Jacket with Seed Stitch Bands

This past week I finally finished knitting my first sweater, a project I have been working on for over a year. I made the baby sweater for one of my little cousins. With foresight I chose to make the largest size; hopefully it will fit. If not, there are many other younger cousins it could go to.

Here is the finished product:

The pattern, which I borrowed from Ann, is Debbie Bliss' "jacket with seed stitch bands" from her Baby Knit Patterns. I would have finished a week or so ago but I needed to buy and sew on the buttons. Not only has this been my first sweater experience, it's also been my first buttoning experience! Overall, I think it worked out pretty well, though I have no intentions of making another sweater, even such a small one, anytime soon. Hopefully my other baby cousins don't get jealous.

Unfortunately, I don't have any babies nearby to try on the sweater to see how it looks on a real person. However, I did try it on myself. It was a little snug.

I've since started a cabled hat, though if I don't finish that in the next week (or get my own set of size 7 double-pointed needles), that project will have to go on hiatus for the summer.

Vegetarian Hakkebøf

Dear Blog,

This is my first post ever. Ariel and I have quit eating at the dining hall - now we just shop there. This means we make all sorts of delicious things in the 2nd davis lounge, and everyone from the floor stops by and says it smells delicious. The other night we made a vegetarian version of hakkebøf, which is a Danish dish composed of ground beef patties atop toast with caramelized onions. Ariel became a fan in Denmark, where her host family would treat her to it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (just kidding!). We made ours with boca burgers and added sauteed spinach and a slice of colby-jack cheese. Mmmm.

Spinach and onions sauteéing. Note the disgusting stovetop.

The final product.

Ariel ready to dig in. As this is Ariel's first photographic appearance, she merits an introduction:

Meet Ariel*: the designer and principle idea-haver behind the blog, and my crafty and culinary life. She is a New-Jerseyan, and as such, has been learning about plants and birds this term from me (my father is a master naturalist, so I feel qualified to teach). When not crafting or cooking, she spends her free time thinking about her other, geographical loves: Star Island, Denmark, and Ghana. She also spends her not-so-free time writing 30 page history papers, which I find commendable and terrifying.

*Also and mostly known as Scary, sometimes I forget she's actually named Ariel. So does her mother.

Sushi for Supper: a project from the past

Last summer I learned the fine art of making sushi. Turns out I had a knack for making sushi, and successfully supervised the making of sushi for about 100 hungry drunks as a midnight snack. Since then I've made sushi twice, once for my parents at the end of the summer and once this past January with some friends.

It's hard to find good sushi supplies in rural Minnesota, so my friend Theo and I drove to the Twin Cities to find sushi quality fish and an Asian market. Luckily we found them right across the street from each other. We returned to school with seaweed, tuna, eel, crab, soy sauce, wasabi, cucumber, carrots, avocado, and these weird gourd strips that we never ended up using. Once we started the rice cooking, we went to the liquor store to pick up some Sake. The sake turned out to be quite gross—even Seth, our friend who will drink absolutely anything, thought so—but the sushi was delicious and fun to make. Although I think sushi without fish is rather boring (eel and tuna are my favorites), Ann the vegetarian found plenty to enjoy.

Claire making sushi (we ran out of white rice so we had to switch to brown rice which worked out surprisingly well)
Sushi being eaten as fast as we could make it

Lab snacks

Meet Ann. Ann is a biology major from suburban Minnesota. This summer she will be working on an organic farm in Iowa. Ann likes to knit, quilt, bake, and read cookbooks. She spends most of her time studying organic chemistry and cell biology.

On Tuesday Ariel went to the local farmer's market and bought some fresh rhubarb so that Ann could bake lab snacks with it. Here is the result...Strawberry-Raspberry-Rhubarb Mini-Pies:

Fresh from a dorm kitchen...

Ann and I decided to start a baking/crafting blog to show off all the things we've been making.
Enjoy!

Coming soon:
Strawberry-Raspberry-Rhubarb Mini-pies
A baby sweater