Friday, August 7, 2009

Irish crochet and comfort food

I dare say I am pretty proficient with crochet. I have been doing crochet for several years now; using both written instructions ala UK and American styles as well as the schematic diagrams favored by the Japanese.

However, in the course of working on my secret project, I am astounded by the amount of time and effort needed for Irish crochet. Take this motif as an example.
Irish crochet butterfly

I call it a butterfly because of the curly flick.

This is the third crochet pattern motif called for in this project. It's barely larger than my palm but the first piece took me just about 40mins to complete!

That includes pattern reading, stitch counting, fumbling with the annoying center thread bulk and so on. Hopefully my pace will improve once I become familiar with the chart.

Did I mention that the triangular motif you saw last time takes me an average of 20mins once I gained speed? All that cutting and joining made me embark on a production assembly approach. i.e. I crocheted the center pieces first and then outlined with the Irish crochet work in a separate session.

Singapore learn Irish crochet

On a side note, I was so inspired by Deb of Chappysmom's comment of making pancakes. And so I tried out a receipe yesterday morning. Perhaps it was the recipe I used or my limited cooking skills, the pancakes turned out rather flat and blah looking.

pancake rolls with kaya fillings

So I decided to make pancake rolls instead. I had 2 versions made:
  1. butter and kaya fillings
  2. orange marmalade
Luckily, they turned out pretty decent! Else they would have headed for the trash bin.

But seriously, if anyone has any great thick fluffy pancake recipes to share, I'll greatly appreciate it!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i tried to do a crochet but with no success..i'm having a hard doing it so i stopped..hehe..
for pancake, here's the basic pancakes recipe hope this will help you..
btw, if you're interested, you can join hobbies club at 88DB Singapore..

katongite on Mon Nov 16, 05:30:00 PM GMT+8 said...

My family like buttermilk pancakes and if you don't have buttermilk, you can replace it with a mixture of yoghurt and milk. This makes a fluffy pancake :

250g cake flour
20g baking powder
pinch of salt
4 large eggs,separated
pinch of cream of tartar
500 ml buttermilk
butter to fry

Whisk the 1st three dry ingredients together and mix the yolks and buttermilk. Beat whites till foamy, add the cream of tartar and continue until you can get stiff peaks. Add yolk mixture to the flour mixture and mix till flour only just disappears (don't overmix). Add whites and fold in.
Lightly butter the pan and fry the batter in amounts that you prefer, but I usually make 4-inch pancakes.

The key to good light pancakes is not to overmix and an occasional little lump of flour is not to be feared.

I crochet too - and big projects can be very tiring, especially if you are not sure of the end result . . . Good luck.

 

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