A Sweet New Year

I don't usually post about non- knitting things, but last week, I made an apple tart for Rosh Hashanah and I was pretty pleased about it.

First I started with a mix of apples. A few Gala and a few macs, so that I had some sweet and some tart:

I was lucky that I didn't need to use all of the apples, so I got to eat a few of them! :) They were delicious. I mean, they were Gala and Granny Smith (oh, I crack myself up). But they were still delicious!

Here are all of the ingredients, waiting to be made into a tart:

A few closeups:

The recipe called for apple brandy, but the guy at the liquor store said I could use regular brandy instead of apple brandy because I had the apples in it themselves, so I did, and it saved me from having to buy a $20 bottle of apple brandy that I would probably never use again.

The pre-cooked tart:

And the tart after it came out of the oven:

It was pretty darn delicious if I do say so myself.

Blocking Lace

I have never really blocked before. But I made this shawl for my mother, and it was all lace. I used silk yarn, and I knew that it really needed to be blocked. So I'm blocking. I followed the instructions on the Yarn Harlot's website and on Eunny Jang's website. I sort of combined the two. And I soaked. And I pulled. And I pinned. And pinned. And pinned. I think I have nearly 300 pins in this shawl. I hope it's dry by the morning.