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Monday, November 22, 2010

It's 12:01 a.m. 19 November, Do You Know Where Your Wife Is?

If she's with me, then we're at the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!  SQUEE!

 Too bad Sarah's Hermione-esque hairdo is mostly hidden, as is the cool part of my hat.  I crocheted it from this pattern, oh so easy and vintage to boot!  And free.  I love me some free stuff.  Here's the crocheted goods sans moi:




The scarf is a new twist on the oh-so-chic Harry Potter house scarves seen in all of the films.  The wizards in the movies, however, have uber-long scarves which go down to their knees (in some cases) after winding around their necks.  I'm 5'9.  No scarf goes down to my knees, and to make one that did I'd have to shell out a lot of $$ for yarn.  Booo.  Etsy to the rescue!  I found this scarf on Etsy:




So I modeled my house scarf after that.  My scarf is super easy!
Chain 42 with G size crochet hook and worsted weight yarn
In third loop from hook, HDC
HDC in each chain
Chain 2, turn, HDC in each HDC across (repeat)
That's it.  My instructions aren't great, but if you've ever crocheted before, I think you'll get the idea.  I put stripes in mine (Ravenclaw colors).  Every 12 rows I switched to gold, crocheted two rows, back to blue, crochet two rows, gold again for two rows than back to blue for another 12.  I ran into a problem with my buttons 'cause they didn't fit through the HDC.  I solved the problem by stitching large buttons onto the visible front part and smaller buttons onto the back.  The smaller buttons do the work, but the bigger ones look nicer.

See what I mean? BTW, I used the blue and bronze colors that Ravenclaw sports in the books, not the blue and silver shown on screen.  I can't bear for my things to not be screen accurate without good reason, but creativity and book authenticity work for me.
The other thing I did for the premiere was perfect a butterbeer recipe.  Yum!  I serve mine cold and haven't experimented with hot butterbeer yet, but here's my recipe.

 Madame Baur's Butterbeer
Makes 4 16 oz servings

1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water
6 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar
1/3 cup heavy cream
Butterschnapps (optional)
Cream Soda


1. Combine the water and brown sugar in a heavy bottom sauce pan over medium heat.  You want the mixture to come to a low boil, then stir it constantly until it reaches 240 degrees on a candy thermometer. (That's soft ball for those of you who do this often!)

2.  Remove from heat, then stir in butter, salt, vinegar and cream.  Let the mixture cool to room temp (about 45 minutes).

3.  Divide the cooled caramel brown sugar mixture between 4 TALL glasses.  I used pilsner.  Now here's the part that depends on you; how much do you like schnapps, and are you giving this to children?  I add two shots to each serving.  You don't have to add the alcohol at all, or you could use a teensy bit of rum extract (add it with the butter and whatnot) for a similar flavor.  I stir the schnapps into the caramel mixture to thin it, then add 16 oz of cream soda to each glass.  This will foam a good lot.  If you choose not to use the schnapps, add a little cream soda to the caramel mixture and stir it well before adding the rest of the soda.  This will prevent you from having a thick blob on the bottom and straight cream soda on the top, get it?

You can also add a little whip cream to the glass before the soda and you'll get a nice frothy head.  I topped mine with a little extra because it looked cute, lol.
Bottoms up Potter fans!  Just don't drink too much of this stuff, or you'll end up like Winky the house elf...

1 comments:

Kelly said...

I love this post too!!! I'm just now getting through reading The Deathly Hallows...I know I'm SO behind...but I loooove HP! And I love the butterbeer recipe. You're my hero!

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