Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Lace edge cardigan (Debbie Bliss; in baby cashmerino)

My second knitting attempt is a little cardigan I made for my husband’s newest granddaughter, now nearly 5 months. I used a Debbie Bliss pattern (from her book Simply Baby; pub. Quadrille 2006) and the recommended yarn, her Baby Cashmerino (55% wool, 33% acrylic, 12% cashmere). It was a slightly alarming pattern as it is knitted all in one piece, apart from the lace edge, which means you have a lot of knitting on your needles – seemingly too much for a small baby. Well, I held my nerve, but even though I chose the smallest size, it has still come up quite big. Fortunately, what began as a very tiny baby has grown considerably, so now I’m worrying about whether she’s too big for it…

Lace edge cardigan (Debbie Bliss; in baby cashmerino)

The colour of the wool is a bit less grey than in the photographs, being a putty pink verging on mauve (the colour has no name, just the identifying number 340608.) Before I began, my only request of the pattern would have been to have had a simple line drawing – along the format of photograph 2 above – as I think knowing what shape I was aiming for would have helped a novice like me a lot.

Lace edge cardigan (Debbie Bliss; in baby cashmerino)

The pattern was quite simple and manoeuvres I was unfamiliar with were well explained. (That is if you didn’t panic, if you took a break to clear your head or left it and came back to it another day – casting off the front and back top edges of the garment at the same time being a case in point. Once done, this was, however, a great source of pride!) I loved doing the lace edging when I got in rhythm with the pattern and I could quite happily have knitted miles of it without stopping. I fact I did knit more than the pattern suggested as I thought it would be so much nicer if the lace went all the way around the bottom of the cardigan too. Fortunately the pattern massively overstated the amount of yarn needed and, even having made more lace, I now have a full ball and a quarter remaining. (I now feel a stripey jumper and possibly a fairisle coming on – there was quite a lot remaining from the jumper I made my grandson too!)

Lace edge cardigan (from Debbie Bliss’ s book Simply Baby, Quadrille, 2006)

This is more of a shrug than a cardigan, being made to be worn without any fastening. I’m a bit unsure as to whether this will prove to be a problem and for a while I wondered whether to attach a couple of ribbons beneath the lace edging so you could tie a bow if the cardigan felt too flappy. Last week I did try the garment – finished except for the lace edging – on my robust, sturdy 14 month grandson and was surprised at how – given it was much too small for him – the garter stitch curved snugly too the body … so I hope it’ll be alright on somebody the right size. I am really beginning to get this knitting bug.

Chocolate crispies (from Miranda Gore Browne’s ‘Biscuit’ (Ebury, 2012)

As this week as is the last week before we go into Lent I was intending to roll my sleeves up and try Miranda Gore Browne’s Spicy Jaffa Biscuits. To make these you have to make a tray of spicy orange jelly, then produce a sponge base and finally, when the jelly is placed on the sponge, you add melted chocolate cooled just enough to sit on the jellied sponge without melting the jelly. It’s this latter process that gives me some trepidation  –  if I add the  melted chocolate and it’s not cooled enough, will I have to go back and start again? Well, having been in London overnight and only having a short time for cooking on Saturday afternoon, I cowardly abandoned what might be a fiddly recipe and resorted to Miranda’s chocolate crispies which is not only the easiest recipe in the world but – apart from melting various ingredients in a saucepan on top of the stove – involves no serious cooking. Wonderfully quick to make, these also made sure we had a good  nugget of chocolate  on the last Sunday before we enter Lent.

Ingredients

110 g unsalted butter

110 g golden caster sugar

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tbsp syrup

1 tbsp milk

100 g cornflakes

25 g crushed pecans (optional)

50 g glacé Morello cherries (optional)

Chocolate crispies (from Miranda Gore Browne’s ‘Biscuit’ (Ebury, 2012)

Makes about 24 bite-sized crispies or 12 big ones and you will need the appropriate size paper cases – I ran out of the little ones, so had to resort to a filling 4 fairy cake size cases.

Put butter, sugar and cocoa powder, syrup and milk in a good size pan over a low heat and stir until completely melted. Don’t let it boil.

Using a wooden spoon, mix in the cornflakes a little at a time until they are well coated (I like to bash the cornflakes down so they’re not too big).

Put you paper cases into muffin tins and use a teaspoon to fill each case with the mixture.

Chill overnight. Remove from the fridge just  before eating. (If any remain, store in the fridge.)

I added cherries and pecans to make this a bit more sophisticated. In general I found these crispies a bit too sweet and wondered if they would be nicer made from melted 70% cocoa solid chocolate, rather than cocoa and syrup. They did, however, disappear from the plate in record time and nobody seemed to have any complaints.

Daughter No 1 is, as I have said before is a political journalist and, being concerned how few young people think voting is worthwhile, takes every opportunity to encourage people in this group to try to spend some time considering today’s important issues. I met up with her in London at her hairdressers only to discover she’d been talking about this to the young people working there, most of whom expressed their disengagement with the coming general election. voteforpolicies.org.uk is a useful site for comparisons of parties’ policies on many issues, although it should be remembered that party manifestoes have yet to be announced. There are also certain provisos about its use, as there’s a certain pie in the sky element over the costing (there’s only a certain amount of money, push for one policy and money may well have to come from another policy you approve of). But if it gives younger voters a way in to considering the main issues, that must be a good thing.