I have little interest in the footbridges of Minnesota, but I was riveted by this man’s investigation of one. All journalism should have that degree of rigor!
The zebra stripes in this King Arthur Flour espresso coffee cake enchanted me, but that’s way too much coffee for my taste. I applied the technique to a combo of cardamom crumb cake and (modified) pumpkin bread to make two pumpkin stripe crumb cakes.
I don’t like decorating food, so anything with visual interest baked in appeals to me. Also, it was delicious. It was a good decision to make the full batch of each batter so I have that second cake in the freezer for later.
I’m thinking about chocolate and peanut butter next time…
I finally finished the crochet patchwork cardigan that I started in early 2021.
Hundreds of 3-inch squares took a long time but were actually a good semi-mindless activity to keep my hands busy while watching movies. The problems began when the time came to attach them. The original plan was to join them with “invisible” seams, which required sewing. I got about 6 squares together before I could no longer deny I despise sewing with every fiber of my being, and there was absolutely no chance I would follow through on that course.
A crocheted seam required additional yarn. Being a Poor, I can’t just order up hobby supplies on a whim, so there were several months of delay while I scraped together a few disposable dollars.
Once I had the necessary yarn, I found the joining was less mindless than making the squares. Lining up the pieces correctly and getting the hook through multiple sets of holes without causing a skew is slow going for an inattentive mind, but I persevered.
The sleeves required wrangling four skeins of yarn at once to get long runs of color similar to the squares. (A single skein produced thin bands in the whole range of colors, an effect unpleasantly chaotic to my eye.) The sleeves appear short because a) the shoulders are dropped and b) I’ll be damned if something I make for myself is going to hang past my fingertips like every store-bought sleeve I’ve ever owned. The trim on the sleeve hits my wrist in exactly the same place the trim on the pocket does when my hand is inside.
Yeah, that’s right. I left seams open on the front panels for the all-important POCKETS so I don’t have to plan the rest of my outfit around where I’ll keep my keys and wallet. The final step was crocheting a couple of big squares for the interior pockets and (sigh) sewing them into place.
The extra seaming added inches to a shape that was already meant to be generous and ended up using a little over 3 pounds (a bit less than 1.5 kg) of yarn, so it’s now more of a coat than a sweater (a “swoat,” if you will). It’ll be cozy if this winter gets colder than flannel shirt weather.
Footbridge, Cake & Swoat would be an excellent fictional law firm. *makes note in story incubator, in ominous proximity to “How could anyone have seen that coming? Tater tots are the friendliest food!”*