Red Ribbed Cardigan

Finally, a month after I finished this cardigan, I managed to organize a photo session of it. I had almost given up the idea of shooting it modelled, as it is meant only for home-wear, but last night husband and I were in the mood for walking in one of Sofia parks and it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed to take a few photos of the cardigan.

I started it in the end of May, planning it as something easy and mindless during the Euro'16 football matches. But it took longer than I anticipated, so I had to abandon it for a while to knit Gaby's blue Miette and then in August I returned to it and finally finished it. Not one of my finest pieces, but for a cotton/acrylic cardi to put on in the afternoons while working or wasting time on the computer it'll do.

Pattern: personal
Yarn: YarnArt Jeans approx. 300 g
Needle: 3 mm
Time to knit: probably a month and a half

Playing with Dolls

My knitting and sewing these last days felt very much like playing with dolls. Actually dolls were the first recipients of my knitting and sewing efforts, as I suppose is the case with 90% of the knitting population :) I was younger than five years of age when I pestered my mother to teach me to knit, so that I could make clothes for my dolls, the same as she was making for my new born baby sister.

So, as I've mentioned before on the blog, Gaby has a friend, who has a very small mini Yorkshire terrier. Two years ago I knitted her a couple of sweaters, but now she's a grown lady and was in need of new clothes. This is the first of the new sweaters - a simple 2x2 rib striped sweater, made with the same yarn to go with the hat for the girlfriend. For fun I used the random stripe generator to program the sequence of the stripes. The pattern I followed is basically my first dog sweater pattern, only I added four more stitches to account for the rib texture.

Pattern: Lizzy Dog Sweater
Yarn: Alize Lanagold Solids (coral and grey), Alize Superlana (white in two threads)
Needle: 4 mm
Time to knit: two days

And on a quite different note - last night I made the apple pie that is becoming the talk on Bulgarian culinary blogland. I had read all the comments and I thought I was prepared for what to expect and still I was smitten with the result. Yes, smitten, because in the course of the preparation I was gradually filling with doubts and at the end I was sure I had misunderstood the recipe - it all looked like too much dry ingredients and nothing to hold them together. So, to be on the safe side, I also made my ordinary dry fruit cake with honey:

After baking, the apple pie looked nothing much, but when we tasted it - oh, my! - it is worth every pray and song!!! Crusty and juicy, sweet and tasty, and so easy to make (especially if you ask your husband to grate the apples :)))

A quick summary of the recipe:
You need: 1 kg of apples, 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of wheat semolina, 1 cup of sugar, 1 tea spoon of cinnamon, 100 g of walnuts, 10 g of baking soda, 125 g of butter (there's also a vegetarian version with cocoa butter).
Grate the apples and mix them with the cinnamon and the walnuts. Mix the dry ingredients. Alternate apple and dry ingredient layers in a baking dish, adding two-three spoons of melted butter, finish with a layer of the dry ingredients and the remaining butter. Bake at 180C for 40 minutes. Spread powder sugar on top. Best enjoyed on the next day!