DesigKnit

It’s Thanksgiving! I’m so excited. This is my favorite holiday of the year. It sort of snuck up on me this year. We’re going over to a friend’s house for a potluck dinner, so I won’t be doing much cooking today. We’ve just finished making bread dough and peeling the potatoes and veggies for our contribution to the meal, and now we’re done except for the boiling and baking steps. I am having a hard time resisting the urge to keep going; I love holiday cooking. We’ll be making our own turkey with all the trimmings tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll have my fill of kitchen time then. Can’t miss out on the leftovers!

I’ve been amazed at how many people that I know are dreading the holidays, want to skip the traditional meals, just stay home, not exchange gifts at Christmas, etc, etc. It’s so sad that so many people are down on the holidays right now. It’s just a chance to celebrate, and who doesn’t need a little celebration? We’re not going to make it home this year, so this holiday season will be quieter than usual for us, but I’d be just as excited if it was going to be a busy week spent in MA. I guess it’s hard not to get caught up in the rush and lose sight of the meaning of holidays, and even the meanings are up for dispute sometimes. A few bloggers have been expressing guilt about not wanting to celebrate a holiday that was based on a mythical alliance between the settlers and natives. While I agree that the “historical” image that most Americans have is horribly skewed, I don’t think that has to destroy the day. Thanksgiving has always been a harvest holiday for me, a time to celebrate bounty before the long stretch of winter. Maybe that meaning is somewhat lost on those of us that live in cities with 24 hour grocery stores open 365days a year. Still, it’s a time to gather good things together and begin the process of snugging down for winter.

We’ve been shopping almost exclusively at our local farmer’s market this fall, which might have helped me feel the magic of the harvest more than usual. We’d been spending a lot of money at the grocery store anyway, and I was just bored with the quality and the unchanging variety. I like having seasons and seasonal foods. I miss having a real winter (and no, Seattle does not have real winters when you’re from Boston…), and I like to feel the seasonal rhythms in my life, including in my kitchen. Sometimes a little anticipation is so much nicer than immediate gratification. If you learn to enjoy the wait, it makes “getting” so much better in the end. I am sure that I will be dying for a ripe salad tomato in February, but it will make next summer’s first crop even better when they arrive. Until then, my little indoor cherry tomato plant will hold us over, I hope.

I’ve been loving the farmer’s market experience. We haven’t been in a grocery store other than Whole Foods (to get soy milk and cheese, and some other random things one can’t get at the farmer’s market) in months, until last weekend. I can’t bring myself to spend $50 for a turkey yet, even if I know it’s better than the ones in the grocery store. We eat mostly vegetarian usually, so the crazy prices of meat in the non-grocery world haven’t hit us very hard. I guess if you buy good meat in the grocery store it costs a lot, too, so we’re not really spending all that much more when we buy at WF, but I’ve always refused to buy meat when it’s not on sale, so that’s been our largest step up in price, since the sale prices in the organic foods stores are often the same or higher than the normal price elsewhere. I can grit my teeth and get over spending more for beef, but poultry is just harder, for some unspecified reason, and it usually costs even more than beef! So, we gave in and bought a QFC turkey last weekend, along with a few other things that are hard to get elsewhere. We at least stuck with free range and antibiotic-free. I’m not interested in extremes, so I’m not feeling guilty about buying it, either. I would have preferred to buy a turkey direct from a farmer, but it’s just a bit high for my budget (and, in this case, it wasn’t even possible; they were sold out).

It’s like buying eggs; at the farmer’s market, eggs cost $5.50 to $9 a dozen, and are usually sold out within minutes of the market opening. That just seems crazy to me. $9 a dozen for eggs? At that point, it’s a supply and demand problem, in my opinion. There aren’t many people that sell eggs, and so those that do have a corner market and can charge whatever they want. Lots of people have been making the local eating commitment lately, and those that are very dogmatic about it will either buy at the farmer’s market or go without. And so the prices jump to $9 a dozen, which is much more than the farmer would usually ask (or get, I imagine). While I don’t mind paying a little extra to help out a farmer, there are some cases where I think that it becomes unreasonable, and this is one of them. I know it’s just the market economy, and I guess there’s no good reason for them to give their eggs away for less than they can get, but in some ways it seems to violate the unwritten rules of the farmer-buyer agreement. I am buying from them because I think that local food is better, and I am making a choice to give my money to them directly rather than paying more than half to the grocery store middlemen. Even if the farmer charged half of what the grocery store charges, they would make a larger profit by this direct marketing than they could by going full-scale commercial. So by the time I am paying grocery store prices, the farmer is already seeing a hundred percent increase in his or her profit (and this is a conservative guesstimate). I know this, but make the choice to buy from them even at slightly elevated prices because I believe in supporting their work, and because I think that their products are superior. I also trust them to be giving me the best deal that they can, in exchange for my support of their endeavor. When they begin charging more just to see what they can get, I think that they are violating that trust, to a degree. I know they need to live, but so do I. In buying from them I am making my budgeting a little harder, and I expect them to realize that and keep their prices reasonable accordingly. When they don’t, I go elsewhere. So, yes, I buy eggs at my local grocery co-op rather than the farmer’s market, and I pay about $3.50 for free range, organic, local eggs. And unfortunately, the farmer that produces them probably doesn’t see even half of what I pay. Too bad they don’t offer their eggs for $3.50 in a direct market; they’d make more and I’d feel better!

I’m really happy that we’ve made small changes in our lifestyle that feel like they might have significant consequences. Eating more locally is a good idea in general, and it’s something that I really enjoy. Going to the farmer’s market is a fun way to spend a Sunday morning. Going to the grocery store is not. These small day to day changes are more important to me than occasional purchases that I now make at a grocery store. While I enjoyed reading Plenty, I’m not interested in a deprivation-based lifesytle. I don’t think you need to feel deprived in order to make changes, and I think you’re less likely to keep it up if you’re always feeling like there’s something you’re missing out on. It’s like any diet; if you go extreme and decide not to eat anything that isn’t on the “healthy” list, you are constantly going to want what you’re not supposed to have. If you just make everything you eat a little healthier by reducing fat, sugar, and portion sizes, you will probably stick with it a lot longer, and be better off in the long run. I don’t have the ability (yet) to take Barbara Kingsolver’s approach in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and so I’ll do the best I can with the local farmer’s market, and leave complete self-sufficience for when I have a place that I can plant a garden and not have my neighbors pull it up to plant their tomatoes.

Still, I think that the farmer’s market routine has helped me to stay plugged in to the joys of the harvest; there is so much bounty, and it is such good food. It’s easy to be inspired to cook and to celebrate when there are picture-perfect vegetables fresh from the ground all around you. Maybe I’m just wierd, but just looking at a bunch of rainbow swiss chard with its bright stems and glossy green leaves makes me happy. Sort of like the way that just feeling a soft yarn makes the day better. Or a warm cup of tea and a blanket. Or a good book. Or the fact that the sun is shining today, and the sky is cloudless. Simple things. Life’s little pleasures, that are just waiting to pop out at you wherever you look. How can we not take a moment to celebrate? Happy Thanksgiving!

I wish I were a sock knitter. I love knitted socks. They’re a great way to swatch out a new stitch pattern, and they’re always a quick little project, which is really nice when you’re like me and always have a sweater or something huge on the needles. And yet I can’t seem to get into them. I look at all the pretty sock patterns, and the sock yarns, and the books, and I think how much fun it would be to make them…if only I really liked knitting socks. It’s too bad, really. I have only made two pair, and I keep telling myself that I should try again, but I’m just not excited. I wore my two pair this week to convince myself that I love them and I want to make more. And I do love them, but I’m still not sure that I want to start a new pair.

These are my favorites, Trekking XXL yarn, in the drooping elm leaf pattern from (where else?) the second book in the Walker series.

The other pair is also Trekking XXL, and no special stitches here, really. These were my first socks, and I was pretty happy with how the heel turned and the fact that they actually fit, considering that I had never really seen how socks were put together, and just made it up as I went along. I used short rows around the heel, and it worked out pretty well for something that I was just winging as I went along. I was also thrilled that the colors line up; it can be so hard to make both look alike with variegated yarn, but these were just perfect, and I didn’t even try. I love it when that happens.

Both pair were quick and easy, and even fun, but I’m just not in love with socks. I am in love with lace, and you’d think that lacy socks would be just the thing to try out new patterns (and lots of fun to wear), but I just can’t make myself want to try it. I guess that’s ok, but I really want to like socks, because I can see lots of reasons that they’d be good for in-between projects (not to mention warm and cozy feet!) Maybe one of these days I’ll get bitten by the sock bug. I’m constantly hoping. I do have some very nice brown Trekking in my yarn bag, so I may just have to give it one more try. But first, Branden’s handwarmers. I can’t wait to get that Alpaca on the needles!

Meet Elijah, adorable stuffed elephant.

I am so excited! Anne has published her pattern for the Irtfa’a shawl! I have been watching its development with bated breath, and it has come out! I seldom follow patterns, as there’s usually something that I would like to be a little different about my version of a project, but not this time. I am making this shawl exactly as published, right down to the color of yarn. There is a point where one just does not mess with perfection, and this is about as close to perfect as it gets. It’s just stunning, and it’s going to take me forever, but I can’t wait! We haven’t gotten shipping confirmation on the yarn yet, though, and it’s going to be a long wait. At least now I can pore over the pattern and maybe do some warm up swatches in anticipation. I have a feeling that practice wouldn’t hurt on some of those lace patterns!

Having to wait will also give me time to finish my Elijah (yes, another patterned project…I don’t know what’s come over me lately) from Ysolda’s blog. He has just one ear to go, so I’m hoping to be done tonight. It’s a good thing, too; I have decided that stuffed animals are not my cup of tea. They’re adorable, but there’s something about managing 5 needles on a stuffed object that is not much fun for me. It’s fine until I add the stuffing, and then it’s a fight from there. Still, he’s been a quick project, and I’m sure he’ll be much loved by a certain wee one that will meet him on Christmas. I’ll post pictures when he’s done.

I am also almost done with my Bearfoot scarf (yes, I know, using a sock yarn for a scarf makes no sense, but I did it anyway, and I love it). More on that later, too.

Nothing much doing with the sweater lately; I’m into the arm increases, but nothing very exciting yet. Hopefully I’ll get back to that once the smaller projects are wrapped up.

I’m still thinking about what to do for a pattern on Branden’s latest pair of handwarmers; I have some gorgeous alpaca yarn (can we say soft?) that I couldn’t keep my hands from petting all the way home from the yarn store, but I don’t have the perfect pattern for it yet. It’s a really dark grey, so it will take a special kind of stitch to show up nicely. I can’t wait to get it on my needles, but I keep telling myself that I should finish up these other quick projects first. Really, I’m probably just enjoying the anticipation…

And now, to knit. I’m hoping for some pictures of finished objects soon, so that I’ll be ready when that Raven arrives for Irtfa’a

I have always wanted to make cheese. As I am sure you will find out if you read this blog long enough, I am fascinated by food “cultures”, whether it’s yeast, yogurt, or cheese. If we drank beer, I bet it would be a lot of fun to brew, too.

I have tried to make cheese several times in the past, and it’s never come out right. I had all but given up, and then I saw Ricki Carroll’s Home Cheese Making book last spring. Of course I bought it; how could I resist? I tried again this summer when Biz was out visiting; we attempted the fool-proof sounding 30-minute mozzarella, and ended up with nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but we got a cheese that resembled Ricotta more than Mozarrella. Not a stunning success, in any case. I knew I had the right recipe, the right techniques, the right temperature, and I was even pretty sure I’d gotten the right milk (we used unhomogenized, lightly pasteurized milk from PCC). What’s left? That’s right, it had to be the rennet. I had some junket rennet tablets, and they were the only common factor in all of my cheese failures; I’d tried changing everything else, and I’d even followed directions from a reliable cookbook. It had to be the rennet.

Ricki has a great cheesemaking supply store online at http://www.cheesemaking.com. About two months ago, I finally bit the bullet and put in an order for real cheese making supplies (including a few different kinds of rennet) from a real cheese making company. And, since then, miracles have happened. We’ve made several different fresh cheeses, and it’s been a lot of fun. It’s amazing how simple it is, once you have the right supplies!

One of our new favorite weekend meals is pizza with homemade mozzarella. We can get the dough started and then whip up a batch of 30-minute mozzarella while it’s rising. By the time the cheese is made, the dough is ready to go and the oven is warm, and in about an hour you have a pretty yummy pizza coming out of the oven. Who says cooking at home has to take a long time? We made a pizza from scratch last night in only a few minutes more than it would have taken to have it delivered to our door! (Not that we object to having it delivered once in a while…)

This time, of course, we took photos of the process for “the blog.” Amazing how the creation of a blog suddenly requires that a camera crew and lighting setup be on hand at all times. Luckily, Branden is into photography, so I have my very own camera man to help out.

We started by warming the milk in a make-shift double boiler and adding the citric acid.

This got the cheese curdling, and the whey started to separate out.

(Sorry for the color in the second photo…it’s very hard to take a good picture showing white curds in white milk in my dark kitchen…)

Then, we added the rennet, which solifies the curds so that they are scoopable.

Branden helped by squeezing the extra whey out of the curds as I scooped them out of the pan.

And Mischief supervised from the trash can.

Then, we heated the cheese in the microwave and kneaded and stretched until it turned shiny. Semi-molten cheese is somewhere between taffy and silly putty; it’s kinda fun to play with, as long as you keep moving so that you don’t burn your hands!

Then, we sliced the cheese, prepped the dough, and baked our pizza. And, voila! just under an hour from milk and flour to pizza. Mmmm…

Well, not really, but it is the project that catalyzed the creation of my blog. I started knitting again about a year ago, and promptly made the mistake of buying enough yarn to make several sweaters, before I was ready to really start them. I am not a stasher; I don’t like having a bunch of projects laying around that I’m not working on. So, it was a bad idea to buy yarn for 3 sweaters all at once because it was on sale. Ah, well. Momentary insanity strikes everyone, I suppose. But anyway. I bought a collection of wool-ease worsted weight in three shades of rose, a color that I usually don’t wear a lot of but have really been enjoying of late. (I love it when my taste changes and suddenly opens up whole new vistas of color to explore…)
The problem was that I bought this yarn without a specific idea of what to do with it. This is a bad idea, because it means that I am not really ready to start working on it, and that it will sit around and build up guilt for long periods of time before I actually use it.

It’s been a year now, and I am finally getting back around to thinking about these sweaters. I knew I wanted a cowl-neck, but other than that I’ve been having a hard time coming up with anything that wasn’t just boring stockinette the whole way. I liked the idea of wide ribbing, as I really liked the way that came out on my first sweater (I’ll post about that someday, maybe). But I didn’t want all ribbing, and I wanted something special to stand out about it. When I saw the post on Vanessa’s blog about the cable sweater, I got that vague feeling in the back of my brain that means it’s onto something and I should think more about this project. I love the cable across the shoulders, though I think that the rest of it is a bit much for this particular sweater. I have nothing against drowning in cables, but with three different colors and a big collar, that many cables would just be too much going on at once. But the one across the shoulders…

Whenever I have an idea developing, I head for the Walker books. I can sit for hours and just flip through all her different stitch patterns, waiting for one to jump out at me. This time, it was the staghorn cable. It’s fairly delicate, not too complicated, and also not just your standard cable. I want this project to move quickly; I’m not likely to want to prolong knitting with a partly acrylic yarn, and I just finished a long project. So, I wanted something simple. Staghorn it is.

Since I want the whole sweater to focus on the cable, I decided to make the cable band first, and knit up and down from it to create the rest of the sweater. I’ve also never done a sweater from the middle, so I thought it would be a fun thing to try. So, I started out with the cable band, and then added the neck this morning:

So far, so good! I’m looking forward to splitting off the sleeves tomorrow, and then it will be quick ribbing all the way down. I’m also working on writing up a sort of pattern (more a set of guidelines than stitch-by-stitch directions at this point), that I’ll make available when I finish. Yay for cables!

I don’t really believe in patterns. In a sense, at least. I think patterns are good guidelines, places to get started, pick up ideas, learn new things. I don’t think that they need be followed exactly. I seldom make it through a pattern (or a recipe) without making substantial changes. I usually don’t even try to follow one; I just pick up my needles and start knitting. I suppose this might be dangerous, and I have had to pull out several projects at rather advanced stages, but I prefer to keep the freedom to try things, to make mistakes that I can learn from, and even to fail, rather than trying to adhere to someone else’s directions. There are some exceptions. I try very hard not to be dogmatic about anything, and especially not something that’s a hobby, and that I do for fun. In my opinion, crafts should be about inventing, starting from scratch and creating something. Every project should be an exploration, not just an attempt to replicate something someone else has done. I am a chemist; I spend a lot of my life replicating things within very tight constraints. My hobbies are not about rules and procedures; they’re about relaxing and seeing what I can invent. It’s just a less structured approach, and, I think, a lot more fun. Sure, it backfires every once in a while, but most of the time I am surprised by how well things come out. And hey, it’s not like you can’t just pull it out and start over if it all goes horribly awry…

I have resisted. I have struggled. I have tried to talk myself out of it. And I have failed. I am starting a blog.

My husband has suggested that I should blog several times, but I didn’t really feel like I have a lot to talk about, and I’ve been worried about making a commitment to actually posting entries. And yet, at the back of my mind, there is a little voice that says “you could write about this…” several times during the course of any given project. Generally, I think that people (myself included) spend too much time on the computer, and that there’s just too much redundant information out there on the web. I didn’t want to add even more bits to those already flying along the information highway, but here I am. As of today, I have a blog. I’m sure Branden is thrilled. I think I’m thrilled.

It all started this summer, when I started reading the Knitting Wannabe blog (http://knittingwannabe.typepad.com). It was kinda fun to read about other people’s projects. My carpal tunnel was acting up, and at least I could read about knitting, even if I couldn’t really do much of it. Well, that led to a subscription to Google Reader, and all of a sudden I was keeping current with about 20 blogs. So much for less time on the computer!

While poking around looking at fun knitting projects, I ran across this post: http://coloursknits.blogspot.com/2007/02/drowning-in-cables.html
Something in the sweater struck me as perfect for my next stash-busting project, which has been waiting for the perfect inspiration to get going. I started the cable accent band last week, and have been thinking about writing a free-form sort of pattern for it as I’ve been going. It’s a fun design, and really very simple to work. It looked like a few people were interested in a pattern of sorts for it, judging by the comments on Vanessa’s blog. So now I have a project that was inspired by someone’s blog, and am thinking about writing a pattern for it. Of course, I’d need to share the pattern, and what better way to give inspiration back than by blogging about it? So, here I am, suddenly a blogger. And I think I’m probably about to get hooked…