Knitting

I started knitting a scarf while I was still living at Grafton doing my undergrad (so that would be...  2004?) and got to about two thirds or three quarters of the way through the pattern I had made before other stuff became more important.  Since then it has been sitting in a bag under my bed, in my wardrobe, or on the couch waiting to be finished.  Last week I got it out again and Mum and I figured out where I was up to.  Unfortunately, I've lost the pattern I made, except for a portion I have printed.  Fortunately, that's all I really need, as I remember intending to simply finish that portion, and then repeat what I have at the other end to finish it.  I wasn't going to post about it until I had finished it (and so won't put a picture up yet), but I really wanted to share what I have literally just found online and what will definitely be my next knitting project.

I want this yesterday.  It's an awesome-looking DNA double helix scarf, and the creator has been kind enough to publish it online for everyone to try.  I don't think I'll use the same colour (it's a great colour for a guy, but I think us girls can get away with brighter more fun colours in scarves), but I may change my mind.  Anyhow, I can't wait to try it, and as it's suddenly a lot cooler (at least in the mornings), I can happily sit and knit while watching the breakfast news.  If anyone has suggestions for colours, feel free to comment!  And if I find it easy enough, and you supply the wool, I'd be happy to make one for anyone - it's something to keep me from baking more cupcakes!

AMENDED:  I noticed the link didn't work...  I don't know if that just happened or if it was always wrong, but it's fixed now.

Butter Measurement Conversions (...sigh)

I'm writing out some (read, all) recipes from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes and am getting quite annoyed with the measurements.  Crazy Americans!  I understand that in America they have a different sized measuring cup (in New Zealand, Australia, and some other countries, we use a cup that is 250mls, while in the States, a cup is 236.588mls or 240mls [way to make it complicated!]) and often use pounds and ounces (because they're stuck in the 19th century?).

But what I don't understand is how you measure butter.  There are sticks of butter, and there are cups/T of butter.  My phone can't (or couldn't until I just created a conversion to do it) convert sticks of butter to grams.  Edmond's Cookbook doesn't have a clue either.  In NZ and Australia, most butter is sold in a block of 500g, and on the paper there are lines that indicate 50g intervals.  You simply run a knife gently along one of these lines on the outside of the paper, then unwrap the butter, and cut along the impression you have made.  I would like to ask any American visitors to my little blog (and I know there have been a few) - how on earth do you measure a cup of butter?  A t or a T is doable, if the butter is very soft, but how on earth do you do the same with a cup?

I have looked up a conversion ratio for sticks of butter to grams of butter and for cups of butter to grams of butter and created new conversion ratios for my phone, so now I can simply look it up each time I write out a recipe.  I can see conversion ratios needing their own post in here soon.  A lot are in the front of Edmond's, but not all that I would want (for example, regular sugar is included, but not icing, caster, or brown, and the damn butter), so I might spend some time when I have nothing to write about making a nice little table.