A quiet Sunday
Organizing craft supplies, winding yarn into balls, sketching, swatching and baking cookies.
I quite like winding yarn by hand around a cardboard tube but it is very time consuming, so maybe I ought to buy a ball winder. They seem so expensive for a bit of plastic though. Sigh.
The oaty cookies are pretty much this recipe and I made up the recipe for the others. They’re very good so I thought you might like to make them. I’m feeling rather lazy and kind of sleepy though, so you’ll need to do any necessary conversions for yourself, sorry.
Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies
Ingredients:
- 2oz butter or margarine - I used goat’s butter
- 3oz light brown muscavado sugar
- 1 tbsp set honey (replace half with margarine and half with sugar or use syrup to veganize)
- 3oz self raising flour or plain flour with 1tsp of baking powder - I used light brown flour which is the equivalent of mixing half and half white and wholemeal
- 1oz cocoa (actual cocoa rather than sweetened hot chocolate powder)
- 2oz ground hazelnuts - I ground whole nuts in the food processor
- A little milk - I used oat milk, but use what you like.
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees c. Beat the butter or margarine, sugar and honey together until lighter and fluffy. If you’ve just taken hard butter from the fridge I find that a fork makes this easiest but an electric mixer would be even easier if you have one. Mix in all of the other ingredients except the milk. Add about a teaspoon full of milk at a time until the mixture just comes together to form a soft dough. Roll into balls roughly 1″ in diameter and place on a greased or lined baking tray with plenty of spreading room between them. Dip a fork in a cup of water and use it to squash the cookies flat, making a criss-cross pattern. Bake for 10 minutes, leave to cool on tray for a couple of minutes until hard enough to pick up and transfer to a wire rack (or, if like me you’ve never gotten around to buying such a thing, one of the shelves from the oven balanced on top of the cooker).
Enjoy.
Posted: August 26th, 2007 under knitting.
Comments: 12
Comments
Comment from Lisa
Time: August 27, 2007, 12:32 am
Hey! To save money and use brain power, I just made a ball winder from K’Nex and a swift from Tinker Toys (could also be easily done with K’Nex too): http://lisaradunz.blogspot.com/2007/08/knex-ball-winder-and-tinker-toy-swift.html
Just finished today, will be making modifications as i test it out with more yarn…what do you think of the crossing yarn thing? I would appreciate your comments/suggestions.
Comment from mel
Time: August 27, 2007, 1:17 am
Sounds like a perfect Sunday :)
Comment from ellie
Time: August 27, 2007, 6:04 am
Yum!
Comment from Emma in France
Time: August 27, 2007, 10:26 am
I got my ball winder very cheaply on Ebay. Might be worth a look.
Comment from MzTallulah
Time: August 27, 2007, 11:12 am
I too got mine on ebay - it took some patience (about a month until I finally won an auction), and some determination in not going over the sum I had decided to spend in the first place, but I’m very satisfied with it.
Comment from shadkitty
Time: August 27, 2007, 2:29 pm
Hm…I used to wind by hand on an empty medicine bottle. It wasn’t until I had to wind rather large-ish hanks into balls that I realized how impractical it all was. If anything, it saves your hands some aching. It does all pivot on how much you figure that pain is worth. Maybe save a little money at a time for it?
Comment from jas
Time: August 27, 2007, 2:40 pm
yummy.
lovely site!
Comment from Trine
Time: August 27, 2007, 6:17 pm
Oh those cookies look yummy! I’ll have to bake them some time soon. :)
I *love* winding my skeins by hand. It takes time, yeah, but you can do it while talking to people (make them hold the yarn) or while watching TV, listening to podcasts or whatever. Or just plainly sitting in a chair in silence. I find it helps me think. :)
Comment from Marie
Time: August 28, 2007, 4:36 pm
I can’t encourage you enough. Time is money. The amount of time you will spend by having a ball winder is amazing. Run - Run to your nearest store and buy a ball winder & a swift. My wonderful MIL donated hers to me and I will never go back to the days of hand winding.
Comment from Laura
Time: August 28, 2007, 5:45 pm
Seriously, buy the ball winder. I wasn’t completely convinced at first, ut it’s revolutionised my winding - it makes it fun! Plus the balls that come off it look so pretty with the criss-crossing.
Comment from Harper
Time: August 28, 2007, 9:12 pm
I too liked winding my balls by hand but when I decided to buy a swift I went ahead and got the ball winder as well and I have never been sorry. I knit for a charity that for extra warmth usually wants us to use a double thickness of yarn and I use the ball winder to easily turn two balls into one (I have also wound a two-strand ball from one ball using the inside and outside ends). There are some more reasonable prices out there (although I can only speak for the USA) and there is something so pleasurable in using a well designed gizmo that only does one thing but does it very well. And mine very easily and securely attaches to my table and is just as easily removed for storage.
That said, the Knex ball winder is amazing and cute so might be a fun project.
Comment from barbara
Time: October 6, 2007, 12:53 pm
after a stressful week i treated myself to your delicious biscuits - thank you so much for sharing the recipe!
xx have a lovely weekend
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