Awww heck, how cute is that?
We fought ALL day long yesterday, and then at dinnertime he noticed this swatch, and he busted out with saying he loved it without any prompting. These see saw days make me feel so stupid, if you know what I mean. Struggling and trying to be hard-nosed for half the time, suddenly to be struck by something sweet that makes you feel like you're the mean one. But you're not! Your heart just feels like it. It's so incredibly confusing.
Like the scarf so far?
It's one of those quiet mornings that I imagined, when we first had a child. I'm at the big table working on my projects, he's in the living room on the floor, tongue sticking out while he concentrates on building a circuit. There is coffee, the soft rushing of the shower in the other room, no one is jumping on anything or whining.
It's here! It happened! This kind of morning! I need to call my friend Sarah.
Granola4 cups oats
3 cups mixture of cashews, hazelnuts and roasted sunflower seeds
1/4 cup brown sugar
pinches of nutmeg and cardamom
1/4 cup wheat germ
2/3 cup oil
2/3 cup honey or maple syrup
2 t vanilla 350 degrees, on 2 cookies sheets lined with parchment, 25-30 minutes.
Watch out at the end. Granola burns fast!
Ideas and projects are piling up, while I sit glumly with tendonitis. I have six designs ready to be knit! Writing Gloves in Glacier colored yarn from Quince & Co. (that's the bottom center,) a cowl called Arrowbite in the Parsley & Sabine (on top,) the lipstick colored scarf I mentioned in my last post, a Melrakki shawl (Old Norse for arctic fox,) a crazy scarf for a Zauberball.
Not to mention the underlying novel. Which is getting so close to being drafted, well drafted, readable, givable to people.
Even writing hurts my hands. I should not be posting this. I should not be knitting these things.
But this is what I do. I make up fictional Old Norse bedtime stories about Saga-esque men with names like Hundr Blacktooth and I pile yarn on top.
Really, I do.
So simple. And yet pretty odd and cool too, the way this "thing" comes together. (I'm having trouble figuring out how to describe it.) The Malabrigo Merino Worsted in Geranio is like the deepest reddish pink lipstick. So gorgeous. I hope when this is finished I can capture it in a proper photo.
There were so many ways I could try to pique your interest in this post. From the cheesy but adorable, "Listen up!" (Bolt is mostly ears.)
To the eponymous.
Basically, I just have a few bits of business to relate.
News! Free patterns! I'm starting an e-newsletter to send announcements of new designs, subscriber discount codes, news about shows or other events, and links to images that provide inspiration for the featured designs.
Sign up here by March 1 and receive a coupon code for a free pattern.
Also, a trunk show in Portland, Oregon. On 2/28 I'll be joining the very talented, sweet as pie Daniel Yuhas, and I'll have several of my designs to look at and try on.
2/28, 6 to 8 pm
Rose & Thistle right after? Yes, indeed!
Finally, after all these years, I've begun to resemble the slutty dog in Lady & The Tramp.
Waves seem to be a recurring image for me these days, in my knitting and in my writing. Water is equal to time in my novel, and my character is sometimes stuck, standing atop Icelandic glaciers or sitting deep in snow. Sometimes time flows too freely and takes her a thousand years away.
A repetitive motif in a cowl could never capture something awesome like the ocean, but it could hopefully conjure that feeling of something lapping and going away.
I've been making wave-like designs lately, with gentle curves and twists and riffles. This one, the Mica Cowl, is from many months ago, long before there was a novel in my life. But today it's sculptural waves make even more sense to me than ever, so I brought it out and photographed it, trying to capture the three-dimensional quality.
Or maybe a rocky stream bank at least? It's kind of scraggy looking when it's hung on the wall.
It' s one of the very few of my designs that I actually wear. Here it is, beside an Icelandic river much like one in my book. My expression recalls how disoriented I was. It was always light out, and I was losing track of what day it was. At times, I felt as old ast the Viking house, but too inspired to care.
Oh, it's the Mica Cowl, originally publised in Knitcircus. Thanks, Knitcircus!
Years ago, when Blackberries were new, my husband hacked one to make what he called a snacktop.
He added a small folding stand and roll-up keyboard. It was tiny, but he could write at coffee shops and libraries without carrying a laptop computer, which what was - at the time - like carrying around a concrete block. The idea of the snacktop was pretty awesome, even if in practice it was clunky and definitely weird. It was doing what our phones would ultimately do. Let us take snack sized devices and do snack sized things with them.
This came to mind because yesterday I heard from a librarian about a term people are using in the library world called...snacking. Not in the sense of eating a humungous moderate number of those chocolate balls from Lindt. The blue ones. No. But in the sense of snack-sized bits of reading. People are reading while they wait in line for things, while they take a short ride on the bus or sit outside a dressing room waiting for someone to try on jeans. (That one could be a big snack, actually.)
This certainly has big implications for libraries, publishers, and of course writers. Or does it?
The thing that caught my attention - besides the fact that now reader's phones are truly snacktops! - was the idea that writers might write to this. Might write something or somehow differently knowing that things might be consumed in small bites.
I think of this in a positive way, mostly, not in a way where new technology might steal the soul of something I write, but as a challenge that could result in some new forms or inspiration. Then I wonder, don't we already have this kind of brief material all around us, rudely injecting us with 5-minute spasms of wonder, fear, anger, advice, joy and unease all day long?
Are status updates and blog posts serving this craving? Or do you think many people are snacking on (gasp!) poetry? It's already short, right? (I'm smiling thinking of my friend Dale, a poet, who is amazed at how many words I can write. At least I have volume going for me.)
All this led me down the path to knitting, of course, because most things do. As a writer of knitting books, essays and designs, and a person whose brain won't shut off, I started immediately thinking about how knitting lends itself to snacking.
Thing is, I don't have a snacktop. I have a plain, dumb phone that my neighbor gave me in a ziploc baggie when my other one broke.
So I don't know.
Are you all snacking?
I would like to say that I'm knitting gorgeous, inspiring things. Textures that leap off the swatch! Laces that lovingly drape. The kind of simple, classic designs that make your fingers ache to knit.
Instead, you may notice a photograph of lentils.
The fact is my swatches over the past week have been depressing in their failure to highlight the yarn I'm designing with. It's a gorgeous yarn in a pale, solid, almost neutral color that should look great in any stitch. And yet. Even old standards from Barbara Walker look poor, and the brand new stitches I'm inventing are positively destitute.
So then. Here's some really delicious and super easy stew I made last night!
1. Chop leeks & celery and get them sizzling in the oil in a big pot with some salt & pepper.
2. Peel carrots and chop in rather large chunks. Add to the mix and stir.
3. When things are a bit brown, add about 1.5 liters water and all the other ingredients.
4. Bring to boil, then a fast simmer for about a half hour. Turn down and let simmer for a while until ready to eat. (I let mine simmer throughout Jillian Michaels' level 1 Yoga Meltdown and writing a chapter of an art book I'm co-authoring with Sebastian.)
5. Take the chicken thighs out and clean them, putting what you consider to be the edible meat back in the soup. I'm picky about what I put back into the soup. I give the rest to the raccons my husband. His standards for edible chicken are different from mine.
I just published the pattern for my Luft shawl, which I've loved knitting and am wearing right at this minute. When I'm not wearing it, I like to set it on the table and admire it. The yarn - called Zeta from Luna Grey Fiber Arts - is so subtly dyed, the wool and silk blend so light and just the slightest bit shiny. The lace is super simple but gives a truly airy consistency. It would be even airier in a laceweight, I'm sure. (I haven't tried. Laceweight frightens me.)
Martin took these pictures on a day that was absolutely freezing. I like the sort of moody one above, and I think it looks a lot like other knitting photos I am drawn to.
On the other hand, I'll paraphrase Martin. He says this picture below is the best one, because a shawl is in part about loveliness, and I look lovely here. Awwww. That made me use it as the second shot (I'm just not sure enough of the shawl pattern shows.)
Here is how you get the pattern.
<3
Though I'm showing you here a picture of Sebastian out in what passes for snow here, this post is about Martin's birthday dinner. Whenever I have a number of people coming over, I make my go-to dish. Sausage and peppers. This is food I ate growing up in New Jersey, and everyone made it, though my dad in particular liked to cook this.
It is sin on a bun, so delicious, looks impressive, and could not be easier to make.
Beware, it is low brow. The ingredients are not fancy, nor is the “method.” But I’ve had three foodies love it and ask either how to make it or where I source my ingredients. (That would be Fred Meyer.)I considered calling it a family secret, but realized that was silly when more people might want this awesome and easy thing to eat.
Sausage & Peppers
You’ll need
Packaged uncooked Italian sausage, like these, about 2 sausages per person.
Two of each: red peppers, green peppers, white onions.To do
Preheat oven to 360.
Place sausage in a baking dish with nothing else.
Bake for about 30 – 40 minutes, turning once or twice.
At that point add the chopped peppers and onions right on top. Nothing else.
Bake for another 30 – 45 minutes, turning and mixing once in a while. It will be done when the sausage are somewhat crispy, almost too brown, and the peppers and onions are cooked and sort of caramelized.
Woot.
I serve them with rolls, and while they were not typically eaten with mustard when I was a kid (more likely they were served with pasta), I do set out mustard.
Here is a picture of me with the sausage on my friend’s blog. Hilarious!
(Bea is an awesome cook, all non-dairy delicious foodie-food. Her daughters can't eat dairy, and to a less serious extend neither can I. So she and I stood in Fred Meyer and read the ingredients of Johnsonville sausages. We kind of closed our eyes and scanned for dairy. Because like in True Blood, we broke Lafayette's cardinal rule. "You don't ask what's inside the sausage, you just enjoy it.")
