Knitting and Baking and NaNo, oh my!

ocooning.

In between the work and the NaNoWriMo prep (come find me, I'm Denizb33 on the site!), I'm still knitting and baking a lot.

A fruit cake that turned into a crumble...

Vanilla icebox cookies dipped in chocolate!

A special birthday cake!

It took three tries, but I've nearly perfected these Sally's Baking Addiction chocolate chip cookies! Next step is to make them smaller, but just as yummy!

First snowfall on the Alps! September 2020

A baby blanket for a colleague!

All about knitting in Yorkshire, from Amanda Owen, the Yorkshire Shepherdess's books

A random flower that appeared in the pot in which the dill failed!

Morning yoga beside Lac Leman, bliss!

I'm thinking of tackling a murder mystery for the first time during NaNoWriMo. Not a suspense, not a romantic suspense, but an actual murder mystery... Nothing to lose, right? If it doesn't work out, I have the elements in place to switch it to a second-chance romance! All I need is the heroine's name...

Will you be taking part in NaNoWriMo?

Lac de Joux and Finished Blanket

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eekend away!

Photos from a weekend jaunt, a couple of weekends ago, to Lac de Joux and the surrounding valley, up in the Jura mountains (home of absinthe, watchmaking, and the largest lake in Switzerland above 1000m):

The Alps, seen from the Jura:

Buffalo and bears at an animal park:

They also had goat and deer!

Lac de Joux, right outside our hotel room!

Snails!

A village in the valley:

And a few more shots of knitting and baking:

This is the finished version of the baby blanket begun here:

And a new hat (which is actually an adult-sized hat, but I had a willing baby model...):

This is a cheesecake blondie, from my sister's recipe:

I found this scribbled recipe when looking for a recipe that didn't call for butter, because we were all out hat day (!). It had no title, so I had to google the ingredients to figure out what it might be:

Apparently, it was muffins!

I haven't been doing well on my ROW80 goals... But I have submitted a story to the Insecure Writer's Support Group anthology contest!

Have you entered a contest recently?

Knitting and Baking Round-Up

ummy, yummy, yummy!

For a while there, I was knitting and baking practically every day.

Knitting in April

Baking and knitting in May

Baking and knitting and ice cream in May

Knitting in June

I didn't take photos of all my baking, but here are the main recipes I used.

I also have my grandmother's recipe for apple pie.

My version came out more as a crumble, and tasted really good, especially with tea (and would also be good with vanilla ice cream!).

My sister has previously translated the apple pie recipe on her Desserts and Drawings blog!

In other news, Tim's Twitter Listening Party is continuing apace! These are lots of fun, especially for the nostalgic albums.

Two other music-from-home events:

Mark Morriss of the Bluetones

Martin Rossiter of Gene

What's your go-to pie recipe?

ROW80, Knitting, and Artefacts

iscellaneous!

emembering Binyavanga Wainaina.

Round of Words in 80 Days: Still a few weeks to go in Round 2. My main goal was to keep going on research for Captive of the Sea. This is...not happening. I wrote more of the epilogue as part of the May writing exercise on thelitforum.

Otherwise, I've been working on assignments for school, and knitting some more!

nitting!

I had a few moments to tidy up my bookshelf of pattern books and printed patterns, and found a couple of good things.

Testing a hat... I didn't quite get the resizing right, so it became another baby hat!

Pumpkin!

Wristies!

Who's got a problem?

The first blanket I ever knit!

I made so many of these back in the day. it's a really soothing pattern to work on.

The scarf pattern I got when I once purchased wool at a church fair!

My knitting blog is named after this pattern!

Have you found a memento or other interesting photograph or artefact lately?