St. Patrick’s Day Beer Coozies

A trio of St. Paddy’s Day coozies (and just in the nick of time).

You didn’t think I’d let my second favorite holiday pass without a theme project, did you? Well, I might in the future because these were a lot harder than they seemed. There’s not one of these that I didn’t have to restart at least once. I should probably be hiding that fact but, hey, I’ve had a couple of beers so let’s get real with each other.

First of all, I could not find a pattern for exactly what I wanted. You’d think there would be lots of other people with Venn diagrams of interests where knitting and beer overlapped, but I guess not. For the bottle coozie, I based it off of this pattern, adding in the stripes. This one worked out pretty well but I had to restart it after I realized that using the amount of stitches it said to cast on, it was gigantic (more like wine bottle size). I adjusted it from 56 stitches to 34.

Bottle coozie in Irish colors.

The next coozie turned out pretty well, at least compared to the first one. I adjusted the same pattern for the size of the can by measuring and multiplying stitches per inch. Stay in school, kids. Algebra is real life. Turns out checking gauge is actually a pretty good idea! Note for the future.

The Irish flag coozie.

This next one was what I intended to do all along and had to work my way up to. While I knit the others in the round, I could not figure out how to get the intarsia clover pattern in there at the same time and ended up starting over. I knit it flat and then sewed it together up the seam. It turned out being much taller than I intended and also don’t look at the lower right leaf. I don’t know what happened there. I’m not even sure if this counts as a beer coozie. Any idea what else it could be? Whiskey bottle coozie? Arm band? Garbage?

The fancy one. Hey, I tried.

I would say I’ll be making this next year but after these projects…maybe I’ll just stick to drinking beer. Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Cheers!

St. Patrick’s Day Treats

I decided to get festive this year and went all out making some St. Patrick’s Day treats. Thank goodness for Pinterest for all the good ideas! There are just tons of fun looking St. Patrick’s Day food and booze recipes. I refrained from the booze ones for now but one of the perks of cooking with booze is the leftovers. And the beers you get to have while cooking, obviously.

If you like Irish booze, these cupcakes will definitely give you an excuse to buy a few kinds. Like I said, I found the recipe on Pinterest, via this website. They’re called Irish car bomb cupcakes, how can you not love them? Guinness chocolate cake filled with a whiskey ganache and topped off with Bailey’s frosting. Warning: they are kind of labor intensive as far as cupcakes go so set aside a few hours but they are DELISH. Really rich and tasty. I took a bunch into work and someone even called it the best cupcake he’s ever had! The recipe made 24 cupcakes and I have a lot of the Bailey’s frosting left over (not complaining). I even saved the insides of the cupcakes I dug out to fill them – don’t judge me. I used a ziploc baggie with a tip cut off to frost them and it actually worked pretty well, if you want them to be a little jazzier and don’t have a pastry bag.

Irish car bomb cupcake!

Even with the hefty amount of frosting I put onto each, there was a ton leftover.

As for the Irish beef hand pies…they turned out pretty well. This is a great time to remind everyone of the lesson learned as a child not to judge a book by its cover because the pies…they aren’t pretty. Here is what I blame that on: I have no rolling pin and used a Nalgene bottle, I had been cooking for 2.5 hours and was starving so my standards were lowered, and I was also 3 Guinnesses in by 9 pm when I finally finished them. Either way, they’re nowhere near as cute as Martha’s (got the recipe from Pinterest via this link from Martha Stewart’s mag, slide 22 if you’re interested) but still tasted good. Another slightly time consuming recipe but it made 8 of these pies which are enough for a meal alone plus a bit of filling leftover. I froze half of them and added onions to the recipe which I think was a good call. Happy late St. Patrick’s Day! Is there anything special you make every St. Patrick’s Day? I’ll need more ideas for next year!

Irish beef hand pies. Odd shapes and some holes in the pastry but it worked out.