Filet crochet pillow cover

I finished a filet crochet panel:

That I used for a pillow cover:

I charted a pattern adapted from Ouvrages de dames... edited by Jule Trigoulet (see the top design on page 9).  A .pdf is available of the chart that I made--I used DMC Cebelia cotton size 10 in ecru, with a 1.4mm steel hook.

I love how it turned out!  I had started the crocheted panel to be a curtain, but then tossed it on the bed...next to the pillow that had a cover which was wearing out...

Now I'll look for curtain ideas!

Finished dress!

The Great Dress Experiment is a success!

I've been working on this dress for a long time, but it has been worth it--it is so comfortable, and I love the fit!  I used the pattern, New Look 6587, view A, and altered the pattern according to the book, Vogue fitting : the book of fitting techniques, adjustments, and alterations.  I added pockets (details in a previous post, with the beginnings of the dress in a past post), and ended up doing the hemming on the bottom of the skirt and the front facings by hand, since I like that look better than doing top-stitching.  I also added a few more buttonholes and buttons at the bottom of the skirt.

I love this dress, and will make more in the future!

Bus vs. home knitting

I'm currently working on Joan McGowan-Michael's "Racer Back Tank with Mesh Side," and I was able to notice the effect of bus knitting vs. home knitting:

I'm thinking that knitting this project on the bus may not be the best idea!  I'm hoping that the blocking will even everything out!

I think I'll start crocheting on the bus.

Favorite pancakes

These are our new favorite pancakes. Made with freshly ground whole wheat flour, they have a nutty taste, complemented by the slight tang of their long, cool, overnight rest:

They're "Pittsburgh's Finest Diner Pancakes," from the King Arthur Flour website.  And, as you can see, they're big pancakes, which fill the pan when cooked:

We've altered the recipe slightly:

• We use 100% freshly ground flour, which we grind from wheat berries.
• We don't cover the bowl with plastic wrap while the batter rests; we simply place a dinner plate on top of the bowl.
• We cook the pancakes in clarified butter.

They have crispy edges, and are very thin, so can be filled and rolled like a crepe.  My favorite filling so far is Straus Creamery's organic yogurt mixed with fresh fruit.

Berber onion and kabocha squash pasties

We recently made the Berber Pizza from David Tanis' cookbook, A Platter of Figs--it's wonderful! Absolutely delicious, and we found it really easy to make.

If you're making it, be sure to cook up more of the onion mixture than you will need. We mixed up the extra onion mixture with baked kabocha squash, and used it for filling in pasties:

I made up some pie dough, divided it up into twelve or fifteen balls, and rolled them out pretty thin, filled them with this filling and sealed them up.  Then cut little holes in their tops, and baked them a little less than an hour at 425F--pretty standard pastie baking.  The combination of the squash and the Berber onion filling was fantastic!

I forgot to get photos of the pasties.  We were too distracted by the deliciousness.

We'll be making all these dishes again, though!

Feast day torte for a feast day

For dinner this past Christmas day, and then again for the New Year, we made a Feast Days Piñon Torte from Lois Ellen Frank's Food of the Southwest Indian Nations cookbook--it's fantastic!

This is the first one, inverted on a cutting board for serving, decorated with powdered sugar on half of it:

We found it was good with 8 ounces unsweetened chocolate (that's two bars of the kind we buy), 1 cup of agave syrup (instead of sugar), and 5 tablespoons of cornmeal.