Irish Soda Bread

This weekend was St. Patrick's day, also known as my anniversary, so it's a pretty exciting weekend in our house!  In honor of our mutual Irish heritage I decided to try out something totally new - Irish Soda Bread.  Joe is especially fond of dense breads, and this is super simple and takes very few ingredients so it was destined to be a great new addition to our recipe book.

I based my creation off of this recipe.

The Ingredients:

1 cup buttermilk - OR - 1 cup milk and 1 tsp vinegar stirred together and left to sit for 10 minutes

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbs sugar


Mix dry ingredients, stir in buttermilk.

If it's too sticky, add some flour.  If it's too dry and won't stick together, add a dab of milk.  It probably won't be perfect.

You can also add exciting things like nuts or dried cranberries or more sugar, but it was my first time so I went basic.

TOO STICKY!!!  Add more flour. 

Now that looks more like bread dough.

Don't forget one of the essential essential elements of Charm Hour- your drink of choice.

And you gotta go Irish on St. Patrick's Day if not always.  

The Simple Ripple Blanket

My grandmother is the queen of these blankets.  Each grandchild gets a full-size blanket in their college colors before they start their freshman year.  I've still got my red and white one in my bedroom here in Illinois.

I wanted to try out a new pattern for the baby of a friend of mine, and it seemed like the perfect one to try since it means so much to me. I found some similar patterns but they were annoyingly complicated.  I decided to make up my own pattern where there's only one pattern to remember that's the same for every line.  It's also really easy to adapt to the size you want to make.

Crochet Edged Fleece Blanket

This project is a super simple project that ends up looking fantastic.  All it requires is some crochet thread, some fleece, and a small sized crochet hook.

 I was inspired by a purlbee pattern for flannel receiving blankets.  purlbee manages to constantly be posting modern patterns based on traditional techniques that I find incredibly endearing.  This one is crochet edged flannel baby blankets.  I don't have a baby, but I do have a very drafty apartment.  I have some knit afghans but was hoping to make something a little warmer and fuzzier.  So after a little bit of internet research I found out that it is very doable to make this with fleece instead.  I picked out a cute midwestern patten for Oy and a basic heather grey for Joe and I.  I used Aunt Lydia's Fashion 3 Crochet Thread (but a thin yarn also works fine) with a 1.90 mm/ size 5 hook.

Fabric Prep: 


This part depends on the supplies you have, how much time you want to invest, and how particular you are.  The first step is to cut the edges to straighten them out and take off that weird not-fuzzy edge.  I also cut my corners to be rounded out of personal preference.

If you're very neat, you could fold the edges under twice, sew them there, and use what I believe is called a rotary punch or a hole puncher of some sort to cut holes about 1/2 an inch apart.

If you're not that fussy, so you can follow that I did, or pick and choose the parts you want to follow.  I pinned the edges as I went (folded over twice to the back of the work).

showing the back of the work, it if folded over twice and pinned