It is a Celebration Giveaway!

At this time of the year I get pumpkin-on-the-brain. It is very closely aligned with apples-on-the-brain. Everything with pumpkin in it sounds good to me. I found a recipe for pumpkin spice muffins on a very creative blog "flipflops and applesauce". I tweaked it a bit and came up with this version which I think is very good.

MIX:

One box yellow cake mix

1 can pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

1/4 cup water

1 egg
Add cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, etc. Whatever you like seems to work. (No garlic though.;)) Penzey's Cake Spice or Baking Spice work great also.

I also mix up a little topping with brown sugar, cinnamon and oats. Press into the top of each muffin. They look prettier and taste better.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20-25 min. I like using paper liners and fill them a bit more than 2/3's full. Makes 18 regular size muffins.

Without the egg these muffins are supposed to be 1 pt on the Weight Watchers scale. I don't think one egg distributed over 18 muffins makes that much difference but it does lighten the batter. In the last batch I added ground flax seed and ground oats and they were still quite good and a bit more healthful.

This morning I'm meeting with my prayer shawl group, Knit One Pray Too, at the local coffee shop, The Blend. It is really fun to go to The Blend and I wish I got there more often. It feels like a big city coffee shop in our medium sized town. Most of the ladies do not like attaching fringe to the prayer shawls. I'm not a big fan of fringe but I have to admit the shawls look somewhat plain without anything. I've been knitting a lace border on mine but that is too complicated for most them, at least for now. I found a garter stitch fringe in Nicky Epstein's Knitting on The Edge, p 99. The fringe is essentially knitted in garter stitch horizontally and then stitches are dropped to make the fringe. It is brilliant! I expanded the directions to explain every single thing that might trip them up. We'll go over it this morning with practice yarn. This little green bit is just my sample swatch. If you would like my handout for the garter stitch fringe, send me an email and I will send it as an attachment. What I especially like is that there is no waste at all with the yarn. If you weigh the first fringe segment at the beginning of the shawl and set aside the same amount of yarn, plus a tad for good measure, you can knit up nearly every bit. Plus I would much rather knit than wind, cut, and use a crochet hook to attach stringy bits.

I still haven't attached a button to my Mitered Kitchen Towel from the new Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines. Both buttons look nice. Which is your favorite?

In celebration of my 104th blog entry I just decided to have a contest. Vote on your favorite button for the mitered towel, yellow or green. I will draw a name out of all the entries and mail the towel (with your chosen button, of course!) to the winner. Spread the word to your friends over here, too! And yes, I will gladly mail overseas! Remember to vote for "yellow" or "green".