Fig and Plum

Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day

2010-03-06T16:37:14-05:00

Knitting progress has been slow lately, and secret (some mitts for this year's Spiders swap!), so here are some photos of another craft I have been trying my hand at in recent weeks: artisan breadmaking.

These efforts started with the much-touted Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, whose authors maintain an informative blog where basically any question you might have has already been answered. It *is* a lot of white bread, so once I get comfortable with the basic methods in the first book, I plan to try their second book of whole-grain breads, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

I've been keeping notes over at Flickr. Can't imagine they are all that informative, since the chemistry of bread is all quite new to me. But I'm definitely enjoying baking my own, so to speak!

Good Old Fashioned Yarn Pron

2010-02-28T00:59:38-05:00

Just checking in with a squishy photo of my favorite impractical yarn, Morehouse Merino 3-Strand. Handwash. Pilly as can be. But I'm under its spell nonetheless. Today cast on with this for a Baby Tomten Jacket (Ravelry) for some expecting friends. One forgets how fast garter stitch moves on US 7s. Joy!

Jenny's Shooting Mitts

2010-01-20T08:51:31-05:00

We're back! I'm slowly posting photos from our honeymoon (amazing! want another honeymoon!) on Flickr, and will likely recap the greatest hits here at some point, but for the moment here is a superskimpy FO post:

Pattern: Susie's Reading Mitts (free download from Dancing Ewe Yarns) (Raveled)
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton, 2 balls
Needles: US 4 DPNs

Notes: A thank-you gift to our lovely and talented wedding photographer, Ms. Jenny Jimenez, for those chilly evenings shooting in the Pacific Northwest! If you like, you can check out Jenny's beautiful post on our wedding, where she has posted a lot of our favorites from the day. Le sigh - want to go back to wedding day, want to go back to honeymoon!

Heart Hats for Big and Little Sisters

2009-12-17T08:47:07-05:00

Pattern: Improvised (will eventually post here - it's pretty simple) [Ravelry]
Yarn: Cascade 220, one skein each color (Big Sister), Knitpicks Sierra, one skein each color (Little Sister)
Needles: US 7 16" circulars / DPNs (Big Sister), US 10.5 16" circulars / DPNs (Little Sister)
Recipients: The Niece Squad

Notes: I am desperately trying to destash. Maybe it's because I went through this phase where I thought I needed yarn for loads of baby projects, but somehow I ended up with like two skeins of everything in my stash - too much to justify a "one skein" project, not enough for anything substantial. This black and white yarn was originally purchased for a diaper cover that I changed my mind about (although I think it's cute, figured mom might not go for "prison themed"). So part of it went into a little black and white striped hat for Ms. Mayarn's little dude (must have thought Mayarn wouldn't mind "prison themed").

The rest seemed a natural fit for my niece, who's a girl, but a bit of a rock star rather than a girly-girl. I thought this hat, along with one for her little sister AJ, struck the appropriate balance, and with some colorwork around the brim, provided some extra warmth (they live in Canada, in a milder area, but still, brrr):

The patterns are slightly different, as you can see, on the loopy and easily delighted AJ:

(above pics courtesy of my sister)

You can see the heart pattern and shape of the hat a little better here:

Also, my nieces clearly have huge heads (and brains) whereas mine is kinda dinky - because Lorin's hat was pretty big on me!).

Neither pattern is particularly complex, but after our honeymoon (we leave Monday!!!) I may get round to posting it here.

Internet Drought!

2009-12-04T11:34:00-05:00

Sorry it's been so quiet here - the UFO project continues but we moved apartments and are still without internet! I'm posting this little dispatch from the office (shhhh!) . . . but stay tuned!

In the meantime, go get yourself some visual stimulation:

This Isn't Happiness
Natalie Dee
Rubber Duck Project

Oh, So That's Picot.

2009-11-23T08:06:46-05:00

Over all my years of knitting, for some reason I never tried picot edging. So when the pattern for these gave instructions for all those yarn overs and k2togs, and a turning round, I was totally confused but just followed orders. And there it was! I had no idea.

Then I gave myself a sticker for being a special knitter. In my defense, the pattern pic didn't show the edge clearly.

These mitts are a thank-you gift for a friend. Can't wait to give them to her.

Color Week!

2009-11-22T11:58:54-05:00

I missed most of Color Week last week, but made up for it on Saturday (purple) and Sunday (pink). Really enjoyed browsing the pool of other folks' submissions, though. Next time round, I'm vowing to make it all seven days!

The Wedding Files: Gocco Coasters and CD Favors

2009-11-14T08:40:50-05:00

Dear Readers, you are certainly sick and tired of reading about our wedding! You have my promise that this is the last wedding craft post, and it includes a project most people thought was funny but some people found kind of sick and weird: coasters with our faces on them.

When we were researching invitations, we saw a few that featured instead of a nice paisley motif or floral flourish a letterpress rendition of the couple's faces. It's a matter of taste, of course, but it was arguably a little strange and maybe even tacky or narcissistic. But after completing our invitations, I was on a little bit of a roll with the Gocco, and was scouring the universe of things that could be printed and images we could use.

The bike we had used for the invitations and totes was altered (by pixel and pen) from some clipart found online. Then I remembered playing with the Stamp filter in Photoshop, which allows you to turn a photo into an image that appears to be stamped. These images, which do not contain much gradation, are perfect for Gocco. And one of our first experiments with the filter was with a photo of us, and it turned out so well we decided we had to use it somehow. (And honestly, I was getting a lazy at this point and didn't feel like experimenting with 5000 different images).

We used a photo of us taken at Carrie M.'s wedding:

But how to avoid the narcissism issue? Well, maybe it's still a little narcissistic, but, erm, what wedding isn't a LITTLE bit that way? But to address it, we decided to put ourselves on something lowly and utilitarian. Napkins? No, because we knew our venue had cloth napkins and we wouldn't want to create waste by introducing paper ones. Why not coasters? Sure, we'll hold your drink, on our faces! Yeah! Funny, not narcissistic (I think).

Plus we knew our venue would be using paper coasters anyway. We also came up with a plan to do two other designs, one of the Brooklyn Bridge, and one of (yes, sadly) our cat.

Problem is, at some point during coastermaking, I ran out of steam with the Gocco. I had already completed the invitations and tote bags at that point, and the wedding was approaching fast. And I had done the coasters of us, but none of the others. Oh. Well.

Anyway, here they are being put to excellent use at the wedding by Carrie, Sandra, and Marie:

Plain paper coasters for stamping or Goccoing can be purchased online at Blockheads

The final Gocco project of the wedding was a labor of love, as the day was drawing near and we were both getting tired. This idea was almost directly ripped off from these folks, and Debbie was helpful in pointing us in the direction of the kraft paper cases, which are from Calumet Carton. The CDs were a joint project - we came up with the playlist together, Chris burned and printed the CDs, and I laid out the CD design and printed the covers with Gocco. The tree image was taken at Valentino Pier, where we got married. I accidentally used fabric ink for the title, which is why it's so splotchy. Whoops.

So that's it for the wedding craft debrief! I hope this didn't bore you too much!

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream w. Virginia's Blueberry Sauce

2009-11-14T00:55:05-05:00

And for dessert . . .

. . . baby's first ice cream! We used the recipe for French-Style Vanilla from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz (formerly of Chez Panisse, and now apparently living as some kind of ice cream god in Paris). It involves steeping the vanilla seeds and pods for a good long while in the custard ingredients, both before and after cooking. Great flavor, a little on the sweet side.

The above was served with a damn tasty blueberry sauce from fellow knitter Virginia who's got herself quite a little canning business at craft fairs around NJ and NY. Follow her on twitter if you would like to know where she's headed next, or to order up some of that goodness!

Now here's that vanilla, buck nekkid:

Not bad for a first effort, right (second if you count that Concord Grape Sorbet)? Although I enjoy it from time to time, I'm not really an ice cream person (I know, and I also don't like potatoes. Chris made Guiness Lamb Stew the other night and I made him substitute parsnips and celeriac for them. Those of you with rotten tomatoes in hand, please be merciful.), but making it is pretty fun. I could become an ice-cream gifter paretty easily! If only it traveled a little better . . .

(ps two posts in one day, WHOA. Plus, I've got two FOs to show you soon, and another one on the way. DOUBLE WHOA.)

The UFO Chronicles, Volume 1

2009-11-07T11:19:42-05:00

It was interesting to see your different reactions to the mountain of UFOs sitting in our bedroom. Some of you have similar piles and are just fine with it. It gave the OCD sufferers among you serious agita. And some of you sent encouraging emails, even assuming (HAHAHAHA) that the plan was actually to finish them all.

O, if it could be so! But alas, you credit me with too much discipline. My plan is to blog each of these projects in their current state, and then, after that, to decide which ones are worth completing and which will be drowned out of their misery in the frog pond.

As I said in the last entry, by and large, there is a reason (I didn't say a good reason) each of these projects got stalled. Let's start with something straightforward, one many of you can probably relate to: Second Sock Syndrome ("SSS").

This is Child's First Sock (Ravelry) from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush. A while back, I went through a short Nancy Bush phase, mostly because my Norwegian Stockings have always been a favorite knit. I had originally started Child's First Sock in Tess sock yarn, but didn't like the way the color pooled in the lace pattern, so frogged and began again with Koigu KPPPM, which is what you see above. It appears from this progress shot that this happened in (gulp!) August 2007.

Then Second Sock Syndrome set in. Or maybe it was Severe Second Sock Syndrome. Because sometime after sock #1 was done, I decided that I disliked knitting socks. And also that I didn't much like wearing handmade socks either - I have narrow feet, and they usually are not elastic enough and end up slouching down into my shoes. The Norwegian Stockings may be the exception, because I wear them with high boots (which sadly, obscures most of the colorwork). Even around the house my narsty old bunneh slippers are always preferred. So I just stopped, even though these socks were unfinished. And they sat. And sat. And sat. And here they are on the chopping block.

I do love the color (as you can see it matches are amazeball teal wall, which is possibly the one thing I will miss about this apartment), the lace is interesting, and the pattern well-written (I still <3 u Nan!). It probably wouldn't take long to finish. If these weren't made for my dwarf feet (another snag . . . I did downsize the pattern and now can't remember exactly how), I'd finish them and give them to a friend, but I don't know anyone with such teensy dogs.

What's next for these sockies? Will they walk the plank? Stay tuned to find out . . .

Next up: Cotton Counterpane Carpetbag (Ravelry).

This photo evidences another reason for this effort - these projects are hogging my needles! I know, they could be held on scrap yarn or stitch holders, but that would be too smart, and would just extend the lives of some projects that should be mercifully frogged.

This one happens to be very near completion. One side of the bag is complete, and I think there's only one repeat left in the lace pattern on the other side. But:

1) I don't have any handles, and the ones I have in mind may be impossible to find. You see, my original vision was to turn this into something of a po-mo CCB and use shiny chrome circular handles. But it seems such handles may only exist in my brain. I don't much like those bamboo ones that are the most common variety. I suppose I could see using some plain circles if they were in a dark wood stain. But still, not exactly easy to obtain.

2) Because of the degree of stretch in this pattern, PLUS the degree of stretch in the recycled cotton yarn I'm using, to be of any use this bag is going to have to be lined. And I'm too lazy and bad at sewing to make a proper lining.

3) I may not even use this. It's a cool project, but it's not especially practical or my style. (Interestingly, the Ravelry entry for this project has more favorites than some of my FOs, even though it's a sleeping project)

So there you have stall #2. Fear not, there's more to come!

And Now for Something Really Scary.

2009-11-01T13:29:01-05:00

Duhn duhn DUUUUUUUHN:

This is a pile of UFOs. Over the next couple of weeks, with your help, I'll be going through and deciding what gets finished and what gets frogged. You haven't seen some of these, and some you haven't seen for quite a long time.

Hope you had an excellent and appropriately scary Halloween. I'm currently being run ragged at work, but managed to snap a few photos of the cuteness in my neighborhood on my way out the door.

Concord Grape Pie

2009-10-21T07:47:10-05:00

Well, I was getting ready to blog about some knitting, but then I left my resurrected leafy vines pullover in the back of a taxi last night after work. So, how about a concord grape pie instead?

Don't worry, I called 311, and they have a surprisingly organized process for finding lost items. I hope the driver thought a half-completed pullover on size 4 needles was valuable enough not to toss in the garbage. Anyway, the pie.

Most people have never tasted concord grape pie. I don't think I even saw a concord grape until sometime in my twenties, growing up as I did in a Midwestern sea of red seedless from the Jewel-Osco (or Le Bijou, as my high school ~~french~~ franglais teacher used to call it). But the first time you eat one, you figure out why "grape flavor" Jolly Ranchers, grape Crush, and other grape-flavored junk foods taste how they do. They are all imitating the concord grape, which is more flavorful and, especially, fragrant than you could imagine a grape to be. You think, "Oh! So THAT'S a grape!" And of course, that color is beguiling, the regal color of velvet.

They should be more popular, but they are probably delicate, and lots of people can't deal with the seeds. My approach is to just eat them. The seeds are actually good for you. Chris spits them out. Either way is kind of high maintenance.

Turns out, the seeds make baking with concords pretty high maintenance, too. (Slightly more so even than concord grape sorbet. Yes, I have a problem.) The idea to try a concord grape pie came from our talented neighborhood baker, Emily Isaacs of Trois Pommes Patisserie. Emily makes quite a few unique pies, including this one, and her recipe for grape pie was published a while back in Bon Appétit. I could have just bought one from Trois Pommes, but as you know I like a project and wanted to try it myself since we had a boatload of grapes from the food coop. Now, the published recipe calls for red seedless grapes spiked with frozen grape juice concentrate which addresses the scarcity of concords but also slyly obviates the need for seeding.

The seeding process took about an hour, with a little help from Chris. When converting the recipe for concords, I asked Emily about the seeding and she said, Yoda-like, "it is the only way." She finds it therapeutic and seeds them by the case when there's downtime at the bakery. Cut 'em, seed 'em. Cut 'em, seed 'em. And so on. So yeah. That's why Emily makes the big bucks ;-) It's a lot of work and there's no good way to do it without cooking the grapes a bit and presumably losing some of their oomph. At least the process makes your hands smell good. And really, an hour isn't that long. Do it while you're listening to Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! or the baseball playoffs or The Green Hornet or whatever people listen to on the radio.

Through no fault of the recipe, my crust for this pie turned out, er, blemished. It tastes nice and flaky, but I was (for no good reason) loathe to add water to make the thing stick together, and it was so crumbly that it wouldn't roll out properly. As Jean suggested on Flickr, it looks "rustic."

And what does it taste like? Jammy, but not nearly as sweet as most grape jams. More like a cross between jam and wine, snuggled inside a buttery crust. If you can still find concords around Thanksgiving where you are, the earthiness of this pie might make it a perfect fit between pecan and pumpkin. And of course, since you earn this pie, it tastes that much better.

Concord Grape Sorbet

2009-10-13T14:14:51-05:00

Ladies and Gents, this weekend saw the maiden voyage of the KitchenAid ice-cream maker attachment, with which we may be officially in love:

Unlike the rest of you (apparently), I am not a canning person. I burn myself a lot (currently nursing a second-degree burn on my middle finger from a brush with the toaster oven, and a minor burn on my inner arm from bumping into a hot cookie sheet), and just don't think sterilizing jars is something I ought to attempt. But I love the idea of capturing a flavor that's right in season in a way that lasts just a little bit longer. Now (thanks to our friends Beth and Shaun), we can make sorbet!

We used this recipe for Concord Grape Sorbet from a recent New York Magazine. The recipe comes from Meredith Kurtzman, pastry chef at Otto, which we tried for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

The sorbet turned out well. How amazing to watch the stuff freeze before our eyes! It's kind of a time-consuming recipe - not active time, just waiting time. I think there is an additional chilling phase because you do not cook the grapes as you do in some other sorbets, so you have to let the mixture sit to combine the flavors for quite a while longer. If I made it again, I would (a) double the recipe, as it doesn't make a huge amount and (b) cut the amount of simple syrup, as it seemed to dilute the grapey flavor a bit.

Next journey: mint ice cream!

The Wedding Files: Viennese Shrug

2009-09-24T21:17:10-05:00

Pattern: Viennese Shrug by Lisa Daehlin, Interweave Knits, Summer 2005 [Ravelry]
Yarn: Fibre Company Road to China, Autumn Jasper, 4 skeins
Needles: US 4 circular

Notes: This is an interesting pattern: it's knitted in halves, from a provisional cast on that goes right up the spine. A graceful shape, an interesting lace pattern, overall, a pleasing piece to knit. And despite a couple of setbacks, described below, knitting the Viennese Shrug was a wedding preparation task I will remember as straightforward and rewarding in comparison to some other tasks!

But ooookay, so as it was pointed out to me early on by Ms. Subliminal Rabbit, this pattern is a "one-size-fits-all." Pattern designers: just because you've written a lovely lace pattern and you can't wrack your head about HOW on earth to create it in a different size, does NOT make a pattern "one-size-fits-all." (evidence!) It just makes it ONE SIZE. Here, that size = big. I do accept some responsibility for being a dwarf. And I don't mean to be hard on pattern designers. But it does make me sad, a little.

Anyway, at first I didn't listen, and cast on using a smaller gauge than called for, thinking that would make up the difference. I endured a substantial provisional cast on (yech! not tasty medicine!), and completed two pattern repeats before admitting my plan had not worked - it was going to be far too long - and frogged. Then suffered through yet ANOTHER provisional cast-on. This time, I made some modifications:

1. Shortening length down the back: I subtracted one of the repeats of the lace motif from the cast on to make the back shorter. Miraculously, this seemed to work out even though I suspected there would be some unintended consequences. Do note though that it results in substantially narrower sleeves. They are snug on me, though less so with blocking. If you have big guns, you may want to skip this modification.

2. Shortening width of piece across the back: This posed a trickier problem and seemed to be an issue for a lot of people who made this shrug. Because of the way the neck is shaped, it would have been difficult to just eliminate a whole pattern repeat. So I included all pattern repeats, but just ended up seaming the sides of the shrug's opening from the armpit join back up several inches. It makes the opening of the shrug a little narrower than it ought to be, and there are times when I need to pull it back up over my shoulders a bit, but this does seem to solve some of the width problem and results in more of a full-length sleeve rather than a 3/4-length.

Using these mods, I think the fit is decent. Not perfect but passable, and this is a garment that doesn't have to fit just so anyway.

So, you may have noticed that these photos are not from our wedding - they're from our mini-moon! If you can believe this, there were other things on my mind besides getting an FO shot for the blog ;-) I actually did wear the shrug at the wedding, but it was during some times when there were not a lot of photos being taken, so visual evidence is scarce. You can see it with the wedding dress (though I'm going to save a reveal of the whole dress for when our talented photographer, Jenny Jimenez, is finished working her magic and I can show you her photos). Jenny was nice enough to forward this rare shot of Shrug in Action, which is from an emergency curbside bustling session in front of my friend Sara's apartment. Note that it was mercilessly cropped by me, so as not to reveal too much just yet :) (so bring any beefs about composition here, not to JJ!)

(Yep! Sara!). This emergency bustling was necessary after a scene on the way out of the hotel lobby proved that klutzes and wedding gowns with trains do. not. mix!

You can see pretty well here how much of the underarm I seamed up.

So. There it is! Wedding shrug!

And one more thing: Road to China. Buy it. Fondle it. Use it. It's my new favorite yarn, and I have a pretty low tolerance for alpaca.

Banana Bread

2009-09-21T20:45:19-05:00

We've only been married a week, and already, we've welcomed a brand new member into our household. Everybody, meet The Mixer! Mixer, meet Everybody!

Everybody, The Mixer is responsible for the deliciousness below:

Banana Bread, from the August 2003 issue of Gourmet. The best banana bread we've ever had. (Except my late grandma's, with the cream cheese frosting, which wins points for sentiment. Grandma couldn't let bananas go to waste!). Unbelievably moist. Unbelievably light. Moistness may be due to the crème fraîche. Lightness, well, all that credit probably goes to The Mixer.

Banana bread (and a lot of sweet breads) can be too dense, and this one has a perfect spongy texture. This recipe calls for beating the eggs and sugar together for 10 minutes, a feat that would have required that Chris and I stand over the bowl in shifts with our hand mixer, complaining about our measly collective arm strength. I can only imagine this somehow gives the eggs the right treatment for doing their fluffy stuff. Thank you, Mixer!* We love you!

Next up: Sharp Knives and the Women Who Love Them!

* and most especially, thank you to Chris' parents, for this wonderful wedding gift!