Today I Learnt:

• How to do a provisional cast-on. It took me about an hour, some tangled yarn and confusion with various guides but in the end Knitty came to my rescue and joy was unconfined.

Yay! See the way I basically cast-on to waste yarn? So clever.

•  How to make Kipferl. These are seriously good biscuits, I would say I was operating on a 'one for me, one for the oven' ration with the dough. I got the recipe from my W.I Book of Biscuits - a present from my sister years ago which I love. It is one of the great sadness's of my life (along with not being French and 2'' taller) that I will probably never get a chance to join the W.I to make Jam and sing Jerusalem.   

The recipe makes 48. There are now considerably less.

Vanilla Kipferl

 225g butter
225g plain flour
1 tsp vanilla essence
100g ground almonds
100g caster sugar
Pinch of salt
Sifted icing sugar for coating

Rub the butter into the flour and work in the remaining ingredients to make a stiff dough. Chill for 1 hour.
Heat the oven to 160 Celsius / 325 Fahrenheit.
Take walnut-sized pieces of dough and roll into small fat sausages, about 2cm wide and 6cm long. Form into crescent shapes.
Arrange on ungreased non-stick baking sheets and bake for 20 min until golden.
Leave to cool for 3 min and then dip in icing sugar. Cool completely on wire racks.
Apparently they taste even better after a couple of days, if there are any left by then.