Happy Easter

I'm a day late I know so I hope that you all had a wonderful, relaxing and possibly sunny Easter Sunday. We had a fabulous day starting with our traditional egg and soldiers breakfast (which wasn't in the least spoiled by having to have solid yolks), followed by a truly joyful church service; all the children and a fair few of the adults (H included) were given green, gold, and pearl helium balloons to hold and at the end of the first response we all let go and the balloons sailed up into the church rafters. It's not a structurally complicated church so there's nothing for them to get caught on and they'll just sit there until the helium escapes and they all come floating down again; H and I are wondering how much helium you would need to put into a balloon to release it on Easter Sunday and have it descend at Pentecost - rather more than an ordinary balloon would take we think, but we haven't done the maths (yet!).

Our lunch was delicious, roast lamb with rosemary, thyme and garlic, roast tatties, yorkshires, snips and green beans followed by an experiment that is now unanimously voted onto the Easter menu in perpetuity.

This:


Is a Nigella recipe from the current edition of Delicious magazine (the one with the pink cover and pictures of macaroons on it) for Passionfruit Meringue Cake, slightly altered to be Lemon Meringue Cake as H isn't so fond of the passionfruit.

It looks a little messy in construction but essentially it's two lemon sponge cakes with meringue toppings filled with whipped cream and lemon curd. It's light and fluffy and insanely delicious,

And we're going to have no trouble at all in seeing off the entire cake. Actually supper last night mostly seemed to involve just another slice of cake. It makes up for my attempt at home-made hot cross buns which involved huge amounts of effort and were totally not worth it. Just looking at the cake pictures is making me want another sliver - cake lunch anyone?

The brief stint of bright daylight also let me get out and about with the camera to photograph the latest baby knit.

This is the Skye jacket by Martin Storey from Rowan's latest baby offering - Classic Miniatures. The pattern suggests using Hand Knit Cotton but I've switched out in favour of Pure Wool DK in Frost turquoisy-blue. And as with all good outfits, it has a hat to match:

A cashmere hat no less - Rowan Pure Cashmere DK in Cork which I found on sale. It is everything cashmere should be - soft and fluffy and soft and snuggle and soft and ... well you get the picture.

Oh if you're wondering why the hat has feet, may I present:

Little chick the hat model - beautifully sturdy at the moment as he is harbouring a tummy full of Lindor mini eggs!

The pattern is well written and accurate for what it is and I don't really have any complaints except that I'm feeling very 'meh' about the whole outfit. It's also distinctly baby boy when I was aiming for gender neutral but that's down to user error and can always be rectified by a quick stretch of lazy daisies if this little bump of mine turns out to be a girl.

I think that the problem is that it's too classic (but really, what did I expect from a book called Classic Miniatures), too old-fashioned for my baby-dressing style (who knew that I had a baby style), and too universal. I feel as if it could have been bought and so I'm reacting in exactly the same way as any other knitter who presents their non-knitting relative with a handknit scarf that took them hours to make and gets the (supposedly complimentary) comment: "it's wonderful, it could almost have come from a shop". I want everything I make for this baby to be drop dead gorgeous cute, and I just haven't hit the mark with this one.

I'm in two minds whether to accept that it's work-a-day and when the baby has thrown up over every other clean item of clothing in the house I'll probably be glad of it, or try to rescue it with some sort of applique - stars maybe? What puts me off the rescue mission is that this jacket has raglan shoulder seams front and back, and however neatly I sew up, I cannot sew up seamlessly in a way that looks acceptable from the outside and so there are little bump seams on the inside and I wonder how truly comfortable that's going to be for the baby.

When so many other designers really push the boat out in going seamless, or as near to seamless as they can get for baby knits perhaps Rowan needs to move with the times. And yes, I know I could have converted to knitting fairly seamlessly if I'd put the time and effort in to re-jig the pattern but sometimes a girl just wants to knit and not think.

On the plus side, I've now got what I hope is enough yarn for the restart of the Baby All Mine cardie for my if-you're-a-little-girl stash of baby knits, and I know I'm going to love knitting it; please pass the needles!