Bellhorn Family

Here is the latest hat I knit. It was finished a few weeks ago, just in time for our weather to start getting cold. This was a pattern called Gingerbread Hat. I'm pretty happy with the final project. A couple photos have been posted in the Knitted Hat album. The picture here was shot is some rather harsh light making the shadows heavily contrasted. I used some poster board to reflect a bit of fill light which helped a bit.

My work organized a potluck get together this evening. I decided to try making an appetizer this time. Generally I avoid those since most are better served fresh and hot. I found a recipe for spinach and cheese swirls which I thought might hold up okay. They probably would in fact be better warm, but they tasted good enough that a couple people requested the recipe. These took advantage of pepper jack cheese to get a little spice kick. The intention was not major heat but just another layer of flavor for everyone.

I also prepared a dessert for the party. Everyone at Thanksgiving enjoyed the individual cookies and cream cheesecakes I took. One consistent comment was that they could not finish the entire serving. This time I tried reducing their height by half while doubling the finished quantity. It seemed to work out pretty well despite the slightly reduced wow factor of the taller cakes. The only negative aspect was that I worked rather late cutting, sanding, and cleaning the shorter sections of PVP pipe molds. At least that was a one time preparation so I am ready for the next party.

We received some rare snow in Austin yesterday. I recorded a brief video on my iPhone during our lunch break as proof. They had originally predicted a couple inches of snow would accumulate. Turns out it only fell while we were at lunch, and all of it melted as soon as it hit anything. We did get a deep freeze overnight. Of course all of the snow had already melted by that point. Hopefully clicking on the picture will play the video. I have been having some difficulty embedding it in the website, so this should just open it directly in Quicktime.