Pink!

 Or, I should say Scarlet! but it looks pink to me.

This is called Scarlet Ibis and it is a BFL from Miss Babs that I got at Rhinebeck last year. I love spinning it. I have finished spinning the singles and will be plying a 3-ply sock yarn tomorrow evening. It is a good color fix after hours of staring at computers.

The rest of this post is about recent acquisitions. What do you think about the two yarns below? One is the Briar Rose Polwarth I spun and the other is a merino/tencel yarn dyed by Briar Rose. The colors are amazingly similar. I am planning to combine them into a shawl - with the similar colors but different hands. The merino/tencel will be more drapey.

 On that note of similar colors, this is what I bought from Briar Rose at Camp. Two sets of BFL rovings that I think I will spin separately and ply together. I think the combo will give me a lot of depth but it could also be mud when plied together. Sampling is my friend!

 This is a silk/Coopworth mix from Hidden Valley Woolen Mills. I love the colors. I can't wait to see how it spins up.

 I bought some books at Camp but those will be in a different post. I received two books in the mail in the past couple of weeks and I am excited about them. The first is a book I won (yes, I won) in a random drawing from Serious Eats. When they review books, they usually get multiple copies to give away. I enter every time I find a book I like. And I won this! How cool is that?

 The other book is from Paperback Swap. I signed up a while ago and listed (and sent away) some books that I didn't want any more. I also put up a list of books that I wanted. I have received one or two that I wanted right away. For a while I would check to see where I was on the list for the books I wanted. All of them were highly requested so there is a list of folks waiting for them. Then I got tired of checking and forgot all about it.

So imagine my surprise when I got a notice that this book was being shipped to me. I had signed up for auto-request for books I really wanted. This eliminates the step of agreeing that you still want the book when it becomes available.

It arrived really quickly and is in excellent shape. The way Paperback Swap works is that you pay the postage when you mail people books and they pay when they send stuff to you. You get credits when you list a book and those credits apply to books that you request. You can also buy with money but so far I've acquired my books just with credits.

I've been mostly spinning as my elbow tendonitis has been acting up and knitting is not fun. I hope it heals soon.

The straight-away

Thank you for all the lovely comments on the shawl. Your support and admiration have kept me going. The chocolate espresso bread is straight out of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. You can get some recipes from an article published in Mother Earth News and from the authors' blog posts. It is a tad too long in the instructions for me to repeat it here.

Here is a view of what the shawl will look like when it is done. Of course it isn't blocked yet so you can see puckers on one side and it is stretched out on the other side. The edging is not grafted yet and the neck edging needs to be done but these are tiny efforts compared to what has been completed.

To celebrate, and because I needed a break with easy knitting, I decided to start a new shawl. This is loosely based on Ingili from Føroysk Bindingarmynstur / Faroese Knitting Patterns aka Bundanaurriklaedid. I am not doing a lace pattern, unlike the original, and my gauge is not as fine as the one pictured in Judy Gibson's site (at the link). I am just doing a simple st pattern of 3 rows knit and 1 row purl. A closeup shows the ridges.

The sts are all crowded on the needle so it is not easy to see in the bigger picture. But each 2 rows are smaller than the previous 2 so it will get easier as I go on. I started with a provisional CO as I'll come back and figure out how to finish the bottom edge after I complete the shawl.

Bread, yarn and lace

First the lace: I am really happy with the way the lace edging is turning out on the shawl. It is hard to see how nice it is in the unblocked stage so I hope you get an idea of it.

I chose to leave it as it turned out. The second row of the pattern is on the right side. I also didn't do a chain st as I joined. I did a k2tog on the wrong side, turned, and then slipped the st with the yarn in the back. This creates an edge that looks about the same on both sides.

Thank you for the encouragement and the condolences on the long binding off/edging process and the help in deciding which side to make the right side.
Here is a close-up of the lace border. See how nicely it echoes the triangles in the edge of the shawl?
This view is from a little further out. I am a little less than a quarter of the way done. There will be 48 repeats of the edging in total and I have completed 10. They go pretty fast but I get tired of doing it so I don't do more than 2-3 at a time. There is no rush. It will get done.

Now the bread part. I baked a loaf from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. I tested recipes for this book and this is the basic recipe for lean french bread. Except that during the testing, I discovered I could add sourdough starter to it and also mix up the flours. So this is mostly whole wheat flour with a bit of rye and a little less than 1/3 bread flour. I added a cup of mixed dried berries/cherries - mostly cranberries but I used up some dried blueberries and tart cherries - and a cup of walnuts to the dough. It makes a pretty loaf when cut.

My loaf shaping skills are getting better but they aren't great yet. This is acceptable, not ugly but not beautiful. You can see the loaf got a lot of spring in the oven - those cuts were closed when I put it in.

I am preparing to knit my first bottom up Faroese shawl. This is the lot of yarn that I put together for it. I am going to start with a provisional CO at the bottom, knit up with the blue Mini Mochi yarn (the balls) first, then the green and finally the Socks that Rock (the skein) if I need it. The rest of the Socks That Rock will go into a lace edging at the bottom that I'll add on later. Isn't it amazing how well these go together given I bought the Mini Mochi yarns at one time and the Socks That Rock at another?

Yes, I plan ahead but that is the way I am. I plan out projects in my head (imagi-knitting) long before I actually start to knit them. I usually only knit one project at a time and I guess this is how I get variety in my knitting!

Two weeks

I am sorry I didn't post last week. I was away and had the most amazing Sunday. More on that later. I am going to try and give you two weeks worth of reading though!

I felt confident enough to truly experiment on a bread recipe the week before last. Until now, I have been experimenting with adding different flours or ingredients but not really trying to make up my own recipe. But I was desperate. I had sourdough starter to feed and that means that I had to find something to do with the excess starter. I decided to combine it with the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes recipe to see if I could come up with a sourdough version of the wet-dough method. They have one on their blog so I used that as a base but didn't add any commercial yeast because I had a lot of starter. The recipe in the book doesn't have any weights, just volume measures and the recipe on the blog starts with some old dough based on their recipe, not real sourdough starter. So I improvised.

The dough was very wet when I took it out in 24 hours to bake. So wet that I couldn't do anything with it. I should have used Jim Lahey's 'bake in a pot' method. But I baked it on a stone free form like a ciabatta and that is exactly how it turned out. The only problem is that there isn't enough salt so the bread tastes flat. It is also a little wet on the inside because the crust turned almost black before the inside cooked fully. I think I should have used a lower oven temperature. Next time...

I love the large irregular holes. I am going to toast it today and put a garlic parmesan spread on it to eat with ravioli for dinner.

While I was away, my pre-ordered bread books arrived. I had also bought one a few weeks ago so I have lots to play with. Clockwise from the top: Peter Reinhart's new Artisan Breads Every Day, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François's new Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and Jim Lahey's new My Bread. I tested recipes for Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day so I can recommend the book without looking at it. My name is listed in the long list of testers in the back. The others need some reading and baking before I can review them.

Now, on to my Sunday last week. I went to Berkeley to visit friends, taking a day off from a long and tiring business trip. I was in downtown San Francisco without a car, so I took the BART for the first time. We spent the day knitting and spinning and eating with a short trip to the Edible Schoolyard. The garden made me nostalgic for next year's CSA season. Food included a lovely crustless quiche, a fruit compote with home-grown fruit, home-made scones with home-made fig jam and a lovely buckle from Sweet Adeline's. Unfortunately, the day ended all too soon.

My friend Therese gave me this gorgeous green roving to play with on my wheel.

During the rest of the week, I walked a lot on the Embarcadero and ate at Greens restaurant, visited the Ferry Building and made a quick dinner trip to Chinatown's R&G Lounge. Other that that, it was all work, work, work.

I got back last night. As always, I overestimated how much knitting I could get done on a trip and took along a new project when I didn't even get to finish the Stor Rund Dug shawl. However, my friends helped me pick out a different edging that I'm more comfortable with. More on that later.

Today, I took a tip from Janine, and made a ditty bag for my spinning oil. I took the foot of a sock where the heel had worn out. I had already used the leg for another project. I finished off the cut edge with a rolled stockinette edging and added a cord and a cord stop. Voila! a spinning oil bag to hang on my wheel.

So that is a a non-knitting report on 2 weeks. I have made some progress on the shawl and I hope to be done with the body soon. It is fun knitting but when each round has 48 repeats, it takes a while to get through each one. Another 10 or 15 rounds are left.

Modular focus

Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

I also want to acknowledge an anniversary of sorts. I've been baking bread for just over a year now. My first loaf was recorded on this blog on March 22, 2008. Now I am making all my own bread - I don't buy any bread for myself at home. I am quite proud of the progress I've made in a year.

Spring is here. The forsythia is blooming and there are buds on the crabapple outside my window. I am feeling more energized and am looking forward to the longer days and warmer weather.

I have been knitting and now I need to make progress on this tank. I have made some, the front is almost done. Here is a detail of the beaded yarn that will be part of the yoke. You can see the little beads here and there. They are threaded onto a thread that is twisted with the yarn. One has to be careful to catch both when knitting.
This is the front. There are a few more rows of the yoke and then I split for the shoulders and knit each separately. I am not happy with the big hole in the middle. Fortunately, there is extra yarn there that I will use to close it up. It is caused by the fact that you are knitting each side separately which stretches the sts in the middle. When I do the back, I am going to try and knit both sides together and see if it prevents the hole. Also, something to be careful on with garter st. Make sure all your ends are on the same side. See that big bit of yarn? That is an end and it is on the front because there is another end neatly woven in on the other side. So this one will have to be taken to the other side and woven in. Sigh! What do you think about my new backdrop for photographs? I bought some stretch velvet to use as a backdrop so the knitting is clearly visible. I like it on this because the silver was blending with the grey of my carpet and not standing out at all.

Here's to more knitting related posts!

Busy non-knitting weekend

I'm sorry I didn't post last week. Somehow the weekend came and went and I never wrote anything. I have been knitting a little but nothing that I can show you. So I am going to regale you with photos of my baking this weekend.

Additionally, before I start, let me tell you about the wonders of ice. I have been having a lot of problems with my arms, especially my right due to computer usage. I am now icing everything every night and it cuts the pain amazingly well. Of course, I feel like an idiot sitting around wrapped in ice packs. I'm sure I will be enjoying this once the temperatures hit 90 F but for now, it isn't all that pleasant.

Yesterday, we had a gorgeous spring day so I cleaned up my yard. I pulled out the annuals from last year, got rid of the peony stems and set up the supports for this year and pruned the roses and the butterfly bush. It is almost time to plant pansies. I usually do that the second week in April.

Anyway, here are the delights from my oven for your drooling pleasure. The first is a babka that I made in the shape of a Kranz cake. I couldn't find a description of this as the site I got it from has been deleted. But here is my version. It is filled with chocolate.

Next I made a dozen blueberry muffins. I joined a winter CSA, called Winter Sun Farms, this year. I received blueberries in a number of the shares. Organic blueberries. I wanted to do something special with them - not just put them in my cereal. So I made muffins from scratch. They are very good. Not too sweet but moist with a crunchy top.

Lastly, I made two loaves of a cheese and onion sourdough bread. I guess you could call it a Quattro Formaggio as I threw in leftovers of cheese I had - a little mozzarella, a little cheddar, some Parmegianno Regggiano and some Monterey Jack. I also added some dehydrated onion and a couple of tablespoons of Penzey's Brady Street Cheese Sprinkle which has garlic and spices.

I'm pretty pleased with my scoring. I've been making a lot of ugly loaves lately. These are the first ones in a long time that I feel like showing off.

Next week, I hope to be back to talking about knitting.

Yet another busy weekend

It is an understatement to say that I'm exhausted. I think I could sleep for a month.

I spent the week driving an hour each way as I was the organizer of a conference. The days were long and made longer by the commute. I also took the opportunity to have dinner with some out of town friends, which made that day even longer.

Therefore, there was not much knitting going on. In fact, there was zip, zero, zilch.

I also spent the weekend teaching. So there was a bunch of knitting and I have made some progress on the Wild Apple. I hope to really finish one sleeve this week! I know I've made this promise before but this time I'm really hoping.

Today I am using the remainder of the focaccia dough from last weekend to make rolls. I am making veggie burgers Indian style for dinner. Here is one recipe to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. I am making my own recipe with vegetables from my CSA farm. I thought it would be even better with freshly baked rolls. I was going to make a calzone with the potato vegetable filling instead of the traditional kind but I thought that if I made patties, I could have it another night during the week. I may need to bake the rolls the evening before as I don't think I will have time to bake and then eat for dinner.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck in finishing that sleeve this week!

Flying time

Time flies, they say, when you are having fun. But what about the situation where you don't have the time to do all the things you want to do because time is flying by so fast? That doesn't seem like fun to me at all.

I wanted to knit this week. Badly, really badly. But I didn't. Not a stitch. I came back on Sunday evening so Monday evening was taken up by grocery shopping, Tuesday with cooking and preparing dough for baking on Wed, Wed evening was just a mish-mash of drama, and chores. Thursday evening was a blur and so was Friday evening (actually I think I remember what I did on Friday). Yesterday I spent time shopping for flowers and working in the yard. All my annuals are planted. I planted dahlias, basil and marigolds in addition to the petunias, geraniums, hot peppers and rosemary I planted a couple of weeks ago.

I didn't even read a book this week! I feel as if the week has slipped by with no input on my part. It wasn't that it was boring or not fun. It was just going by way too fast.

I AM going to knit today. On Friday I met with a student. She has been struggling with lace but she has mastered it finally. It was a version of my Driftwood stole. I am so proud of her for her perseverance, her attention to detail and her love of learning.

I have put my garden photos up on Flickr. I thought this way you would see them only if you want to.

A lot of my bread baking this week was based on Artisan Bread in 5 Mins a Day. I can't recommend this book strongly enough for those who don't have any time to bake. There is an accompanying blog with a lot of answers and some new recipes. A lot of it is marketing but there are good tips there also.

Thank you Knitman for your compliment on the tree and the house.

Anmiryam, yes, it is the small things that make us feel virtuous. I am especially feeling good about my exercising. This is one of things that is making me have less time to knit though. In order to get up early in the am to work out, I have to get to bed early. Oh well. Eventually I will catch up on the knitting

Beading on the cheap

Or not so cheap. The necklace itself isn't cheap but the tools are.

I made quite a bit of progress on the necklace this week. Here's a close up. There are two silver beads flanking the large bead and then 14 strands of seed beads in 4 colors all mixed up at random. I am debating if 14 strands is enough or not. I am going to do the 14 on the other side and then decide, so please weigh in. I have about 4 done on the other side and you can see them at the bottom of the photo. Here's my oh-so-inexpensive bead set up.The base is a metal thali (just the tray, no food ;-) ) with a washcloth in it to prevent things from sliding around. A plastic bowl serves to hold the beads. I tried using slip knots on coil-less safety pins to prevent the beads from sliding off but it didn't always work. So I went looking for Bead Stoppers at the local craft store that is supposed to carry them. No luck. They didn't have them. But they did have crimp beads that looked a lot like those Bead stoppers. So I bought them. $1 for more than I need. You can see them at the top of the tray. One of them was too tight to pull the beading line through. But enough of the others work. I am using a Big Eye needle to thread the beads and you can see it in the middle of the bowl.

I also made a multi-grain bread using a recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It has come out really well. I like Peter Reinhart's writing style and have bought his Whole Grain Breads which has a different technique that I have to try.

No knitting but that has to change soon. I have a contract from Interweave for an item to go in a new book coming out next year. The yarn arrived yesterday and I need to get started on the charting and knitting.

Nothing, nada, zilch

No knitting, no beading, nothing to report.

Actually, that is not entirely true. I did work the cuff of the sock in the Shibui sock yarn and am almost finished with the first sock. I am quite surprised because I am almost out of yarn. I won't run short, but I don't have exceptionally large feet - quite the contrary, and I usually have a lot of yarn left over.

Also, I am useless at winding center pull balls without a Nostepinne or a tube of some kind. I wound this on my fingers and it was a huge mess. So much so that I took some time and rewound it into a usual round pull-from-the-outside ball and life is much better. I should be binding that sock off shortly. I am going to try one of the 2x2 rib bind-offs I learned from Jean Wong.

After Ann and Barbara so kindly gave me advice on baking stones and replacements in the comments to last week's post, I went to Target and bought a pizza stone. It is small but it works. I made pizza last night for dinner and also baked the remainder of the bread dough. It came out well. Next week I am going to try a whole grain recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I also found a couple of links via Ravelry that you might be interested in: Manjula's Kitchen (how to make naan in your oven) and Vegan Feast Kitchen (a variation on the no-knead recipe).

I am in a relative state of shock this weekend. A colleague of mine -my age - just passed away this week. My husband spotted her obituary in the newspaper. I had just heard from her a few weeks ago so I am dazed. The wake is tomorrow. What a fine line there is between life and death. It continues to reinforce my philosophy that we have to live each day for that day and not wait till someday to do the things we enjoy - especially the simple things. Spending time doing the things we enjoy, stopping to enjoy precious moments along the way, and making time for the ones we love is something that we have to do all the time. To balance that loss, I also heard that my friend's daughter had a baby girl. 5.5 weeks early but healthy and doing well. In the midst of life there is death but in the midst of death, there is life.

Beads, bread and a bottle

This post is a mish-mash of various topics. Still not much knitting but I did finish the Klein bottle Hat from the Schoolhouse Press Knitalong. I got really bored with knitting the handle and then grafting it to the 'hole' we left in the inner layer. I botched the grafting. I was trying to be clever but failed. I should have just removed the scrap yarn, transferred the stitches to needles and grafted (plan B). I thought I could follow the path of the waste yarn to graft in rib (plan A) but it didn't work. After struggling with one side, I went to plan B and the second side looked fine. Fortunately it is not very visible. I think the whole ribbed thing is a pain because I didn't like the increases/decreases for the top of the hat in rib and I didn't like the short rows (to make the handle curve) in rib either. But it is done and it will be a long time before I start knitting anything in navy yarn in rib. A question for the mathematicians. Something tells me I should sew up the outer layer to the handle to close the second 'hole'. Should I? These 'holes do not exist in mathematics. They are virtual. So they shouldn't exist but none of the instructions on any of the patterns I found say anything about this. The 'hole' in the inner layer no longer exists as it is where the handle joins the inner layer. But what about the 'hole' in the outer layer where the handle passes through it to join the inner layer? I think it should be sewn up around the handle but I don't know for sure. Any ideas would be welcome. I also baked more bread using a recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 mins a day. The recipe itself was reproduced in the NY Times. I haven't got the book yet but it is on hold in the library. I like to check books out before I buy them. I didn't have all the tools - no stone or peel. So I baked on a cookie sheet with a Silpat on it. The crust isn't anything like the one I got from the Jim Lahey's recipe but that might be because of the lack of a stone. But it looks OK and probably will taste fine. There is another half of the recipe sitting in the refrigerator. It keeps up to 2 weeks and one can bake at any time. I may try the other one in a loaf pan just for larks.I've been shopping for a stone but comments online say that buying from an online store seems to be risky. Many of them arrive broken or cracked. The local Bed Bath and Beyond and Linens 'N Things seem to only have the smaller thinner stones. So I will have to defer the purchase till I go somewhere near a Williams Sonoma or other specialty store. With gas prices being what they are, I don't want to do that just for a stone.

I also went to the bead store and bought the fixings for a necklace for my lovely bead. I am very happy with the results. I may sit down next weekend and make it. I didn't take photos of the fixings and I'm not sure I can do justice to them with the camera.

I've been reading a lot. More Brother Cadfael books and two bread baking books are on my reading shelf right now. I have The Bread Baker's Apprentice and The Village Baker from the library. The latter sells for lots of money as it is OOP. The former looks like a good basic book that explains the process of bread baking in a lot of detail.

If you are wondering why I'm suddenly obsessed with bread, I can't help you. I have no idea. I have been wondering the same thing myself. I haven't eaten bread in years. Especially white bread, which is what I'm baking. Somehow though, I feel like baking it.

Spring!

Yay! Spring is here! But it is so dull and boring outside.

We don't have snow but it is too cold and windy for gardening and the ground is soggy. Wehave had so much rain. In a week or so I am going to go and buy pansies to set out. I bought some dahlia bulbs because I found some nice ones but it is way too early to put them out. My daffodils are just barely breaking through the ground.

I am in a knitting slump. I haven't picked up needles all week and I just don't care. My hat just sits. My Wild Apple just sits. This is what happens to me when I have too many things in the works. That is why I stick to one or two things at a time. I am going to force myself to finish the hat this weekend.

Today I hope to go to the bead store and find the rest of my bead necklace - to go with the Sheila Ernest giant bead.

Last weekend I baked bread after a long time. I had used recipes from the Vegetarian Epicure and Laurel's Kitchen but the crust was too hard or too soft. I couldn't even slice one loaf. Then I saw this recipe from the owner of a bakery in NYC (you may have to register to see it but you can provide invalid info). I thought "why not? I'm as smart as the average 8 year old, in fact I was an average 8 year old once"
There is my first attempt! It looked like bread and it rang hollow like good bread. A bit misshapen but not bad. The inside wasn't too bad either. It had holes. It looked like bread. It was a bit under done - you can see a damp spot on the upper right. But it was slice-able and really really tasty. I made a few mistakes. I kept the yeast too warm over the long rise so water condensed on the inside of the plastic wrap and made the dough too sticky. That is why the loaf was misshapen. Secondly, it didn't rise as much as it should have because the yeast was tired. Lastly, I took it out too soon - hence the damp spots.

But the crust was all crackly and and inside all soft and it tasted heavenly. I normally only like bread the day it is baked. Otherwise I only like it toasted. But I ate a couple of slices on Wednesday - 3 days after baking - and they were chewy and lovely.

Here's the second loaf that I made this morning. Doesn't that look professional?The inside still needs a tad more cooking. It wasn't damp any more but just a little underdone. I think next time it will bake covered for 35 mins or so and then uncovered for browning for the 20 mins I did today. If I bake it any longer uncovered, it will burn. It has a nice brown color on it already. Here's the inside. All lovely and airy.

Looking at the books I cited above brought me back to a different time in my life. When I was younger, I wanted to grow my own food organically, process it all myself, and live on it all year. I had a 20x30 foot organic vegetable garden, I canned and froze all my vegetables, tried to bake bread, cooked everything from scratch and wore myself out. I had a full-time job and young kids and it was too much. I gave up on the gardening and found short-cuts in the cooking. I still cook almost all our food at home but I use short-cuts in techniques and in ingredients. I get my vegetables from a CSA farm in the summer and freeze as much as I can for later. But I focus on enjoying the produce while it is fresh and seasonal and that is all that counts.