S'More Brownies, Please!

Last summer, after a brief camping trip we had half a bag of marshmallows, two Hershey's bars and two sleeves of graham crackers and no fire to make s'mores with. I also had on hand a box of Betty Crocker Family Size Fudgey Brownie mix.

So I created this:



We'll be camping with friends again around July 4th, so I'm sure I'll do it again. Then, maybe I'll have pictures to add to the tute. But here's the breakdown:

Graham Cracker Crust
1) Crush graham crackers. About one sleeve did it.
2) Melt butter- 6 to 8 tbsp depending on your preference.
3) Combine and line bottom of your cake pan.

Brownies
1) Break up 1 Hershey bar into small pieces.
2) Mix brownies as directed, adding pieces of chocolate bar.
3) Pour over graham cracker crust.
4) Bake in oven as directed

Marshmallows
Now, my stove has a broiler underneath that works really well for this. I simply lined the top of the brownies with marshmallows, turned the broiler on and put them in just long enough to brown the marshmallows (it's really not long!).

Otherwise, you could probably remove the brownies a few minutes before they are done, place the marshmallows and put them back in the oven.

Enjoy!

Sticks & Stones Scarf and the Dread Pirate Gloves

My husband likes different. And I can't blame him. I wouldn't want a plain old boring black pair of gloves and scarf either. And that's mostly what is out there for men. But this past winter was freezing, and even winters before I couldn't bear seeing him go out without a scarf and gloves. So we picked out this fun (yet subtle) Sticks and Stones yarn by Caron Simply Soft Paints.

I started with the scarf, the basic Ribbed scarf pattern from Deb Stoller's book. I opted to use size 13 US needles instead to give it a kind of lacy openwork kind of feel and made it plenty long for him to wrap around several times.



Then he asked me to make gloves. His scarf was only my second project, so I said, wait and we'll see. Everyone I had ever talked to said to stick to mittens or fingerless gloves. Gloves sounded horrible! Well, here's a little thing about me. I don't tend to stick to what people recommend and I always like a challenge. So after knitting the booties (see previous post), I was ready to try something new. I decided to try the Ken pattern by Berroco.



Since the project turned out to be a surprising success despite all the warnings I heeded not, I named them the Dread Pirate Gloves.

I did have a few snags. The first few rounds on DPNs is a bear. There was no mention of how to add yarn when you move on to the next finger. I finally found a how-to somewhere online, but it didn't warn about it creating holes between the fingers. I found that if you thread the yarn through back and forth with a needle a few times before knitting there really wouldn’t be much of a gap. Don’t know if that’s the best way to do it, but they look good! And I learned it is much better to use the person's actual hand (if available) instead of the measurements in the pattern. The second glove is little wonky (one of his favorite words) because I failed to do this.

All in all, I enjoyed taking on the challenge of "the dreaded gloves," and Ben is pleased with his new gloves (and has been wearing his scarf all winter). I look forward to scaling more knitting mountains. :-)

Oh, a funny little bit! I finished all of this with two skeins. I really thought I wasn't going to have enough for the second glove so I went all over to find another skein. My Jo-Ann's was out of it, and I ended up driving 45 minutes to get a third skein. I never needed it. In fact, I had this much of the second skein left:



So, for next winter, I think a matching hat?

Snuffleupagus Booties

My Gran has this thing about gifts. We aren't allowed to buy them, only handmade will be accepted. She gets pretty cold, so I thought for this last Christmas I'd make her a nice pair of comfy booties. I had just started to learn to knit so I wanted something pretty simple. I came across this pattern on AOK Corral and thought I'd give it a try.

Easy they indeed were and they are definitely warm, but they are rather unshapely. That along with the texture of the yarn reminded me of Mr. Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street. I don't know. What do you think?



These aren't actually the ones I made for her. I made these for my mother-in-law for her birthday. The first one's were really unshapely, so I used less stitches so that they wouldn't be so wide. But I'm still not thrilled with the end result.

Update: she loved them and kept remarking how adorable they were. :-)

Hullo

Hullo, blogosphere. While I'm not a new blogger, I am new to craft blogging. If nothing else, this will be a nice space to chronicle my attempts at making a nice home for my husband and I. My hope, however is to share tips and patterns, etc. along the way with any who might be interested.

So thank you for stopping by and hope that you will be coming again soon to see what I have been whipping up.

~Lidi Di