Madhu Knits and Cooks

Staggered Fern Blanket for Baby Sonali - A Great Spring Pattern

I recently had the opportunity to not only knit, but also design, a wonderful blanket for baby Sonali.  Baby Sonali lives in the Bay Area, so I decided to use a light cotton-bamboo blend yarn I had ordered in bulk from the Lion Brand catalog last summer.  

To design the blanket itself, I pulled out my handy 365 Knitting Stitches a Year calendar book and was quickly overwhelmed by all of the patterns.  I decided to narrow down the options by focusing on lacy repeats that wouldn't add too much bulk to what I hoped would be a lightweight blanket.  I ended up settling on two different repeats and ultimately had Andy select both the winning repeat (Staggered Fern Lace Pattern/Nov. 28 on the calendar) and the winning yarn color (Green - Snapdragon).  

I then had to figure out how to break up the lace repeats so that the blanket would look complete, and not just some discordant pattern repeats thrown together.  This task ended up taking up the most time of the entire design process, and somehow I still got by this step without making test swatches.  I decided to try a 5-stitch - k2tog, yo, k1, yo, sl1, k1, psso - repeat between the lace panels, based on this pattern from my go-to blanket book, the Leisure Arts Our Best Knit Baby Afghans.  

So now with my yarn, gauge and designing processes over, I got to knitting.  My devised pattern was fairly easy to get into, and I noticed results pretty quickly after getting started.  I decided to complete the top edging after about 22 inches of the blanket was completed, and after blocking, ended up with a slight rectangular blanket.  

True to my design inspiration, the blanket was light and somewhat fluffy, and I think the pattern/color combination worked out really well with a green leafy blanket, similar to baby Asha's blanket.  I hope baby Sonali is enjoying it!

Blanket for Baby Sonali

Pattern:  Cast on 107 stitches.  Full pattern below.  20-stitch lace repeat with 5-stitch lace dividers and 6 garter end stitches on each side.

Yarn:  Lion Brand LB Collection Cotton Bamboo, 1.6 skeins in Snapdragon

Needles:  One US 6 circular

Measurements:  21 3/4 inches wide by 23 inches tall, post-blocking

Full Pattern:

Rows 1 - 6:  Knit across.

Row 7:  K6 (P2, K9, YO, K1, YO, K3, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K2tog, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K1, psso) three times, P2, K9, YO, K1, YO, K3, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K6.

Rows 8 and all even rows:  Purl across.

Row 9: K6, (P2, K10, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K2tog, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K1, psso) three times, P2, K10, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K6

Row 11: K6, (P2, K3tog, K4, YO, K1, YO, K3, (YO, K1) twice, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K2tog, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K1, psso) three times, P2, K3tog, K4, YO, K1, YO, K3, (YO, K1) twice, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K6

Row 13: K6, (P2, K3tog, K3, YO, K1, YO, K9, P2, K2tog, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K1, psso) three times, P2, K3tog, K3, YO, K1, YO, K9, P2, K6

Row 15: K6, (P2, K3tog, K2, YO, K1, YO, K10, P2, K2tog, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K1, psso) three times, P2, K3tog, K2, YO, K1, YO, K10, P2, K6

Row 17: K6, (P2, K3tog, (K1, YO) twice, K3, YO, K1, YO, K4, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K2tog, YO, K1, YO, sl1, K1, psso) three times, P2, K3tog, (K1, YO) twice, K3, YO, K1, YO, K4, sl1, K2tog, psso, P2, K6

Row 18:  Purl

Repeat Rows 7 - 18 until desired length reached, and then finish with 6 rows of garter stitch (knitting across).

Mardi Gras King Cake - Definitely Worth the Annual Effort!

We happened to be in New Orleans during the first weekend of Mardi Gras this year, and had a fantastic time.  The daytime neighborhood parades and festive, communal spirit were really amazing to experience in person.  And in a sign that a Mardi Gras celebration of sorts would make perfect sense for us when we returned to New York, I received a Brooklyn Public Library notice the day we left NOLA that the John Besh cookbook I placed on hold a few weeks back was ready for pick-up!

We ate at John Besh's restaurant August during our latest New Orleans trip, and had a wonderful, five-course meal (more details will be available soon on my other blog), so I was particularly excited to open up this cookbook.  The first recipe I decided to try because of the Mardi Gras tie was Besh's King Cake recipe.  

Upon first glance, the recipe seemed fairly simple to construct, and the user comments for the online version of the recipe on Epicurious provided some helpful tips as well.  I also made several other alterations to fit what I had on hand and/or the techniques I thought would be best.  For the cake, I used 2% milk and placed the dough on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet for baking.  For the icing, I substituted 2% milk for the sweetened condensed milk (simply because I didn't know what to do with all of the leftover condensed milk), reduced the amount of powdered sugar to 1 cup (to reach the consistency I wanted), and dyed the colored sugars at home using regular evaporated cane sugar instead of buying colored sugars.  And per the Epicurious comments, I reduced the baking time to 22 minutes, which led to a "healthy" browning on the bottom of the cake.  In the future, I'll probably go down to 20 minutes?

Otherwise though, I followed the recipe as is, and while I somehow got confused during the braiding process (key = use a large surface to roll out of the dough and carefully do the braiding!), it did in fact turn out to be pretty seamless to put the cake together.  The result tasted really great too - lots of cinnamon and citrus flavor, perfect amount of moisture v. breadiness that other king cakes can have, and a nice amount of sweetness from the icing.  I think the icing may have been a little lemon-y for at least Andy's tastebuds though, so I may reduce that fresh juice in the future or add a bit of fresh orange juice as well for a different flavor? 

This will definitely be an annual tradition though - and the best part is that you get SO much cake from this recipe, that you absolutely need to throw a Mardi Gras party to consume it!