Dessert for breakfast and other things of joy in this absurdly stressful time

 

The world is a shit-show so let's all tear our eyes away from the news and latest catastrophe and share a few things that bring us joy. There should be a little something for most people who find their way to this blog. Please chime in in the comments if you have suggestions for things that are getting you through because I could use as much joy as I can drag over the threshold.

Culinary Joys

Fruit Desserts for Breakfast

Based on what I've been eating this month, it might be hard to believe that I don't really have a sweet tooth. I do, however, love the process of baking and I love summer desserts that are made from fruit whose season is fleeting. One of the benefits of having picky eater kids (yes, still...) is that there is usually left-over dessert that I can enjoy for breakfast. 

Lately, I've made these three recipes and they are all freaking fantastic as dessert but also can be enjoyed the next morning for breakfast:

Blueberry Cream Cheese Galette

(scroll down to the third recipe in the linked article)

The only change I made was to use my own single pie crust recipe and I put all the crushed blueberry mixture on the cream cheese to bake while the original recipe reserves half to have a mix of raw and cooked (why? I have no idea. The raw squished berries looked kind of gloppy and unappealing so I just tossed it all on the cream cheese layer.)

Texas Peach Cobbler

I used more peaches than the recipe called for, about 4 cups sliced, and I didn't peel them. I also served it with heavy cream rather than ice cream. Brown butter, peaches, cream, and absurdly easy.

Italian Lemon Almond Cake with Honey Lemon Peaches and Honey Whipped Cream

I followed this gluten-free recipe to a T and added my own spin by serving it with diced peaches that had 1/2 a lemon squeezed over them and a spoonful of honey stirred in and about a cup of heavy cream whipped up with another spoonful of honey.

(For those of you thinking, "Wait, this is the only recipe that's gluten free but not that long ago Kate said she was avoiding gluten," well, I have an update on that at the end of this post.)*

Visual Joys

I use Instagram differently from any other form of social media: it is where I curate my retreat from the world so there's a lot of joy there and not a lot of news. I follow recipe developers and knitting designers and people who post beautiful photos of far away places that allow me to dream of traveling again someday. Lately, I've been following lots of illustrators and two in particular have on-going projects that I look forward to and which bring me joy.

Watching a cephalopod poster come to life by artist Kelsey Oseid (@kelzuki)

Kelsey Oseid started a project last week to draw and paint 31 creatures from the order Cephalopoda (that's right! Octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, nautiluses!) to create one of her beautiful "Creatures of the Order" posters. It is simply magical to watch a sped up time-lapse video of a strawberry squid come to life. I already own a print of her Creatures of the Infraorder Cetacea (whales and dolphins) and am looking forward to purchasing a companion print when she completes this one. 

  

Transmundane Tuesdays prompts by artist Carson Ellis and the resulting submissions

Artist and illustrator Carson Ellis posts a prompt made up of 3 random phrases on a Tuesday and then people submit their creations. The results are absolutely stunning and create such a sense of shared humanity: there are professional artists who submit, there are little kids, there is everyone in between. I look forward to her curated display of the previous week's prompts and am contemplating becoming more than just an observer and trying my hand at it even though words, rather than visual art mediums, are more my thing. This week's prompts were: 1. has a long beard 2. has butterfly wings 3. wearing glasses. The prompts always surprise and send my mind down myriad paths that aren't our current reality. One of my past favorite weeks was 1. is a baby 2. is made out of mud 3. is wearing a helmet. You can follow her feed @carsonellis where she has stories featuring some of her favorites of the week's submissions, follow the hashtag #transmundanetuesdays where all the submissions for all of the weeks reside or follow a tag for each individual week: this week's #beardedandwingedinglasses has some absolutely stunning works in there (a papercut! an embroidery! one that is made, I kid you not, entirely from pressed flowers!)

Literary Joys

I've read a string of amazing books lately that have been balm to my soul in very different ways. If you are looking for some fiction to get you out of your present reality, maybe one of these will also appeal to you. I think all will make it onto my "best books of the year" list:

Deacon King Kong by James McBride
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Apeirogon by Colum McCann

My reviews are posted both on my Books Read in 2020 page and on my Goodreads account.

Fiber Joys

I'm knitting two sweaters right now that bring me great pleasure: not only are the patterns well-written, but the two yarns I'm using are so different and both so lovely.

First up is the Wave of Change Jacket by Denise Bayron that I'm knitting in a linen tape yarn called Kestrel. Linen isn't the easiest fiber to knit with because it has little to no stretch (I likened the last time I knit with linen to the sensation of knitting with dental floss...) but this tape yarn is way better: the construction means that there is a little bit of give to it and the pattern uses big enough needles that it won't be an endless project (I still have a linen t-shirt that I started 3 years ago and didn't finish--fine yarn, little needles and just really not enjoying the process. I'll finish it someday, but not someday soon!) The linen is cool in my hands on a hot day and has a lovely sheen.

Here is a picture of the stunning designer wearing her linen version (the pattern is also written for chunky wool and my friend Carol is making a version so I'll get to see my jacket's winter sibling!)

And I also just cast on to make this Bronwyn sweater:

I'm using different yarn than what is called for in the pattern, Kelbourne Woolens Germantown in the color Natural; it's less expensive than the yarn pictured above and has really lovely stitch definition that should make the cables pop! I'm thinking of this as practice since one of my kids requested that I make them a version of Chris Evans' Aran sweater from the film Knives Out (the link takes you to a New Yorker article that discusses said sweater. Yes, it is a phenomenon). I found this pattern which looks pretty damn close to the movie sweater. We'll see if I'm burned out on cables when I finish the Bronwyn sweater (this is a pattern that I'll need to pay close attention to so I don't criss when I should cross) or on fire and reluctant to stop!

Please share your joys in the comments. I'd love to know how other people are coaxing their brains out of daily panic mode!

__________

*The status of gluten.

So I started going gluten-free at the beginning of February and I felt better: less joint pain, less digestive upset. I kept it up for a good 4 months while the world went fucking nuts. And then I decided to see what would happen if I tried gluten again. I made a batch of our favorite pasta al limone (fantastic recipe) and had a big bowl. And I didn't notice any difference. I went a few days, then tried gluten again with a big slab of my dad's homemade bread (he's an amazing bread baker.) Again, no difference. Huh. So what was going on that I had felt better when I went GF? A bunch of things I think. Placebo effect most likely contributed: I had felt helpless in the face of pain and discomfort and felt better because I was doing something. That feeling was probably compounded during the helplessness of the initial COVID-19 shut down when everything felt out of control (not that everything is hunky dory now, but at least we have more information so I don't feel quite so afraid of everything.) I also made some substitutions while GF that were probably pretty healthy: eating more whole grain brown rice and cornmeal instead of items made from white flour probably helped out both in the digestive realm and in controlling inflammation. I also frankly had the time and energy to focus on getting good at GF baking and welcomed the distraction from endless worrying. I am glad that I learned a lot about GF cooking and particularly baking since it led me to invest in ingredients that I didn't usually have around and to learn how to make safe, delicious foods for my GF friends. Going forward there will probably be some featured GF recipes here, but not exclusively GF. 

I (almost) finished something!

Last night, while watching Little Miss Sunshine (my pick for a perfect mother's day movie), I finished knitting the final sleeve on my SiMPLE SOMETHiNG sweater. 

Ta da! 

This was a really fun knit: the construction is simple but the use of doubled sock yarn means that you get to make lots of choices about which color to bring in and when to change colors or add a little pop. If you are at all interested in making this sweater, I urge you to go to Ravelry to check out the original and the many unique color choices that people have come up with. There are so many stunning versions. Mine is on the subdued side, with gray and cream and pink as the main colors (I used this as a stashbuster and had the most of these colors already) and I striped it rather than attempting an ombre shading; I am really tempted to try to make one with darker and bolder colors someday.

The sweater is shaped a lot like my favorite sweatshirt and because it uses primarily superwash wool sock yarn, it should be about as soft and comfortable. It'll also be pretty low-maintenance in the care/washing department. I have plenty of sweaters made of more delicate fibers, so it's kind of a relief to have a sweater that can take a little abuse now and then and not fall apart or look like crap.

Of course, all those color changes means there are lots of ends to weave in, so it'll probably be properly finished and blocked in, say, a week if I cue up the podcasts and just make myself do it.

This is the wrong side of the sweater and you can see, I have my work cut out for me. Luckily I don't mind weaving in ends; I'm just a little impatient because we're having a cold snap right now and this would be very cozy to wear.

Of course, I still have plenty of sock yarn left so I'm thinking that maybe the next way to use some of it up should be with this Tin Can Knits Snap Hat pattern that uses FOUR strands of sock yarn at a time!

Brushing up

I've been brushing up an old skill lately--namely contorting my body into the physical position that allows me to knit and read at the same time. The first few times I tried recently to revive this skill my right hand fell asleep. Then I encountered a new challenge as the 55 lb dog climbed in my lap (she's a heat seeking missile) and complicated things. I had to try and prop the book on her head and not poke her with a needle. But I finally got the hang of it and so was able to finish a sweater and read a really good YA novel. And the dog got a lot of loving.

You'd think that my knitting would have picked up because of the lovely new yarn shop that opened in town (and where I occasionally work). Spun has beautiful yarns and is an inspiring place to spend some time and satisfy the fiber cravings. But Fiona requested that I knit her this sweater in mid-November and Spun didn't open until December 1st.

Owls by Kate Davies knit in Lion Brand Chunky Wool-Ease in Silver Gray. 

And look--the pre-teen is smiling! That's pretty notable these days...

The significance of her asking me to knit for her cannot be understated since she has pretty much refused my offers of knitwear for the past few years (though she will occasionally still wear the fish hats that I made.) I didn't want her to change her mind so I rushed out and bought yarn at the big box craft store and cranked this baby out in washable acrylic/wool mix. (If I'd been a bit more patient and waited for Spun to open, I probably would have still bought an acrylic mix--like the affordable and soft Berroco Comfort Chunky that Spun carries--because my kids are crap at taking care of their clothes and I fully expect to find this sweater crushed in a corner under Fiona's bed...no premium fibers for them until they learn that a sweater is not a dust rag.) The pattern was easy and speedy and fun to knit. There are only two tiny seams to sew up at the end, but there are 36 (damn) buttons to sew on for the owl's eyes.

And the book I read while knitting the end of the sweater is this one:

I loved Patrick Ness's previous books, particularly The Knife of Never Letting Go, and loved this one, too. The Rest of Us Just Live Here has a clever concept that, with a different author, could have been irritating. The beginning of each chapter has a brief summary of a parallel tale--one that will be familiar to YA readers (particular fun is poked at Twilight with numerous references to vampires, but the same could be said for Harry Potter.) Pretty much any novel that has a "chosen one" aspect and some form of paranormal activity is referenced in these brief bursts. Then the rest of the chapter shifts to four (mostly) normal kids and what it is like to witness weird stuff happening but be more focused on real world problems like family dynamics, crushes, what comes after high school and particular mental challenges. The main character, Mikey, suffers from OCD and his struggles with it make for some really poignant writing which Ness manages to make more interesting that the weird blue light and enchanted deer that keep appearing in the background and that are the problems of the chosen ones (not our main characters.) The satire never dominates but is gentle and appreciative and eventually does end up intertwining with the paths of the four main characters. It was a really lovely read and one which I couldn't predict what would happen which was a welcome change from a lot of the recent YA fiction I've read.

And now I need to go do some yoga stretches to straighten out my posture before contorting again for the next yarn/book project!

knitting, or not!

The other day my girl critter checked out a book from the library that had a load of knitting patterns for her kind of creatures, namely bugs, squid and other creatures that creep most people out. At first I anticipated many hours of fiddling with tiny needles trying to craft these creatures, and then I took a look at the patterns and realized that it has been so long since I knit that I honestly could look the kid in the eye and tell her I couldn't make heads or tails of the instructions.

So I dodged that bullet. But it did get me thinking, what the heck happened to that sweater I started, oh, about 2 years ago?

I dug around a little bit and at the back of a closet in a knitting bag I found this:

That looks to me like a sweater that is totally done except for one cuff. Maybe 8-10 rows of knitting max and a few buttons to sew on.

Seriously, if I had made just a tiny bit more effort I could have been wearing this thing for the last two years. Pathetic.

I know my knitting decreased dramatically when I stopped attending a whole lot of meetings, meetings in which I knit so that I didn't go crazy. I decided that those meetings, while excellent for my knitting productivity, were not so good for my mental health so I stopped going to them.

But hey, one of those evenings when I'm skipping a meeting (yes, I still write them on my calendar in case I have some burst of happy-Kate-ness that I decide to expend not on my family but on attending a meeting...) I think I should probably finish up that cuff. If I can remember how.

Another hat

For those days when a fish-on-my head is not the look I'm going for, I made this Floppy Fair Isle hat. It was really fun to knit, I made it all from yarn in my stash (which gives me a thrifty thrill) and it is nice and loose, so doesn't create horrible hat head. I only used four colors of yarn, rather than the five called for in the pattern because the other worsted weight yarns in my stash clashed, but I think the colors and patterns turned out fine with four.

This hat works great for me, but I have a big head and thick, curly hair and I can imagine this hat being way too big and sliding over the faces or off the back of the heads of people with a smaller noodle circumference or who have fine, silky hair. As the name says, it is quite floppy, so much so that Brian commented that it would be a useful hat to wear when produce shopping in case you need a place to store an extra cantaloupe.

I'd love to make another one of these for someone, but need to find a big-headed, big-haired recipient who is fond of cantaloupe.

The pattern can be downloaded here.

Dignity, always dignity*

 

The fish hat strikes again!

It serves its designated purpose--keeping me warm but not crushing the curls.  And I like to think it lends its wearer a certain elegant je ne sais quoi.

If you're feeling shy, it can help with that too.

* from Singing in the Rain, my favorite movie when I was 10.

New problem: hat head

Since I filled up a trash can at my hairdressers with the bulk of my hair recently (quick way to lose 5 lbs) I have felt the liberation of the short haired.

I'm loving the short hair but, with the newly nippy weather, have now encountered a new problem: hat head. It's not something you have to worry about with a ponytail, but with short curls that are kind of wiry in the texture department, putting on a hat is like sticking my head into a weird hair mould--pointy hat=pointy head, bowl hat=bowl head, etc.

So I've been on a quest for a knitting pattern for a loose warm hat that won't smash my curls or make me look like I have a muffin on my head.

I knit this one (pattern is available for free on Ravelry if you are a member):
It treats the curls well, but isn't very warm due to the loose knit and the shape (it only barely covers the tops of my ears.)
If I pull it down over my forehead, my head looks like a big moss covered boulder. Not really the look I'm going for. So this will do for a brisk fall day, but I hear that a blizzard is on the way and this hat does not have the chops to keep my noggin warm.

So I also cast on to make myself a fish hat like the girl critter's. I tried hers on and it is pretty loose but able to be pulled down low to cover most of my head. And I don't look like a muffin-head; I look like a fish is swallowing my head (but that's intentional, right?)
The colors are all wonky in the photo; I'm making it in the subdued tones of grass green, dusty blue and black. Because subdued is really the quality I'm going for with a fish on my head...(really I chose them because they were a) in the stash bin b) all wool so hopefully warm c) passed the squish-up-against-my-forehead-not-itchy test).

Does anyone have ideas for other patterns that might work for non-curl compression? Please send me any ideas because I have a feeling I'll be in some situations this winter where a fish might not be totally appropriate...

Putting on the pink

The days have been gray and there is a chill in the air. Autumn is definitely here and I need a jolt of color to keep me perky. In the last few days I've been drawn to hot pink. This isn't a color I usually embrace--I'm more of a red and orange type--but it has felt good and energizing in a transitional sort of way.

I've begun knitting a pair of wool socks from some stash wool that I acquired about 4 years ago.
I'm doing them toe-up, using the short row toe instructions that I found in Socks from the Toe-Up. This isn't the first time I tried toe-up socks; in fact this very wool was used in my first attempt and ripped out when it looked funky. But the short-row toe worked great. I'm not really using a pattern--just ribbing the top and keeping the sole smooth and I haven't decided what kind of heel I'll do yet. But it is very nice to have something so cheerful to knit and so portable; way better than wrestling with a big sweater when I go out (sweaters are better for in-front-of-the-dvd player knitting).

Yesterday I spread the pink into the kitchen by making 3 pints of pickled red onions.
I was going to do Orangette's recipe, but then I happened upon David Lebovitz's much simpler lazy-person's version and went with that. Mine aren't quite as brilliantly pink as his--some of my Tantre torpedo red onions were almost white on the inside so there wasn't as much pigment to seep out into the brine. But they should still be a cheerful accompaniment to the burgers I'm planning on making soon.

Crafty Question

I need some help here people. I discovered an amazing sausage throw rug on the internet that I can't afford and want to try and reproduce before October 7th, the date of Brian's birthday. Or if it was a really labor intensive process, it could be pushed back to Christmas.

Actually there are 4 different rugs. The Ham Sausage is pretty, but since I've never eaten Ham Sausage (Biershinken), it doesn't appeal quite so much as the others.
Aesthetically the Blood Sausage appeals to me most. (I've eaten British blood pudding sausage with big fried English breakfasts and liked it well enough, but I've never tried the German version):
Culinarily, I'm a Soprassata girl through and through (and I also think it is quite attractive):
I don't mind a taste of real Mortadella now and then but it doesn't strike me as "meaty" enough, though I do think this one is mighty pretty with its little floating bits of green pistachio and peppercorns:
So help me out, people. Is there anyway I could make one of these? I remember doing a rug-hook kit when I was about 9 years old (a hideous picture of an orange and brown mushroom on a lime green and yellow background--ah the colors of the 70s!), but I think that might look too fuzzy and fuzzy meat is not a good thing, I think. Maybe I could knit and felt something like this then sew it to a canvas backing? Actually what I think would probably work best is felted crochet (at which I suck, but hey this would be an inspiring way to get over my hangups). I saw this amazing crochet portrait in Craftzine and the technique looks adaptable to meat products.

I think I'll have to face down my crochet fears sooner or later because I'd really like to make Monster Crochet's awesome bacon scarf. You can knit it using intarsia, but the good thing about the crochet version is the back looks as good as the front, which cannot be said for a knit version.

In a more general note, crafty goodness has not been hovering around this household. In fact, I'm in a crafty funk. My knitting projects are not keeping my attention--I'm part way through two different items and have been ignoring both because I'm tempted to rip them out. I haven't started the Gathered Pullover even though I bought the pattern because of the color of my yarn--knitting with dark purple seems like it would be pleasant in, say, November. But the color turns me off in the middle of summer. About all I've done on the crafty front is a couple of lame beading projects with the girl critter. So I'm hoping some meaty craft project will get me going again.

a forced pause

I had been having so much fun knitting this:
Until I did this:
I know--it looks pretty contained now. I dare not show under the bandage for fear of causing nausea of extreme proportions. There is a chunk of my finger tip missing thanks to poor attention to my chefs knife while chopping scallions last night. I dabbed/poured some liquid bandage over it in an effort to help my overwhelmed platelets and stop the constant drip of blood. (That stuff stings like hell, let me tell you; I was able to track exactly where the nerve that starts in my finger tip is located all the way up my arm and where it connects to my spinal column because as I put the stuff on the entire thing felt like it was on fire.) Blood bubbled up under the liquid bandage and then the stuff hardened and I went around with a big lump of blackening, drying blood hanging off my finger that Brian got squeamish just looking at. But at least it meant no trip to the ER for stitches. Right now I feel my pulse throb-throb-throbbing in the missing wedge and my typing? Ha--I'm back to pecking at the keyboard with my right index and left middle finger. And screwing up royally.

So I'm a little pissed at myself since the injury is messing with my writing and cooking and also means having to take a forced pause in the above knitting project which has got to be the best stash buster ever. You can see the pattern and read about the inspiration here and if you are a Ravelry member you can see the gorgeous completed versions in the project gallery. It a great way to use up ends of skeins and those stray balls of yarn that you aren't quite sure where they came from but also that you don't have the heart to get rid of. Stuff that looks dull as dishwater when by itself suddenly becomes interesting when combined with other scraps.

Fish hat

You'd think that wearing a fish on your head would just about guarantee a smile from a kid.
But my girl critter has been working on her face of gloom.
I had to jump around like a monkey to get her to crack, but I finally succeeded.
She almost looks cuter from behind. Which is good, because now that she's 6, apparently the age of turning away from mom has commenced.
Pattern info:
The fish hat is from this awesome knitty pattern: Fish Hat [Dead or Alive?] It was really fast and fun to knit and I got to use up a bunch of stashed scrap yarn. I'll probably be making one for every member of my family.

Loving Ravelry

It took me a while to get into Ravelry, but now I'm finding it more seductive in the time-wasting department than even my Bloglines feeds.

It has a fantastic database that allows for all kinds of searches: by yarn weight, by pattern type, by just-about-any-search-term-you-can-come-up-with. You can read reivews of yarns before you buy them and find out which are evil and pill almost instantly or that split while you knit and drive you to distraction. And the pattern galleries have helped me make some decisions--you can see what the sweater looks like on real bodies, read about alterations people made, and find out if the pattern was well-written or made people swear a blue-streak.

Thanks to Ravelry, I have FINALLY found a pattern to use up my huge stash of Rowan Biggy Print Yarn:
Unlike many sweaters made with superbulky yarn, the people wearing the resulting sweaters in the Ravelry gallery did not look like they were drowning in wool. I have a tendency to get claustrophobic in bulky yarn sweaters and feel like I'm being swallowed up by a not-entirely-friendly sheep who wants its coat back.

I'm still searching through the Ravelry database for something to do with all the Swish Worsted yarn that I bought to make a wrap sweater (got 3/4 of the way done and realized that I look like I'm wearing a bathrobe when I wear wrap sweaters and ripped it out). I might divvy up the yarn and make this gathered pullover for me and some sort of sweater for Fiona who has commented lately on my selfishness as a knitter.

Still relevant!

You might think that a sweater jacket made of chunky yarn would be irrelevant in April.

You would be wrong:
This is the view of the back deck. 6 inches of this crap fell on Sunday night and led to a snow day for the critters on Monday. In April! The snow was like wet concrete and broke some branches off of the large lilac (which was already budding) in the yard. I had already packed away the critters' winter boots in the attic and had to go rummage around and retrieve them. Grrrrr. It had better melt before Friday when the kids' spring break begins because I want to spend as much of next week as possible out of doors.

But the shit-load of snow was a motivator. I finally faced my zipper fear and finished my Urban Aran Cardigan. And I think it turned out pretty well.
The best decision I made was to double the length of the collar, fold it over and sew it down on the inside. This has given it enough heft to stand up properly and not flop outwards and look messy:
I got the idea for the collar trick from this zipper installation tutorial. I didn't actually follow her method for zipper installation though. I ended up basting the two fronts together using red scrap yarn. Then I pinned and basted the edges of the zipper to the cardigan (using hot pink thread so it would be easy to see when removing). Then I pulled out the red scrap yarn and sewed the sweater as close to the zipper as possible. I did all the sewing by hand because my sewing machine and I do not have a very trusting relationship. It took a little experimenting to find the best distance for the seam which would cover as much of the zipper as possible without letting the wool get caught in the teeth. Then I went back, pulled out the hot pink basting and sewed down the edge of the zipper (with black thread).

A knit buttonhole band would be much faster to accomplish, but I do really like the feel of the zipper with this particular sweater. It makes it more like a lightweight jacket. And, unfortunately, it looks like I'll get some wear out of this particular garment before packing it away for the summer.

Writing mitts

I actually finished something! OK, it is something small. I made a pair of fingerless mitts for writing. My office gets a little nippy in the winter and my hands get cold easily so I'm hoping that these will help me keep my butt in my writing chair.

I picked a colorway I thought would cheer me up when it is gloomy outside and psych me into thinking that excellent writing would naturally flow from such cheerfully clad hands. They took less than once skein of Claudia Hand Painted Yarns fingering weight merino in colorway Summer Rose

I adapted the pattern from this one by Weaverknits, just made them a little shorter in the wrist and added some 2 x 2 rib around the edges so they don't roll. I like this pattern a lot more than the one other pair of gloves I have knit mostly because of the thumb shaping. It's a nice contour and keeps my thumbs from getting claustrophobic. And now I'm tempted to try the Neiman sweater pattern that Weaverknits had in the Fall 2007 Knitty.

A contoured thumb is a happy thumb.

It may officially be Spring now, but the weather decided that it would welcome my gloves to the neighborhood by snowing this afternoon...so yeah, those of you who had wet flakes slapping you in the face this afternoon can blame me. Just be thankful that I still haven't finished the Urban Aran cardigan (still frozen with terror at the zipper insert moment) which would have probably called forth a blizzard.

Zipper advice

I've always been freaked out by putting a zipper on something I've knitted. Zippers don't stretch, sweaters do. I don't ever sew with jersey knits for the same reason.

So I "finished" my Urban Aran yesterday:
Before we get all giddy that a piece of very warm knit wear actually was completed in the season in which it can be worn, let's take a closer look at that collar.

Uh oh. Wonky collar-zipper shape.

So it isn't "finished" after all. I've got to re-do the neck since it is both too baggy and warped.

I'd like it to look more like this. Or this.

Here's what I think I need to do:
1. Get a different zipper. Plastic. The inside of the metal zipper scratches my chin when it is zipped all the way up. Ouch.
2. Rip out the collar. Re-knit it a bit smaller by picking up fewer stitches. And don't continue the cable pattern into the collar because it makes it flex funny, especially with the zipper.

I noticed that the other people who have made this have used 2-way zippers. I don't think I need to do this because I don't really plan to unzip from the bottom. And I'd have to mail order the zipper.

Any advice from experienced zipper installers before I embark on my knitting revisions? Is there anything else that I should change that I haven't thought of yet?

Heh heh heh

I'm feeling good this morning after hearing that McCain has given up on Michigan. And my sister sent me this link to a hysterical Sarah Silverman video about the election called The Great Schlep. My favorite moment in it? When she compares "Yo!" and "Oy!" because Jews read from right to left.

And lowering my political anxiety means that I'm not expending a nutso amount of energy worrying and can instead focus on writing and food and some knitting. So here's an update:

WRITING
The writing is still going really well. It's pretty cool to sit down each day and be able to see and feel the shape of the whole book--it's like the book is a crossword puzzle I know I can complete, and I just have to keep plugging away and filling in the little boxes. Except that makes it sound tedious and it is actually really fun. I'm also fleshing out some of the supporting characters and liking them more and more as they develop.

FOOD
On the cooking front, I have a few plans. I have to try this recipe for Deconstructed Turkish Dumplings that was in the NYTimes food section recently. And there is another NYTimes recipe for Zucchini Egg Lemon Soup that I want to make before zucchini season is over. If I make it with yellow summer squash I might even be able to trick the small critter (who loves basic Avgolemeno soup) into eating it.

I'm also going through a little Korean food phase right now. This was triggered by a visit to the improbably named JC Rich restaurant. JC Rich is where Steve's Lunch used to be, but unlike Steve's, where you could get diner food like eggs and hash browns in addition to Korean food, JC Rich is all Korean. It is a happy discovery in the cheap/campus Korean category; far better than the (also deceptively named) Coffee Break Korean restaurant a few doors down on South University.

(I just did a little Googling and apparently the JC in the name stands for Jesus Christ. And someone noted that there are Korean translated bibles next to the salt shakers. Frankly, I was too busy woofing down the food to notice or care.)

Next time I go, I'll bring my camera. Brian and I went there on our gym/date night and I got my favorite, Dolsot Bi Bim Bop (Brian had spicy squid) and I thought it was really good--there was a wider variety of vegetables than you usually get at the cheap places (shitake mushrooms, spinach, cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts) to mix with the egg and beef. It came with little banchan portions of bean sprouts, pickled daikon and turnip kim chi that they refilled often. The portions were insane and if I had got regular Bi Bim Bop I might have eaten less (that is to say, a reasonable amount), but I love the crunchy rice crust that forms on the bottom of the stone bowl and so I ate my way to get to it. That's my excuse for gluttony and I'm sticking with it.

You'd think that eating so much would satiate my appetite for Korean but you'd be wrong! This week I made a trip to Manna International Foods/Korean grocery (on Broadway) and bought some supplies for home treats--a quantity of fresh kim chi (I love seeing the gallon sized jars in their coolers), mung bean pancake mix, some thin sliced beef for bulgogi and lovely vermicelli noodles for Chap Chae, which I haven't made in way too long. I have a quantity of scallions that are finally ready from my garden so I've been making kim chi scallion pancakes at every opportunity--I even had them for breakfast this morning and they go well with black coffee.

KNITTING
And knitting wise, I'm working my way up the sleeves for my Urban Aran. I've added a half-hour of knitting time to my week by signing the smaller critter up for a Little Ninja's Karate class. And the smartest thing I have done with this sweater is knitting the two cardigan fronts and the two sleeves at the same time. It is totally worth the hassle of untangling the double balls of yarn not to have to remember the changes I inevitably end up making to the pattern when working on the second sleeve or front. This may be the first really symmetrical sweater I knit...

A return to fiber

Now that there is some cool air moving back in to my surroundings, I'm willing to immerse myself up to my armpits in woolly goodness again. My serving-as-a-cat-bed for the summer Urban Aran Cardigan has been retrieved from the felines in time for the restarting of my son's piano lessons (also known as my guaranteed one-hour of knitting time.)

And I figure I really should get going on it since there are a bevy of new knitting books at the library that I've requested and will be receiving in the near future. Thanks to Ed, who taught me how to create an RSS feed for any new knitting book that my library enters into its catalog, I get first notice on acquisitions and can get my request in at the front of the line. I usually get the books within a month or two of them being added to the collection.

Coming my way in the near future are:

Boutique Knits





Closely Knit





Inspired to Knit





Knit So Fine





Knitted Critters for Kids to Wear





Continuous Cables




and

Alt Fiber





Based on my judgmental perceptions of the covers, I'd say I'm most attracted to Closely Knit because the sleeve on the cover looks like something I'd wear. I'm guessing that Inspired to Knit and Boutique Knits won't be my cup of tea based on the quantity of lipstick that the cover models are wearing (because you know all about that inverse relationship between lipstick quantity and knitwear wear-ability, right?) Knitted Critters looks promising for the smallest member of our household who pretends to be an animal for most of her waking hours, but the photo on the cover looks like the hat doesn't fit well. One of my pet peeves is the number of kids' hats that sacrifice fit for cuteness. If the hat doesn't stay on, no kid will wear it and thus your effort has been wasted. (I learned this the hard way...) And I don't have much of an opinion on Alt Fiber or Continuous Cables since the pictures of their covers are a little too small for me to make out.

Endings

I finished the Branching Out scarf for Fiona's music teacher, Angela, just in time for her last class (sneef) yesterday. I put a row of crocheted loops at the ends, just to soften the thing (and to prove to myself that I can still crochet a loop which is about the only thing I can crochet).
It looks lovely on Angela--I could never wear that color. Fuschia and I are not a happy combination.

Today was Fiona's last day of preschool (all these "lasts" which I know will turn into a load of "firsts" when she starts Kindergarten in the fall) and I decided I needed a little comfort to deal with all this parenting emotion. Today was my writing day and luckily I had some left over molasses cookie dough in the fridge so I only had to take 5 minutes to roll out some balls, roll the balls in granulated sugar and put a little blob of raspberry jam in the middle.
These are really terrific cookies that I don't make often enough. They are perfect with a cup of tea in the afternoon--a little spicy a little sweet, but complementary rather than competitive with the flavor of the tea. And since I'm dwelling a little on parenting in my own life, I worked on the family dynamics of my main character today. I didn't manage to integrate the cookies and tea into the story yet, but give me time...

Molasses Cookies
recipe from some college friend's mother who used to mail us these cookies...

3/4 C butter, softened
1 C brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 C molasses
2 1/4 C flour
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 t ground cloves
1 t ground ginger
1 t cinnamon

granulated sugar
raspberry preserves

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cream together butter and sugar. Add egg, then molasses. Sift together dry ingredients then mix into butter mixture.

Put a little granulated sugar in a bowl. Pinch off a blob of dough and roll into a sphere and then roll in the sugar. Put your sugared spheres on a lined baking sheet.

Now you have a choice of how thick and chewy you want your cookies to be--for thick cookies which are a little chewy and a little cakey use your thumb to make a dent in the middle. For thinner cookies that are a little crisp and a little chewy, use the bottom of a glass to squash the spheres to about 1/4" thick. Then make a wee dent with a finger. In the dents, put a scant 1/2 t of raspberry preserves. (The ones in the above photo used the bottom of the glass method; the previous batch used the thumb squash. I like the texture of the bottom of the glass cookie a little better, but you can put a little more jam in the thumb squashed ones and I like as much jam as I can get...)

Pop in the oven and check in 8 minutes. They might need a minute or two more depending on the thickness and size of your spheres. You want the edges to begin to brown (which isn't so easy to see on a dark brown cookie...) but try not to overcook or they get a little dry and loose the chewy factor.

Cool on a rack. Serve with tea.

Fiberly progress

This past week I tried two new recipes and both turned out "meh". Both were consumed when they first came out of the oven, but the leftovers have been ignored and will, most likely, get dumped. I made this pseudo-cassoulet and it was acceptable, but not memorable. And then I baked these spicy ginger muffins with currants and toasted pecans and they too, did not live up to their promise (the baking time seemed way off and they turned out pretty dry. Dry is not a good quality for gingerbread.)

So I have quit the kitchen and retreated into fiber-ville. I got a little of the completion satisfaction I was craving by finishing a baby sweater before said baby is walking:
It's the Elizabeth Zimmerman February Baby Sweater pattern (Lion Brand Cotton Ease yarn) that a lot of on-line knitters seem to love. I'm glad I finished it but didn't find it so transporting a pattern that I feel I have to make it again and again. Sure it's nice not to have to sew a lot of seams when you are done with the knitting, but really, the seams on any baby sweater aren't such a big deal to be a deterrent to me picking a particular pattern.

I've also plugged away at another Branching Out scarf that I'm making for my kids' music teacher. Ian started going to her classes when he was 18 months old and Fiona started at birth (coming along with her brother). This spring finds Fiona and I taking our last class with Angela and to say we will miss her is an understatement. Out of gratitude for all the stages and phases she has (patiently) seen us through, I thought I'd make her a good-bye present.
This one is made out of a double strand of kid silk haze and some other black and purple silk yarn that I found in my stash.

The wrap cardigan I've been making is now starting to look, well, wrap-ish:
And I still have the Urban Aran cardigan to work on, though now that the weather has turned warm and this one is knit in a chunky yarn, the soonest I'll get to wear it is next autumn:
I'mrelieved that my fibers have been treating me well when my skill in the kitchen is at a low point, but here's to hoping that I can turn the latter around and consumption of fiber of the vegetal variety becomes a little more pleasurable...