Bumpy cables

Because I have the attention span of a flea and because I got a really good deal on the yarn, I started yet another knitting project, this time making bumpy cables:
At first I thought the bumpy (seed stitched) cables were kind of creepy, like they had sprouted pimples or something. But I'm growing fond of them. So far I've messed up the cables and had to redo them twice, which is a pretty good run for me. I don't often make cabled stuff because I don't have that attention-to-detail sort of personality and will knit along happily and then look back and realized I've twisted one cable (usually way at the bottom) the wrong way. Much cursing then ensues.

So I'm trying to train myself to stop and look at what I've done fairly regularly so that I catch mistakes before I've gone on too far.

I do really love this yarn--it isn't some fancy schmancy fiber--just Paton's Merino that I got on sale at Joann.com. But it is soft and springy and very red. I'm making the sweater pictured below (I bought the pattern at Elann):
and yarn for the entire sweater cost $42 (and that includes shipping--the yarn was on sale for $5 for a 100 gm ball and I had a 20% off coupon). And for once, I am actually using the yarn that is called for in a pattern and I'm following the pattern rather than making lots of changes. I was quite tempted to do some modifications, particularly to all the seed stitch panels, but finally decided that a) I kinda like the pattern as it is written and b) I'm sick of dealing with all my "I'm smarter than the pattern" blunders (see all the damn mistakes I made on that Ribby cardigan). It is humbling, but true--I am not smarter than the pattern. So I'm actually going to try and complete this sweater by (gasp) following the rules!

Undies in a bunch vs. Knickers in a twist

Depending on which side of the Atlantic you are from I've either got my undies in a bunch or my knickers in a twist about Zadie Smith's new book On Beauty.

Unfortunately, after reading this book, I don't think Smith would recognize the incongruity of an American uttering the latter phrase.

I'm hardly in the first to comment that Zadie Smith has a tin ear for American English (though I didn't know about the problem before reading the book)--go look at Blue Pencil's wonderful post dissecting all the mistakes in just the first few pages. Also, there are a number of readers' reviews on the book's Amazon page that detail other inaccuracies.

Shall I tell you what triggered my editorial instinct? Not food mistakes (for once) but clothing, an area in which I am hardly an expert since I live in jeans and t-shirts (a friend expressed surprise recently when I wore a shirt with buttons). But even such a non-clothes horse knows that you don't call a turtleneck a polo-neck and a tanktop a vest when you are writing in the point of view of an American character. Another gaff that had me snorting with laughter was when a group of rappers was offered "a crate of beer" rather than a case of beer after a performance.

Smith's editors should be scolded in a big way for letting this many mistakes through; Deb (aka Blue Pencil) pointed out that Smith thanks numerous editors and copy editors all of whom should be dope-slapping each other to bits now.

The inaccuracies aren't merely linguistic--Smith may have spent some time at Radcliff, but she has no clue how the American university system works. There were so many red flags that yanked me out of the story. It would be too tedious for me to list them all (though please do feel free to e-mail me and we can have a big old bitch session together). I am still wracking my brains as to why Smith set this at an American university and not a British one. I don't see how this book was improved by hauling it to this side of the Atlantic and I can imagine it having far fewer errors if it was set in an environment that Smith knows better.

And now, on to the actual story. In the moments that I was able to turn a blind eye to all the distracting errors I tried hard to get into this book. Smith says in her opening note that the book was "inspired by a love of E. M. Forster" and that she wanted to "repay the debt with hommage." Oh dear. I love Howards End and clearly Smith does too, but I don't think that I should re-write it.

Unlike Forster, almost none of Smith's characters are complex or sympathetic--most are pretty despicable. The only character who did retain the subtlety of the original was Charlene Kipps, the mother figure based on Mrs. Wilcox. Unfortunately, she also appears on the fewest number of pages. Forster manages to make his characters have unappealing sides to their personalities--no one wants to go cuddle up with Mr Wilcox and one could accuse Helen Wilcox of being bullheaded--but they are not so caricatured that one would dismiss them outright. But spend an hour in a room with Monty Kipps or Zora Belsey? No thank you.

Also, when does paying hommage to one's favorite book merely revert to laziness? Smith lifts scenes almost word for word from the original. The two most glaring examples are the scene with the Kipps family after the mother's death in which they reject a handwritten note bequeathing a family painting to Kiki (in the original Mrs. Wilcox writes that she would like Margaret to have Howards End) and the scene at the railway station in which Mrs. Kipps wants to take Kiki to see a painting at another house and is intercepted by her family (Mrs. Wilcox wants to take Margaret to Howards End and similarly is intercepted by her family). Reading these two scenes made me extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed for the author (Smith, not Forster). Did she really have nothing new to add? Was it necessary to "borrow" every aspect of the scenes?

One reason I'm spending so much time dissecting my reaction to this book is that I really loved Smith's first book, White Teeth, which dealt with race, class, and gender politics in a way I can only describe as graceful and light (despite the weightiness of the topics). Her characters in that book were so warm and alive and complicated. Now I want to go re-read both White Teeth and Howards End to rid my mind of this impression of Smith and to reclaim Forster's story from Smith's version, which unfortunately became more parody than hommage for me.

Note to self

Staying at home and indulging in, say, $900 worth of massages, wine and babysitters, would be a better way to get through winter (and the school break) than to spend that money on airfare.

We had a dickens of a trip to visit Brian in AZ (he's on a two-week work trip). Silly us, we thought it would be "fun" to break up the daddy-drought and go someplace sunny for a few days of Ian's school break. Both kids got sick (again). Ian was screaming in pain from pressure in his ear on Saturday (we drove to the top of a small mountain and the change in pressure triggered it) and then Saturday night (and Sunday night and last night too) Fiona spiked a fever. She's a mess--hasn't been eating, won't take Tylenol (every night she and I have a massive wrestling match to get her fever lower including sticking her in a bathtub of cold water--you could hear the screams for miles--but at least after that she took her damn medicine.)

To add to the "pleasure factor" of our (ha!) vacation, our flight out on Wednesday evening was delayed 4 hours--they boarded us, pushed away from the gate, went back to the gate, got us off the plane, put us back on the same plane, pushed away from the gate again, went back again, got us off the plane and then finally put us on a different plane. All after the kids' bedtimes. We finally got to AZ at 4 AM (their time--6 AM here) and Ian was so exhausted he promptly threw up.

Yes, the sun was shining and both my kids looked like little moles squinting up at the sky and complaining about how bright it was. There were moments between bouts of sickness where things went ok--a trip to a science museum, a 4 hour playground visit where the kids were overjoyed to be playing outside--but all in all, a vacation I'd prefer to forget.

God it feels good to be back home where they can scream without waking up an entire hotel and there are lots of videos with which to placate them.

Beverage news and memories

You may (or may not) recall that last October Ami and John brought over three affordable bottles of wine for us to drink and decide which one they should buy a case of for their bonfire.

I have some excellent news: my favorite of the three they brought
is on sale at a ridiculously cheap price at Arbor Farms. They have it for $4.99 a bottle plus you can get another 10% off if you buy 6 or more bottles which makes it $4.50 a bottle. That's cheaper than some bottled water! So I went and bought a case and now we have a house red that will help us get through the rest of the gloomy months. It's a punchy Syrah, not terribly complex, but able to stand up to common fare like, spaghetti with red sauce or, Mexican chocolate cupcakes...

On another beverage front, Jam Faced's recent post about tea got me thinking of my own addiction. Go look at his post for a beautiful photo of what looks like my ideal cup of tea. It is in a lovely bone china cup, to start with. It also looks strong and milky and has a perfect tea biscuit to nibble on while you sip.

The photo and post hit a raw nerve since for the past two weeks I've been out of my favorite tea and have been trying to find a substitute. Unfortunately I'm addicted to Peet's English Breakfast blend which I can only get via mail order. I order it a pound at a time (and a pound is a LOT of tea) but somehow I thought I was on my second to last tin rather than the last one so I went through a period in limbo land. If I was more organized I would have placed the order right away but in between the chaos and, oh, let's see, the chaos of my life with the two rug rats I would forget daily to order the tea and then remember daily at tea time when I was faced with inadequate substitute brown brews. Finally I propped the empty tin on the keyboard of the computer so I would remember to place the order the next time I got on-line.

Thankfully, this week the tea arrived and this afternoon I sat down to this:

The ingredients for a happy afternoon Kate

In the Peet's-free interval I tried two teas that I don't remember being as bad as they were: Taylors of Harrogate Imperial Tea Room (loose leaf) and Twinings' English Breakfast (in--ugh--tea bags). I was not a girl raised on snooty tea; "tea" when I was growing up was plain old Typhoo tea leaves. We stuffed boxes of the stuff in our suitcases (along with many packets of McVities Plain Chocolate Digestive Biscuits) every time we visited the relatives in England. I thought Typhoo was downright wonderful stuff compared to the Lipton that was served everywhere else.

The Taylors was strong, it had that going for it, but there was no bouquet. And the Twinings tea bags--weak brown water. Yes it had some caffeine, but no taste. I really don't remember becoming such a tea snob, but I think Peet's has ruined me--their tea is whole leaf (not the broken crumbles of Typhoo) and really has a flowery bouquet. It isn't super strong but that can be dealt with by adding an extra spoonful to the pot.

Now that I have the Peet's in hand, I have been attempting to come close to my memory of drinking the ideal cup in front of my Granny's coal fire in her 18th C farm house up on the Yorkshire moors. I know, this is a vain quest since there are so many elements of my daily life that lack the atmosphere of the memory, but a girl has to dream and I dream of tea.

I even bought some Thomas Organic Creamery Creamline Milk the other day (once I got my Peet's supply) which is from local pasture-fed Jersey cows, is non-homogenized and low-temp pasturized--about as close as I am like to get to the milk my Granny had delivered every morning. It helped, but I fear that the ideal cup is beyond me simply due to the vividness of my memory. So I'll keep looking back at Jam Faced's post and keep on dreaming.

I did experience a positive memory moment this week by re-reading Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase; it was a quick and pleasant trip back to the past. After the first few chapters it became abundantly clear why I loved this book as a kid: there is a headstrong heroine who can't keep her temper and there are nice descriptions of food.

By page 17 I was seduced by "a box of chocolates about a foot square by six inches deep, swathed around with violet ribbons" and a little further down the page "a confectioners' paste board carton filled with every imaginable variety of little cakes--there were jam tarts, maids of honor, lemon cheese cakes, Chelsea buns, and numerous little iced confections in brilliant and enticing colors." Mmmmmmm. Must go track down little cakes to go with tea.

Kid-Lit

In the past two days, I've read two of Kate DiCamillo's kid books and the one pictured to the left is fabulous.

There are appealing characters who are remarkably complex especially when you take into account the economy of the writing. But the prose isn't simplistic in the least and does not talk down to kids. The author uses words like "perfidy" and tells you if you don't know the word to go look it up. And the plot moves along quickly but also knows when to slow down so that the experience of reading it isn't breathless.

The illustrations, by Timothy Basil Ering, are also beautiful. I can't say I'm the greatest fan of having illustrations in books that aren't strictly "picture books" because often they don't jibe with the prose (I read a horrible edition of some Trollope novels last year which had the most hideous illustrations and completely ruined the spell the prose would cast) . But Ering renders DiCamillo's story perfectly; it is a treat to turn the page and see one of his beautiful, smoky drawings.

I also read DiCamillo's first book, Because of Winn-Dixie. It was ok. The southern voices were done well and again, there was an economy to the story, nothing superfluous or excessive. But I can't say that I found the plot or characters that interesting. I'll definitely be reading The Tale of Despereaux to my kids (I think Ian is almost ready for it) but I doubt I'll read them Winn-Dixie.

DiCamillo's books might be directed at a slightly younger audience than I have been craving so next up I'm going to revisit a favorite children's author: Joan Aiken. I loved her book The Wolves of Willoughby Chase when I was a kid--I must of read it 10 times. It turns out that this book was the first in a series dubbed The Wolves Chronicles so I checked out the next book in the series Black Hearts in Battersea. I am hoping that a re-read of Wolves and this next book turn out to be as good as I remember. I just noticed that Nixie Knox has Wolves on her recommended books side bar and since I like (or, let's be honest here, love with an unreasonable passion) many of the other books on her side bar, maybe my adolescent self had decent taste (in books at least) after all.

My favorite cupcakes

We have a three year old in the house now and yesterday we had a plate full of these to celebrate:
One of the great things about having kids is the many opportunities for cupcakes. I hate baking traditional cakes, but love making cupcakes--there's no anxiety about whether the cake will stick to the damn pan, stacking layers, or doing an elaborate frosting job. If you asked me to make a traditional birthday cake I'd be pissy. But make a batch of cupcakes? Sure!

My enthusiasm for cupcake making is helped by the fact that I happen to have found the best chocolate cupcake recipe in the world. These cupcakes are extremely easy to do and I love the fact that the batter is made in a saucepan. They are so good that you don't need frosting. They are actually better without frosting--once I made them with a bittersweet chocolate pecan frosting and it totally overwhelmed the cake. I prefer to just dust a little powdered sugar over them and if you want to spruce them up, use a stencil. (The "3" above was printed out in a big font on the computer and then cut out with scissors.)

The recipe calls these Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes because there's a little cinnamon and quite a lot of vanilla that punch up the chocolate. These flavor enhancers are lovely, but what really makes these cupcakes great is the moistness of the cake: they aren't dry or heavy. Just terrific moist cake. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I must also state that these cupcakes go pretty well with red wine. Not that I served the small creatures any wine with there cupcakes (tempting), but there were a number of moms who looked just about as tired as I felt (Friday, 4 PM, go figure) and we all washed down our cake with Shiraz...

Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes
adapted from Rebecca Rather's recipe printed in some food magazine (I can't remember which)
makes at least 24 cupcakes--I made 24 and still had a good amount of batter to eat raw while they baked.

2 sticks (1 C) unsalted butter
1/2 C Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 C water
2 C granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 C well-shaken buttermilk
2 T vanilla
2 C all purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt

1. preheat oven to 350. Put cupcake papers in your muffin tins.
   
2. melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, then whisk in cocoa. Add water and whisk until smooth. Remove from heat.
3. Whisk in separately sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.
4. Sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt into a bowl. Then sift again into the cocoa mixture and whisk until just combined (it will be a little bit lumpy).
5. Fill cupcake papers to about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer or toothpick comes out clean. It's a moist cake, so don't worry if a few crumbs stick to your tester.
6. Allow cupcakes to cook and then dust with powdered sugar.
   

Adolescent Lit

I suspect that the reason I've been feeling fed up with the adult fiction I've been attempting has nothing to do with the books themselves. I think, at this point in February, I'm simply fed up with being an adult.

So as an attempted antidote, I checked this out of the library:

We'll see if this Newbery Award book has the desired effect of taking me back to the many hours I spent as a kid curled up on the couch in the wintertime reading and escaping. I don't have any memory of being bummed out by winter back then, mainly because I lived many of those dark, cold days in imaginary landscapes rather than the one outside my door.

This is the kind of book I should be reading out loud to my kids in the evening (which means the librarian didn't give me a funny look when I checked it out). I've been trying to get them into chapter books, but it is a hard sell for Ian--he'd much rather look at an anatomy textbook or read a book about electricity. The kid is into facts. I suspect Fiona will be a good candidate for this kind of book when she gets a little older since her imagination is always going full steam ahead. Most of the time I have to guess where the hell she thinks she is. Often I am reminded of Claudette, the tiny little secretary of the Department de Pays Anglophone at the University of Bordeaux. She regularly would utter the following phrase after a confusing encounter with one of the spacier of my fellow lecteurs: "Je ne sais pas quelle planete il habite, mais ce n'est pas le meme" (roughly, "I don't know what planet he's living on, but it isn't the same as mine.") That is Fiona in a nutshell.

Rippin' mood

Yesterday, I baked a batch of Fimo buttons...ripped out the failed zipper/awkward hook and eye band on this:

And reknit the band to be wider and with button holes. And I sewed on the buttons:
Hopefully this means I will actually start wearing the damn sweater. Yes, I have managed to stretch the shoulders out so I don't feel like someone is grabbing me under the armpits all day long. I don't think the button band looks quite as nice as the zipper version of the sweater but as I am completely incapable of sewing a zipper on a sweater (even after referencing numerous tutorials and on-line photo demos) it'll have to suffice.

On other knitting fronts, I have decided that I hate this sock:
so I ripped it out. Too bumpy and fussy for me. I think I'm in a rippin' mood right now so watchout rippables, here I come!

On a more positive note, I started this:
My first toe-up sock knit in the Regia yarn I brought back from Germany. If ever there was a colorway that served as an antidote to winter, this is it. The ridiculous thing is that this yarn comes from a series called "Canadian Colors" where each colorway is named after a different Canadian province. Did you know that Manitoba looks like a tropical sunset? Me neither. I also have the Toronto colorway.

And my feelings about toe-up socks? Neeeeeh. I found the increases on the toe far more awkward than the decreases one would use with top-down. I had read that people liked toe-up because you could try it on at any time and make changes, but the first time I knit this toe (yes, there were a number of attempts before getting it even halfway right) I couldn't tell that I was making a mammoth sock until I had finished all the increases. Then I realized that it might fit a bear paw and had to rip it back (luckily I'm in that rippin' mood, eh?). Unless someone can give me a better sales pitch on the benefits of toe-ups, I'll be a top-down sock maker from now on. Besides,"toe-up" doesn't have much linguistic alure and "top-down" sounds like I'm riding in a red convertible with the sun shining. That's a nice image to have when you are stuck inside because the weather is so cold that it will freeze your snot if you dare to breathe.

I've been memed

Ed tagged me and since this is a fairly painless and amusing meme, here goes:

4 Jobs I'’ve had in my life:

1. lab tech (what else do you do with an English degree except go and count the number of mice who die after being injected with various strengths of botulism toxin?)
   
2. lecteur d'anglais
   
3. arts education manager
4. mommy
   

4 Movies I can watch over and over:

1. The Big Lebowski
2. Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
3. Persuasion
4. Best in Show
   

4 TV Shows I love to watch:

1. (Back in the happy days when we had HBO) The Wire and
2. Curb Your Enthusiasm
3. (Now that we are HBO-less) 24
4. and Arrested Development (I know, I know the series finale just ran so I won't have this little corner of televised comfort to flee to anymore, damnit).
   

4 Places I have lived:

1. Berkeley, CA
2. Bordeaux, France
3. Evanston, IL
4. Ann Arbor, MI
   

4 Places I have been on holiday:

1. Lake Superior Provincial Park
2. The Jelly Belly Factory, thanks to the lobbying efforts of two small sugar-crazed creatures
   
3. London: theatre, theatre and more theatre
   
4. Cayo Costa, FL (the anti-Florida, an island where the only thing you can buy is ice)
   

4 of my favorite dishes:

1. A really good Greek salad (not authentic Greek--I want lettuce too)
2. Grilled Corn with Cheese and Cilantro
3. Vietnamese Beer Snack with a cold beer
4. Cold whole-grain toast with lots of butter, good preserves or marmalade and a strong cup of black tea with a splash of milk
   

4 Websites I visit daily:

1. Bloglines (the only way to keep track of new posts on blogs)
2. Cute Overload (a substitute for sunshine in this northern clime)
3. Flickr
4. New York Times
   

4 Places I would rather be right now:

1. A clean, well-lit place with a comfortable chair and no one asking me for a beverage, or crayons, or for help going to the bathroom.
2. Talking with a friend, sitting on her deck in Berkeley, with a cold beer.
   
3. Watching a really good play.
4. Hiking in some non-snowy mountains.
   

4 Bloggers I am tagging:

1. Annie
2. Julie
   
3. Lynne
4. anyone else who wants to reveal a little (not a lot) about themselves--go for it.

Ugh and then, the Un-ugh

If, like me, you were tempted to make the Pho recipe in the January issue of Gourmet, do yourself a favor and get the car keys and drive, however far, to a Vietnamese restaurant. If you live too far from any source of Vietnamese food to be able to get there in, say, 2-3 hours, then suck it up and wait until you can visit an appropriate Mecca of Vietnamese cuisine (D.C. sounds good about now or lots of places on the Left Coast) because I am here to tell you that making your own Pho is NOT WORTH THE EFFORT.

(Yes, I know that all caps is the equivalent to shouting at you. I'm in a shoutin' sorta mood this morning, watch out small people and don't piss off mommy.)

I'm not going to go into all the flaws in the recipe and the disappointing result that I served as "dinner" last night because I'd only do that if I thought the recipe could be redeemed with a little tweak here and there. From now on when I crave Pho I'm not going to head for my kitchen, I'm going to get in the car.

On a happier obsession front, my Pho-grumped out mood has been lightened by reading this:

I can't read David Foster Wallace all the time. But sometimes his distinctive style is just right and after slaving over a pot of what turned out to be scummy grey brown soup, I happily escaped my current surroundings and armchair traveled to where ever he was writing his enormously entertaining essays, be that the "Academy Awards" of the porn industry, John McCain's primary campaign bus (in 2000), or in front of the TV in his neighbor's living room in Bloomington when the twin towers were falling.

Despite wincing throughout his essay "Authority and American Usage" since I am one of the criminals he is complaining about who may love language but never learned any grammar, (which I suspect is like the scorn I may feel for a person who loves food but who doesn't even know how to make toast) I can't help but love the fervor of his rant and the fact that he uses vocabulary like "euphemism," "corollary," and " rhetorical" side-by-side with the word "wedgie" and the phrase "Molotov-tossing anti-pants radical." I also could not stop thinking of my Blue Pencil friend Deb and what torture daily conversation must be for her (Deb, if you are reading this, you must request this book from the library now). I remember Deb once breathed a sigh of relief when I said "I feel nauseated" rather than "I am nauseous", not because she was happy that my stomach was upset, but because the latter sentence means that I, myself, am the thing that would cause nausea in others. I didn't have any clue what I was saying and I am just as likely to say the latter and unintentionally refer to myself as a pool of green vomit, but clearly Deb's linguistic awareness causes her to suffer expressions of such ridiculousness so often that hearing something expressed correctly is a rare occurrence.

Sometimes Wallace's essays focus on the absurdity of daily life, but thankfully they aren't all irony and witticisms, which can become tiresome. There are some authors who are regularly lumped into the same general category as Wallace but who never, ever drop the corrosive sarcasm. Wallace knows when to employ his wit and when to just be honest and the effect is to make the moments of honesty feel more honest. If you need an example, look at the last sentence of his essay about the twin towers: beautiful, sad and without any irony. I'm not going to quote it here because it really does need the force of the rest of the essay behind it to give it its impact.

So, go get the book. I suspect that you will find at least one essay that resonates with you. And you can also breathe easy knowing that you have in the house the mood antidote for any labor-intensive-yet-completely-disappointing-food-experiment you may have the bad luck to attempt.