Blue Miette

A quick photo session in the nearby park of the very cropped Miette cardigan I knit for Gaby.

Pattern: Miette by Andi Satterlund
Yarn: Schoeller+Stahl Limone Color, 100% mercerized cotton, 50 g / 125 m, 165 g total
Needle: 3 mm, 3.5 mm
Time to knit: one month

A very tiny cardigan, made to feature the big flowery buttons Gaby got as a present from a teacher. I love how it combines with her blue sundress, I hope it will go well with other items in her wardrobe too.

The yarn is new to me, but I'm not completely satisfied with it and will not use it again. It is not well mercerized and the thread feels weаk and given to shedding. I hope the cardi will not be worn out too soon.

Sponge Cake with Pudding

Sponge cake with pudding on top is a discovery for me this summer and it provides so much opportunities for improvisation. So far I've made it twice - first with pudding vanilla and sweetened sour cream and last night - with mascarpone and chocolate pudding.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 10 g backing powder
• 2 vanillas

For cake syrup:

• 150 ml milk
• 3 tbsp sugar

For the pudding:

• 500 ml milk
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 chocolate pudding Dr. Oetker
• 250 g mascarpone
• 1 pack gelatin (10g)

Preparation: Beat the eggs with the sugar, add flour, baking powder and vanilla. Pour in a cake ring form and bake in a preheated oven at 180C. Take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool. Do not remove the cake ring. Heat 150 ml milk with three tablespoons of sugar and syrup the cake, spreading the milk evenly.
Prepare one Dr Oetker chocolate pudding and add 250 g mascarpone to it. Add one pack (10g) of gelatin, prepared according to the instructions on the pack. Pour the pudding mixture on top of the cake and leave in the refrigerator for the night (or at least for 3-4 hours, 2 hours minimum, if you can't wait longer :).
Et voilà, very juicy spongy cake for your morning coffee:

I'm finally ready with this tiny Miette, just waiting for Gaby to take a few proper modelled pictures of it:

Almost There

Some real progress on my new Miette cardigan. When I cast it on June 25, I was sure I would be able to finish it until July 12th, as Gaby wanted it very cropped and with short sleeves. Unfortunately, I've had so much work these last weeks that couldn't keep up with the schedule, now I'm trying to finish it at least until July 25th.

Why the deadlines? Last month Gaby, who won the third place in the senior group of the National Olympiad of Biology, succeeded in entering the National team for the International Olympiad in Biology to be held in Vietnam. One of the teachers of the team noticed that she often wears hand knitted cardigans and presented her with these big colorful buttons. And we decided to make a cropped Miette for these buttons :)

I had bought 4 balls of a new mercerized cotton yarn Schoeller+Stahl, Gaby liked it and after some sampling I cast it on. The yarn is much thinner than what the pattern calls for and my gauge is different, so to achieve the smallest size I am actually knitting the largest size of the pattern, with a few additional rows and increases before the split of the body and the sleeves. So far I think it's coming out OK, but with all the work (and all those football matches of EURO 2016 - I'm big football fan and watched almost all of the games :) the cardigan progressed a row or two a day.

On July 12th the team left for Thailand and from there to Vietnam. They are coming back on July 25th and now my goal is to finish the cardigan until then, as Gaby and the other girl on the team are leaving the very day of their arrival for another event in the country. Go team Bulgaria! :)

MMM'13 - Fourth Week

As was to be expected, the fourth week of the month is mostly repeats from the previous weeks. I do have other me-made clothes, mostly shirts, skirts and dresses, sewn when I was heavily into sewing, but most of them I don't wear any more or just didn't feel putting them on during the week.
I'm happy to report that Gaby continues to wear her cotton cardigans to school, she wore the blue cardigan yesterday and put on the lilac Joy this morning. I'm thinking of knitting her another one, probably in red, maybe with cotton and bamboo.

Day 22 - My most recent knit - Obsession by Kim Hargreaves. It was a good thing I added cotton to this bamboo, the soft bamboo thread is already showing signs of pilling.

Day 23 - Sabrina top, cotton and viscose.

Day 24 - Burdastyle 90s shirt. I have no recollection of the pattern, or even if it was a women's pattern or an adapted man's shirt, because back then I also made three checkered  shirts for my husband. I chose this photo for the blog because of the funny photobomb in the distance - a city child, running wild through the green meadows. She ran like that most of the time and also rolled on the grass - the call of the wild, what can you do :))))

Day 25 - My Christina again. Well, it's obvious, this is my favourite summer cardigan. I love its terracotta color and feminine design, Kim is a genius.

Day 26 - Miette. If it wasn't for MMM, Miette would have been my every second or third choice, it goes so well with all of my dresses.

Day 27 - And another easy choice  - the Vine Yoke cardigan. Soft and very comfortable. I'll tell you what's in the bag in my next post :)))

Day 28 - One of the self-sewn dresses I mentioned at the beginning, very flattering design. It was actually a long dress, which I cut short the next season - I think short dresses suit me better. And obviously a parade of cardigans couldn't be complete without Quanun. I'm thinking of a shorter cardigan with 3/4 sleeves, based on the Quanun silhouette. If you wonder why I am always carrying this bag - because it is big enough for the camera and sometimes tripod I bring with me :)

MayDay

I've been debating with myself all day long whether to blog about my first day of Me-Made-May or not. I know I said I'll report my participation in the challenge weekly, but the commencement of the month somehow feels special and calls for noting. So, I'm noting it with this post :)
When I took part in SSS'11, I thought more about what to wear and how to arrange for somebody to take a picture of me. But looking at the beautiful and masterfully taken photos of other participants made me realize how much I enjoy well photographed garments and how important the presentation of an outfit is (to me). This made me buy a better camera with a tripod and try to improve my pictures for the blog, giving more thought to the background of my photos. As a result I often catch myself walking through the neighborhood looking for beautiful or just interesting places where I could shoot any future finished object.

So yesterday, while walking to my Pilates class, I thought of the snow covered peaks of Vitosha and how beautiful they stand against the greenery of the city. And it occurred to me that I want Vitosha to be on the first of my MMM'13 photos. I took the pictures early in the morning, while there was still little movement along the high bridge over our river. As for the choice of what to wear, the month of May is excellent for my numerous little cotton cardies and I've got many more on my knitting wish list :)

I'm finding the MMM'13 Flickr pool very inspiring, I wish I could sew at least half as expertly as these ladies!

Miette

Pattern: Miette by Andi Satterlund (free Ravelry download)
Yarn: YarnArt Summer 150 g and YarnArt Violet 90 g, held together
Needle: 4 mm, 3.5 mm button bands and neckline
Time to knit: 11 days

This is a top-down cropped raglan cardigan with a pretty lace detail, quite easy and pleasant to knit. For full disclosure, I should mention that I did make several mistakes in the lace, all of which I went back and corrected, because I'm such a crazy person. My gauge was quite different from the pattern's original (20 st and 25 rows for a 4 inch square), so to get the smallest size I actually knitted the medium 38". But not quite - the sleeves felt narrow, so I added 6 sts to each of them (53 total) and gradually reduced them to 40 sts. before the lacy part.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I read carefully all of Gail's notes on Miette and I would recommend them to anyone planning to make this cardigan. She's provided many useful tips and among other things now I'll never have to wonder any more where to place the buttonholes on my knitted clothes, because I already know that WOMEN ARE ALWAYS RIGHT :))))