch,  1 sc in each sc = 24 sc 
14 rnd: 1 ch, (1 sc in first two sc, 2 sc tog), repeat to end of rnd, sl st = 18 sc
15 rnd: 1 ch, 1 sc in each sc = 18 sc
16 rnd: 1 ch, (1 sc in first sc, 2 sc tog), repeat to end of rnd, sl st = 12 sc
Fill the egg with suitable toy filling.
17 rnd: 1 ch, (2 sc tog), repeat to end of rnd, sl st = 6 sc
Pass thread through the 6 sc  and close slightly the gap, weave in ends.