Saturday Classics

It's a beautiful, partly sunny Saturday morning, and I've been spending it working on some classics:

Currant scones

Button bands on fair-isle yoke sweater (have to be ripped out because too short)

EZ's baby surprise jacket, for when the button band frustration becomes too extreme. This is my first time working with this pattern, and it's been fun -- although knitting what is basically a big rectangle could be boring, my interest has definitely been piqued by trying to figure out what part of the jacket I am knitting at any particular moment. Plus, this is a nice use for some variegated Aurora 8 I bought on sale at School Products a while ago -- I think that this was actually a botched dye lot, but I liked the subtle differences in color.

Here's the recipe for the scones that I adapted from one in Gourmet Magazine:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 stick (8 Tbs) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 Tbs baking powder
1/2 cup dried currants or raisins
1 and 1/4 cups 2% milk

Preheat oven to 425. Cut butter into tablespoon-sized slices. Put flour, butter, sugar, salt and baking soda in your food processor and process until it resembles coarse crumbs. If you don't have a food processor, you could use a pastry cutter or your fingers. Dump in milk and raisins and process until smooth (or until your processor starts having difficulty with it). Lightly dust a countertop with flour and turn out dough onto it. If it's not totally mixed, knead in whatever crumbs are at the bottom of the processor bowl. Knead dough very lightly, adding flour if necessary, just until the dough holds together and does not stick to countertop (the less handling of the dough, the better). Pat dough into a rectangle about 9x12 inches big. Use a knife dipped in flour to cut dough into triangle shapes. Place triangles on baking sheet and bake 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned on top.