The Fearless Travel Writing Knitter

2012-01-31T11:45:00.000-08:00

Mountains to Climb

One of my personal struggles this winter is staying on track with one or two projects. This can be a challenge in both my work life and home life, but at least the heat of a deadline and the prospect of a paycheck goes a long way toward reining in my work. But home? That’s another story.

I began the month of January with a set of goals, which included:

Completing the re-fabrication of a purse (the framework wasn’t über successful)

Finishing a pair of winter pajamas
Doing January blocks for my Block of the Month class
Finishing fjalar
Fixing the living room curtains
Progressing on the winter quilt

All the above were to be accomplished before diving in to new projects. (I have a long queue of items waiting to be launched, so trust me, I won’t be twiddling my thumbs for some time.)

It’s January 31. Let’s see how I did:

Progressing on the winter quilt - Check
Fixing the living room curtains - Check
Finishing fjalar - Check
Doing January blocks for my Block of the Month class - Check
Finishing new pajama pants part of the new winter pajamas - Half-Check

While not 100% done, the list of of things I did accomplish makes it seem as though January was largely successful. This photo, however, tells a different story:

Clearly I have failed utterly in my singular approach to the month.

The winter quilt in-progress is in the foreground. In the background are the parts and pieces of my pajama top, pinned and waiting to have the shoulder seams sewn. Strewn around and on top of it is stash fabric I started sorting through to find material for the February blocks (pattern delivered early), only to realize that many of these fabrics were left over from my herringbone quilt that will be required in whole or part to make the complementary shams, which I hadn’t planned to make before late spring/early summer but now realize need to be a February project so my whole stash will be available for the March BOM quilt blocks and beyond. And underneath all of that are the parts and pieces of my purse, which I’m waiting to begin rebuilding again once I’m done with the pajamas and (now) February quilt blocks because I’m too darn lazy to thread and re-thread the sewing machine only to go back to the first thread when I rotate projects around again. In this case, I need a beige thread for the pajamas, brown for the quilt, and a navy blue for the purse with a heavy-duty needle. Yes, re-threading the sewing machine is my breaking point.

Goals for February:

Finish January
Stop setting goals—especially unattainable ones.

2012-01-28T06:58:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Adventures: Homemade Mushroom Soup

We’re definitely neck-deep in soup season around these parts. It’s too cold for warm weather food, yet nowhere near as cold as it should be for hearty stick-to-your-ribs meals. So a few days ago I found myself scanning the bookshelf for soup recipes, both old favorites, and never-tried.

Last night I whipped up my first-ever batch of homemade mushroom soup, before taking in a double feature of super-campy ’60s-era super-hero films at the local art house.

A scene from Superargo vs Diabolicus (link to YouTube Trailer)

The recipe is from Best-Ever Soups by Anne Sheasby. These recipes take a bit of getting used to because the book was published in London, so all the measurements lead with grams or litres, and end in cups and tablespoons. Some of the ingredients, particularly fresh, aren’t available in the United States. Standard kitchen equipment and techniques differ as well.

This recipe, for example, calls for using a moulilegume or food mill with a coarse blade to blend the ingredients near the end of the cooking process. I don’t own a moulilegume, and frankly I’m not even sure how to pronounce it.

Besides sauteed onions, steamed potatoes, garlic, chicken stock and white wine, the recipe called for 12 oz of mixed mushrooms. I opted for one package of sliced baby bella and a package of bunapi mushrooms.

Parsley is added after it is blended (in my case with an electric blender), and a dollop of sour cream and a bit more parsley is added to the individual bowls. I served mine with two slices of fresh baked sour dough bread from the local artisanal bakery.

The result was supremely delicious, and it was not nearly as finicky to make as it appears! I’ll definitely make this soup again, though next time I might opt for two packages of baby bella’s, and reserve the extra 4 oz to saute and add after the other ingredients have been blended together. Oh, the possibilities...

2012-01-25T05:43:00.001-08:00

Progress Made; Progress Unmade

This week has taken many unexpected twists and turns.

I have:

Finished and delivered a favor for a client that has been on my desk staring at me since the summer of 2008. That was both an issue of time and technology, and we had to wait for both before it could be finished. The final product—a hardbound book—was much appreciated, and won me a hug.

Completely frogged Sailing the Hudson Bay. That sounds worse than it is because I was only midway through the second cable repeat on the back, but it still super-sucks. It’s a project that has been cast aside many times since August, 2011, and I think I got lost in what I was doing and what row I was on, which meant the two main cable sections were in disagreement over which row I was on, and somehow I didn’t have the right number of stitches between cables to make the pattern come out right. After futzing with it off and on for a few days, thinking I fixed it and then discovering another issue, I ultimately decided frogging and beginning again would be the kindest thing to my sanity.

Which is important, because in the previous seven days I’d received two sets of calls that completely wrecked my days. One was from an overbearing out-of-state relative who wanted to enlist me in his new passion for a miracle naturapathic cure for my mother for a disease that she hasn’t even been diagnosed with. He seemed to think that if I were involved in this that my mother would be more likely to get on board. He found I wasn’t nearly as helpful in this effort as he’d hoped.

The second set was from a surprisingly persistent phone scammer on a phishing expedition. The first call began innocently enough with the woman identifying herself and saying she was looking for “X”, a person I didn’t know and definitely wasn’t at this number. Which I said, and then hung up, but that wasn’t good enough. She insisted that I had to verify other pieces of information about my business and threatened to send someone over to visit me personally if I didn’t do it over the phone. Every time I would hang up, she would immediately re-dial her Magic Jack. Pick up the phone, drop it on the cradle. Ring.

I refused to give her the information she needed verified, and instead made her tell me the information she had. Oddly, we became disconnected every time she had to come up with information herself, and with the last question didn’t call back again until the next day. In the meantime, I’d done a little googling about this scam and the company she said she was with. Every instinct in my bones had told me that this had been a scam, but that and my refusal to cooperate hadn’t helped in ending the calls. And Magic Jack calls can’t be blocked as dependably as real numbers.

The next day she called and identified herself and asked for the same fictitious person “X”. But this time I was prepared. I said coolly, “I spoke with the FBI about this yesterday, and they are familiar with your scam.” Then I hung up. Oddly, no repeat calls.

We brewed over the weekend, and Sunday turned out to be our worst brew day in the history of beer making in our household. Nothing seemed to go right. The mash failed the iodine conversion test, and no amount of resting changed that. Our thermometer stopped taking correct readings though it looked like it was still working. This caused us to over-cool the wort at the end, and we finally had to halt the process overnight to allow it to come back up to room temperature before we pitched the yeast. And yesterday the extra-active yeast created krausening and out-gassing to the extent it looked like the fermentation bucket might explode. I have never been so glad that the too-cool winter temps in the basement force us to house the ale fermentation buckets in the guest bath shower. If there had been an explosion, it would have been relatively easy to clean up. But thankfully it didn’t and the fermentation has settled down, so this morning we swapped out the airlock, which had filled with wort, with a fresh one this morning. “S”, be glad we postponed your intro to brewing for another day/another brew.

Yesterday I reached a landmark on the new winter quilt. I finished handquilting the understory of the birch forest, which is the design I chose for the hand stitching. When I reached the end I pulled the quilt off the frame and spread it out on the floor to remove the yarn boundary from that edge, and re-secure the length of yarn that marks the boundary between sky and the upper canopy. Before I did that, I had guessed that I had finished quilting 1/3rd of the spread, not counting the border or matching shams. Now it looks like it’s closer to 1/4. But, that’s 1/4 I don’t have ahead of me, so I’ll take my victories—large or small—where I can.

I still love the look of the quilt, and it will look awesome for the winter of 2012-13 when I can (fingers-crossed) finally use it.

This time last week I tried to sign up for a class at the local arts center on dyeing techniques for fabric, thinking this would be an excellent overview that I could then apply to art quilts and other projects in the future. Unfortunately, the arts center had cancelled the class because only two people had signed up before I called. Rather than ask if I wanted to sign up for the class when it’s offered again in March, the told me to take a class called “Fabulous Fascinators,” which they assured me would be very similar. I asked if the woman knew what a fascinator is, and she said that she did, and that it’s a hat. Right. So my question is: how on earth can they believe and tell people that a class on hat-making, which includes techniques in fabric folding and manipulation, is at all similar to a class in fabric dyeing? I passed. And in my opinion, fascinators are so Royal Wedding 2011. In other words, over.

I guess that means my Thursday evenings continue to be free, which is good since we’ve been watching lots of great television lately. Doc Martin is a new favorite, season 3 of Justified has begun on FX, and we’re about to wrap up the first season of Boardwalk Empire on DVD.

2012-01-23T10:01:00.000-08:00

One Artisanal Knot* : The Figure Eight Noose

Sadly, I grew up in a knot-deprived home. Even though my father was a Scout Leader and sportsman, and I was Brownie, Girl Scout, and Camp Fire Girl, I never learned to make anything more elaborate than the knots to tie my shoes, and a granny knot.

For most of my life this hasn’t been a huge concern. But this lack of skill/knowledge really showed itself when it came time to stringing the Roman shades for our new home. Sure, granny knots secured the string to the bottom blind panel well enough, but they absolutely couldn’t hold up to the constant wear and abuse of the pull cord used to raise and lower the shade.

We put up with falling-apart pulls for the first few years, but a frayed and broken string finally forced us re-string the living room shades. And since we were re-stringing anyway, re-visit the options for knots using an actual book.

Requirements: a strong knot that would actually become stronger and tighter as weight is applied, and a knot that would have the waste or cut end traveling upward instead of down from the knot. The Figure Eight Noose seemed to fill the bill, and is made to attach rope to a carabiner. Any knot that is used in rock climbing is a knot to be respected, in my opinion.

The reason this knot is called the Figure Eight, is that you’re basically making an “8” with the cord.

See the eight?

And finally put it tight.

The noose closes up as weight is applied, and the final knot is well-concealed within the wooden bead I use as part of my pull.

Three down, a dozen more to go...

*A nod to Portlandia season2. For my local peeps who have never heard of or seen Portlandia, the Portland they depict has a lot of similarities to our town...

2012-01-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

Finished Object: Fjalar

I gotta admit it: there were times I wasn’t sure this was going to happen.

Oh, cables I love. Super wooly deep-winter sweaters I love. Elsbeth Lavold designs I love. But this particular sweater was swimming with trials and tribulations. Even when I got to the final wrap-up of sleeves, it turned out that the sleeves knit as-directed, for a myriad of reasons, did not work and had to be frogged and re-knit several times.

Water under the bridge. The baby’s been born and I’ve worn it on the two coldest days of the year with nary a shiver.

My personal critique of the design is that I’m not a huge fan of this particular shoulder/sleeve shaping. And, though I like the collar details and shape, the back of my neck would have appreciated a softer fiber choice.

The wool is Brown Sheep Lanaloft Worsted bought during my LYS’ annual sidewalk sale several seasons ago for a whopping $40 total. It’s rare anymore to knit a sweater for less money than it costs to buy it new. Other than my time in it, that was definitely true this time around.

2012-01-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

Converted Fan of Spider Silk; Still Not a Fan of Spiders

Until this morning I had never heard of a spider that spins golden silk. But here’s vivid proof, in a cape made from silk produced by over a million Madagascar Golden Orb spiders over seven years, now on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

A short radio interview about the process of collecting, and the silk itself, can be found here.

I’m particularly fascinated with the fact that several grams of spider silk placed in the interviewer’s hand seems to give no sensation of weight.

The fact that the beautiful silk is spun by the female spiders, and the role of male spiders is primarily lunch, surprises me not at all.

2012-01-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Adventures: The Little Sweet Shoppe around the Corner

With a few exceptions, homemade candies have never held a prominent spot in my family’s kitchen. Growing up I recall making peanut brittle, and peppermint bark, and very occasionally chocolate-covered pretzels. Everything else “sweet” fell under the heading of baking. So imagine my surprise when an article in the December 2010 Better Homes & Gardens magazine plunged me headfirst down the candy-making rabbit hole.

Three recipes from this issue really got my creative juices pumping, and I had had every intention of making all three things to bring along to family holiday gatherings that year. Unfortunately, I suffered a major cooking set-back on the first item I tried, and didn’t have the heart, time or fortitude to plunge into the rest. And I had absolutely no one to help me troubleshoot it except to say “yes, I hear that even things like humidity will cause them to fail...”, which, if you’re wondering, is no help at all.

Twelve months went by, but I never forgot about the candy. I was determined I would try one more time.

Eggnog Marshmallows:

My first-ever marshmallows. They turned out very fantastically, and are exceptionally sweet, so a single marshmallow makes a super dessert. I topped them with melted white baker’s chocolate, to which I added a bit of vanilla. I think next time I would omit the chocolate, or maybe use a semi-sweet dark chocolate to off-set the sweetness of the marshmallow. These make an obnoxiously huge mess, so are off-limits as day-of making when company is coming over.

BHG suggests topping them with white nonpareils, but I found them to be non-existent in this part of the world (and unnecessary, really).

Pink Grapefruit Gumdrops:

This was my first attempt at grapefruit gumdrops, but my second attempt at gumdrops. This is a “Test Kitchen Variation” for the main recipe: coconut gumdrops. My 2010 fail was on those coconut gumdrops. More on that below.

I followed the instructions for the grapefruit gumdrops to the letter, except I used the food coloring I had on-hand, which happened to be neon pink. Awesome choice, in my opinion. The coconut sugar coating could have been ground up more, but I haven’t had a chance to replace my blender (burned out the motor earlier in 2011), and my stick blender was throwing coconut and sugar all over the kitchen. Amazing tart flavor, set well, and definitely something I will make again. Store-bought gumdrops? Never again!

Coconut Gumdrops:

Second attempt, and finally a success in 2011. The first time it never set up. In retrospect, I think the fail was due to a can of coconut milk that had set on the shelf too long. It was still within its sell-by, but had separated. Since I had never used coconut milk before, I had no frame of reference to know there was a problem when I opened the can. The coconut gumdrops are a very mild flavor, and not terribly coconut-y, but are delicious none-the-less.

2011-12-30T10:37:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Adventures: Turkey Stew with Rosemary Dumplings

This time of year I am inevitably on the hunt of good uses of dark turkey meat, thanks to an abundance of turkey leftovers in late November. This post on SouleMama got me thinking “stew”, though I went off-road significantly from the instructions.

The blogger’s*** dinner was Chicken Stew with Rosemary-Garlic Dumplings, published by The Herb Companion. I have quite a few issues with this recipe as written. First, the chicken breasts are cooked and served whole. How is that a stew? My belief is that if a knife and fork are required to eat stew, it’s not stew. Second, the “rosemary-garlic dumplings” contain no garlic. Shouldn’t that be a requirement as well???

Instead, I opted for Turkey Fricassee from Joy of Cooking. Since the meat was already cooked, I simply deboned it and cut it into bite-size morsels, and went on with the instructions as written from that point. I also added fresh rosemary a la Herb Companion, add added Herb’s rosemary dumplings at the end of the cooking time.

Not the prettiest photo of a pot of stew in the world, but man was it super-flavorful!

And yes, I would call this a stew.

*** Note that Amanda Soule (who I adore and respect) is not the author of this recipe, and that I am throwing all my criticisms squarely in the lap of the editors of The Herb Companion. After a semi-recent series of increasingly pleading emails from one of their interns asking for information on an area I have some knowledge in, ramping up until it was clear said-intern didn’t just want direction but rather for me to write her damn story for her, I feel extra-justified in using a sharp tone.

2011-12-29T06:24:00.000-08:00

Finished Object: Trapezoid Crocheting, When Rectangles are Directed

For those in the know, I am ever hopeful that someday I will successfully teach myself crochet. Yes, I am semi-knowledgeable in bobbin lace, locker hook rug making, kumihimo, etc. Yes, I did teach myself how to crochet an edging on a knit shawl for my mother so I (a learning through reading person) could teach my sister (a learning through demonstration person) how to do the motif so we could gift it to our mother. But beyond a few potholders, I’ve never successfully completed a project.

I am the type of learner that needs to do something with enough frequency that “knowing” drills down to muscle memory. With knitting, that happened fairly quickly because it’s the same knit stitch over and over and over. And with stockinette, it’s the same knit row/purl row/knit row/purl row over and over and over. Scarfs are a great starter project. Then maybe advance to hats (gauge/circular). Sprinkle in some cables or lace. Try garment construction with increases and decreases. There are plenty of projects that can increase a knitter’s skill base in baby steps.

With crochet, on the other hand, you can crochet a scarf in single or double crochet. But anything beyond tosses a thousand new obstacles in the new maker’s way. Where do I put the hook? Is it through the space created by a stitch, or in the stitch itself? The whole stitch, or just one side? Which side? How is a half double crochet different from a single crochet or a double crochet?

“Help” sites/programs like Knit & Crochet Today are anti-help, as far as I’m concerned. The host (always a host with immaculately lacquered nails) begins to describe a basic stitch. In the hook goes, ever so slowly. Then whoop whoop whoop whoop. There now (following blur of wraps, grabs and re-grabs), see how simple that was?

Because crochet tends to combine multiple stitch types to create a motif, which is then repeated, there is little opportunity to truly learn one stitch type before switching to another. And those questions above? Most of the answers are dependent on the specific pattern, and a specific pattern will likely utilize a combination of all these answers.

So it is no surprise that the project that is my latest attempt to learn crochet was suffering from some... shall we say “peculiarities?”

This is supposed to be a rectangle...

One more-absent-than-not member of our knit group kindly suggested the reason for this outcome is that I wasn’t doing the necessary chain at the beginning of each row. But I was, which I kept telling her over and over and over. What was super-confusing about this is that the next row always had one less motif than the row below. I was making every motif that there was room for, but I would inevitably run out of room.

As it turned out, I was forgetting something critical. I would get super-wrapped up in making the crosshatch motif, that I blazed right past the sort-of half motif at the beginning of the row that created a straight edge for the angular stitch ground. Without this, that I dubbed a “flying buttress”, there wouldn’t be enough room to make the sufficient number of motifs on each row.

I had to remind myself often to count the motifs before proceeding, and there was plenty of careful frogging back and starting a day’s work over.

Are there mistakes? You betcha! Am I convinced I was doing a proper double crochet? Hardly! But... it’s done, and ends woven in the morning of the recipient’s birthday. I call that a victory.

Details: Crosshatch Stitch Afghan from Best Ever Afghans by Crochet! Fall 2011. Patons Lace Sequin, size K hook.
I didn’t concern myself with meeting gauge, so the afghan is not the size specified, and I added a few extra rows for a total of 67 to make this the right length/proportion (26 x 50) to be more of a shawl.

2011-12-20T16:41:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Adventures: Cooking a “Tweet Tart” for your “Tweetie Pies”

This week, I focused my kitchen experiments to food for our outdoor feathered friends. Seed-embedded suet cakes have traditionally been a mid-winter treat in the feeders at my house. The birds need the extra fat for energy during these cold months.

Suet can be easy to prepare, and there are lots of recipes available on the internet. Basically the process involves melting suet (a specific type of fat found around the organs of cattle), and adding to it other food stuffs, like peanut butter, cornmeal, and seeds, etc. The mixture is then poured into molds, and kept in a refrigerator or unheated garage until ready to use.

Trouble is, between now and the time I made this at my old house (maybe 5 years ago), butchers and meat markets no longer seem to receive entire beef carcasses, and the meat locker/processor has removed the suet before beef reaches the store. The only fat that a local butcher will have is subcutaneous fat, most of which they need to add to hamburger and sausages.

After asking at every butcher shop I thought would be most likely to carry it and coming up empty, (I didn’t bother with WalMart, etc.) I thought my days of making homemade suet for our birds was over. Thankfully, one of my knitting friends heard me talking about my quest at a recent knit group. She happened to run across suet for sale by a local beef raiser at a holiday farmer’s market, and picked up a bag for me. I’ve never been so happy to receive a bag of fat! (Thanks, “J”!)

In celebration - and inspired by Cooking for the Birds, I decided to go a bit crazy with my suet production. The suet cakes I made are not in that book, but the author’s ideas, photos and recipes certainly got my creative juices pumping.

I first made a crust for the suet tart by melting suet, adding lots of cornmeal, and just a little bit of seed.

I pressed part of the mixture in the bottom of the tart pan, and set it in the refrigerator to cool.

With a solid base, I then pressed more of the mixture around the sides of the pan, and put it back in the refrigerator.

Now for the filling. For that I melted more suet, and added lots of crunchy peanut butter, some cornmeal (proportionally less than for the crust), and more seed (proportionally more than in the crust).

I removed the pan from the heat, and added chopped raisins and cranberries to the mixture.

The spooned the mixture into the crust, placing it back in the refrigerator to cool.

Once they were solid, I turned the pans upside down and gently pushed on the center of the tins to encourage the tarts to pop out. (With all that grease built in to the crust, you better believe they did!) I then took some creamy peanut butter and melted it in the microwave a few seconds to liquefy it. The peanut butter is piped around the edge of the crust, and sunflower seeds are pressed in to it. A cranberry garnish is added to the center.

Three suet cakes ready for the next bird black tie ball, hostess gifts, or to keep on-hand for surprise visitors bearing gifts.

2011-12-19T18:02:00.000-08:00

Finished Object: Claus and Effect

Mr. and Mrs. Claus have been a part of my Christmas since my earliest memory. My mother would set up the display in front of the piano by the front door - Santa warming his backside in front of the wood-burning stove, Mrs. Claus sitting on a child-sized wood & rattan chair.

Mostly paper mache and standing about 2 1/2' tall, they originally came from a florist’s holiday window display, and were purchased by my uncle in the late '50s/early '60s.

I’ve always been fond of them, though they were mistreated most of their lives by being hauled up into an attic and left there for most of the year. Bugs live in attics. Bugs that like to eat paper.

Did you know paper mache was mainly paper??

In repairing these figures, I tried to retain the the original work of what gives the characters their personality, so I didn’t do any work on the skin tones or non-hair facial features.

Here’s a close-up of Mrs. Claus from the front

(note the lack of eyelashes)

And again from the back

(and major bald spots in her hair)

The first step I took in repairing them was to purchase a new can of matte white latex paint. Behr’s Polar White was a pretty good match.

I applied a fresh coat of paint to her chair

Glued what remained of her original hair back to her scalp over the bald spots, painted the hair (which sealed in and strengthened what remained of her hair), and finished it with clear glitter that I sprinkled over a diluted all-purpose glue that I brushed over the areas I wanted the glitter to stick.

(The Conair hair dressing apron helped to keep the glitter from sticking to her clothes)

For her eyelashes, I used matte-finish white tissue paper.

One figure down, one to go.

(The “wood burning stove” only required minor paint touch-up)

Mr. Claus shared many of the same problems, and had the additional burden of a broken arm.

Fortunately his nightgown is not a true finished garment

so I was able to reach in and peel back the sleeve fabric, revealing that his arm wasn’t truly broken, but was removed from its original “socket”.

I played with the arm placement until I found the best match for the paper tears, and temporarily held it with glued strips of tissue.

And then secured it with multiple layers of glued muslin strips.

With the arm fixed, I turned my attention to the hair and beard

and finished up with glitter.

Unfortunately my seemingly minor fixes changed Santa’s center of balance, which was never that good, as you can see from this photo.

While I tried to put his arm back in its original position, I didn’t have an earlier reference photo to ensure that. And all that new paint on his head made him more top-heavy. Our solution was to make felt lifts

which I then glued to the bottoms of his slippers

Mr. Claus needed some new eyelashes, too.

Next year I’ll spend some time trying to clean/brighten the clothing and trim, but Christmas is rapidly approaching, and I’ve got other holiday-specific deadlines that are demanding attention. And I wanted to get the couple into their unheated new home so the sub-zero winter nights would kill any buggies that remained. So for this holiday season, Mr. and Mrs. Claus are officially open for business.

2011-12-18T19:06:00.001-08:00

For Anyone Who is Interested in Clean Air, Clean Water, and Safe Food

Run, don’t walk, to rent/borrow/buy a copy of The Last Mountain. I had a feeling that it would be both interesting and disappointing (as a view of humanity) based on my visit to a coal mining region of eastern Kentucky. The entire time my press tour group was hauled around being shown the beneficial results of reclaimed mined lands, I had that peculiar sensation of wind being blown “up my ass”, which I try not to be a natural sensation, and therefore stands out.

The simple act of turning on a faucet and taking a drink of water, which we take for granted, can sicken or kill the residents of regions impacted by these practices.

If we are not trying to create a world that is better and safer for our children than what we inherited, wtf are we thinking?

And, if I ruled the universe, executives like these would be forced to move with their families into homes beneath retention bonds and coal silos, and breath the air and drink the water—similar to what slum lords are forced to do in New York.

For my local peeps, the public library owns a copy.

2011-12-12T06:57:00.000-08:00

Monday Smile

Every week should begin this way:

(From the new Muppet movie)

2011-12-11T05:43:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Adventures: Applesauce Cake

I’m having trouble finding duds in my cookbook library that would allow me to free up some shelf space, and this next book isn’t cooperating either. But I’m learning to live with each tasty “disappointment.”

Family Sampler is a compilation of recipes contributed by one family, and published by Morris Press. So far I’ve tried three recipes. The first was for a chicken artichoke casserole using frozen artichokes. Turned out sourcing frozen artichokes was the most difficult part, but finally found it in the third store attempt (Kroger stores stock it in their Private Selection line. If a store carries frozen edamame, then they are likely to carry frozen artichokes as well. I’ve never done much with artichokes, so I was up for the experiment. The base recipe turned out okay, but the result was a bit bland and a-tonal in color. I’ve made some notes about ways to improve it on both counts the next time around.

A few days ago I realized I was famished for some applesauce cake, which is weird since I don’t think I’ve ever made and rarely eaten applesauce cake. Still, this was one impulse that couldn’t be ignored. I found a recipe in Family Sampler, which was easy to make, called for ingredients that were already in my pantry, and baked in an 8x8x8 pan, so we didn’t end up with a huge cake and only two of us to eat it.

Dee-lish! This one goes into my permanent file with no alterations recommended.

That evening I made another recipe out of that book: Chicken & Rice Divine. Basically it’s a cream soup dump recipe, but it’s not a 15-minute stove top process. Cooking in the oven for 1 1/2 hrs not only gives the rice a chance to cook, but it blends and marries the flavors. Unlike similar recipes I’ve seen in the past, this one also called for a bit of curry powder, which turned out to be a genius move on some cook’s part. My substitutions included using leftover Thanksgiving turkey instead of chicken (the dark meat from one thigh and one wing produced the right amount of meat), choosing their option of broth (low-sodium) instead of water, and adding a tablespoon or so of pimento to give the otherwise a-tonal casserole a bit of color. The result was amazing, and I’ll be sad when I run out of dark turkey meat (I think dark meat is the way to go on this because of the fat content and the almost smoky flavor of that cut). The only alteration I’ll make next time is sauteing the onions and celery in less butter to allow them to build up more color before they are mixed in.

The experiments are not over. Tonight I’ll test a recipe for Herb-Crusted Sirloin Tip Roast with Creamy Horseradish-Chive Sauce that I found through the Kansas Beef Council’s web site, and twice baked potatoes from Joy of Cooking. I suspect the look of my sirloin will only bear a faint resemblance to the Council’s photo, given my knife skills, poor lighting, lazy camera action, and impatient food styling. But it’s the final flavor the counts, right?

2011-12-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

I Had Blamed my Mother, but Apparently these Roots Tap Deeper Down the Ancestral Tree

“dark sense of humor”—check

“pessimistic view of human nature”—check

“dark view of the human condition”–check

“feeling that the world's messed up”—check

“we might as well laugh about it”—check, check, check, check

The BBC News article, How Scandinavian is Scotland?, could easily be retitled, How Scots/Scandinavian is this Kansan?

2011-12-07T05:06:00.000-08:00

A Brief Bulletin from Movie/TV Land

Loads of knitting/crocheting to be done, and it’s too miserably cold to garden. Thank goodness for a backlog of quality entertainment!

Hits:

Detective Inspector Irene Huss, a Swedish cop drama. Episodes 1-3 now out on DVD in the U.S. My only question is how on earth does her professional chef/husband leave the restaurant every night to have dinner with his family? It is subtitled, so knitting stockinette is the only way to go.

Exporting Raymond. The creator of the U.S. sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond is sent to Russia to help them re-create the series in that cultural setting. Having grown up during the Cold War (I received booklets in grade school advising how to prepare for/and survive a nuclear bomb) I found this particularly interesting.

Sopranos. I know. I’m late to the party. But it’s too great a party to miss!

Long Way Down. Sequel to Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s Long Way Round documentary when they circumnavigated the globe west to east on their motorcycles. This time they begin in northern Scotland and travel south to Cape Town, South Africa. Watching the shifts in culture, political and natural landscapes is fascinating. I hope they follow through on their plan to do a third sequel through the Americas.*

Misses:

Hollow Man, a Kevin Bacon remake of The Invisible Man.

Looking forward to:

Saving Private Perez. (Yes, it is on order at the local library. I’m hold #1, thankyouverymuch.)

The quilt is still coming along beautifully, though ever so slowly. The callouses that have formed on my fingertips are making it hard to use my smart phone. At times I find myself wondering if sewing conductive thread directly into my callouses would help... Not that I would, but there are times! On a recent episode of Castle, the police were pondering the identity of a dead body, based on physical attributes: calloused fingertips, and a wide bottom. What career would cause that combination? My answer: Professional hand quilter! (Turned out he was an over-the-road trucker. I like my answer better.)

* All the above titles, except for the Long Way series, are available through our local library. Long Way may be rented from the local art house, but be forewarned that each title is a full season of shows, so watching even one title during a single rental period is a challenge. Renting and watching both would only be possible if the viewer gave up sleep and personal hygiene rituals.

2011-12-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

Finished Object: Christmas Wreath Repair

Back in 2006 when I assembled/acquired/fabricated the parts and pieces of my mid-century modern white Christmas tree, I realized that my usual green door wreath would be completely out of place. Around that time I happened across one of those HGTV/DIY shows that combined entertaining tips with do-it-yourself decorating projects. This particular episode (Creative Juice on DIY) was about decorating and cooking for a winter holiday party, and included a how-to on making a felt wreath.*

That happened to be just the key I needed to design my own door wreath. The first year it worked pretty well, though I found that the snowflakes, which had been secured with only ribbon, were floating around, powered by wind, gravity, and humidity. Also, despite the fact that the wreath was protected from precipitation, the humidity would cause the snowflakes to wilt and collapse forward.

After the move, the wreath failed the float to the surface until after the holiday season, and we simply didn’t get around to it again until this year. Last week, pulling it out of its high-class storage trash bag, I discovered (shockingly) that the wreath had held fairly well, but needed some TLC and additional snowflakes due to the shifting issue I previously described.

For the past week I’ve been slowly spreading white glue to the backs of the snowflakes to stiffen them up, cutting out new snowflakes, and applying glitter and beads.

The result:

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Materials:
Wire wreath frame
Blue and white felt
Blue tulle
Light blue 1/4" sheer ribbon
Large eye blue beads (approx 1/4" diameter)
Small grommets
Elmer's all-purpose white glue
Blue glitter glue
Silver glitter glue
Galvanized wire to make hook for hanging
Hot glue
Hot glue gun

Two types of snowflake patterns are made. The top pattern is more intricate, while the base is plain and blocky. Make the same number of top and bottom pieces, but 1/2 in blue and 1/2 white. The number you’ll need depends on their size and the size of your wreath, but my snowflakes are roughly 6" in diameter, and the finished wreath has over a dozen.

It’s been a very long time since I made the original, so the details of its construction are sketchy, but I believe that white felt is also used to wrap and pad the wreath frame, and then covered in tulle. Since it’s covered in tulle, I can only tell you today that a white fabric is beneath.

The snowflakes are decorated separately, then glued and grommeted together. The ribbon then wraps around the wreath, pushed through the grommet and a bead, then down through the grommet and wrapped around the wreath to the next snowflake. Once they’ve been arranged, hot glue holds them nice and tight.

Here’s my original post where I discuss the project, and a close-up view of the wreath. (Holy cow I’ve been blogging a long time!)

Now to return to my Mr. and Mrs Claus repair so I can get my North Pole tableau up before the season is over!

* Here’s a similar project on the HGTV site, but for making a fall-themed felt wreath using a twig base.

2011-12-04T09:54:00.000-08:00

Radio Silence

Sorry about the lack of blog posts of late, but

I’m really wrapped up in this quilt project!

2011-11-28T09:42:00.001-08:00

When “Winter White” Leans More Toward “Yellow Snow”

Those who are closest to me know that I have a severe knee-jerk response when it comes to buying celebrity lines of products. This applies Emerilware (Emeril Lagasse’s cookware), EVOO (Rachael Ray’s olive oil), and even spreading to anything bearing a pink ribbon*. Why? Because I always suspect the quality of the product. I’m sure some are good, but for example, when I heard my niece raving about having just bought an X, Y or Z at a Pampered Chef party because it was pink, I had a sinking suspicion it would last a nano-second in an actual working kitchen.

Take my Christmas tree, for example. In the winter of 2006/2007 I bought a Martha Stewart Snowbird Mountain Tree with “winter white” branches at KMart. (Before y’all roll your eyes at a white Christmas tree, I’ll remind you that a few months before I had made felted holiday ornaments (rav link) that needed to be showcased, and they would have been lost on a green tree.) That was the same year that Target had a line of mid-century modern garlands and ornaments, resulting in a white tree that became a spectacular ode to a by-gone era.

Flash forward to year two, and the tree that was put in the box white was now an off-white. Year three, it had moved more decisively toward the yellow end of the color spectrum. Now, in the winter of 2011/12, the tree looks like this:

(Shown against a white piece of paper for comparison.)

Gross, huh! Some branches are still leaning toward the white end, while many others are decidedly not.

The second year I owned this I tried to call the manufacturer, but the phone number was no longer good, and they weren’t on the internet. My guess is that it was an import company that changed their name and number as soon as the first Christmas season ended.

Last year I tried to find a replacement tree, but white is few and far between in the best of seasons, and I started my hunt too late to find anything in stock. This season I started super-early and spent an entire afternoon doing the full rounds of stores in the capital city that might stock trees. A 7' white pre-lit tree at Lowe’s proved to be the winner:

Pre-lit wasn’t a requirement because I already owned plenty of lights, which would go to waste if not used for the tree. But this was the best tree I could find, pre-lit or non-. I keep it in a non-heated room in the house, so I’m super-glad that I had bought a special plug a few years ago that turns the tree on when the sun goes down, and is set to turn off again six hours later. Plugging and unplugging the tree may not seem like a big deal when the sun is high and that room gets so hot that the thermostat-controlled exhaust fan kicks on, but it’s a whole ’tother matter when it’s pitch black outside and in the teens both inside and out.

We went simpler on the ornaments this year because this is the first year our kitten has seen a tree. No telling what she was going to do. (Glass ornaments were definitely out.) And I’m putting extra effort into our decorations by doing a much-needed set of repairs on the Mr. and Mrs. Claus tableau. More on that in the coming weeks.

Here’s hoping that this tree, when pulled out of storage next year, is as white and wonderful as it is this year.

*For the record, while charitable giving is worthwhile, I believe it’s always better to give directly to a charity, while goods should be purchased based solely on their quality, price point (compared to budget) and suitability for the task.

2011-11-24T05:59:00.000-08:00

Giving Thanks

I’m thankful that:

• I’m on the last cable repeat of the last cuff of Fjalar. I love cabling, but I’m beyond ready for some mindless stockinette.

• I finally found (ultimately with Michael’s help) the missing pattern piece from my favorite nightgown pattern, so a fresh summery nightgown is on the horizon.

• I finally found the second spool of hand quilting thread that I swore I had purchased.

• The craft room has (in the process of the above hunt) undergone a major organization and cleaning.*

• I have a loving collection of furry heat-seeking missiles, especially on chilly afternoons.

• That spring-blooming flowers can’t read calendars.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

* Of course, after all that cleaning and organizing, the pattern piece was exactly where it was supposed to be in its pattern envelope (and where I’d already looked several times), and the spool of thread turned up in an all together different room in the house.

2011-11-17T04:16:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: End

Me Week came to an end last night with a spinach and artichoke dip appetizer from Flick’s Lounge in Legends 14 (a choice I can’t recommend as it was like eating a salt lick),

and a movie (Tower Heist).

I got a lot accomplished over the past few weeks, but with the writer’s block episode find myself staring down a lot of work with very little time to do it in.

Yesterday I tried to trim the inner panel of the winter quilt shams, and immediately afterward realized that I had cut in the wrong place, forcing me to re-group, rip seams, and sew on a new section. I decided that I would wait to try trimming it again until there is a second human in the house to verify my cut line choice.

This morning I realized that my ribbing count had somehow gotten off in a cable pattern on the first sleeve of Fjalar, and the only reasonable way to fix it is to frog back an entire repeat to start again.

I think what I need here is another Me Week to recover and regroup from the last. That and a thick slice of pumpkin pie.

2011-11-16T05:31:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Hump

Trying desperately to fight my way through writer’s block.

2011-11-15T03:01:00.001-08:00

MW Mission: Solve

Begin piecing the matching shams for the new winter quilt.

Finally end the multi-year search for a replacement white Christmas tree.

2011-11-14T03:47:00.001-08:00

MW Mission: Soft

Crocheting a cushy afghan while babysitting a video import.

Finally completing the first main stage of hand quilting for my new winter quilt

resulting in a trash can overflowing with my marking tape.

2011-11-13T02:01:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Gold

Thinking I should really begin fall leaf clean-up... another day.

Giving myself a gold star for finishing row 3 of the crosshatch stitch shawl.

Giving a gold star to the anonymous person of warped genius who created an Occupy Lego Land diorama (image #2)

2011-11-12T01:20:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Begin

Begin thinking about the Christmas season with the sighting of the first bell ringer outside Sears. (!)

Begin seaming the front and back of Fjalar (to obtain accurate measurements for sleeve length)

Begin the first row of crosshatch, mistake riddled though it may be.

2011-11-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Quiet

A quieter day than usual on the quilting front as I’ve had keep the energetic kitten out of the room while the front and back of Fjalar are blocking on the floor.

Quietly coming to terms with the fact that Thanksgiving is right around the corner, by placing my order for a fresh free-range turkey and bourbon pecan pie.

Determined to quiet my computer by finally finishing the transcription on several long interviews for articles that are due next week.

2011-11-10T03:01:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Classical

Another day of working, quilting and knitting to a background of classical music courtesy of my extremely large classical collection on my iPhone.

A classic lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup.

While watching a classic sci-fi flick, Soylent Green. Though dated, it's not entirely irrelevant - especially given the issues of global warming and the fact that our earth may now have seven billion people. Plus it’s straight-up campy fun!

2011-11-09T04:49:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Jazz

Working, quilting, reading, knitting with jazz music filling the home, including this Smithsonian box set.

My first attempt at homemade spaghetti carbonara, jazzed up with the first homemade pasta I’ve made in over 15 years.

2011-11-08T05:10:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Move

Moved to take a trip to the next town in the driving rain.

Moved to explain a complex medical treatment to young children.

Moved to start a fire as soon as I walked back in the front door.

Moved to stage Fjalar to begin the last shoulder bind-offs.

Moved to start the foundation chain of the crosshatch afghan, despite my better judgement and denials 24 hours ago.

2011-11-07T05:29:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Clean

No explanation necessary, really. And who wants/needs to see a photo of soap scum remover applied to glass? Let’s just say some of this, as well as other stuff, happened.

What does require an explanation is how this relates:

The first bottle opened of our Clean the Ice Box IPA to ensure it has carbed fully since bottling day.

Good to go!

2011-11-06T05:04:00.000-08:00

MW Mission: Language

Listened to three early 2008 episodes of Coffee Break Spanish on my iPhone while quilting more birch tree trunks into my winter quilt.

Did three exercises from the Spanish Now workbook I bought in the ’80s. (Yes, I’m a bit behind in my Spanish language self-studies.)

Finished a particularly Yiddish-dense chapter in the Frozen Rabbi, while listening to the German language Berlin: Songs of Love and War, Peace and Exile (favorite cut: “Das Lied vom Surabaya-Johnny”).

2011-11-05T03:44:00.000-07:00

MW Mission: Explore

The obvious solution here would have involved a drive, either to a new store or a random country road. But never has a day gone by when I felt less like taking a drive. And this is Me Week, after all. So...

I explored the world of CSI-like investigation trying to recreate the original tape lines marking where I am to quilt, which were torn off (with extreme glee) by a shelter kitten in her first weeks in our home.

Allowed several adult cats to explore a not-often-allowed-into craft room during my investigation.

Explored the wisdom of an afternoon nap beneath a fuzzy blanket.

And explored the idea that I might actually have this crochet thing in the bag.

2011-11-04T02:47:00.000-07:00

MW Mission: Plot

Plotting a probability timeline for finishing the hand quilting on my winter quilt:

Completion by end of Me Week: No way in hell.
Completion by end of November: Maybe, but only if you believe in miracles.
Completion by end of December: Better, but boils down to circumstances beyond my control.

Plotting my approach for beginning the Crosshatch Stitch prayer shawl—with the help of two books, Excel spreadsheet, scrap yarn, and the entire resources available to me through the Internet—and realizing that I am completely out of my depth—yet oddly undeterred.

2011-11-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

MW Mission: New

A new project: Crosshatch Stitch in Crochet! Best-Ever Afghans

Ready for a new side on Fjalar. (Technically I was supposed to knit the neck band a bit longer before starting it, but I’d prefer to do them both once the shoulders are bound off.)

Eagerly, and with a bit of trepidation, anticipating waking to a blanket of new snow - the first of the season. (The new bottle of O’Mara’s for Irish Coffee and the log in the fireplace did ease the trepidation bit.)

2011-11-02T03:24:00.000-07:00

MW Mission Log: Blue

Terminal C

A Blueberry, Banana and Walnut Scone from 1001 Muffins, served with a cup of Douglas Fir tea in blueberry mug, and another read chapter in The Frozen Rabbi.

2011-11-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

“Me Week” Strategy 3.2 (beta)

This time around, “Me Week” is destined to be different. Instead of making sweeping commitments such as “finish winter quilt” (though I do intend to get some real work accomplished on that), or “spend three hours every day knitting Fjalar,” this time my mission for this “Me Week” is actually a bunch of tiny missions contained in a small cookie jar.

Each little piece of paper bears a single word that can be interpreted any number of ways. To describe them as vague would be a serious understatement.

Drawn at random at the beginning of every day, it is up to me to figure out how to accomplish it based on the time and tools at my disposal.

My mission for Day 1? Blue.

Yep, I wasn’t kidding when I said they were vague. Good thing Me Week doesn’t officially begin for a few more hours. I’ve got some serious thinking to do!

2011-10-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T03:47:00.000-07:00

Dropping the Gears

“Me Weeks” are approaching at the speed of light, an event I have learned to look upon with trepidation.

All the imagined carving out of a new schedule, focusing on beloved-but-neglected projects, learning new skills, reading book after book for long stretches, marathoning a season of television that I love but my viewing partner - not so much... well something usually happens to destroy all of that.

I am trying very hard not to set my sights too high, but as soon as I set myself realistic expectations, one more thing creeps onto my list and then another and another...

I need to fix that ASAP. This “Me Week” more than most has all the potential of being a fail, due to the likelihood that my time will be spent either in doctor’s offices and waiting rooms, or on the highway going or coming from the same. And I know I have significant yard clean-up time ahead of me give that most of the leaves have yet to fall.

I have a lot more office work than I expected because new assignments with tight deadlines roll in the door before I’ve had a chance to finish the ones I already had.

Because of all that, I’m going to test out a new approach to the weeks that will hopefully give me the flexibility to tackle each day as it comes, without the inevitable disappointment of missed opportunities. More on that later.

In preparation for the coming weeks, this week I have completed six major assignments, conducted interviews for two more, canned jars jars of green tomato salsa, eight jars of green tomato mincemeat, repaired rotted wood on the solarium, assisted in roof repair (mainly by conveying tools on and off the roof and holding the ladder) and tried my darnedest to get past the really difficult thinking stage of Fjalar. No small feat.

(The green tomato projects were last minute, but became critical and time sensitive once the flat landed on my doorstep - as noted by the four tomatoes ripening in this photo.)

Fjalar is from Elsbeth Lavold’s Viking Patterns for Knitting. She is a visionary designer, and her sensibilities align with mine. Nearly every project in the book is marked for future knitting. The downside is that English is not her first language, and her patterns are challenging. That’s when clearly written instructions are crucial, and that’s something this particular pattern is not blessed with.

It went well until the beginning of the collar on the front. Then I spent (no kidding) the entire two hours of my knitting group trying to make broad sense of the instructions. And another hour at home working out the fine details of those instructions. Now that I’m a dozen or so rows through the really head-bending stuff, I’m having to keep three row counters with me at all times to keep track of 1) rows in the cable chart, 2) rows between increases on the seam end, and 3) rows between decreases where the stockinette panel meets the cabled neckline. Yes, all three in tandem. The good news is that I’m almost done with the seam increases. The bad news is that once the whole right side is done, I’ll need to repeat all of this for the left side.

Frankly I’m finding the whole thing about irritating. Hardly “Me Week” knitting. But I forge ahead because the sleeves will be a breeze and I can nearly smell the barn when it comes to finishing this project.

Tonight is Halloween. Our porch lights will be off and we’ll be inside hiding.

2011-10-17T16:23:00.001-07:00

Say Goodbye to Summer

It’s been in the 50s and drizzly all day. A log is burning in the fireplace. All the household plants are inside for the year. With every chance that we’ll have a hard frost in the next day or two, I ended the afternoon with a sweep of the yard, sampling the last of the 2011 blooms.

Goodbye summer. It’s been a sweet, sweet ride.

2011-10-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

Lab Tested; Bride Approved

The bobbin lace “flower” for the wedding garter has been road tested - and proved to be a success.

This was the first time I’ve been inside the family church since the arson-caused fire, and its subsequent rebuild. The new church is barely recognizable as the old. What was once the parish hall is now offices. The sanctuary is now a parish hall. The old parking lot is now the sanctuary. And stylistically is it unrecognizable, too. It was never traditional, but the design now draws on Scandinavian influences.

Sitting in the sanctuary waiting for the wedding to begin, I found myself looking at the liturgical cloths and aching to create new ones with stylistically-appropriate lace inserts drawing on seasonally-appropriate biblical symbolism. This wouldn’t be a one year, or two year project. This would probably be bobbin lace linens created over the remainder of a lifetime.

Yes, I do know that I am a sick, sick woman. Perhaps I’ll postpone further action on that thought until after I’ve completed the 5,000+ projects that are already ahead of me.

2011-10-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

A Finished Object

Wedding rings motif from 50 New Bobbin Lace Patterns by Claire Burkhard.

If I were going to name this project, it would probably be “mistakes have been made,” because well... they have. But still, not a bad job overall considering how rusty I am with my bobbin lace skills (last project completed prior to 2007) and how much I had reduced this pattern (35% of the original), and therefore how difficult it was to see where I was to place pins, and what stitches to make where.

This is what it looked like soon after I started hanging on bobbins and making lace. I used the same Continental-style bobbins I used to make lace to re-make the family heirloom Christening gown that was destroyed in a fatal fire in December 2004... so I guess that means the last time I made lace was in 2005. Ee-gads - no wonder I felt out of my depth!

I used a spool of cobalt blue Gutermann silk thread that I happened to have in my stash.

Bobbin lace is essentially a weaving process, but I’m creating the loom on the pillow as I work, setting pins in the critical points. The density of the finished piece as made by the number of bobbins, thickness of thread, types of stitches, and number of twists, holds the shape in its finished form. I’m essentially blocking the lace as I go, much as knitted lace is blocked after it is finished.

The pattern was too small for me to easily read without the help of several magnifying lenses.

This is what one of the two motifs looked like right before I removed the pins.

And the two finished motifs with a quarter to show scale. I said it was really tiny, right?

Afterward I fastened it to the bride-furnished garter along with a cluster of silvery glass beads as faux stamens.

This was not an easy task period, and not an easy one to integrate into a very busy summer schedule driven mainly by near-death, death and dying of ones (multiple) near and dear, together with the foolish desire to earn a living wage.

Could I have done better? Probably. But it is done, it was done and in the hands of the bride a week before the blessed event. And I dare say, no one has the eyesight and knowledge to point out my errors. If they do, they, at least, will surely understand and keep their big yappers shut.

2011-10-12T04:20:00.000-07:00

What the Heck?

I was only gone a week. When I left town, it was still hot and summery. A week later we’re in full-blown fall. Even on hot days, there is a chill dryness in the wind that reminds me hard frosts will soon be here.

Unlike other years, there will be no bulb planting this fall. There’s simply been too much happening around these parts that has put me woefully behind on many critical personal and professional areas. I’ll be doing good to make room in my schedule for leaf raking. And frankly, I may use the “wait until they blow into the neighbor’s yard” approach this year. They pay people to remove their leaves, so it’s not like I’m making their weekends harder than they need to be, right?

The past month has been a mixed bag of successes and failures and/or frustrations. Fortunately the successes have outnumbered the rest, but only by a hair.

A week before we left, I finally attributed the cause of our shower door sticking to the fact that the frame was coming completely apart at the seams. The surprise wasn’t that this had happened, but that we discovered it when two people were at home to fix the problem, and before the glass fell away creating a pathway of death between the naked person and the exit. We tried to fix it with the door in-place, but it turned out to be a much bigger problem, so the fix involved saw horses and a complete removal and dismantling of the door so we could replace two screws that had sheared off. Yay Michael for being lead mechanic on this one!

Did you know I was a plumber? Neither did I, but I did manage to successfully fix a dripping faucet even though all the hardware stores in two towns were out of the specific part I thought I needed. Hmmm... Maybe my tightening it when I re-assembled it will turn out to be a permanent fix. Or maybe the faucet is a ticking (or dripping) time bomb. We shall see. But until then and for the last three weeks it hasn’t dripped a drop. Success!

Speaking of time bombs, I’ve known since we bought this place that we were operating on borrowed time with the built-in microwave. Chunks were missing out of the handle, and I discovered that it was being held to the door with sheet rock screws and joint compound. A few nights ago, while thawing our dinner, the handle came completely off in my hand. Add “shop for new microwave” to our task list for the next day, and “schedule installment” for a day not too distant in the future, I hope. (The $$ I saved fixing the faucet myself proved to be a nice off-set to the price of the microwave, too!)

I stopped at some very cool stores during our multi-state venture, and could have done way more damage if a) my budget had allowed and b) if I already owned the kitchen of my dreams so I had a safe place to store and/or display things. I still bought a few things that are too big to fit anywhere, but at least they are metal and therefore fairly unbreakable.

This is my haul from the Dutchman’s Store in Cantrill, Iowa:

You’ll note a brand-new large cast iron skillet that I bought for the sole purpose of making biscuits and gravy. This Sunday is my next attempt when I’ll be trying out my Grandmother’s recipe for buttermilk biscuits straight from her old recipe file (in foreground of photo). You may note that it leaves off many of the criticals, like time and temperature. Gotta love it!

Also shown is a staple to the turn of the century Midwestern housewife: a grease cup. I’ll get use out of this every time I make bierocks. The massive metal bowl will be used for making bread. There’s real salt, straight from a mine with no purification, the skinniest elbow macaroni I’ve ever seen, and a bag of cheddar cheese powder to make my favorite popcorn.

I was extremely successful stocking the larder in Oklahoma, too. We stopped at Lovera’s Italian Market in Krebs.

There I picked up caciocavera cheese, aged caciocavera cheese, glop (parmasan and asiago cheeses blended in olive oil), smoked Italian sausage, Italian sausage with tomato basil...

a rosemary dipping oil, Fusilli bucati macaroni, lime tree honey, Tarallini with fennel, and various rice mixes and mints.

I could have gone a lot crazier there, but I can always order more by mail later. Lovera’s makes the caciocavera cheeses in-house.

As much as I’m trying to avoid buying new stock for the lawn and garden (both because of $$ and time), I couldn’t avoid replacing this arborvitae that we’d originally bought in June.

Yes. Massively dead. And as big as it was, it didn’t come cheap. Fortunately it did come with a warranty, so a section of last Sunday was spent making a return trip to the nursery where I a) had to endure a lecture about the proper care of my new plants (in my defense, it’s been a really really crappy year, and we left on a week-long business trip just as the hottest, driest week hit our area so no one was home to ensure it was properly watered), and b) lectured back about the fact that the original plant had two leaders which is a no-no-no for any good nursery, and c) learned how this plant (when alive) can be used to do a traditional Indian spiritual cleansing. After the nurseryman (who is in fact, a Native American) heard just a tiny fraction of what this year has been for us, he seemed to think point c was something we should really consider. He might be right.

Next post: an actual finished object fit for a bride.

2011-09-27T02:13:00.001-07:00

Multitasking; or How to Suck the Life Blood Out of Every Minute

With lace motif 1 of 2 finished as of Saturday,

a little over 1 1/2 weeks of total home time between now and the wedding, and the discovery that the bride is a bit of a bridezilla who is panicking over the fact that I’m not yet finished, I found myself exploring new ways to get the job done.

Like this six hour round trip to shoot an assignment during which I managed to get slightly more than the halfway point on motif #2.

For those of you who weren’t at knit group at Saturday, this was pretty much my fashion statement that day as I pulled pins out of motif #1.

Folks, this is bobbin lace, and I owe you a post on the entire process. But that’s going to have to wait a few more weeks.

2011-09-23T02:31:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Adventures: Bierocks/Bieracks/Beerocks/Beroaks

Another successful recipe courtesy of Das Essen Unsrer Leute! This time around I delved into the world of bierocks, which are a small rolls stuffed with a cabbage and ground meat mixture. Recipes vary greatly, but that’s it in a nutshell.

Most of the communities had at least one bierock recipe in their chapter, but all except one didn’t bother specifying how to make the roll. So for that I went to the towns of Munjor and Antonino, and Mrs. Wasinger’s recipe for “beerocks” dough.

I can’t say how truly traditional this variation is because it calls for bran cereal. But it uses bran cereal in exactly the way I do for my “always in the house” bran muffins. That is, 1 cup of whole bran cereal softened in 1 cup of boiling water. The result is a hearty and heart-healthy bread.

The recipe wasn’t without its issues. The list of ingredients didn’t include salt, yet the written directions said to add it. How much was a mystery. I took a stab at 1 teaspoon. And the written directions didn’t say when to add the yeast, nor was their any mention of softening the yeast in warm water. So I added the yeast directly to the bran cereal soak - after it had cooled to lukewarm. That seemed to work.

Mrs. Wasinger’s filling variation called for sauerkraut, but I’m fresh of homemade kraut, so for the filling I journeyed over to Pfeifer for Mrs. Roth’s Bieracks recipe. Hers was a chopped cabbage recipe, cooked the ground beef, onions and cabbage in bacon drippings, and included a grated sharp cheddar cheese. Yummy!

I am usually a lot of particular about the brand of cheese I buy, but I mistakenly cheaped out this time around and got the Best Choice Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese, which was extraordinarily mild to the point of tasting like Velveeta.

The end product turned out to be excellent (even though I got distracted by a show on the Halogen channel and left the bierocks in the oven a tad too long), but could be improved by using a true sharp cheese, and perhaps swapping out ground beef for sausage.

It’s a amazing to realize you could feed a large farm family on only 1/2 lb of ground beef! For smaller families, they freeze well and reheat well. I take mine straight out of the freezer and put then in a foil-covered pan in a 200° oven for about 45 minutes to thaw, then pumped it up to 325° for another 15 minutes.

2011-09-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

Wool Gathering

There are times, such as the times I live in now, that I’m utterly grateful for knitting. Knitting passes the minutes/hours spent in waiting rooms. It gives me something to think about (other than the obvious), while freeing me up to engage in conversation with my friends and/or relatives who shares my same fate. And in the end I have a garment—something woolly to keep me warm when the winter winds howl.

The bad and the good about knitting is it also encourages strangers to strike up a conversation, sharing their own memories about their knitting present, or knitting in the distant past. (And no, there is no way I’m old enough to remember “Bundles for Britain” that you learned to knit for when you were 9. Thank you.)

I think for these strangers that our knitting, my mother’s and mine, is a way to momentarily forget about why they are there, and their own fears about the precipice that they are standing on. The gift of that forgetting is a wonderful thing.

Traveling with an iPod and ear buds can be a wonderful thing, too.

2011-09-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Adventures: Squash Bread

This recipe has been haunting me. I nearly talked myself out of making it because it lacked a lot of critical details, and was completely foreign to me. And yet, I found myself flipping back to that page trying to suss out the author’s meaning.

The recipe comes from Das Essen Unsrer Leute (The Food of our People, I think), a cookbook of folk recipes collected from the Volga-German communities Ellis County, Kansas. (For anyone traveling through Kansas on I-70, you probably saw the majestic spires of The Cathedral of the Plains in Victoria.) Since the towns were founded in 1876 until well into the 20th century, this society remained close-knit and largely intact, and did little to integrate with the American culture. So the recipes in this book are very traditional, and can be traced back to each family’s pre-Russian settlements in Germany. My squash recipe was contributed from the small town of Liebenthal in nearby Rush County, population less than 100.

The idea of a “squash bread” messed with my head a bit, until I remembered that one of my favorite recipes is a pumpkin bread (squash), and that making loaf after loaf of zucchini bread was one way to solve the answer to an over-abundant zucchini harvest in the home garden. But - here’s kicker #1 - this recipe isn’t a quick bread like my pumpkin and zucchini recipes; it’s a leavened bread.

Kicker #2: It calls for 2 cups stewed squash pressed through a potato ricer. So the next question became, how does one stew squash? I couldn’t find any other example of a squash bread recipe (other than pumpkin and zucchini), and the only recipes for stewed squash called for making a stew with squash and onions. I may not know much, but I know that isn’t what is meant for the bread.

I bought a butternut squash at the local farmer’s market, peeled it, and sliced it into 1" chunks. Then I cooked it in a skillet with a little bit of water. My end goal was to make a product similar to canned pumpkin.

After letting it cool, I riced it. As it turned out, a medium-sized squash only riced to about 1 1/2 cups, so I had to integrate in some of the bits that resisted ricing in order to make up the difference in volume. Hmmm...

This was added to scalded milk, a bit of sugar and butter. Once that mixture cooled, I added in the equivalent of 1 cake of yeast, then started adding flour to a quantity only specified as “flour enough to knead.” I lost count on how many cups that turned out to be, but I can tell you I made a major dent in the 10# bag I’d recently bought.

After kneading it for a good 15 minutes, I turned it into my favorite large thrown clay bowl, something I purchased years ago from the Historic General Store in Plevna, Kansas. (That store was an old-fashioned false-front building with wide wood plank floors littered with peanut shells. The store burned down in 1997.) It was a huge amount of dough, and it turned out to be something of a monster in the rise.

After punching it down and dividing, it made three large loaves. Baking instructions were absent, so I relied on my Victory cookbook for those details, and cooked them at 425° until the crust was a golden brown, and the loaves sounded hollow when tapped.

These are—without a doubt—the fluffiest most tender and tasty loaves of bread I have ever baked. Hands down.

That night I served the bread sliced with a bit of butter and local honey, alongside black beans and rice made from my grandmother’s recipe. Heaven!

2011-09-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

In Which I Attempt to Conquer my Fear of Pattern

This is the latest product from my sewing room—and what will be the last for a bit while I focus on a wedding deadline (more on that on a much later post) and after that my winter quilt that is already two winters behind schedule.

The pattern is Simplicity 2696, view D. Although this view is supposed to have braid sewn on the facing band at the neckline and bust, I ended up leaving it off. I did go to Hancock to hunt something down, but I didn’t like the types of braids they had in dark colors, and the lighter braids made the whole tunic go from busy to gaudy. Truth be told, it was already at gaudy without the braid.

The fabric is a deeply discounted corduroy from last season.

I adjusted the fit of the pattern, and think I did a fair job of it. The cuffs were a bear, but not bad for my first-ever attempt at making cuffs. For some reason I couldn’t get my buttonhole attachment to work properly on the actual cuff (though it was working quite well on my test fabric), so I ended up winging a lot of the buttonhole using a regular foot, and adjusting the needle placement and zig zag width to make the holes.

Worn without something underneath, it will work in the early part of fall. Worn with a light mock turtleneck, it will go well beyond.

2011-09-04T18:38:00.000-07:00

The question is: Who or What is Emily?

Earlier this summer I was weeding in my sunken garden and noticed some holes in the soil that were approximately 1 1/2 - 2" in diameter. We made a few guesses as to what the architect of these holes could be, but I’m pretty sure I uncovered the mystery - literally - this afternoon.

I had placed some bags of mulch on the soil in my sunken garden a few weeks ago, and left them there to help kill the weeds beneath. Since that time the members of the household have both been walking on the bags harvesting hops and such, and this morning I spent a goodly amount of time kneeling on said bags to weed around the based of the hop vines so that I could spread the mulch around them. Then I started emptying those bags and spreading the mulch.

I was nearly through the mulch bags that I’d previously placed in the garden, when I lifted one up and saw this beneath it:

Except that wasn’t exactly what I saw, because coiled up in that burrow was a snake. A snake that was frankly a bit pissed off that I upended its home. I was the only person in the garden at the time as my gardening partner was in the shower. So I did what any proper thinking Kansas woman would do. No, I did not scream. I grabbed my iPhone and tried to take a proper picture.

Not great. I did say it was pissed off, right? But this shows its head.

Here is where it started to do a U-turn, so its head (not visible) is passing its tail. But in this picture you can more clearly see the pattern. The snake was approximately 3' in length, and about 1 1/2" in diameter at its widest point.

You see that it is primarily a black snake, but has wide deep reddish/cream bands down its length.

I’ve ruled out venomous snakes that are indigenous to my region (Kansas), but haven’t yet found what it is. If it’s a juvenile, the markings could be different from that of a mature snake. And I can’t rule out that it is a former pet snake, or specimen from the university, that is loose in my garden. Frankly, it could be from anywhere.

It‘s still in my garden somewhere beneath the mulch that I just spread. And I named it Emily to be as non-threatening a name as possible. It was either that or Gandhi. I ask only that she and I try very hard not to scare the shit out of each other in the future, and I think Emily would want the same.

ETA: We have a tentative identification. Emily is a juvenile Black Rat Snake. She likes to climb trees and eats small animals and birds. If Emily keep our rabbit population down, I’m behind Emily 100%. Here’s a video interview showing an adult Black Rat Snake. She is one our area’s most common - and largest - snakes.

2011-09-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

The Kitchen Calleth

A week or so ago I had a national floor cleaning company come in to do the ceramic tile floor in my kitchen/dining rooms. I have said before and I’ll say again that I hate-hate-hate these floors. They are the cheapest ugliest tiles that Home Depot sells. Even when clean, the mottled colors look like the floor is soiled. And when dirt lands on them, it grinds in to the deepest pours of the tile and the grout, and will only free itself with hands-and-knees cleaning involving a multiple scrub brush, sponge and bucket process. It’s been three years since I’ve owned the place. In three more years I’ll have them come in and do the deep clean again. Then those floors will be a memory. But I digress.

To prepare my floors for the cleaning crew, I had to remove all the furniture and rugs. And that meant moving all my cookbooks and dismantling those shelves. Sorting through the books as I put the room back together, I was reminded of ones that I’d always wanted to explore, but somehow got lost in the shuffle of daily life. In the coming week I hope to bring you the results of several experiments. And I’ve added a spiral notebook to my cookbook shelves, so I can record the details my successes and failures. First up: Biscuits & Gravy

You may recall that I had a very short-lived attempt to find/develop a good from-scratch recipe for this health food back in early April. An attempt that turned out to be short-lived due to a major refrigerator failure. This time around I made another attempt at the buttermilk biscuit recipe from Victory Binding of the American Woman's Cook Book: Wartime Edition, this time cutting the shortening in before I added the buttermilk. (Rookie mistake last time.) Since I have twice as many people in the house to do the “hard work” of taste-testing, I didn’t bother halving or quartering the recipe.

My father-in-law had been a huge biscuits and gravy fan, so I used my mother-in-law’s old wooden rolling pin as a nod to him.

I probably should have used less flour in the rolling-out stage, so I used a pastry brush to remove as much of the excess flour from the biscuit tops as possible.

Definitely better-formed than last time - slightly raised and moist.

And for the sausage gravy I used this recipe from Cooks.com. The point about adding the flour a little at a time and waiting until it browns before adding more is an excellent one. Instead of using the Rice-brand sausage as last time, this time I used a bulk pork sausage packaged at my local grocer. The recipe recommended a sausage high in fat content, and this seems to fit the bill.

After I re-read the instructions, I saw that the recipe author had me add the flour while the sausage was still in the pan. I think that would have helped. There certainly would have been more fat content for the flour to bond to.

As it was, I ran out of oils at 4 T, and wasn’t quite enough to thicken the gravy. Plus, it made it harder to integrate in to the milk without clumping. I ended up adding two cups of milk, then putting it in the blender at the liquefy setting. That broke up the clumps. I then returned it to the pan and added the remaining milk.

Then I melted 2 T butter in a separate pan, and added 2 T flour to make another roux, browned it, and added it back into the main gravy along with the sausage. I think next time I’ll try making this in a cast-iron skillet instead of a teflon-type pan, too, so that I can be more vigorous with the scraping and whisking.

Plating stage.

Time for breakfast!

Other than those technique tweaks I’ve mentioned above, this test batch turned out superbly. A nice hearty breakfast eaten outside on the first cool morning since spring, when we’ve got a full day of intensive lawn work ahead.

2011-08-31T05:49:00.000-07:00

Finished Object, Finished Object(let), and a Wee Bit of Dust Blowing

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I may not have been blogging, but I was definitely knitting. To wit:

Socks for Sis III

This will be the last pair I knit for anyone other than me.

Back completed of Fjalar mostly as directed in the pattern, though I lengthened the torso a bit. Must remember to lengthen the front in the same manner!

And is this Knit Air? Yessiree Bob ubetcha! I seriously haven’t touched this in years, and probably haven’t since early 2008 (also known as “the year of the move.”). But I was emboldened by the ultimately successful completion of Can-can, and have a strong desire to reduce the number of projects in hiatus (specifically difficult projects) at any given moment, which will ultimately help declutter the craft room, so out of hibernation it came.

It is still a tricky knit for me because the core of the thread is thin and the mohair tends to cling around the needle like a faux stitch. The reflection of strong artificial light on the hairs—even my coveted Ott Lite—can also make the knitting difficult to read. This knitting is best done in daylight hours. And if I make a mistake, then I absolutely must solve it by tinking stitch by stitch or the mohair will knot up irrecoverably. Counting stitches often is mandatory.

But I’m in no hurry. Frankly, I don’t think I’m a lace shawl kind of gal, and don’t think anyone in my family who deserves a fine lace knit shawl would live long enough to see it completed. Hmmm... But without a doubt it will be beautiful when it is done.

Lastly, I have officially cast on for Sailing the Hudson Bay. I’ll share some details when I have a few more rows under my belt. I will say that it is a pleasure to knit.

An update for my locals: The conversation I mentioned at the last knit group happened. It fared pretty much as I expected but not as I’d hoped. It is what it is.

2011-08-25T07:41:00.001-07:00

In Need of a Good Laugh?

Aren’t we all! Here’s a list of the top ten winners of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Some are great, many are groaners, and there’s one (#10) that I find completely distasteful. But I hope that there is a pun in that one that I don’t understand because of a difference in our use of the English language.

(Btw, B&Q is a home improvement store similar to Lowe’s or Home Depot.)

2011-08-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

Finished Object: a Modified Sulu not from Star Trek

What do you do when a loved one goes to Fiji and all they bring you is a branded sulu from the Warwick Fiji Resort & Spa? Go crazy in the sewing room, of course!

A sulu is the national dress of modern Fijian men and women. It’s a rectangular piece of broadcloth that is wrapped around the waist to form a sort of skirt. This particular sulu had, not only the name of the resort, but also bright frangipani blossoms strategically placed on the fabric.

The pattern I chose for the base design is Simplicity 2593, view D, though I tweaked the pattern substantially.

This view has no sleeves, which I wanted because the lightweight fabric is perfect for super-hot days, and sleeveless fits the bill. View D also has a twisted band of fabric attached at the neckline, which give it some visual interest. However, instead of sewn shoulder seams, I wanted straps that buckled at the shoulder, and the fabric band to be attached only at the bust line and back of neck, and loose at all other points.

First up I adjusted the pattern and made a muslin to test my construction theory.

Not bad, though I think the fabric band doesn’t have enough twist, and is too wide at the shoulder.

Then I took my pattern and carefully placed it on the fabric so that the flowers would show, but wouldn’t place a blossom smack dab over a boob.

Perfect.

Or nearly so, as I don’t like the look of the white knit tank I’m wearing underneath it. It reminds me too much of my grandfather’s old undershirts that eventually yellowed to the point they became my grandmother’s dust cloths. And new term for the day, I am told that this type of undergarment is called a “wife beater.” Hmmm...

At any rate, other than looking for a new under garment for this shirt (that would otherwise be a wee bit too “showy” for public outings), I’m pretty darn happy with it. It’s been over a decade since I’ve designed any of my clothes, even to the point of modifying an existing pattern except for fit, so this feels like a victory. And it is, truly, a cool delight on a hot, hot day.

2011-08-17T15:22:00.001-07:00

Crickets?

Yep. That’s probably all you’ll hear for the extended period, save for the occasional cryptic photo.

There is indeed knitting happening (and one FO that’s blocking as I write this) but for those of you in my local group who heard me go on and on and on about my previous week? Guess what? It’s a repeat performance of the week I’d missed while I was out of town.

I’ll be back some day soon with real content (I sincerely hope). In the meantime, my parents need me 1000 times more than you do at the moment.

2011-08-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

Not Divided

about the fact that I’m close to reaching the toe decrease point on Socks for Sis III.

And do you think this intrepid hiker heading to Bear Lake on an NPS shuttle bus has a clue that he’s wearing a woman’s sweatband that’s straight out of a 1980s Jane Fonda exercise video? (Note that it’s braided...)

2011-08-07T05:19:00.000-07:00

There are Worse Places...

to give a private knitting lesson. (btw, it was 71° at the time.)

2011-07-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

Seldom Truer Words

Now that “The Turn” is upon us as evidenced by all the mattresses strapped to vehicle roofs throughout town (July 31/August 1 when most of the rentals are turning over to a new student population), this bumper sticker has risen to my list of 10 all-time favorites:

2011-07-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

An FO Parade

Our current state (in the midst of an intensive heat wave with no relief in sight for weeks to come) has inspired a lot of activities that could be accomplished inside in the air conditioning. The result is a making week in the extreme. Here’s the list by the numbers:

Three jars black raspberry preserves,

Two yummy new-to-me recipes, one of which was such a success that it is now on my list of top 10 favorite meals of all time (Chicken Royale* from my grandmother’s recipe box),
One totally awesome book read (The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender),
And one amazing lace tunic bound off, seamed and integrated into my “fancy dress” wardrobe.

It may be 100º, but life is rockin’ around here.

Knitting detes:
Can-can is worked in Seduce by Berroco in colorway 4435. The yarn is a bee-atch to work with because it ladders down with just a sideways glance. Its fiber content makes it slippery (rayon, linen, silk, nylon), so its too slippery to safely knit on Addi turbos, etc. But the lace pattern is chock full of ssk’s and sssk’s, necessitating a pointy needle, which bamboos are not. I ultimately determined Bryspun circs to be exactly the needle required. I lengthened the front and back to give it a more flattering look for my frame.

Before knitting this, I was not a lace knitter. I’d tried a few projects in fits and starts, but a 26-row repeat was a huge challenge for me. There was lots of frogging and tinking back. In the end I probably knit this tunic three times. Yes, I could have “overlooked” some of the mistakes, but I would have known they were there. And I knew that the finished tunic, given the lace and luxurious fiber, would look high-end. That is, as long as there weren’t obvious errors in the knitting. Perseverance paid off. The finished top is a delight to wear, very light and cool. I’ll make a muslin bag with a ribbon drawstring closure to keep it in, folded in a drawer, when I’m not wearing it. That should help prevent damage from snagging. And I’m ready to tackle another lace project.

*The next time I make Chicken Royale, I’ll start it earlier and have a camera at the ready to shoot the plated dish. Essentially it is chicken breast wrapped around a bread stuffing, and smothered in a mushroom cream/sour cream sauce. Granted, not the most heart healthy dish around, but the final flavor profiles are worth the risk of arterial blockage.

2011-07-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

Pivot

Pivot. Pivot! Pivaahhhtt!! I can’t say that word without evoking a scene from Friends where Ross tried (without success) to move an over-sized couch up the stairwell to his new apartment.

It’s pivot time in this college town of mine. Students are moving in, and while the mass migration won’t happen until the end of July, they are filtering in, checking out apartments, looking for employment.

Signs of migration:

Hooptie cars cutting through my neighborhood
A job interview on the sales floor of World Market (the two managers were taking copious notes while the job hunter described what gave her the passion and drive to study social work)
Cars with loud stereos
Sales staff at my local co-op who leave to look for something for a customer (me) and get so distracted that they never come back.
Larger-than-usual piles of junk outside rental properties awaiting trash pickup
Cars with young drivers speeding and changing lanes excessively
Stores merchandized with a heavy emphasis on dorm room essentials

I miss that part of summer when we had the town to ourselves. Unfortunately my household missed most of it taking care of critical out-of-town family concerns. Hopefully next summer will play out very differently.

The rise in student population isn’t the only change in these parts. Having offed my thrifted Woman’s Day cookbook, I started digging through my collection in search of new and past favorites. On deck this week is an Broiled Arctic Char with Basil Oil and Tomato dish from Gourmet Today; Chicken Royale from my grandmother’s overflowing recipe box; and Sweet Corn and Cilantro Chowder from one of my favorite soup cookbooks. The chowder is one I tried and loved last year, and given that sweet corn is in season once again and we’re in the depths of a prolonged heat warning, was a no brainer to put on the menu for this week. Arctic char wasn’t available locally, so I used the editor’s recommended substitution of wild-caught salmon. The basil is in season though, and I sourced more than necessary for this dish from the Saturday farmer’s market, along with beautiful black raspberries that will be turned into jam tomorrow.

The final pieces of Can-can are blocking right now, and if things work out schedule-wise on Sunday (between making jam and sauerkraut) I hope to have the ends woven in and the seams stitched by the end of the day. And that leaves me at another pivot point. With Can-can being such a time and energy sink—particularly since January of this year—I’m a bit at a loss as to where to turn. Do I start a new project, or return to another long-hibernating one? The prospects are truly exciting.

2011-07-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

Resigned

I know what you’re thinkin’, and you are wrong. This post isn’t about (yet-) another Can-can set-back. I have five rows to knit before I bind off on the final sleeve, thank-you-very-much. No, this is a cooking post.

I am a self-confessed cookbook hoarder. I haven’t done a proper inventory, but the fact that I have two free-standing shelving units dedicated to my collection should give you a vague sense of their numbers. I have cookbooks for many ethnicities, cookbooks with high production values (hardcover with lots of photos created by a vast editing/design team) and cookbooks that are collaborate fundraising efforts by local community groups. Some are newly minted. Some are nearly a hundred years old.

My area of interest these days are cookbooks that were published in an era when people still cooked for their families on a normal basis, while eating out was a rare treat. And that’s what I thought I was buying when I picked up the Woman’s Day Collectors Cook Book ©1973 at the local library’s book sale.

The editors describe it as a “cook book for connoisseur cooks—a new and unique collection of wonderful food adventures.” It contains over 2,700 recipes, mostly culled from the clip-out section of their magazine.

These are the recipes I have tested to-date:

Mandarin chicken
Chicken enchiladas
Beef pie with Sesame-seed puffs
Austrian beef goulash

All very different dishes, right? And yet they have a lot in common. They were finicky to prepare, ingredient heavy (ka-ching$$), resulted in average to mediocre meals, and every dish had an oddly similar sweet flavor and consistency. Seriously, the chicken enchiladas tasted a heluvalot like the beef pie. Makes no sense. And I usually prefer my protein dishes to be savory, not taste like dessert.

If this is what home cooking was all about in the early ’70s, I’m not surprised people started eating out more, or slapping a couple frozen dinners in the oven. Live and learn.

The base recipes could all be tweaked and refined, and I think ultimately elevated to deliciousness. But there are other cookbooks I own that hit it out of the park each and every time, like Gourmet Today. I think it’s time to turn my meal exploration adventures in a different direction.

As for the Woman’s Day cookbook, it is headed back to the library book sale donation bin.

2011-07-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

R.I.C.E., R.I.C.E., Baby

Yeah, I know. Soooo dating myself. It gets worse.

Sunday, in the wrap-up of preparation for a brew day with parental guests, I had what can only be described as a cleaning accident. Mopping specifically. And while the wrenched knee I ended up with is no joy, especially when navigating stairs, it is exponentially better than the temple-bounce off the cabinetry that I was trying to avoid on my way to the floor. Mission accomplished.

Thus I am living the R.I.C.E. life: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. Perfect for knitting, really. The knee will recover and is already much better than Sunday, and Can-can is progressing quite nicely. With this being sleeve #2-formerly-1, I am delighted to realize as I finish each row that I will only knit that particular row 2x more before I bind off. It takes the sting out of the psychological pain of being the new owner of a cane–black with a comfort grip.

And if you’re wondering, brew day went off without a hitch, much to the delight of my father who has never seen anyone brew beer period, and certainly not all-grain. The IPA will likely be named “Jewel’s New Boot” for an episode of Deadwood Season 1. Deadwood fans will understand just how appropriate that name truly is.

2011-07-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

That Means We Have to Visit Kansas; or Regards from Nowhere

Stumbled across these old videos on YouTube recently - the perfect holiday viewing gift for my fellow Kansans. There are 1001 observations I could make about them, not the least of which are the (probably sadly accurate) depictions of stereotypes and gender roles of the day...

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

2011-07-02T09:27:00.001-07:00

An Extra-Special Independence Day Holiday Weekend Celebration

Blocking has begun on Can-can’s front and back panels. Woo-HOO!

Either the second sleeve or the first (depending how everything shakes out) is officially cast on.

2011-07-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Have you read this report?

I haven’t read all 647 comments, but no where (in the article, or in the comments I read) did anyone address the son/future groom’s role in this drama. Did he not prep his future wife on proper behavior in the house he presumably grew up in, and therefore should know himself? Did he not intervene on behalf of his future wife? Maybe he knew there would be fireworks, and that’s exactly what he wanted...

I have other observations I could make, but the etiquette professionals and 647 commentors did a fair job of addressing them.

2011-06-29T05:29:00.000-07:00

The Week of Creatures

As the optimum window for planting perennials is drawing to a close, I find myself out in the garden more and more trying to get caught up on everything that didn’t get done during the last chaotic months. This “being outside time” has been hot and hard, but has also brought gifts of small creature sightings that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Like a few days ago when I helped in the rescue of a least shrew that had fallen in a half-undug hole of a fence post hole and was in danger of being squished during the final pry-out stage. There are toadlets galore in the garden. And something chewy that has taken refuge in the wood pile. Heard it. Seen the aftermath. Have yet to see the actual creature.

At least there have been no sightings of snapping turtles or wild cats this calendar year. So far.

It feels like the garden is finally taking shape. It was basically a desert when we bought it in 2008, and we ended up having to remove about half the few trees and shrubs that were here due to poor health and/or poor placement.

Three more bushes were installed this week:

a Green Giant arborvitae, Royal Purple Smoketree,

and a Verdoni Hinoki Falsecyrpess.

And lots and lots of day lilies, Asiatic and Oriental lilies.

We ate dinner at a business associate’s home a few nights ago, and I was bemoaning the fact that I have been spending several hours every morning working in the garden, but that I’m hopelessly behind for the year. This associate couldn’t imagine what on earth I would have to do in the garden that would take me that long. Hmmmm... Having glimpsed her lawn and garden, I’m not surprised by her surprise. There are a few flowers, including a long line of old-fashioned echinacea bordering the approach to her front door, but nothing is in beds, and the only weeding is what the mower catches as it trims the edge, so all the day lily beds were as much overgrown grass as they were lily. Yes, I’ve got a weed issue in my beds too, but there is also an obvious attempt at controlling them, and those that are there only have a month of growth rather than an entire season.

After I’d written this post, but before it went live, I got a call from my MIL. She, too, asked if I was done with my gardening work. I wonder if the general public (and these are both people who own their own homes with a yard that should be tended) realize that yard work is a bit like vacuuming and cleaning the toilets. Done right, tasks should be repeated on a semi-regular basis. Back to my garden...

Buttered Popcorn from our 2010 purchases continue to be a favorite for me. Michael is extremely fond of Mallard, also from 2010.

We picked up some gorgeous Asiatics. Unfortunately a severe spring storm destroyed their blossoms before I could take proper pics.

But this Nosferatu is a delicious addition dropped into the center of the Buttered Popcorn,

and I’m such a huge fan of the Yellow Tiger Lily that I went back to the garden center to buy another pot..

And to wrap up the week of creatures, I bring you a moment of fuzzy bliss, compliments of Aspera and the newest addition to our household, a very patient Piña.

2011-06-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

A Recent Conversation

MIL: Does it hurt? she asked.

ME: Nope.

MIL: Did you scream?

ME: Nope.

MIL: Well I would have screamed if a tiny leopard had jumped on my face in the middle of the night.

2011-06-20T04:57:00.000-07:00

Weekend Wrap-up

This weekend I have two movie reviews, and two recipe reviews.

Food first:

This recipe for Strawberry Summer Cake is to-die-for!

I left off the extra 2 T sugar sprinkled over the top, but didn’t miss it a bit. Very fast and easy to prepare.

Sunday night I whipped up a batch of Mandarin Chicken from the Woman’s Day Collectors Cookbook ©1973. It’s a very different dish than I’ve ever made, and the recipe directed that I marinate the chicken breasts in a stick of butter and 1/2 cup of white wine. Awesome! As it turned out, the dish was much milder (read: bland) than I expected or prefer. Jotting down some notes about how I’d modify this in the future, like omitting some of the syrup from the drained mandarin oranges, and throwing an entire can of oranges into the blender to get a better infusion of mandarin juice throughout the sauce. Amping up the soy sauce and adding cashews could also help the dish overall. Will know for next time.

On the movie front, if you like English-language foreign films, then check out The Station Agent. No, it’s not foreign, but it has the pacing and feel of a good foreign flick. It’s written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, who played the reporter in the final season of The Wire. Available on DVD.

Saw the film trailer for Potiche, starring Catherine Deneuve on one of the latest Millennium Trilogy DVDs. It’s playing at some art houses now, and it was a fun film. As a knitter, I especially loved the scenes with her son Laurent and his sweater.

I know. How deliciously ’70s!

2011-06-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

Filling a Much-Needed Prescription

After the long, stressful, emotional and life-changing weeks we’ve had, we sorely needed an evening of this:

Live music performed by a bossa nova band, which was followed by:

A screening of an incredibly cheesy lucha libre movie starring Mil Mascaras.

2011-06-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Have You Ever Wondered...

if the wrong plot is ever prepared for a grave...

and what it would be like to discover this during the graveside service...

and order a new grave dug...

and the remains/coffin/vault removed from the wrong plot...

and placed in the correct plot?

Well, that’s one thing I don’t have to wonder about any more. Cross that baby off the list!

2011-06-10T18:23:00.001-07:00

Rest in Peace

2011-06-09T03:23:00.001-07:00

The End of an Era

I’m finished. The final page of the final book in the Earth’s Children series has been read. Am I disappointed that the journey I began in 1980 is over? Nope. Relieved is more like it.

For the whippersnappers out there that weren’t of reading age (or possibly even alive) back in 1980 when the first of the series (Clan of the Cave Bear) was released, I can tell you that female protagonists were few and far between on the literary landscape of the time. Nancy Drew was about it, and that’s like saying that playing with an Easy-Bake Oven is as good as a Mr. Wizard’s Adventures in Chemistry Set. So a book with a strong female lead, that was rich in details of prehistoric humanity and the flora and fauna of the Upper Paleolithic era... let’s just say the book had me at “hello.”

I have read the entire series as each book was released. I wish I could say I loved each and every one of them, but that would be a lie. I enjoyed the first two or three, while the later ones have been incredibly disappointing. But I felt committed to see the journey to its end.

Nine years passed between the publication of book five, The Shelters of Stone, and book six, The Land of the Painted Caves, and thirty one years have passed between the release of the first and last books of this series. That’s a lot of time, and my memory was pretty foggy on some of the critical plot points, so back in March I started reading the entire series over. That’s over 4000 pages, people. And what I found was that the books were mainly filler and fluff. If you were to remove all the passages that described the buildings, animals, and plants—and removed all of the (many, many) detailed descriptions of the main characters having intercourse—the books would have been about a quarter their size.

And it’s not stellar writing, either. For the most part she seems to be writing to a fourth grade reader level, then she throws in odd words like “diffident” that isn’t generally used in casual conversation but she uses it with such frequency that you’d think it was an article like “an” or “the”.

I dare say, if the author were to shop the series around today, that it’s unlikely that she would have found an agent and publisher. There’s more competition from pedigreed professional writers, and fewer publishers willing to take gamble on a new author.

Did I really read all 4000+ pages? Um... no. I found myself skimming large passages of the previous books because I was trying to refresh my memory on the characters and plot points, and that didn’t require knowing what types of grasses were growing on the steppes they traveled through in chapter 13. And then I found myself skimming large tracts in the final new book because I wasn’t all that fascinated with the descriptions of the dozen or so caves she visited during her donier tour, or by the cave paintings themselves. I might have been more interesting if she’d made an attempt at explaining the symbolism behind some of the images, but she avoided that entirely.

No. I’m done. The last three books are in a pile on the dining table waiting for the next trip to the local library where they will land in the donation box with a mighty “thud”. I’m more than okay that they are done, and more than okay that I will never feel compelled to read them again.

More time for knitting.

2011-06-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

When it’s 93°, and You’ve Just Spent a Sweaty Morning at a Civil War Reenactment…

there’s only one reasonable thing to do:

Take a community nap!

2011-06-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

Minutes to Spare: A Finished Object

This is the Cable Vest from Lion Brand, made for size 1. Fiber is Red Heart Eco-Cotton blend in chocolate and accented with almond.

The reviews of this pattern remark that the neck hole as written is too small to fit easily over a child’s head, so I made mine bigger, and made adjustments to the pattern accordingly.

I was nearly done the evening before this was to be gifted, but ran into a major snag at the 11th hour and had to frog the neckline ribbing and start over. With the neckline re-do, plus knitting the ribbing on the sleeves, seaming, and sewing in loose ends, this sucker barely made it in time. In fact, it was still damp when I took it out of the dryer and rushed it over to “W’s” house for the gathering. Whew!

2011-05-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

The Best Memorial Day Ever

It’s been a wild couple of months, and mostly not in a good way, so we made our best attempt at having a calm, quiet Memorial Day weekend. Step 1 in this effort was stopping by the local video rental store to catch up on movies we’ve missed. There were semi-hits in the bunch, and some semi-flops (Skyline—why bother with a plot of character development. It just gets in the way of the special effects.) but two of my favorite videos were movies from the past.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has long been my favorite musical. The fact that I like it at all is pretty amazing because musicals generally are my least favorite form of entertainment. But this surpasses all musicals and actually falls in my “favorite movies of all time” category. Seeing it again, in widescreen, start to finish without commercial interruption? Priceless.

Next up was a movie that hit a nostalgic note, With Six you Get Eggroll. Not a great movie. Frankly not even a good movie. What it was was highly enjoyable. It stars Doris Day and Brian Keith (Family Affair) and was released in 1968. The sets and wardrobe choices were delicious, but what I loved most of all was spotting all the actors that I knew from other shows of that era or later. A person could almost make spotting the stars a drinking game.

Here’s a few and how I know them best:

Barbara Hershey (Love Story)
George Carlin (comedian, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” monologue)
Alice Ghostley (played Esmeralda on Bewitched)
Jamie Farr (Klinger on MASH)
William Christopher (Father Mulcahy on MASH)
Allan Melvin (Sam the Butcher on the Brady Bunch)
Vic Tayback (Mel on Alice)

I’m sure there were more, this was plenty for sure. I hope to spend more time in the “classics” section in the future. And that’s good, because I frogged the Can-can front and started over on Saturday. No worries. Eating an entire flourless chocolate torte myself during the last knit group went a long ways toward me not giving a flip about the entire situation.

2011-05-30T16:21:00.001-07:00

Still Testing the Limits of the Equipment...

but at this stage, it appears that Purr-Dar has a range of over 250 miles based on the nearest tornado watch box. Pretty impressive considering that her equipment is 100% cellular and 0% mechanical.

Curious about the cropped ear? Aspera was
adopted from a managed feral cat colony.
A tipped left ear indicates a cat that was
spayed or neutered before being re-released
into the colony.

2011-05-28T09:18:00.001-07:00

Proof Positive...

that the Audubon Classic Oriole Feeder is unable to withstand a squirrel bombing.*

ETA - a few other pieces of evidence suggests we may have had a larger creature like a raccoon in the yard. Still, if these feeders only have a lifespan of less than one month, then the orioles are going to have to look elsewhere for food.

2011-05-25T08:35:00.001-07:00

Precipitation in the News

Like many Kansans, we live and breathe weather. We don’t get the number or fierceness of tornadoes that is commonly believed, but we grew up watching the skies and generally know the signs of approaching severe weather (like when tree leaves curl upward making them appear silvery) and what to do to protect ourselves (which many of us choose to ignore... but that’s another matter.)

Not long ago a severe tornado and hail-bearing storm hit my hometown. My parents, who don’t have a basement, gathered their prescriptions, cash, lock box and dog, and drove to my brother’s house. They pulled in his driveway just as marble-sized hail began to fall. My brother came out with plastic laundry baskets that they used to protect their heads and bodies getting inside. My mother-in-law spent her time sitting on the lid of her toilet in her basement bathroom talking to her sister (who lives in another state) on her cordless phone - her sister keeping her calm. A photo was published a few days later that showed one of the funnels directly over her house.

I’m too young to remember, but a massive tornado hit my hometown when I was two. As I understand it, I spent that storm along with the rest of my family in the cobwebby basement of my grandparent’s house. Afterward I helped my siblings and father sell special editions of the newspaper out of our wagon.

The scope of the tragedy in Joplin is unimaginable. My thoughts are with those who have lost friends and family, homes and businesses, memories, and the injured. But most especially my thoughts go out to all the first responders, military, utility crews, and search and rescue teams, who continue to put their lives on the line to save, protect and rebuild the community.

As I write this there is a severe thunderstorm rumbling outside. Not a tornado storm*, but a lovely wish-I-had-time-to-curl-up-with-a-good-book-and-listen kind of storm.

Wait.

There’s the drenching downpour.

Perfect timing to read this article that suggests bacteria stimulates precipitation.

* ETA. This storm isn’t behaving normally, and almost everybody including the weather professionals about its tornado potential. While I’m in a regular storm, this storm is giving birth to tornado bearing storms. The Purr-dar (Aspera) alarms have been blaring. I should really listen more often.

2011-05-19T11:26:00.001-07:00

More Remnants

Drenching rains have put a damper on all my garden-y plans for the day - and possibly into next week. Thank goodness there’s still plenty of juicy tidbits to be discovered on the news interwebs:

Officials at the Center for Disease Control have issued preparedness advice for the coming zombie apocalypse. I am, for the record, so over the whole zombie thing. I say, if the bodies are decaying, then wait them out until they can't walk or crawl anymore. Duh!

This next story is much more scary and exciting to me. Scientists have discovered a creature that can survive exposure to space. Microscopic tardigrades, known as water bears, may be one of the the coolest creatures on the planet, ranking ahead of meerkats by a furlong, but slightly behind my new kitten Piña. Knowing that one of their habitats is leaf litter is an excellent reason to postpone fall-clean-up.

2011-05-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

Remnants

Things have become a wee bit less hectic around here. This isn’t a permanent state - not - at - all. But in these in-between hours (that will make sense to my local knit group) when things are temporarily stabilized, a few hours to relax, read and knit in my comfy chair have been gratefully welcomed.

Still working on the front of Can-can, and have now completed 1 entire pattern repeat. Think I have three or four more to go before the front is complete, but it’s doubtful I’ll get it finished in time. You won’t find me at the post-rapture looting party. I’ll be at home madly knitting something new to wear this gala season.

The crafter in me can really appreciate the skill and inspiration behind this man’s beard. Not that I would want to grow one myself - if I were a man, that is - and not that I would want to be married to someone would (can you imagine going shopping with him? A person would never be able to take two steps without being stopped and questioned.). But from the other side of the globe I can tell you truly that he earned that winning title.

That’s it for now. The first Baltimore oriole of the season was spotted in the backyard a few minutes ago. The grape jelly and simple syrup has already been laid out, but it’s time to toss half an orange on the feeder for good measure.

2011-05-11T05:57:00.001-07:00

Dear Knitting Friends,

If I am able to make it to knit group this weekend, then be prepared: I have stories to tell. Big stories, surreal stories. Coen brothers meet Quentin Tarantino meets Rod Serling kind of stories. Maybe even a dash of Lewis Carroll.

To all others, I deeply apologize. For you I can only wish that you live a full rich life without this kind of excitement-all-piled-on-at-once.

2011-05-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

Seven Sweet, Sweet Words

Hours, like the scary ones leading up to this, require the fortitude of a knitter with a full project bag.

2011-05-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

Home

Crazy busy around here, so I’ll leave you with a few photo memories while I take care of other more pressing business.

When traveling over an Easter holiday, you are at risk for sharing a fast food restaurant with a bunch of kids and one adult dressed up in a bunny costume.

I’ve heard of grocery stores banning backpacks and large bags, but hoodies are a first (Columbus OH).

We were in the rain most of the trip. This storm effectively denuded the pear trees, but oh what a beautiful sight!

Made time on the way back to stock up on some yard goods at this town east of St. Louis,

and for fun and exploration at the Missouri Botanical Garden, too.

Didn’t get much knitting done on the road, but that’s okay. Turns out I’m going to need a great deal of waiting room, etc. knitting on hand.

2011-04-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

Thank Goodness

Despite the fact that gas prices have been soaring while on we’ve been on the road (3.85/gallon the first time we drove through Indianapolis, 4.15/gallon two days later), we never had to pay these prices—yet. You can’t read the small signs in this picture, but the “lower” 4.49/gallon price is for cash, the higher (5.59) is for credit. Geeaaawwwddd! This photo was taken in the Chicago Heights area on Friday, April 29.

Very little knitting has happened. Looking forward to some serious home time! There’s laundry to be done, groceries to be bought, and cats to be tickled and napped with. Soon. Very very soon.

2011-04-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

Clearly, Still Obsessed

Stumbled across this display at a Marshes grocery store. Definitely will need to re-open my test kitchen very soon!

2011-04-25T14:31:00.001-07:00

Socks for Sis III on a Quest

2011-04-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

50%: Another “Finished” Object(let)

Can-can’s back is now “done”! That’s done in quotes because I have not and will not bind off until I get the front to the same length and have thought long and hard about whether it needs to be a hair shorter or a hair longer.

For now, the live stitches have been moved into another needle. And with one sleeve done, that puts Can-can squarely at 50% completion. Woo-HOO!

Only a few more hours of knitting time left before the lace knitting gets packed away, and the travel knitting comes out. That will be Socks for Sis III, traveling in a rockin’ zippered Basmati rice bag I picked up for its original purpose from the Indian gas station. That’s not a slur. It honest to Pete is a gas/convenience store stocked with Indian food. I love this town!

2011-04-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

There are no Words

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13162118

2011-04-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

The Laugh-Riot Post

Me Week continues its theme, it seems: The Week of Many Bumps in the Road.

For those keeping score, it's still refrigerator 1, human-with-plans 0. The repairman came out Tuesday, and the good news is that the fix isn’t supposed to be expensive. It’ll run a little over $200 for the part, labor and trip charge, plus a little tax. That’s not terrible for an appliance that would cost me 5-8 x more to replace with a similar model. The bad news is that he didn’t have the part in-stock, and it had to be ordered. Assuming it comes in as scheduled, it won’t be repaired until Thursday afternoon. Friday or Saturday I’ll have to devote a significant amount of time and cash to replace many of the contents that had to be tossed. I’m only one person. There’s only so much thawing food I can consume, and I’m absolutely not going to re-freeze any meat that has thawed. That’s a food-borne illness waiting to happen. By then Me Week will be in its sunset, so the quest for the ultimate platter of biscuits and gravy will have to be continued at another time.

But that’s not the painful bump. The painful bump can be attributed to Can-Can, or shall I call it Cursed-Can?

Monday evening I realized I would need to wind another skein of Seduce to continue and finish the back. But before I did so, I decided to lay out all the parts and parts-to-be so that I would know absolutely how much fiber I had to work with. I am going to make the top a bit longer than the pattern called for, so re-checking seemed like a wise idea.

Tuesday morning I found the ziplock bag with the skeins allocated to the front, and sleeve #2. But sleeve #1 that I finished a few months ago? MIA. If I couldn’t find it, I would be faced with a possible shortage of fiber. Possibly the length of the tunic would have to remain at the pattern length or maybe shorter. Perhaps the sleeves would need to be shortened as well. So since I was closing in on the completion length of the back, finding or not finding sleeve #1 was Level 7 Critical. Organizing the craft room was added to my activity list for the day.

I looked high. I looked low. I thought about it: where would I have put it? I remembered the trash can had been placed near the desk where I’d been working, and I had emptied the can a few weeks ago. Could it have fallen into the can (assisted by a playful kitten) and it’s in a landfill somewhere?

After hours of searching/organizing, I realized I was making a huge mess, and I wasn’t any closer to my goal of finding the sleeve. I slept on it. Wednesday morning I woke up; poured myself a pot of coffee; and boxed up all the parts, pieces, and instructions for Can-Can; and put it on a shelf until I either accidentally ran across the sleeve or years later came to grips with the fact that it was permanently lost.

Before leaving the room I decided to tidy up one more thing. I had a large bag in the room with six skeins of cotton I’d bought in Minnesota a few months ago to turn into a few more crocheted pot holders. I took out a few skeins and wandered over to my cubby shelves to stash them away. These shelves happen to be mere inches from the area where I’d been working on Can-can earlier this year. I leaned down to find an empty cubby, and lo and behold spotted the glimmer of a bronze fiber knitted sleeve stuffed in the back. That particular cubby was right at eye and hand level when sitting in the chair where I’d been working.

What followed was a mixture of rejoicing and cursing. One sleeve found: 24 hours lost. I realized I wasn’t in any mental state to do the full analysis that I’d intended on Tuesday, so add to that another 10 hours.

Can-can is once again a work-in-progress. The parts and pieces are going to stay exactly where they are, spread out on a work table with all kinds of notes and zip-lock bags, until I’m ready to work on the next piece. Then the finished piece goes on the table with the others, ready to assemble when - and if - that day ever comes.

And the moral of this tale is that if you’re going to sit and think about where a lost object might be, it’s best done in the chair where you last had seen it.

2011-04-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

“Breaking” News x 2

Judging by the wind pattern on my Seduce balls, I am officially at the point I had been at in winter of ’09/’10 when realized I had made a horrible and noticeable mistake in the knit pattern (caused by stitches leapfrogging on the needle) too far down to tink. It appears that when I realized this mistake I opted to move this back-in-progress onto different needles so I could use the proper needles to begin a sleeve, and return to this when the pain was... painful. But life intervened, and before the sleeve could be finished, or the back dealt with, the entire project was boxed up until my trip to San Diego in January of this year.

My first thought when I pulled the project out was “where’s the mistake,” because I couldn’t find it. But humorously (or not) I had forgotten that I had moved on to a sleeve. I ultimately found the back - and the mistake - and was forced to either finish it with a fairly noticeable mistake (in my opinion) or frog the entire back. And frog I did.

I haven’t been making much progress on the tunic because I haven’t had that type of time (uninterrupted), but Me Week has given me more of that, and it has also helped that I’ve pushed all my other knitting projects to the back of the queue. I even had the balls to take this project and this project alone to knit group.

This morning I finally reached my previous end-point (VICTORY), and am knitting forward in virgin territory. And not only that, but I’m at about 16", and I have about ten more to go before the back will be done. I’m starting to feel the weight of the yarn hanging off the needles, and that is giving me a power boost as well.

In part 2 of breaking news, the Me Week Test Kitchen is temporarily closed. The refrigerator/freezer stopped working at hour -1 of count-down to Me Week (as in just as we were leaving for the airport). It felt cool for the first two days, but the milk has turned early, the butter is soft, and of course the contents of the freezer are in a slow thaw. For food safety reasons, and to conserve what cold remains (helped by bags of store-bought ice), I have reverted to minimal survival cooking until the unit is either fixed or replaced. I won’t know which will be required until Tuesday afternoon, which was the earliest appointment I could get. Thankfully, the mini-fridge where I keep our homebrewed beer, is still fully functional.

2011-04-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

From the Me Week Test Kitchen: Biscuits and Gravy Day 1

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I decided a good way to spend part of Me Week would be to find and/or create the perfect recipe for biscuits and gravy.

As many people from the Midwest or the South know, this is a down-home stick-to-the-ribs classic breakfast staple, but one that is rarely actually made at home these days. I remember a distant cousin from England visiting my grandmother when I was a little girl, and our family made a point of adding this to the menu so she could get a true taste of Kansas. I had no idea this was “bizarre” or perhaps even “gross” until a few years ago while watching an episode of Today, and Lester Holt (who, based on his infrequent guest judging stints on Iron Chef thinks highly his culinary knowledge) became nearly physical ill at the sheer mention of this dish that he had apparently never heard of nor could ever imagine would be good.

I brought this up around a breakfast table in San Diego in January. A California man not only knew what I was talking about, but knew the best place within driving distance to get a plate of it. I mentioned Holt’s revulsion, which surprised California Man, so we conducted a small survey of the other people attending that conference who were seated around us.

The Americans had heard of it and many had fond memories. The Canadians? Disgusted!! This is ironic because A) one of the Canadians had just finished telling us about her recent visit to Mexico when she ate live bugs just to prove to a persnickety travel writer that eating bugs wasn’t gross, and B) these are people* who crave poutine, a dish of French fries and cheese curds smothered in gravy. Talk about glass houses!

All this talk about biscuits and gravy got me to thinking. As much as I appreciate a good platter, I think I’ve only bothered to make it once, which I can’t count because the sausage gravy came out of a can - as did the biscuits. Which leaves me the also very occasional platter at fast food restaurants when we travel. Since fast food versions of anything are just a pale shadow of the “real” thing, perhaps its time I do my own.

Day 1.

It’s not just about the dish as a whole. I have never bothered to make biscuits from scratch, either, so this exercise is a great excuse to add that to my culinary toolkit.

I decided that the best recipes probably date back to when my grandmother was a young wife and mother. I probably have her recipe, in fact, but before I looked for that, I grabbed my copy of the Victory Binding of the American Woman's Cook Book: Wartime Edition, and quartered their buttermilk biscuit recipe (since I’m solo during Me Week).

Whoopsie. If I’d bothered to read the directions, I probably would have seen that I cut in the shortening before adding the buttermilk!

The flour portion of my reduction may have been a tad over-reduced.

And I think I rolled them out too thin.

Unattractive, but tasty and tender straight out of the oven.

While the biscuits were in the baking (450° for 12 minutes), I turned my attention to the sausage. For this step in the process I was flying by the seat of my pants.

I arrived at the grocer ill-prepared for the sausage options before me. I ultimately ended up using Rice medium heat pork sausage

That I cut into quarter-inch disks

and fried in a hot skillet without any added oil. When those were done, I removed the sausage to drain on a paper towel, and

melted a smidgen of butter in the sausage pan

and then flour to make a roux. Then I added milk, fresh cracked pepper and a little salt, and let it bubble until it thickened. At this point the flavor felt a little thin (one dimensional), so I experimented by adding a dash of cinnamon before crumbling the cooked sausage and adding that to the gravy.

That turned out to be interesting - not bad, but a bit odd - so I’ll see if I can’t track down a more appropriate spice for Day 2.

* For the sake of full disclosure, these people (Canadians) are really my people, as many generations of my family lived there, served the country, are buried there, and have places named for them. In fact, I’m certain that I still have distant cousins roaming about. I don’t know if my Canadian ancestors ever ate biscuits and gravy themselves, but I would hope that they would at least have been more open-minded!

2011-04-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

I Know

These have got to be some of the most beautiful hyacinths I’ve ever seen, too. I’m still guessing that they are gipsy queen, but the wash of color from top to bottom doesn’t jive with any hyacinths I’ve seen in any color scheme. It’s a living Arizona sunrise.

I can’t wait to see what is next to bloom. Other than the small grape hyacinths, there’s not a blue in the bunch. Nothing against the classic blue. It’s just not a color that ever resonated with me. Same can be said for geraniums, petunias, and pansies in any and all color schemes.

More flowers will be added to this bed in about two weeks, and hopefully many more about a month after that.

2011-04-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

More Signs of Spring

The countdown to Me Week is in full earnest. I’m putting down my list of things I’d like to accomplish during that time, which includes things like “finish back of Can-Can” - the lace tunic that is an on again off again battle of wills - and “discover or create the perfect biscuits and gravy recipe.” More on that one later.

But this doesn’t mean that life is otherwise normal or without its (mostly) spring-related hitches. Like the fact that:

I’m watching a neighbor’s house while she’s away. Despite the fact that she stopped all her papers, and in fact no longer subscribes to the Wall Street Journal, a WSJ has been delivered every day. It is evidently impossible to stop a paper that isn’t subscribed to in the first place. Either that, or the carrier is eternally optimistic she’ll change her mind...
My lawn guy came by to turn on the sprinklers for the year, and came close to trampling some of the many tender peonies that are coming up in the bed where the valve is located. Michael cautioned him to watch his step, and the guy thanked him and proceeded to take the lid off the valve box and dump it squarely on young peony stem. And one of the new and coveted chocolate peonies I’d just bought and planted last fall. Note to self: those things snap rather than bend.
I had to report a dead baby bunny just outside the polling place doors so that the maintenance staff could remove it before permanently scarring a young child.

Hope you’re having a semi-normal spring!

2011-04-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

Jiffy Snap

It is full-on spring around these parts. Daffodils are popping open everywhere. Even the hyacinths are poking through the mulch in the earliest days of opening.

I believe this variety is Gipsy Queen, though the color may shift as the bloom matures, so I’m not ready to bet the farm on this. It might become The City of Harlaam, but that’s more of a butter yellow.

Because it’s so spring-like, I found myself at my favorite local nursery a few days ago buying a flat of Euonymus Coloratus to plug into our upper bed, (So many gaps... but such an un-fun thing to buy and plant.) and there on the seed rack were packages of Shasta Daisies. Two ended up in my hand at the checkout. I’d bought three shasta daisy plants last year at the same time and place I’d bought the buttered popcorn daylilies because the two looked so awesome together. Unfortunately, once the blossoms were spent, the plants died. They are supposedly perennial, but last year was a hard year for gardens, and as these can attest. So go from seeds and start earlier in the year, right?

Problem is, these daisies have to be started inside about 8-10 weeks before the last frost (already past that deadline), and I have a long history of failed indoor starts.

Did you...? Yes.
What about...? Definitely that.
Yes, I even built a starter table floored with heat tape covered in sand, with an old storm window as a lid, and lit with fluorescent lights. Failed, failed, failed.

But that was the old house. Maybe the new house has better seed starter mojo? (Especially given its decidedly hippy-dippy roots.)

So off to Ace Hardware I go, after sifting through the January sale seeds I bought to see if there were any varieties that also needed to be started this way. There was: snapdragons.

Of all the wonderful and scary seed starting options, I went for the classic Jiffy greenhouse because it brings back fond memories of my childhood. If all else fails, at least I’ll have that.

It starts with compressed disks, then water is added.

The disks slowly swell...

Then the sides are peeled away from the top so seeds can be sprinkled on, and a lid placed over the whole thing.

These are two of the total of five I’ll need to plant by the end of the day tomorrow. With luck, I’ll have seedlings by near the end of the month.

2011-03-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

Week Weirdness

With only one week to go before Me Week, life is throwing all kinds of interesting things my way.

In the last few days I:

May have laid the groundwork to get the manager of a branch of Bank A fired.
Pointed out to the folks at Bank B a small $99,900 error in the fees and minimums listed on their web site (me not being a mathy person in the slightest makes this more embarrassing for them then an achievement for me) (And this is related to the first item only inasmuch as the incident at Bank A inspired me to get off my duff and hunt for a new bank.)
Had to rein in my eldest sibling who, out of misunderstanding and fear, has been spreading a false rumor about one of our parent’s having cancer. He does not, so far as we know, have cancer, nor are any of his numerous doctors investigating this possibility.
Purchased The Land of Painted Caves from one of the few remaining local bookstores. Still re-reading Book 1, have placed a hold on Book 2 but it’s not due back until mid-April, and will need to reserve and read several books beyond those before I get to the one I still (apparently) own and finally the one I just bought. Pretty sure this will be the summer of Earth’s Children.
And finally received a long-coveted copy of the jazz CD Empire by Scott Colley that Borders had on back-order for an entire month, but Amazon ultimately was able to fulfill and deliver on the second business day after I ordered it. The album is named for a long-gone town from Kansas’ earliest settlement history. The album is just as wonderful as I remembered it (perhaps more?), and may be worn out by the time Me Week concludes. Given all the above points, that would be completely understandable.

Not saying it’s been a terrific week so far, but it could be far worse!

2011-03-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

I Have Been Asked...

if the rest of the crew is getting along with the new kitten.

Clockwise starting at the top: Aspera, Nacho and Piña

Touch and go... touch and go.

(And yes, those are my new wool socks, thankyouverymuch!)

2011-03-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

Lessons of the Day

Given my general lack of interest in (dare I say “borderline intolerance of”) children*, I should strive to never schedule extended dealership appointments over spring break. This morning I spent around 2 1/2 hours camped out at the dealership. About half an hour in, the kids started to arrive, and by the time my freedom papers were issued, the waiting room was fully stocked with about over a dozen. Yes, they were moderately well-behaved (though gargling with samples from the water cooler fell outside of that), just being around that many children tends to give me the hives.

After finishing The Monster of Florence, I can say with utmost confidence that a) I will never look at the Amanda Knox case the same way again, b) I am stunned by the incompetence of the Italian law enforcement and judicial system, and c) I never, never, never will buy property in Italy, nor do I want to spend extended vacations there either.

With Monster of Florence behind me, I decided I should re-read the entire Earth’s Children series in preparation for the latest installment which is due out next Tuesday. I have read and own the entire series, and yet I thorough scouring of my bookshelves has resulted in only one of the previous 5 books. That likely means that either a box was lost in the move, or mislabeled. In fact, those aren’t the only books that I’ve discovered were missing in the last two months... I suspect that I won’t feel entirely “moved in” until “move out” day, aka “the day I get shipped off to the old fart’s home against my will”. On the bright side, the public library has most in not all in their collection, so I’m not forced to buy again what I know I already have... somewhere...

* I adore my friends who happen to also be parents and grandparents. But children are energy drains for me, so my preference is to keep contact to a minimum. OTOH, if “W” doesn’t give me a chance to see her first grandbaby when he comes to town, I’ll be a cranky gal indeed.

2011-03-23T07:56:00.001-07:00

The Only Good Thing...

about our piece of BLEEP guest bath, “improved” by some past low-life owner or renter—or fly-by-night contractor hired by the above mentioned—who installed the shower controls backward (hot is cold and vice versa) which cannot be fixed without removing the entire wall, made the tub drain stopper a merely decorative object (note use of washcloth to achieve stopper-like function), installed Home Depot value line ceramic tile “grouted” with sheetrock spackle, and didn’t seat the toilet properly on the tile floor which caused it to leak through the ceiling into the downstairs bathroom in August ’09 just prior to the dark winter of ’09-’10 when Caper broke his leg and the water heater sprang a leak which cost us an additional significant chunk of money we hadn’t budgeted for*...

is the amazing glass doors that make the 5-10 minute wait of a cat lathered up with medicated shampoo to treat the blackheads on her backside, a noisy but relatively dry and stress free time for me (not for her, I’m sure.)

*We were subsequently able to successfully fix said toilet, water heater, and leg. Remaining bathroom bits will wait until money falls from the sky.

2011-03-14T04:34:00.000-07:00

Finished Object: Peat Harrow Socks

Socks for me, and I had hoped they would have been done before the end of winter. But with overnight temps at or above freezing, and daytime temps in the 50s and above, I think I missed the mark. On the other hand, I did sew the ends in about eight hours before the springtime move of setting the clocks forward one hour. Does that count? And on the plus-plus side, I finished them well under a year after I started them. For me (especially lately) that’s pretty amazing speed.

Specs:
Fortissima Colori Socka Color, in the garter rib by Charlene Schurch.

And no, I am not a super-matchy socks person, so the randomized color changes don’t stress me out in the slightest.

2011-03-08T08:49:00.001-08:00

Slices of Life

Monday I spent over three hours on the ultimate goal of getting cats A and B vaccinated, and ended with accomplishing something else entirely:

being urinated on by cat A as I was inserting her into the carrier (a first);
having cat B diagnosed with a bladder infection that I suspected her of having up until the cat A urine incident at which point I had both undergo urinary tests which ultimately meant that I left the vet's office with two un-vaccinated cats (due probably due as much to the stress on them as the stress to the vet), antibiotics for cat B, and a prescription for a veterinary formula of bladder-friendly food for cat B that (hopefully) won’t kill cat A as another vet-ish brand has nearly done several times in the past;
and ultimately buying none of the required food for cat B because the vet desk at PetsMart—where I was told to buy said prescription food—because they were (in)conveniently closed on Monday (and Sunday too), which was frustrating on many levels not the least of which is that it’s over sixty miles round-trip from my home and I didn’t want to have to make a second trip to town in two days.

Today on the other hand, I found I was able to buy the coveted food about a mile and a half from my home, and am watching a past episode of Undercover Boss for (extremely) valid business reasons that (conveniently) give me time to knit the gusset on my second Peat Harrow Sock.

It may be pouring rain outside, but comparatively I’m definitely living life on the sunny side today!

2011-03-02T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Verdict

Call #1 this morning. letting Unc know that his birthday present would be delivered today.

Unc: Oh, honey. You didn’t have to get me anything! I’ve had plenty of birthdays in my life.

Me: Maybe you could have mentioned that before I bought the yarn and spent the last 6-8 months knitting your socks!

This afternoon Unc called to let me know they arrived.

A) They fit perfectly (gunboat feet that man has).

B) They’re soft.

C) They’re comfortable.

D) They’re an attractive color and he likes the knit stitch.

E) He wants to know where I found the wrapping paper, and can I buy more to send him?

No problem. The store is holding their last three sheets back for me.