Spring.

Today I received a gift from my nephew, his first Easter eggs done by him. He was so excited in giving something he created on his own. I decided to start my post with a picture of such special gift. Gracias Juan Carlos!

So now we are almost at Spring and almost at Easter. The weather in Mexico City has been quite hot and my winter projects are now kept deep in my drawers. I decided to start a new project for this coming season. It is inspired by a downloaded pattern at the Vogue Knitting website from Vladimir Teriokhin, a very good designer. Although the original pattern is quite nice just the way it is I decided to add a little something to make it a bit more "coquete". Something simple really: a set of lace hearts that I will keep on knitting on all the project vs. the simple St st suggested by the designer. Here a picture of Teriokhin's "Off-The-Shoulder Pullover".


And here is a picture of my version with my favourite model posing -he loves to sleep on top of my stash!-. I am following the lace heart pattern from a book and think it looks quite nice. In this project I am trying to improve my "lace" technique.
Aside from the lace pattern I also changed the color to make it more vibrant and "loud" and as always I am not using the type of yarn suggested because I already had a very nice french cotton. Hope to finish it before Spring ends!



Still on the Lace theme I an trying to finish a very old project, my own design......oh how difficult it is to retake a lace pattern! It is a long foulard and I am glad that I left some notes and so I must finish it soon. Its starting date? well....March 2004. :)


Some news: I am now at Ravelry!

Finally all this hot weather has put in season oranges everywhere so I baked an orange cake to celebrate. From Margaret Fulton's "Encyclopedia of Food & Cookery":
Ingredients:

- 1/2 cup of butter or margarine.
- grated rind and juice of one medium orange.
- 3/4 cup caster sugar.
- 2 eggs, separated.
- 2 cups self-raising flour.
- pinch of salt.
- 2 or 3 tbsp milk.
- sifted icing (confectioner's sugar)

Cream butter with orange rind and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, one at a time and beat well after each. Sift flour with salt and fold into creamed mixture alternately with strained orange juice and milk, beginning and ending with flour. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form and gently fold in. Spoon into 20cm round or square tin pan greased with melted butter, bottom lined with greased waxed paper and dusted with flour. Bake in a preheated moderate oven (180 oC/ 350 oF) for 35 to 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean. Turn out on to a wire rack and when cool dust with sifted icing sugar.
Enjoy!

Hasta Pronto!