Knitters-Knitters

Amber Waves

I did it!  I did the whole 18 spool oeuvre, and I enjoyed it.  After the miles and miles of increasing, swooping rows of stockinette, managing the absurd tangle of yarn bobbins was easy and satisfying.  Now I just have to do the sleeves and collar, which I'm expecting to fly by.

And fly by it must, because this swing coat is going to have a short shelf life.  It's meant to be enjoyed from November through most of January, at which point the recipient is expected to shrink considerably.

The cover gal, as you can clearly see, is a tall and skinny affair.

It looks beautiful on her and even more fetching on my patient model LB (also a tall and skinny affair). Still, I think this coat, with all that bell-shaped swing, was designed for someone not so skinny.

Someone... a bit more spherical in the midriff region.

Someone...temporarily convex.

That is, if I can get LB to agree to take it off.

Birth Order

It is not uncommon for the youngest child to be a bit on the spoiled side.

Oh, and shutty, Lo.

Contest Winner Announced

Several of you had the right answer...

...and the winner of the drawing is Barb!  Barb, please email me with your address and whether you would like the Usinger's snack assortment or the Kringle.  Thanks for playing, everyone!

Jen

Accounting for Tastes

Sindi wrote: I enjoy your contests, but I didn't know what this jewish household would do with all that pork if we won.  Then I read today's post about how much Olive loves pork.  If I win, please give the pork you were going to give me to Olive instead.

This got me thinking: given the fact that the words Kosher, Treif, Shabbat, Israel, Ramah and Schmaltz appear in this blog on a regular basis, I probably have several readers who'd like to participate in the contest but for whom vast quantities of pork is not exactly an enticing lure.  Since it is my secondary motive (primary motive being, of course, to show my appreciation for you readers) to introduce you all to the flavors of Wisconsin, I'm offering an alternative prize: Kringle from Racine's O&H bakery, in the form of a three-pack that looks like this:

If you're unfamiliar with kringle, it's a large, flat pastry that resembles a circular driveway, and I defy you to find better kringle in the US than at O&H.  The winner (who will be announced tomorrow evening) of the contest will have the option of the Usinger's Snack Assortment or the Kringle 3-pack.  Again, USA participants only, for shipping reasons.

How Olive's Beans Are Made

I start with two bags of black beans and use the quick-soak method: pour beans into a pot, add about twice as much water as beans, cover tightly and bring to a boil.  Allow beans to boil for about 2 minutes.  Then remove from heat, but leave cover on for an hour or so.  Drain and rinse.  Supposedly, rinsing the beans means they'll be less gassy, but I think the best way to make them less gassy is to just eat them more often.

Put the beans back in the pot and add enough water to cover beans by about 2 inches.  Then cook at a low boil forever, until you can't stand it anymore, until you are quite sure that they just have to be soft by now.  This can take up to 3 hours, and you'll have to add more water along the way.  Do not add salt.  I'm not sure why, but Mom says that adding salt too early in the game will turn your beans against you, and they'll never get soft.  In fact, there may be a Cuban curse to this effect: may your frijoles retain the consistency of pebbles no matter how long you cook them.

When it looks like most of the beans have split, bite into one and make sure it's soft.  At this point it will taste like absolutely nothing, and the contents of your pot will appear most unappetizing.

In a large saucepan, sautee a large diced onion and a small bell pepper.  Traditionally, the onions and pepper are sauteed in olive oil.  That's all I will say on the matter. 

Olive likes a little spice, so I added a diced poblano.  In Chicago, a well-traveled poblano has the hotness factor of a California bell pepper.  That is to say, none at all.

Add black pepper and some cumin.  Don't overdo the cumin--a little goes a long way.  If these beans are for Olive, add some red pepper flakes and a squirt of Rooster Sauce.

Some red wine vinegar is a must.  Also, a bay leaf.  You remove the leaf after the beans are done and if one finds its way onto your plate, you aren't supposed to eat it.  I'm not sure what exactly the leaf adds, but it's important that it's been there.  It's like the Kelly Bensimon of spices.

I add a large can of diced tomatoes, since again, where I live the canned tomatoes have more flavor than the fresh kind that arrive by truck.  Sautee the vegetable matter until the onions and peppers have softened.

Then add the whole melange (this melange has a name--sofrito) to the pot of beans, and simmer a few more hours.  Serve with rice.  I'm partial to Uncle Ben's converted, and always add a packet of Goya Sazón with azafrán.  I feel like rice should always be yellow, unless we're having Chinese.

At first Sabina commented, Too much vegetable detritus! but by dinnertime it had cooked down to her satisfaction.  Olive loves pretty much any black beans, but these had a certain... something.  She made quite a pig of herself.

The Things We Do for Lard

Yesterday we made a trip to the pumpkin farm in Glenview, where we bought three pumpkins.  Two are for carving at our church's dads-and-their-fifth-graders carving party (Agatha and Anatole), and one is for us to carve here at home.  As my fingers can attest, I am not good with knives.  E.g., LB will be carving three pumpkins.  Surprisingly, I do like reaching my hand in and pulling out hunks of stringy pumpkin goo.  I find that satisfying, as does Olive.

The farm had a few geese and chickens and one long-suffering cow, no doubt forced into a state of ennui by the signs surrounding her warning observers not to feed her anything interesting.

The fact that there was only one animal to pet didn't phase Olive.

It is Olive's best trait that she wakes every morning secure in the knowledge that something unbelievably fun is about to happen, and if there is any joy to be unearthed from a situation, she will find it.  Yay!  Really long car trip!  Hurray, I'm getting fillings!

Indian corn, but I'll bet you knew that.

Hardy mums, according to the sign.  We didn't buy any.  Even well-adjusted plants become suicidal under my care.

The farm had an old-time general store, for display purposes only.  What is Leaf Lard?  Is it truly made from vegetable matter, or was Leaf just a brand name?  Pork has been on my mind a lot these days.

On LB's birthday, we had Chinese take-out and one of the entrees we bought was Shredded Pork with Dried Tofu.  We have Chinese take-out about once every two weeks and in the old days, Olive could count on having that shredded pork the next day in her lunchbox.  She's figured out by now that Keshet's a pork-free zone, so she insisted on eating the entire entree that night.  Every time she finished a serving we'd given her, she'd point to the container and thump her chest like Tarzan. This means More for me! with emphasis.  It wasn't until I emptied the entire container onto her plate and showed her that absolutely no one else would be getting any that she could eat with joy instead of desperation.

Before we went to the pumpkin farm yesterday, we had lunch at McDonald's.  Olive was happily eating her fillet-o-fish and dipping her fries into the extra tartar sauce when she noticed that my crispy chicken club had strips of bacon on it.  Again, she would not rest until she'd been given every piece of my bacon.  I had to open my sandwich to show her the naked chicken, proving to her there was no more pork to be had.  I recalled an incident weeks earlier, when I made an apple pie and the only part of it that interested Olive was the crust: made the old-fashioned way, with lard.  

It took some time, but it is now obvious to me that my perfectly cylindrical child, Miss Short and Portly with the body-density of Plutonium, is suffering from a Pork Deficit.  Since this need cannot be met at school, she must have more at home.

On a bacon run late yesterday afternoon, I bought a brick of lard at Sunset Foods.  They keep it in the left-hand corner of discreet freezer toward the back of the produce area, with the frozen schmaltz on the far right. Between the two rendered fats is a neutral zone containing frozen vegetarian entrees.  I bought the lard for pie crust, but I'm thinking of sneaking it into a few other places--places where its presence would be noticeable only to small aficionados of pork who can be counted on to never tell.

Tune in soon for No One Needs to Know How the Frijoles Are Made.

Breasts, Bossa Nova, and a Contest Involving Sausage

You probably thought you were home free regarding extraneous Jen information when I posted the results of my most recent pap smear, but I feel compelled to tell you my mammogram results were good, too. 

As I mentioned last year, I go to Waukesha for mammograms because they give you while-you-wait results.  In the two years I've been going there, I've never seen another woman in her 40's or even her 50's in the waiting room.  Where are you 40- somethings getting yours done? Are you blithely going to whatever imaging center's the closest and then waiting patiently for that little card in the mail?  Do you worry while you wait, or are you pleasantly surprised when you get the postcard?  Oh, that's right.  I had a mammogram last week.  I had that kind of mammogram exactly once.  It took two weeks to get my results, and I lost 8 pounds.  Not coincidentally, it's when I first became acquainted with Dr. Bowtie.

I've been working on an idea I have for people who are afraid to fly, and who are also afraid of diagnostic procedures (I'm certain the cross-over between these two groups is huge).  It works like this: you board a very large plane and are immediately anesthetized.  In an airborne exam room, a team of doctors, radiologists and lab technicians go right to work, giving you a mammogram, a colonoscopy, a pap smear, a CBC and, if applicable, a liver function test and sed. rate analysis.  When you land, you are given the results of everything.  As an added bonus, you're in Hawaii!  It'll be called Global Imaging. 

Going to Waukesha also means going to Milwaukee and visiting the folks, and unfortunately, being stoned on valium anxious about my impending mammogram, I forgot to pack my camera for the trip.  I wish I'd brought it, because after the mammogram LB took me to a yarn store in Elm Grove called  The Yarn House.  It was the tiniest yarn store I'd ever seen, and the sign on the door had a list of presidents who'd served terms in office during the years the store existed.  I think JFK was the first on the list.

The elderly proprietress immediately asked LB and me if we were brother and sister.  Surprisingly, we've been asked this before.  In the past it's always amused me but now I'm starting to wonder.  It could explain a lot: missing arms, autism...you think?  Naaaahhhh. 

She also told us that she'd known Elizabeth Zimmermann personally.  The first time EZ came to the shop with her husband, she warned the owner: Brace yourself: he's charming.  The proprietress showed every sign of being a flirt, and when her younger assistant went to get a ladder to access the Rowan Kid Mohair for me, she said, Why are you bothering with that?  We have a tall man, here, gesturing gracefully at my brother LB.  Later, when she was ringing up the sale and LB tried to interject that surely I didn't need another 24" circular needle in size 4mm, she said to him, You mind your manners!

I bought the Rowan Kid Mohair in a rather breasty shade of pink, and unvented a stitch pattern for it.

I call it the bossa nova, because it's physically impossible to do it without humming The Girl from Ipanema.  Knit three rows.  On the fourth row, it's knit one, then knit the next stitch together with the loop directly below it from the previous garter stitch ridge.

My left thumb nail suffered a terrible blow in 1999 and hasn't been the same since.

These are working hands, and they date me.  The rest of me looks much younger.

 

Besides, Elizabeth Zimmermann?  Total man-hands, you know.

Repeat these four rows.  If I dug up my Harmony stitch guide I'd probably find this listed as garter stitch variation #3, but I like Bossa Nova better.

Enough with the breasts and the pink already; let's move onto sausage.  It's been a long time since I've held a contest, so here we go:

On I-94, driving from Milwaukee to Chicago, 'round about Kenosha you will pass a sign that says, " ___ Recreation Area."  If you are as immature as LB and I, then you will giggle at this sign every time you drive past it.  What is the name of this recreation area?

You may Google; one guess per person, please.  The prize is a Usinger's gift assortment called the Snacker's Delight and it looks like this:

If there is more than one correct guess, I'll do a drawing.  USA participants only this time around, given Usinger's shipping parameters.  The drawing will be on Friday, October 16th.

 

It's the Little Things

Last week I was awarded a blog award by the lovely Paula of apiperknits.  Sooner or later I'm going to figure out how to put this picture on my sidebar, but here's what it looks like:

In the spirit of good karma I'm awarding this prize to three other domestic bloggers:

Lene of Danceswithwool.  This award will register a faint plink as it lands on the pile of all her other blog prizes, but hers is the first blog I read regularly.  She's the one knitting blogger who makes me want to hide in the closet with my chunky yarn and fat needles and cry softly to myself.

Whileshenaps.  This woman creates frighteningly life-like birds of out fabric and wire.  Also, I think she may just have the most clever blog name ever.

Stephanie of Chocolateandwhine.  Brownies, Key Lime fudge, banana muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and a sprinkling of 20-something angst.

Thank you, Paula!

While we're on the topic of thank yous, thanks, everyone for your birthday wishes for LB, and your list of comforts in the wake of LB losing his spot in musical chairs.  He's surprisingly energized and excited by potential new seating opportunities, and somewhat relieved now that it turns out that lost chair had a wicker bottom with a hole in it and one leg shorter than the other three.

My knitting plods along, a slowly-building cranberry symphony.  The monotony of stockinette makes me think that when the colorwork time comes, I may just try out that 18 bobbin thing after all.

In more delicate news, the results of my annual pap were normal.  It's been 16 years since I was successfully treated for CIN3, but I shvitz about what'll turn up on that slide every single time.  Hey, let she without any debilitating worries cast the first stone.

Saturday

Some of you may remember that last Christmas, Agatha made LB a book about his workday.  For his birthday, she continued the theme with a peek into his weekend. 

I'm cute when I'm asleep.

¡Gol, gol, gol!  ¡Golazo!

Notice the time on the clock.

Here I am!  All refreshed and well-rested!

When things get slow, Olive likes to push Dana out of his chair.  She's smaller and lighter than he is, but freakishly strong.  Plus, she has the element of surprise on her side.

Anatole likes books about the Avatar.

Heavy on the starch, please.

The pictures don't lie: he does indeed get to control the remote.  Occasionally.

Ah, too true.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Today is LB's birthday, meaning that once again he and I are the same age.  That sweet, 45-day period when I can pat him knowingly on the shoulder and say, "Take it from someone who's been around here a little longer than you have..." is over. 

I had big dreams of making LB a new sweater, but we've all been pretty consumed with baby knitting these days.  I can't post pictures or Andra might see.   She's not a regular reader of Knitters-Knitters (yet), but every so often Hen drags her here in a panic, so that she can reassure him that regardless of whatever bons mots I may have written that day, he's still The Funny One in the family.

Here's where Lo interjects with, "Yes, but looks aren't everything."  Oh, I know you sooo well, my brethren.  Right now OFD is exclaiming, It rubs off! -- his way of taking credit for anything amusing the three of us might say -- and Irma is about to comment with something that leaps headlong over the yawning divide between compliment and schmaltz.  Don't do it, Mom.  We're eating, or we'll soon be eating...

Cheesecake.  I have shown you this cheesecake many, many times.  LB has requested no chocolate, so instead I'll be making a sauce that involves boiling canned cherries with copious amounts of sugar and dark rum.

Given the fact that LB's birthday sweater is still in the idea phase, he's getting this little parcel containing skeins of Rowan Magpie Tweed with an attached note.

Can you see that one skein in there, the very dark burgundy?  That's your yarn, Dixie, and it's going to be the main color in the Icelandic yoke sweater I'm making from The Best of Lopi.

Here's a picture of the sweater, in different colors, of course.

LB's will be a crew-neck pullover.  Being a tall, thin Presbyterian who spends much of his off-time putting on fake voices for the amusement of children, he's halfway to being Mr. Rogers already.  Adding a button-down sweater to the equation would just be pushing the point.

Happy Birthday, LB.  I concur.