Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday, and that everybody has come away from Sandy unharmed. Wow, it’s just insane what nature can do!

I finished my lace scarf last Wednesday. I’m so happy with it!! It was such an easy knit, but creates such a wonderful effect. I am totally in love with scarves. I really have to stop myself from running back to Hobby Lobby and grabbing some more of that Paton’s Lace in the other colorways. The Arctic Plum would be lovely, as would Patina and Woodrose. Or in their Lace Sequins yarn! Those jewel tones are lovely. I’m not a huge fan of green, but I love that Peridot color!

I have to say, I had a bit of trouble blocking this one. The cast on edge has a lovely ripple pattern, but that didn’t happen naturally (for me) on the bind off edge. I attempted to recreate that better with blocking, but it didn’t work. It’s frustrating – I followed the directions almost exactly (the pattern mentioned slipping the first stitch of the ‘normal’ rows – I chose to go ahead and knit the stitch), so I don’t understand what happened. It all worked out, because I simply reblocked it to give it a more of a straight edge. It’s so wide I fold it accordion style on my neck, so it’s not very noticeable.

Otherwise, I love it!! I’ve already worn it once, and it was so fun playing with the different ways to wear it. Eventually I pulled out my favorite butterfly pin and secured the ends of the scarf in a cowl-like fashion.

Beyond the knitting, there has been much excitement here lately. We had an incident the other day that resulted in a small fire on the far end of my father’s land. Luckily neighbors saw what happened and were able to put the fire out quickly. I’ll leave it at that – you don’t need all the drama.

Before that I was busy, busy, busy with baking. My dad’s church had a fall festival this past weekend and one of the activities was a cake walk. My father does not bake, so I made some items for him to take in. I try to pick different sorts of recipes, things that aren’t so common to send for these sorts of things. Chocolate, white, and red velvet cakes are a dime a dozen at a southern church event! I try to make sure my baked goods go early by making them more unique. And it works!

This year I sent an apple spice cake with a brown sugar glaze, devil’s food cupcakes with mock peanut butter cookie dough frosting, and vanilla peanut butter chip cookies. If you’re interested in any of the recipes, the links will open in a new window to the blogs I got the recipes from – I wasn’t creative enough to think those up! The apple spice cake was a variation on a recipe a friend gave me many years ago.

For that, you’ll need:

1 box spice cake mix
1 can of apple pie filling
2 eggs

Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Mix all the ingredients together. (It’s going to be a weird-looking batter, due to the lack of wet ingredients. You’ll just kind of have to plop it into the pan and push it around to fill it.) I greased a standard 8×11 baking pan with non-stick spray, filled it, then baked it for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle came out clean).Take a spoon handle or a chop stick, and poke holes all around the cake.

For the glaze, combine 1 cup of packed light brown sugar, 1/3 cup butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of evaporated milk (or cream, or half and half) in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it comes to a gentle boil. Then cook for 3 to 5 minutes more. I then let that sit a few minutes to firm up a bit, then poured it over the cake, using a spoon to make sure I covered the entire cake, and drizzling it over the holes to it really got down into the cake.

(Disclaimer: This isn’t my recipe, either. I found it online, but can’t find the website I used it from now – I had scribbled it down on a piece of paper. If you’re the author of this recipe and want to claim it and have me link to it, please, just let me know. I am NOT trying to take credit for creating it.)

Everything went over really well – I’ve been asked to send copies of the recipes for people! I have not tried the apple spice cake myself, but have tried the other things. They are pretty tasty. I wasn’t sure about the mock peanut butter cookie dough frosting, but it turned out pretty good and is a really interesting compliment to the cupcakes. And the recipe made more than I needed for the cupcakes, so there is some in the fridge. I can eat cookie dough and not worry about raw eggs! Score. The vanilla peanut butter cookies are so yummy. I made a batch for the house and they were gone within 24 hours. The flavor combination is so good, and wow…are they soft! I’m totally in love with them! Thank goodness for Pinterest, right? I’m finding so many more great recipes than I ever could have found on my own!

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