Book Review - Hot Bread Kitchen

When I got this book I didn't know that Hot Bread Kitchen was a place. I thought the cover looked good, and I liked making bread at a recent bread making class I went to.

The story of the Hot Bread Kitchen is nice. It is a nice story. The kitchen provides education for low income minority women. It helps them get management track positions in the food industry. 

My favorite thing about this book is that is has recipes for all those tasty breads you get when you eat out. Some I enjoied eating but couldn't remember the name of or how to spell it even if I did. Now I can make them at home. 

I also like that the books assumes you know nothing about making bread and gives some great tips on how to get started. 

Noro Striped Scarf

This is quick and fun project I have been meaning to do for awhile. The idea is you take two balls of self striping yarn and alternate them. It ends up making a fun scarf that has different combinations of stripes the whole way through. 

I had a little extra yarn, so I made up a matching hat pattern. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough yarn, or that the hat would be too small with the amount I had. But, it ended up fitting. :)

Book Review - The Homemade Kitchen

I love this book. I have the author's other book The Homemade Pantry. This book is even better. My favorite thing about it is that it doesn't assume you know how to do all the basic things. I know a lot of the basics, but not all and probably not the best way to do things. It is nice having that available. One section is on roasting vegetables. Which I do regularly, but it is nice to have a better idea written down for how long to roast each type.

I also love that it has simple recipes. Especially in the salads section. The recipes are simple and don't require a lot of ingredients. One is sauteed dandelion greens and a fried egg. It looks delicious, but I never would have thought to make it.

I'm very happy with this book, I am looking forward to trying more of the recipes.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Steven's Sweater

 I finally finished Steven's sweater, only a year later than originally planned. I like how the pattern looks, but it is so poorly written. The pattern is bottom up, and the first thing you knit is the body. This part of the pattern is deceptively fine. Despite being the biggest part of the sweater, it went quickly.

Unblocked - I will probably be lazy and not block it until it get washed.

Then came the sleeves. I did them exactly as the instructions indicated. My stitch counts were as the pattern stated, the gauge was as the pattern indicated and also matched the rest of the sweater. But, when had about a quarter of the sleeve done it was obviously excessively huge. Not the cuff, just the sleeve. I ended up having to cut out a third of the stitches to make look at fit like the picture. The biggest issue with this is that it throws off the stitch counts for the rest of the sweater. In addition to this issue the pattern doesn't actually include directions for doing the increases on the sleeves. It just say increase and return to pattern as soon as possible. I made up my own way, but it was a pain.

Then the raglan decreases started. This part I really expected to be better. I considered this to be the key part of the sweater as the decreases align perfectly with the edge of the diamond pattern. The first time I finished this sweater the neckline was huge. Considering that I had quite a few stitches less than the pattern was written for this makes no sense. As written the neckline came out looking like a deep boatneck, which would be fine it this was written for me. But it is nothing what the picture looks like. I added another half repeat of the pattern and basically ignored the pattern. It seems to have worked, but it was a lot more work than I had intended to do.

In the end, it fits Steven and he likes it. I am very happy to never have to use this pattern again.