Hiya, Cupcake

I’ve got stuff to do today to stay on track. Seriously. I do.

But first let me tell you about these cupcakes.

yummers

I made minis – The best looking ones are in Ellie’s lunch.

I’ve been looking for an eggless replacement for my yellow cake recipe for two years. It’s been on my mind more often lately because of monsters like these. Sorry for the Fox News link, but at least it doesn’t have the undercover video. I’ll tell you all about where eggs come from one of these days, but not today. There’s no time today because you need to make these cupcakes.

New Go-To Cupcake*
makes 12 regular cupcakes or 36 minis

Preheat your oven to 350 and grease a 12-cup muffin pan or line it with little paper cups.

1 1/4 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. baking soda
1/2 t. of salt
1/2 c. granulated sugar
   Whisk these together in a bowl. It’s the lazy way to sift.

1/4 c. brown sugar (I’m pretty sure this is the key.)
1/3 c. oil
1 c. some kind of milk (I used soy.)
2 t. vanilla
   Whisk these together in another bowl. I actually whisk them in a 2 c. measuring cup because I am LAZY and don’t like to wash anything I don’t have to.

   Pour the wet into the dry and whisk until relatively smooth.

   Fill each muffin cup 2/3s full – it comes out perfectly. You can get 36 minis out of the same amount of batter if you don’t lick the spoon. And bake 24 minutes for the regular size and 12 minutes for the minis. You’l know they are finished, because they will be beautifully golden and nicely rounded on top.

Now make the frosting. This cupcake is an all-purpose wonder. I’ve put straight up buttercream on top, floofy chocolate buttercream and most recently, salted caramel buttercream. *swoon*

Buttercream Frosting all Kinds of Ways
Makes enough for one batch of cupcakes. Doubles easily.

The gold standard is:
1/4 c. Earth Balance in the stick (Organic Valley’s Butter is also a winner)
1/4 c. vegetable shortening
2 c. powdered sugar
1/2 t. vanilla

   You’ll need an electric mixer to get this good and fluffy. Beat the Earth Balance and shortening together until it’s a little lighter in color. Then start adding the powdered sugar 1/2 a cup at a time, beating until each addition is mixed. Beat in the vanilla and add food coloring if your child is obsessed with pink. For a more floofy frosting that you can pop in a pastry bag and squirt out like clouds, beat in a couple tablespoons (GRADUALLY or you’ll get accidental frosting soup) of your milk of choice. If you manage to have leftovers, store it in the ‘fridge for later.

   For chocolate add: 3 T. cocoa powder and 1-2 T. some kind of milk
   For salted caramel add: 1/2 t. caramel extract or a big spoonful of caramel sauce and 1/2 t. salt (maybe more depending on how much you like salt)

   You can also substitute 1/2 c. cream cheese (Tofutti’s vegan version works great if you can get it) for the shortening.

Now frost those cupcakes. And eat them up.

*This is an edited adaptation of a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes take Over the World. I haven’t actually seen the original recipe so it is possible that I put it back how it was supposed to be.

Little Lunch

I’m still plugging away at Christmas orders, but in non-knitting news, I’ve been trying something new.

At Ellie’s new pre-school, the kids eat school provided lunch before they are picked up at noon. We were picking Ellie up before that since we ‘eat weird’ for this neck of the woods but she really really really wanted to eat lunch with her friends. So I bought a couple little lock-top containers and started packing her lunches in lazy bento fashion. This has been a little bit of a challenge since there is not a lot Ellie eats at this phase of her development (if it’s green or obviously grown in the ground, Ellie has ethical objections).

bento-esque

Friday’s Lunch

She’s got graham crackers with peanut butter in the middle, a laughing cow cheese wedge, veggie straws (just two green ones), a couple Oreos and prepackaged applesauce from our hurricane supplies. The real cute is in her little bento bag.

kitty

Pink AND a cat!

The unexpected side effect of Ellie’s little lunchables is that three days a week Michael and I can eat grown up lunch.

nom

Curry couscous with corn, black beans, seitan and carrots.

There’s actually nothing in there that Ellie doesn’t like (except carrots) but there is nothing in there that Ellie will eat (except the seitan).

Ellie said her lunch was “yummers” and ate everything except the cookie part of the Oreos (???). Ours was yummers too and we ate it ALL.

Priorities

This week the emphasis is on:

The Bear Pattern (ARGH!)
Ellie’s Cardigan (More on that.)
Washing Clothes as the Sun Shines (No point to a clothesline otherwise.)

pink pink pink

She picked pink for her cardigan. Wait until you see the button.

The cardigan will be Head of the Class from Timeless Knits for Kids. I bought the book sight unseen thinking that if I liked this one so much, there MUST be a few more I’d want to make.

Nope.

If anyone wants Timeless Knits for Kids, I’d love to share. I’ve got both sleeves finished and I am at the armholes on the sweater, so you won’t have to wait for it too long. It’s one of those sweaters worked all in one piece up to the arms and then divided around the armholes. I really hate working that way* – even if it doesn’t actually take any longer than knitting a thing all in pieces it FEELS like it does. Not to mention the WEIGHT. But I bought the book so I am committed.

The yarn is one of my new favorites, O-Wool Balance (50% organic wool, 50% organic cotton) in Rose Quartz , from one of my favorite shops, Green Sheep Shop where O-Wool is the Yarn of the Month for November (20% off). Happy coincidence or shameless attempt to get me to spend more money on yarn? It’s so hard to tell.

*I very much want to make Jared Flood’s Brownstone (in O-Wool Balance, of course) for Michael but the thing is knit ALL IN ONE PIECE. A man’s sweater in the round will take ALL ETERNITY and break my wrists long before I get to the collar.

Oh. Hey There, November.

gobble

Gobble Gobble

Some of you may remember how I wanted to put together another set of Birdies. It turns out that the three that I wanted to include are actually radically different designs even though they have the same basic body shape. So I will be releasing them one at a time instead of as a 12 page collection. Since it’s November, you get Turkey.

He’s only available on Ravelry so far, but I will make him available on Etsy for November.

Happy November!

Take Two

It’s the first day of preschool! Jump for joy!

jumping in striped legs

Check out those stripes!

You thought we already did that? She spent a total of eight days at the old place. The third Friday morning, she told me she would rather stay home and clean the house with me than go to school and have birthday cupcakes with her class. We were already REALLY unhappy with the place (our choices are few) but sticking with it as long as she seemed to be enjoying herself. We called the Montessori place a couple towns south (it’s a drive or she would have been there already). They said “Sure we have room, but if you aren’t in a hurry, we’re opening a new school down the road from you!” We weren’t in a hurry and school started today.

And she was not shy.

The Official Pattern of Dish Rag Tag V: V is for Victory is up and ready for download on Ravelry and in my Free Patterns (it’s at the very bottom). Incidentally, the Free Patterns page has been spruced up a bit and now has pictures.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to get started on Ellie’s Halloween costume! I am so glad school opened this week – I had no idea when I was going to find the time to get that done.

DRT: Delayed Results

When you want to have a fireworks extravaganza, first you have to wait for the dark of night when Ellie is asleep (she has a fire thing that extends to any sort of spark, we don’t have candles at birthdays or anything).

light em up

But once you have that…

Congratulations, Knitrageous! Captained to Dish Rag Tag Glory by Susan, these fireworks are for you!

woooo

Ooooooh!!

Then you have to wait for sunshine and Ellie to be awake to open the package! Don’t worry, last leg Lila, nothing was singed but the corner of the box.

yummy yarn

There have been some really great colors in the return yarn this year!

That’s a great dish cloth from Lila, but the thing that just really sums up Dish Rag Tag for me is this.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Thanks to each of you for another year of Dish Rag Tag. Thanks for one more year with 100% participation (three out of five! woo!). Thanks for one more year of enthusiasm, joy and support. Thanks for being willing to make new friends, work toward a common goal and just being all around wonderful people. Thanks for making my year brighter.

Thanks.

I’ll have the V is for Victory pattern available tomorrow!

Dish Rag Tag V Final Standings
A-NINE-ILATORS……10/7/2011
3x the Charm……10/8/2011
Purls Gone Wild……10/8/2011
Eight’s Great……10/11/2011
11th Round Knockout……10/11/2011
Knit 1, Win 1……10/13/2011
Round Tuit……10/14/2011
Lucky 7s……10/15/2011
All Four One……10/17/2011
Perfect 10……10/17/2011
Knitrageous……10/20/2011

CPSIA: Handmade Needs Your Help

December 31, 2011 will be the last day toys can legally be sold in the United States unless they undergo mandatory ASTM F963 testing. ASTM F963 testing must be performed by an independent lab and is used to determine if a toy is safe for children to play with: seams are sound, no flammability issues, little fingers can’t poke into holes, the toy doesn’t shatter into a million sharp pieces when it’s dropped. This sounds like a great idea. Safety first, right?

If you are a large company, and your toys are stamped out with a machine by the thousands at the cost of about $1.50 a toy, this is not a big deal. If you are a small toymaker who spends hours on a single stuffed animal, this is the end of your business.

I hand knit soft toys from natural materials. Each toy takes an average 6 hours from start to finish. I have a three year old and precious little time so I produce around 200 stuffed animals a year. My toys aren’t small batch, they are micro batch. My yarn and filling choices (cotton, wool, cashmere, angora, alpaca) are typically organic and often purchased directly from the farmer. Each type of toy is produced with the same techniques and solid construction. Each is produced with my own hands so there is no question about variation in quality or in craftsmanship.

My ‘Cotton Companions’ are available as eleven different types of animal. In order to be in compliance with mandatory ASTM F963 testing, I will be required to submit each animal design (model) for individual testing. If just one copy of each model is required for ASTM F963 testing, I will need to make and send eleven toys. That represents 66 hours of work and about $45 in materials. Add to that testing fees of $500 per toy – $5,500 in testing fees for the eleven Cotton Companions. That’s more money than Yarn Miracle makes in a year. If more than one copy of each model is required for testing, the cost in my time alone is absolutely overwhelming. Lab testing can require as many as ten copies of a model. For the Cotton Companions that is 110 toys – more than half my annual production!

I also have six designs for larger toys, make eleven styles of Itty Bitty Animals and at least a dozen varieties of Itty Bitty Birdies. To test every design in my shop would cost a total of $19,500 in testing fees, 160 hours of knitting time and I haven’t even done the math for materials cost – and that’s only to submit a single copy of each toy design.

For my ‘luxury’ companions, I use handspun yarns, hand dyed yarns, special blends of fiber and cashmere. If each fiber type needs to be tested, that’s more than a dozen additional toys and a staggering materials cost. Many of the luxury toys are one of a kind. To send a one of a kind toy in for ASTM F963 testing would leave me with no toy to sell!

Not only is ASTM F963 testing ‘overburdensome’, it is impossible. Impossible not just for me, but for every other small toy manufacturer in the United States. There will be no more hand made blocks, no wooden teethers, no waldorf dolls, no bendy dolls, no more made-to-order plush monsters, no more unique, no more original, no more handmade toys with exemplary safety records. But the big toy companies, whose negligence sparked this law, will be just fine. In an already damaged economy, mandatory ASTM F963 testing means the end of even more jobs.

There is a CPSC hearing on October 26 to determine if there should be alternative testing requirements or exemptions for handmade toys. The Handmade Toy Alliance will be there to lobby on behalf of small batch manufacturers. Here’s how you can help:

Write your Senator.
Write your Representative.
Every email makes a difference. Every letter shows the public cares about what happens to the people who make handmade toys.

If you feel inclined: join or donate to the Handmade Toy Alliance.

Buy handmade for the holidays. It may be your last chance.