Funky Knit. By Dansko. Only $139.95 a pair, in case you’re interested. I, personally, am not. So what do you think, knitters? Yes? No? Maybe?
Category: Life, The Universe, And Everything
Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning.
Salem, MA 5:00 a.m.
Knitting and Cooking in 90 degree heat, or, Feelin’ Hot Hot Hot
It was 90 degrees out today. I have no air conditioning in my house. So what did I do? I started knitting a sock and I made a pie. 🙂 It was either that, or go to bed at 7:30 again tonight because it’s too hot to do anything. Sadly, this is how my entire week went down. The plan was just to lay under the ceiling fan above my bed until I cooled off a little. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen asleep under that fan way too early every night this week. This meant I woke up around midnight, tossed and turned for a few hours and, if I was lucky, fell asleep for a couple of hours before the alarm clock went off. Sleep this week has been intermittent with all the Independence Day festivities going on up and down my block. My neighbors have kindly been putting on illegal firework displays for my entertainment every morning–at 1 o’clock or so–all week. Right in front of my house. Cherry bombs are one thing, but when commercial-grade flares are going off over my roof, then I start to panic. I nearly had a heart attack at 1:00 Thursday morning when I heard the distinctive shriek of what sounded like missiles right outside my house. I looked out the window and saw someone had set something off in the middle of the street right in front of my house. Flares were flying into the air and over the roofs of my very densely populated neighborhood. There were no tragedies on my street, but every year around this time I hold my breath and hope and pray nothing bad happens. I want to know how people get their hands on commercial-grade fireworks!
The one good thing about fireworks this year was this: I discovered I can see most of the city’s firework display from my front deck. It’s not as good as being at the harbor with an orchestra playing, but it was great nonetheless. The rain held off until the display was almost over, but for a while I was watching fireworks while thunder and lightning started to come in. There’s something frighteningly exhilarating about watching fireworks and lightning light up the sky at the same time, but it wasn’t long before I ducked inside for safety. When people started returning from the display carrying their deck chairs, I was glad I didn’t have to walk back in the storm.
This is the ball of Zauberball sock yarn I bought last week. My LYS assured me that one ball will make a complete pair of socks. It was hard to pick a color from the variety of multicolored balls at the shop. but I couldn’t resist the blues and oranges in this ball of rainbowy goodness. This yarn is incredibly soft and lofty; you can see the halo around it in the photo. I’m only on the cuff but already I’m dreaming about wearing socks made from this. I bet they’ll be incredibly soft. I will be taking my mom to some doctor appointments this week, and socks are a good waiting-room project.
On to the vegan baking. Behold my lemon pie made with Ener-G egg replacer (Shhhh: it’s made from potato starch!) 😉 These days I guess I would call myself half-vegetarian, half-vegan. I appreciate the reasons for going vegan, and I’m all for creating a healthy meal using exclusively plant-based foods, but veganism is very challenging. And let’s face it, sometimes I crave cheese! I can usually break the week up into all-vegan days mixed with cheese/dairy days. This pie is from the back of the Ener-G box, and takes some lemon juice, sugar and water. It’s poured into a pre-baked pie crust and served chilled. I’ve made other lemon pies, and I like using chocolate pie crusts with lemon filling. Lemon and chocolate work so nicely together, and it’s a somewhat unexpected combination.
There. It’s 10 pm. That’s a decent time to go to bed, right?
The first step is admitting you have a problem.
My problem is, I’ve bought 4 spindles in as many weeks. Two of them have fiber on them, one is going to be used for plying very soon, and one is waiting for my Ravelympic challenge in July, so I can’t start spinning with it until the opening ceremonies. I blogged about the Golding rooster spindle a few weeks ago. Since then there’s been one Greensleeves, one Schacht, and one Sistermaide. Let’s start with the Greensleeves:
This is my second Greensleeves spindle, and once again I’m impressed with how long it spins. The craftsmanship is superb. Just look at the details in the grain close up here:
…and here.
I’m going to spin on this during the Olympics using the turquoise top I bought during the Yarn Crawl in March. Once again I have no complaints at all about Greensleeves and they are a very close second to my favorite spindle company, Golding Fiber Tools. Now, on to the Schacht.
This is a very nice spindle for the low, low price of $19. It only comes in one type of wood but it’s very pleasing to hold and it spins well. This model weighs 1.1 ounces. It’s a good price for anyone looking for a starter spindle, though it might be a little on the lightweight side.
I bought the Schacht from WC Mercantile. They’re online and they have a brick and mortar store in Texas. I purchased the spindle on their Etsy shop, and then I followed their link to their website. There I bought 4 ounces of undyed firestar. Since I didn’t know about the main site beforehand, I assumed I would get two separate packages. Both items arrived within a week in the same box, with only one shipping charge. I love how this company was on the ball, even if I wasn’t. That’s good customer service, and I’ll definitely place more orders with them in the future.
This is my newest spindle, a Sistermaide.
I couldn’t find any reviews or any feedback on Ravelry or through Google. I liked the starburst wood inlay pattern, and I liked that Sistermaide spindles are reversible. They can be a top whorl or bottom whorl by simply switching the hook to either end of the spindle. That said, this is a perfectly servicable spindle. This model weighs 1.9 ounces, and there’s a notch in the whorl. The spin isn’t nearly as long as on other spindles I own, but it functions well enough, it’s pleasant to look at, and it gets the results I want. I’m getting the same results on this spindle as I do on my others. Unfortunately, I am SO out of love with that fiber color now that I’m seeing it spun up, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
This weekend was beautiful, and I didn’t end up doing much of anything. I wanted to go to the movies but didn’t feel like making a hike anywhere, and the local theater was playing nothing I wanted to see. No Avengers, No Prometheus, nothing! Sometimes nothing is a good thing. I cleaned the kitchen, cleared out some old magazines and catalogs I don’t want lying around the house, and followed it all with a relaxing spell on the deck. I even had some company. Spike likes the Adirondack chairs almost as much as I do; he hops right up onto them and makes himself comfortable. He is definitely one spoiled pooch.
I made a quick and easy supper. Nothing complicated, just a simple casserole from a book in my vintage, or “classic” cookbook collection. I love cookbooks from the sixties and seventies; no one worried about pesky fat or calories or heart attacks! Everyone ate meat, butter and cheese like they were going out of style! Tonight’s entree was an easy cornmeal casserole, i.e., polenta.
I never knew how unforgiving the camera flash could be until it revealed how much black pepper I (deliberately) put on top of this casserole. Oh well. Here’s the recipe, from 1970’s Italian Casserole Cooking by Angela Catanzaro. According to the back book jacket, Angela is a “diminutive brunette bursting with energy.” oh, you Mad Men-type publishers, you!
CORNMEAL CASSEROLE (Casseroula di Polenta)
1 cup cornmeal
3 tablespoons of butter
1 lb fresh sliced mushrooms
1 cup tomato sauce or 1 8-oz. can of tomatoes
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
Freshly ground pepper to taste (emphasis mine)
Cook cornmeal according to label on package. Turn cooked cornmeal into greased 2-qt. casserole dish. Level top of cornmeal with spoon. Melt butter in skillet and saute mushrooms 3 minutes. Add tomato sauce and stir. Pour over cooked cornmeal. Sprinkle with cheese and pepper. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Serves 4-6.
Just a few of cook’s notes. I blindly follow recipes the way I blindly follow knitting patterns. So next time I’ll probably rethink cooking otherwise healthy vegetables in 3 tablespoons of butter. It was a lot of butter. This type of dish is very friendly to veggie substitutions. I don’t like mushrooms so I used zucchini instead. but polenta can be bland. Adding parmesan cheese to your polenta makes a world of difference. What’s that? Your box of cornmeal has recipes for cornbread and hush puppies on the label, but not polenta?…just like my box. Here’s a simple polenta recipe if you’re similarly stranded:
4 cups of water, 1/2 cup of cream (or milk, skim, soy, etc.) and 1/4 cup parmesan cheese to every 1 cup of cornmeal. You can add a pat or two of butter if you want. Bring the water by itself to a boil first, then slowly shake in the cornmeal. Whisk it briskly and get out the lumps. Continue to whisk and quickly add the cream, cheese and butter. Whisk constantly for 5 minutes, until the polenta thickens. That’s it. Lots of people tell you that you have to stir polenta for an unbearably long time, but five minutes will do. You can tell when it’s thick enough. Enjoy!
The One With All The Flowers
Sunday was hot and sunny and gorgeous, so I made my semi-regular pilgrimage to the urban Mecca known as Home Depot. So did a boatload of other people. I like Home Depot. I’m a crafty gal, but I’m not the type of person who can build a deck or redo their kitchen by themselves. No, I like to dip my toes into the kiddie pools of DIY, if you will: such as the paint section, garden furniture, and the gardening department. For a year my goal has been to dog-proof my deck (on the 2nd floor) so my dog can’t slip under the gap under the railing. Mine was a simple no-frills solution involving 16 2-ft. sections of plastic picket fencing and a bunch of plastic zip ties. I just turned the fencing upside down so the spikes normally stuck into the ground were facing up, with the inverted fencing covering the gap. I tied it to the deck railing with a zip tie on either side of each fence and voila! Spike can relax and enjoy the deck along with his humans. I love a good reason to go to Home Depot, and since I needed to make a trip anyway, I decided it was time to give the whole deck a makeover, Martha Stewart-style. That is, if Martha Stewart lived in a triple-decker and had champagne tastes but a TJ Maxx budget. 🙂
Please enjoy my how-to guide for creating a beach cottage-themed deck fairly cheap. Start with these wooden assembly-required Adirondack chairs. They retail at $49 each but the price seems to steadily decline as the summer wears on. I paid $30 each for them last year late in the summer. I went back to HomeDepot a week later and they’d been reduced to $20 each. I started the makeover last year with these chairs. I LOVE Adirondack chairs and always wanted to own some. They were cheap and, a year later, are starting to wobble a tiny bit when I sit down in one. I may need to invest in some good ones someday, but for now, I’m living the dream. The pastel mint paint I bought at the same time never made it onto the chairs, and I don’t think it’s ever going to at this point. I added the cushions later on.
Do you like my coffee table? It’s an old lobster trap. Yay for upcycling! Oldies Marketplace in Newburyport, Massachusetts usually has a few lobster traps in stock in the summer. Mine already had a wooden tabletop put on top of it. All I need to complete the theme is some brightly colored bouys, and most antique stores from Mystic to Maine have them.
The pansies and two of the flowerpots are from Home Depot. The pot with the bees on it is from a local indie florist who has since closed up shop. Here’s a closer look at the plants I truly hope I don’t kill:
Finally, I couldn’t resist this lovely clematis plant:
I love my new and improved deck. I never used it last year but I’m going to really enjoy it this summer. My finishing touches will be a wind chime and a small outdoor rug. I want my summer reading/knitting nook to feel like an outdoor living room. This will be a wonderful place to read, knit, spin and just relax. I have a lot of spinning fiber to work through, so I think I’ll be spending a lot of time out here.
Postcards From Massachusetts
Another Crawl, Another Haul. Day One.
The North Shore Yarn Crawl 2012 has come and gone, and I’m a little poorer than I was last week. But it was worth it. The shops were awesome. The crawlers were out of control. Coveted Yarn was both awesome and out of control, but that’s nothing new. Yarn crawling on St. Patrick’s Day was a lot of fun, since there was already a festive vibe in the air. We yarn crawlers passed quite a few pub crawlers everywhere we went, but who says you can’t do both?
We’re a little North of Boston, but we can compete with any major city when it comes to the variety and quality of yarn shops. City yarnies may not have as much ground to cover, but all I had to do was follow the ocean the whole way. Cities can’t beat that kind of natural beauty.
I don’t know what happened to winter, but we passed it, skipped spring and went straight into summer. The weather was warm and perfect, and on Sunday it was in the 70s. It was a perfect weekend for driving, shopping and eating Mexican food, and I did plenty of all of the above. This year I wrote out a wish list of things to search for such as books and a particular project. Last year I was on a Noro kick. This year, Debbie Bliss was the focus. I wanted to pick up some of her pattern booklets and the yarn to make the striped pullover from the spring issue of her magazine. As it turned out, I couldn’t find the Bella yarn needed for the pullover, so I didn’t end up with a larger project. But I made some impulse purchases for smaller projects, and I found some of the items on my list.
As always, my sister/crawl partner and I started in Salem at our LYS Seed Stitch Fine Yarn. The store was hosting two local independent hand-dyers, and I couldn’t keep away. I bought two skeins of yarn, one from each dyer. The acid-green yarn at the top is from Toil & Trouble, “bookishly inspired” yarns. The color is Ecto Cooler, from her Geekery collection! Sigh. You had me at “Geekery.” You know I had to buy some green yarn on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m eager to start knitting with this but I don’t know what to make. I’m tempted to just knit a plain pair of socks and let the awesome color speak for itself, but this color is crying out for…something…maybe a tree or leaf motif. I’ll have to search through my patterns. The yarn on the bottom is from Knittink, a dyer who takes the names of her yarns from comic books (yay!) that are “geekery inspired.” Sigh. You also had me at “Geekery.” There’s definitely a theme going on here, and the funny thing is, I didn’t even catch the word “geekery” on either label until I got home. This color is Burnished Turquoise #1. I’m planning on making a basic slouchy hat with this. I have yet to knit a slouchy hat, and I’m going to start working on one soon because I can’t wait to knit with this yarn.
We drove over the bridge to Beverly, where three shops on the crawl are located. Two are a couple of blocks apart in the downtown area, one is farther away in Beverly Farms. I love downtown Beverly because it has a quiet sort of cool with, among other things: two yarn shops, a tattoo parlor, great places to eat, including a vegetarian restaurant, an art school, funky shops, and The Cabot Street Cinema Theater. I love this city; Beverly’s cool without calling attention to how cool it is. We hit The Knit Stitch and Creative Yarns and had lunch in town. Both stores have been open for just over a year; they each opened less than a week before last year’s crawl, and I’m very glad they’re both still here. Creative Yarns carries a lot of Debbie Bliss booklets but they didn’t have the ones I was looking for, so my search continued. It’s just as well, I’m still working my way through all the Noro I bought there last year.
Yarns In The Farms is always worth a stop, even if it is tiny and gets a little too crowded for my comfort zone during yarn crawls. My sister picked up a Classic Elite yarns pattern booklet, and I bought an adorable pattern for knitted Russian matryoshka dolls. I have a thing for matryoshka dolls. It calls for Malabrigo but I’m not going to buy expensive yarn for these, I’ll probably purchase some Knit Picks in some obnoxious cheerful colors instead.
All of the shops so far are fairly close to each other, but the real road trip is the drive up to Gloucester. I can’t visit Gloucester without stopping into Coveted Yarn. I wish I lived closer (or they were closer to me!) so I could go to their knit nights and evening classes. I love CY because they’re my local source for spinning fiber. I order a lot of fiber online but nothing beats being able to see the colorways right in front of you instead of having to go by an online photo. CY always hosts Mad Color Fiber Arts, and this year she took over the entire back room. I can’t resist racks full of gloriously vibrant spinning fiber! Check it out in this photo! I took my time picking out which colors to buy, while keeping an eye on the ridiculously long line at the checkout counter. By the time I joined it there were 16 people in line ahead of me! But CY fans are that hardcore, and CY reciprocated the love by handing out door prizes to everyone in line–just for waiting in line! Joey C., a Gloucester blogger, filmed this really cool video on Saturday and you can live vicariously through it here. I love how he can’t quite believe how bananas people can get over yarn. Believe. But he totally gets into the spirit of the event, and his enthusiasm is wonderful.
I bought two colorways of Mad Color, a superwash merino/nylon/wool top in bright 
pink, red and brown, and a polwarth top in purple/hot pink/violet shades. I bought a verrry chunky Louet bottom-whorl spindle at Coveted. It was so warm on Sunday evening that I took the purple roving and the spindle out onto my porch, where I spent a frustrating hour trying to spin the polwarth. The staple is shorter on this fiber and I think the Louet spindle is too heavy. I dropped the spindle a lot more than I usually do. Also, it wobbles while it spins. I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to do that, so either I’m doing something wrong, or the fiber isn’t the right kind for this weight. Unless I got a defective spindle…but I’m sure I’m the problem, somehow. It would be nice to know the weight of the spindle but it wasn’t on the label. Two ounces, maybe? My first ever spindle was a Louet top-whorl spindle of a similar weight, and I avoided it for a long time because I didn’t think it spun well. But once I had more experience at spinning I was able to get the same results with it as with my lighter spindles. I’ll try to spin the polwarth on another spindle, but for now I’m a little disappointed because I really want to use the bottom-whorl.
Saturday was exhausting, but the crawl was only half over. On Sunday I headed North for more yarny goodness. I’ll tell you all about it in my next post. Good night!
It’s That Time Of Year!
It’s March, and North Shore yarnies know what that means: Yarn Crawl 2012!! Boston’s North Shore’s yarn shops are getting ready for the yarn-hungry hordes to invade in two weeks. This is the third annual crawl, and it gets bigger every year. Last year was the first time I attended, and I had a blast stretching my crawl out over the weekend. I can plot the routes two different ways: North up to Newburyport one day, and East out to Gloucester the next. Both are enjoyable scenic drives and there are plenty of great places to eat along each route. Saturday should be especially fun this year since it’s Saint Patrick’s Day. Some green yarn and green beer are in order, I think, though I’m wondering what to do for dinner, since there may be a lot of folks out celebrating (i.e., imbibing) that night. :0
I am really, truly going to try to rein in the spending but as usual, I can’t make any promises. The fact that I get paid that Friday doesn’t help my resolve to not spend, yet enables me to spend if I want to. What to do?!?! What I should do is pick a project, just one project, and make that my goal for the crawl. I cohabitate with way too much yarn as it is, but the danger lies in accessories and acoutrements: I can always be persuaded by books, magazines and project bags. I’m trying to narrow down the project to shop for. A sweater would be lots of fun, though there are some awfully cute stranded mitten patterns floating around on Ravelry, and the Hippocampus mittens are calling my name. Who doesn’t love adorable little seahorses? There are some mindblowing color combinations out there and I’m leaning toward a bright oceany blue background with a bright orange or white seahorse. The contrast has to be high or the seahorse gets lost in the background. The Kauni yarn the pattern calls for is gorgeous but $29.95 a skein. There’s lots of Zauerball colors out there to choose from…but then again, I have tons of Socks That Rock yarn lying around unused that I could–should–use instead.
Dreaming and planning is almost as much fun as crawling and shopping, yes?
In other events around town, the Salem Film Festival is in full swing this week. It’s a weeklong all-documentary film festival that has really grown in the five years since its inception. Films from all over the world are shown and in some cases, premiered here. There are so many wonderful documentaries screened, and this year is no exception. I don’t have time to see everything I want to, but if there was one movie I had to see this year, it was Becoming Santa. I had several chances to view it this week so I picked Sunday, when it was shown in a much smaller screening room, with only 18 seats.
L.A.-resident Jack Sanderson lost his sense of Christmas spirit after the death of his mother; this film documents his journey to regain it by attending Santa school and training to work as Santa Claus during the Christmas season. Jack takes us along for the ride, through an intense weekend of Santa training and on to his many Santa gigs, including mall appearances, parades and the Polar Express.
This movie was at times hysterically funny and heartwarmingly tender. I laughed, I cried, I cheered for Jack as his often sardonic observations gave way to the Christmas insight he was searching for. The audience was small but enthusiastic. I love when a theater audience applauds after a show! If you’ve ever believed in Santa–or perhaps still do–this movie will truly move you.
Knitters, Knitters Everywhere
Ahem. I don’t usually report on conversations that took place in the ladies room, but I’ll make an exception today. Nothing indelicate, I promise…
I walked into the ladies room at work this morning and saw a single ball of Noro yarn sitting on the chair by the door. If I had to guess I’d say it was Kureyon, in a variety of purple shades. It was still wrapped in an unbroken ball band, new, fresh and waiting to start a new project. Beneath it was a folded up piece of paper–a pattern, no doubt.
“I see yarn!” I exclaimed. I thought the yarn’s owner might be a friend of mine who also knits. A laugh came from behind the closed stall door.
“Don’t steal it!” Came the reply. It didn’t sound like my friend. Stealing someone else’s yarn never entered my mind. Of course it didn’t! Knitters don’t rip off other knitters, right? The bad knitting karma would get you, resulting in broken needles, splitty yarnm and frogged projects. But I will admit my heart skipped a teeeeny tiny bit when I saw it was Noro.
I never did see who the other knitter was.
There are several knitters and crocheters in the surrounding offices that I know of. We see each other knitting on our lunch hours and stop to chat about the pattern or the yarn. Two ladies I know are able to knit at their desks if it’s a slow day. I, unfortunately, don’t have that kind of freedom. Some of the knitters I know moan to the crocheters that they just can’t get the hang of crochet, no matter how much they try. Some of the crocheters complain that they don’t”get” knitting for the life of them. Either way, everyone’s working on something they’ll love, and we’re all enjoying the process. Life is good!
Happy Ginger Home 