There's Snow Better Time for Cinnamon Roll Scones

We got a beautiful, if short-lived, snowfall recently.

Borga had a nice time keeping track of everything that was happening...the softly falling flakes, the seed-seeking birds, the playful squirrels.

What...it's time to go in already?

It may be freezing outside, but we've got a lot of beautiful green inside. I've started two new trailing houseplants, and although my paperwhite flowers have died, the green stems are still tall and strong. The bougainvillea tree is blooming, too.

It's so beautiful, brightening up the corner where it sits.

The amaryllis plants are growing nice, healthy stalks, although they won't actually bloom for many weeks.

I love winter green!

Besides tending for the indoor plants and taking silly glamour shots of our cats...


...I've been working on some knitting projects. This past weekend, I was finally able to give away this baby blanket that I knitted late last year. It's a classic design known as Old Shale, with cables in between the fans of lace. I really enjoyed knitting it.

I rarely buy yarn...the yarn I bought in Portland was the first yarn I'd bought in a year...but I had to go to my local yarn store to buy some gift yarn for a friend, and I was seduced by some bulky-weight Misti Alpaca. So soft, and beautiful saturated colors.

It's amazingly soft and snuggly, and it begged to be made into something special. Unfortunately, it's quite expensive, and I only bought 1 skein...not enough for the scarf I'd hoped for.

Before deciding on a project, I knitted up several swatches to see how the colors played out. This swatch of garter stitch was too dense for my tastes.

I tried a drop stitch swatch, which I really liked, at first. Drop stitching is really easy. It's knitting stockinette, but you loop the yarn around your needle twice to knit, instead of once. It makes great use of a small bit of yarn and displays the colors nicely.

Drop stitch patterns move amazingly fast and I finished a scarf in an hour. I just didn't like the finished product, though, so I frogged it (to Todd's horror - he doesn't yet understand that sometimes yarn and your chosen project don't agree) and started again.

I originally shied away from knitting a stockinette swatch, because stockinette edges curl, and the fabric is quite dense. However, I fell in love with the swatch I knitted.

Armed with the stitch I wanted and the yarn information, I was then able to make an informed decision when searching the Ravelry database for a pattern. I settled on a pretty cowl...which I will make sometime soon!

I've been cooking a lot lately, as usual. As much as I'm trying to stay away from sweets, I saw a recipe on Annie's Eats for cinnamon roll scones. The sugar content didn't look too high, and they are made with both white and whole wheat flour. I decided to throw caution into the wind and make a somewhat modified version.

Cinnamon Roll Scones
Modified from Annie's Eats
Makes 14 scones

Ingredients
1 stick butter, cold
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup greek yogurt (or sour cream)
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling
Milk, for brushing
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup toasted pecans (optional)
1/4 cup cinnamon chips (optional)

Glaze
3 ounces cream cheese
1/2 - 3/4 cup powdered sugar, to taste
a dash of vanilla
enough milk to bring the glaze to the desired consistency

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and whisk to combine. Cut in your cold butter, using a fork or a pastry cutter, until the butter is reduced to pea-sized bits. In a separate bowl, mix milk and yogurt and fold into dry ingredient mixture. Be sure not to over mix!

When your dough is mostly mixed, flour your work space well and roll out dough into a 10 inch square. Brush the surface well with milk. Whisk together filling ingredients and sprinkle over dough, covering the surface evenly. Roll your dough into a roll. It will be messy...that's all right.

Use a sharp knife to cut your roll into one-inch slices. I got 14 slices out of mine. Place them on a pizza stone or greased cookie sheet.

Mmmmm...don't they look good?

Bake for 14 - 16 minutes, until golden brown.

Whisk up your glaze and ice the tops.

These are soft and tender like a scone and sweet like a cinnamon roll...but much healthier!

I hope you give them a try soon.

Have a great week!

Portland: Part I

We're home from our Christmas in Portland! Besides visiting friends and family, we had an opportunity to do a little sight-seeing. We went from seeing Christmas trees...

...to the lovely fir and pine trees that pepper the Pacific Northwest.

Our first outing was to the Oregon coast. It didn't matter if it was raining in Portland, because the coast has a way of making its own weather.

The closer we got, the clearer and brighter the sky became.

At last...sun!

I love the Oregon and Washington coasts. They're quite different from the coastline in California. It's much colder and rockier...but that doesn't stop me or anyone else from hiking the ocean's edge.

Haystack Rock juts 235 feet above the surf. It's frequently shrouded in mist, but we had a lovely view.

The foaming waves may not look too dangerous, but the Oregon coast is known for 'sneaker waves', or huge waves that suddenly appear from benign surf. Many people have been washed out to sea because of them, and I, too, was once knocked off my feet by a thigh-high rush of water where once there was just gentle water sucking at my feet as I walked along the coastline. This girl is probably a little too far out for her own good!

Of course, there are lots of seagulls...

...and some interesting oddities. I love unique sand structures. I wonder what creature made this pit...

...or sent up these bubbles?

I love, too, how the water, receding from rocks, makes long trails on the sand.

I found sand dollars and other interesting shells in abundance.

Jellyfish of all shapes, colors, and sizes were washed up along the coastline.

Logs, too, were stacked here and there, deposited at will by the roaring surf.

I love the foam left behind on the rocks!

As we headed down the coast, a storm rolled in.

I *love* a stormy coastline. The colors are amazing, as the sky becomes the same color as the furthest wave.

Before the storm hit, there was just enough time to see the fading light among the trees at my favorite place along the coast, Hug Point. The light is wonderful, the trees are dense, and the coastline here is frequently stormy.

We sat alone on a small bench just beyond the sand and watched the storm roll in.

We left before it hit, because the temperature dropped drastically and we were wet, too. Another day!

One of the best parts about our beach day was finding our 2011 Christmas ornament. We started a tradition when we married of buying a special ornament each year, photographing it, and writing a little blurb about its discovery in a scrap book. We vetoed several ornaments this year, and then I found this smooth piece of wood on the beach. It already had a small hole bored in it...just perfect for a bit of yarn.

More Oregon photos to come! But speaking of yarn...now I can finally post some of my Christmas knitting projects that were hidden away. Here is a baby hat I knitted for a pregnant friend.

It matches this baby kimono, which buttons on the outside...

...but ties on the inside for a better fit. Those newborns are squirmy!

I also knitted a thick wool baby blanket. The yarn bulged like an egg crate before blocking, but with the application of water, and a little stretching...

...it straightened out into its normal state. Can you see the leaves?

Oh, and here is the baby! :)

I also made some Star Trek socks for Todd. It was my first time knitting a stranded design with two hands. It was slow, but my tension was better. I'm going to keep working on it.

I also made a hat and matching fingerless gloves for my brother-in-law.

For Christmas, I received a beautiful skein of fingering-weight yarn...that sparkles!

After all my Christmas knitting, I treated myself to two skeins of this lighter pink Malabrigo...

...two darker skeins...

...and a decadent skein of Madeline Tosh called "Magnolia Leaf".

I hope you treated yourself a bit, too!

Have a great week!