Good Sunday morning. It's early. Way too early for any sensible person to be out of bed. I'm actually still in bed, or rather, on the bed, using my laptop. I was so tired when we got home from Em's last night that I didn't post. Four days into the month and I dropped the ball. I'll try to do better.

As promised, photos of the chocolate torte. I found the recipe in a magazine advertisement for almonds. I made it to take to a holiday party the first year we were married. Pk loved it so much, it became part of our holiday baking. Being a torte, it uses almost no flour, only 2 tablespoons. The rest of the dry ingredients are made up by finely ground almonds. I used super dark chocolate, butter and vanilla (we were out of rum, the usual flavoring) and mixed it together with a little sugar(and no leavening ingredients) to get this very rich batter. Which goes into the pan that is covered with butter and ground almonds, not flour. I used parchment paper cut into a circle to keep it from sticking to the bottom. After it bakes and cools, it's glazed with a mixture of melted chocolate, sugar and water and rum. Because I used different chocolate, the batter was thicker and the glaze was frosting-like and not as loose as normal. I used store bought sugar letters. Usually, it gets decorated with almonds but this was a birthday torte. All in all, it takes a pound of chocolate. You can see why this has become a favorite. One of Em's friends has a nut allergy and fortunately, he asked what was in the torte before he ate some. There was only a small bit left and a small bit of the pound cake we took with us left as well. Enough for Em to have for breakfast (a tradition in our family, birthday cake for breakfast).

I finished the March socks yesterday morning, in time to give them to Em. These are the socks made with the Mini Moochi. It's washable yarn, single ply and very soft. Very difficult to rip back if you need to for any reason. These were just plain toe up socks with 2x2 ribbing. The colors are great and they're very soft. (did I mention they're soft?) Em loved them. I started the April socks with the Tofutsie yarn. I used a SWTC pattern designed for the yarn. After the Mini Moochi yarn, this is like string. It's wool/cotton/soy/chitin mix and very thin. It's a huge contrast to the handspun socks I'm working on for the ravelry group.

And, because the sun is coming up and the birds are singing, in other words, a lovely morning, here's a photo of Sarasponda in the sunshine yesterday morning. I managed to spin a little yesterday but there wasn't much time. I'm hoping to remedy that today.

Enjoy your day!