Sure, the solstice has passed, and December 25th has come and gone, but in our house, we're not only getting ready for the New Year, but for La Befana and for what our family calls Russian Christmas.
I made these awhile ago for Jonah, and I'm afraid that it took me so long to give them to him that Mr. Panda, or another of his friends, will end up wearing them instead!
So I just ran horizontal stitches across the holes to cinch the knitted fabric together:
My darling friends had given us Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan, and I gave the foccacia recipe a try. It's absolutely delicious. The bread comes out with a dense, moist texture, perfect to hold up to cheese, a dip in wine, or even sliced horizontally to make a sandwich. I cut down on the salt quite a bit (2 teaspoons rather than a tablespoon, and no salt on top), and topped it with only 1/8 cup garlic olive oil (made with sliced garlic sauteed in extra virgin olive oil) mixed with 1 tablespoon water. I cut the fat and salt since I like to top the warm foccacia with cheese (like a Point Reyes blue), or dip it in red wine.
The Joy of Baking's pumpkin scones recipe is wonderful. I've modified it a bit; I only use 1/4 c. organic vegetable shortening (rather than 1/2 c. butter), use lowfat milk or soy milk rather than buttermilk, and like them a little less sweet, so I substitute 1/4 c. agave syrup (rather than 1/3 c. sugar). I also omit the egg wash at the end to cut down further on the fat & cholesterol. I then bake them as directed on on ungreased cookie sheet--no need for parchment paper if you aren't using the glaze. They come out great!
The booklet that has the pattern for Paul's sweater is actually for sale at Summer Breeze Books. And the price seems very good! I've never ordered from them, and don't know them, but they have a lot of interesting knitting items under "Vintage 10 cent items, etc."
It's another stage in the Journey of the Fine Gauge Sweater: the beginning of the first sleeve! When I started this sweater, out of sock yarn, over a year ago...
We love this challah, and make it often. It's the King Arthur Flour's "Challah" pretty much as written, with the exception of using agave syrup instead of sugar. I let the braided bread have its final rise on a parchment paper covered baking sheet, because the glaze can make a royal mess out of the baking sheet, and don't have an instant-read thermometer--I find one can tell when the bread's done without one!
Timson is kind enough to appear as my avatar on Ravelry, and Casey was kind enough to create the code that makes the parrots appear! I'm particularly impressed, because Timson's parrot appeared perched on his (Timson's) "frogged" shot glass. (Timson has been known to tipple.) Timson is a gnome of few words, but on the subject of Talk Like a Pirate Day, he says very quietly, if you lean in close, "Arr."
Timson loves his cornmeal scones. (Well, Timson loves just about any type of scone!) These are really easy to prepare--the recipe below is for the lowfat, vegan version, but if you're an omnivore with healthy cholesterol levels, substitute milk for soymilk, and butter for shortening--heck, substitute cream for soymilk! (Or slather them with butter. Mmmmm.)
After a nice scone, Timson can't resist a wee tipple in his favorite shot glass.
Have you ever seen one of your favorite authors in the whole world next to something you made for them? Someone whose books have made you laugh out loud no matter how bleak the world had become? Someone who had crafted something that always brought you joy, even when your heart was shattered? If so, you know how I feel today.
Cedric and his pal Fergus also had a great time visiting the Polaris, and you can too! She's beautiful, built in 1906, a carvel-built pumpkinseed sloop. (OK, I have no idea what that means, but it sounds so cool that I'll be looking it up.)
Fergus' pal Debbie was there, as were other pals, and we had such a good time we hope we can visit 
Cedric loved his visit to the Niña with Fergus. The crew was so friendly and knowledgeable, and very patient with their smallest visitors. They loved exploring the model:
As the artist Chuck Close said: 'Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.'
--Jon Carroll, column for Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007
Today we visited the UC Botanical Garden, and Cedric's favorite spot was the dye plants bed in the herb garden. The flowers were still stunning, and the indigo pods were lovely.
We get the most interesting researchers at work. This week, Cedric came in to work with me to meet his pal, Fergus, who's researching his family history--like many of our researchers, Fergus wanted to look up the ship that carried some of his ancestors in the registers. It was quite a challenge for him, since he's only a fraction of the the size of the Lloyd's Registers--even the small ones!
This is my first batch of bagels! I used the recipe in the The King Arthur Flour baker's companion (which is also on their website) because it was the lowest fat version of the recipe in all of my cookbooks. (It's beyond lowfat--the only fat I used was to grease the bowl that held the rising dough.) I also substituted agave syrup for the sugar in the dough--I didn't see any reason to go hunt down exotic ingredients like "non-diastatic malt powder," if what I had in the cabinet would work--and also substituted rice syrup for all the sugars in the water bath. Worked like a charm.
Sam and Max, freelance police, outlasted the tshirt onto which I had embroidered them. Now they will be bringing their particular brand of aggression to a Christmas tree near you.
Cedric has had a fantastic time visiting LA in the past two months. He loves LA--everything about it. The first trip down he posed, as you can see, with some of his favorite new acquaintances. (I keep telling him there's nothing like a dry martini, and he finishes every single one I offer him, then orders another single malt.)
Anchor's Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale is Cedric's new favorite beer. This is really saying something. Cedric enjoys his beer and is partial to ales, and has been trying many of the brews available from around the world at his new favorite store, Ledgers Liquors--he had heard Ledgers called the adult Disneyland, and they weren't wrong. (He's also amazed by Ledger's selection of single malts--in fact, he gets emotional about the single malts, and can't yet speak openly about them.)
So I turned to the manual for all things domestic in my abode: Home comforts : the art & science of keeping house by Cheryl Mendelson. Her recommendation: baking soda.
As a deodorizer, [baking soda] works neither by perfuming or masking odors nor by absorbing them. It chemically neutralizes odors ... most unpleasant odors are caused by strong acids ... or strong alkalies ... Baking soda reacts with the odor molecules to bring them to a more neutral pH ... the deodorant effect is also present when baking soda is dissolved in water ...
Introducing the completed back of Paul's sweater! Of course, it won't look that shapely on Paul--my dress form isn't set up for his shape--but pinned on the dress form you can really see the detail of the vertical stripes.
Happy first national Poem in Your Pocket Day! I love carrying around poetry--usually favorites such as Byron's "She Walks in Beauty" or Carroll's "Jabberwocky." Today, though, I wanted to discover something new, and since one point of today's celebrations is to share, check out e.e. cummings' "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"--it mentions knitting.
This is the wonderful 2-ply worsted Jacobs yarn that I bought at the Meet the Sheep day from Robin at Meridian Jacobs. It's wonderfully tweedy-looking, due to the colors of wool on the sheep that she's woven together--it's not dyed--it's as the sheep grew it. I bought a bit of a darker color in case I don't have enough of the gray.
We had a great time at Meridian Jacobs' Meet the Sheep & Fiber Fun 2008 in Vacaville. After two really intense weeks, we didn't make any commitments or any plans for today; we decided that if we woke up feeling like going, we'd go. It was a beautiful spring morning, so after waffles, we went.
Robin was there telling us all about the sheep and the goats, and the kids who were there got to help bottle feed the baby goat (who, I believe, is two weeks old). The goats were incredibly friendly, licking and nibbling your fingers while you pet them, and her dogs Bonnie & Rusty were lovable, too. Some of the sheep didn't mind some attention and some petting, but some were shy. Robin's sheep are all Jacob sheep, and her friend Colleen was there with incredibly fluffy Romney and CVM sheep (Mopsy and friend!). Cedric loved watching the sheep in the open field, the sheep and goats in the barn, and even the two pigs.
I had been mystified; the first time I knit this elephant, as you can see, the trunk was where its left ear should be! (The little legs are supposed to open at the inseam.) I had no idea what had gone wrong, and ended up frogging the whole head and starting over. This time I paid close attention, and the elephant's nose is going to be right where it should.
In the pattern, when you put the legs on to the needles, in the section called, "Body," there's this little bit: "Join double strand of main yarn with RS facing to the beginning of one needle." I'm working on dpns, and already had the yarn attached to one of the legs, thank you very much. That's the problem! The yarn is attached where the elephant's "family jewels" would be (or "gates of Venus"--these are very private elephants, who only reveal their gender post-adoption to their new caretakers, so I have no idea what gender they will turn out to be). The yarn should be at the hip--in the middle of one of the legs.
It's done! Timson thinks it's very comfortable. I'm not letting anyone get too close, because then you'll see all the mistakes that were made on my first cutwork embroidery project.
The cutting was going so well--too well. It took a long time to feel comfortable; I had cut out about a quarter of the design before I was able to feel the scissors against the purl edge of the embroidery, and I thought I was able to feel the difference between cutting the thickness of the threads of the material versus the threads of the embroidery. I was so wrong--so overconfident! Timson is showing you just one place where this wasn't so, where I cut a bar.
Otherwise, except for the few areas where I've cut my bars (there are more!), the cutting out is going pretty well. It's going slowly but it's going--I don't find it as enjoyable as stitching. Next time I may follow some other directions I've read, to cut out certain sections ahead of time, like the small circles and the smaller areas that will be crossed by bars, and embroider them after the cutting.
One thing my husband and I have in common is a love for the look of fine gauge knitting, so the sweater that I began for him late last summer is on 3.0mm needles, out of Louet gems. I love the feel of the wool, but it's not the most evenly spun--there are fuzzies every so often, and sometimes it's thicker, sometimes thinner. I'm hoping because it's so fine, no one will notice the differences in thickness, and after it's blocked, I'll try to work the fuzzies to the back. (If you click on the image to see the larger version, on the lower left, you can see a rather large fuzzy.) Now that I'm ready to do the armhole shaping, you can really see the ribbing pattern; from one edge to the other, the number of stitches is:
I spent untold hours considering this question until I gained a little historic perspective by reading Rozsika Parker's history of women and their embroidery, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. Why do most women give their handwork away? Why are female-dominated creative endeavors usually seen as "craft" rather than "art?" If these questions interest you, read this book. And if you haven't heard it, Philosophy Talk's What is Art? is well worth a listen.
