An anniversary...

A year ago today I was sitting in a brand new apartment, in a brand new town, in a brand new state, on a brand new side of the country.  I was surrounded by boxes, watching a hesitant cat make her way through the maze of packed stuff, and contemplating the possibilities of a carpeted floor.  Momola was sitting in the other chair, never stopping her tireless unpacking.  I was exhausted, from the drive, the hurried move, the prospect of a new adventure.

A year later, that cat loves the sunshine and the carpet.  I have houseplants, and a new Sunday brunch routine with a best friend instead of my brothers.

I'm headed back this week to visit DC, see the family, catch up with friends.  It was a happy accident that this trip coincides with this date.  I miss all the folks back east, but I've settled quite nicely into life out west, and I know I'll be happy to return home.

Enter the new...

It seems I can't start a new year without change and drama.  Last year I uprooted and moved across country for a new job in a new town, with a new and quieter routine surrounded by friends old and new.  I burrowed into my new surroundings with a fervor, reveled in my new nest and neighborhood.  I loved it.  Then 2012 came, and decided a change was warranted.

I've lived in DC and Boston, where rents are high, and rent increases an annual occurrence.  I was not prepared for the bay area, however, where rents are higher, and rent increases only regulated in the amount of time required for notification.  I'll spare you the extended version and give you the punchline:  I'm moving two doors down from my lovely nest, into a one-bedroom apartment with smaller kitchen, balcony, and a linen closet the size of a tea towel.  Yes, there were tears.  I have no idea where my lovely craft closet will fit in the new place, nor any of the items currently in the outside storage closet, which is lacking in the new place.

To focus on the positive, I do love this neighborhood, where I can walk to my wee city's downtown restaurants and festivals.  I will still have a washer/dryer, which I consider a must.  I'll get direct sunlight in the mornings, so my plans for tomatoes and herbs will proceed apace this spring.  They painted the wall in the living room this week, so I still have my lush green, non-white decor.  I'll reward my storage creativity with a trip to the Container Store after the move - I may be losing the craft closet, but we all know I love a chance to organize and use the label maker.

Stay tuned, you know there will be stories of catastrophe and recovery to come.

Christmas Crafting

I got toys for Christmas!  It was strange to wake up Christmas morning and know that I wasn't going to see the family, but cell phones and video chat are magical things.  It was great to talk to everyone as they unwrapped presents and went to various holiday gatherings.  And me?  I was wearing new Christmas PJs, drinking coffee with egg nog, eating bacon, and enjoying a lazy quiet morning - playing with my new toys as enthusiastically as my nephew!  I got the most wonderful set of needles, and a new yarn swift (contraption pictured below, aids in the winding of balls from skeins of yarn), and new yarn, as well!

The yarn acquired previously, check the beautiful needles!

Lace always looks a jumble until you block it out...

Blocking is a feat of magic!

A birthday scarf for the almost-birthday girl!

For Daddo.

Daddo was unimpressed with my glee over the new knitting gadgetry - you'd think he'd have a greater appreciation for the implements needed to make his Christmas scarf.  Apparently not.  These babies were also under the tree with my name on them, and they're going to work a treat at the office - who can't hear you now?  That would be me - I tested them today at home, with the world's loudest dishwasher silenced for the gentle tones of Kate Rusby while I worked on the couch.  It was wondrous.  I'm a very lucky and spoiled girl.

Lessons in Food

There was a farmers' market in Boston - it was an hour's T ride away, and many of the vendors expected bulk purchases.  One girl does not need 5 lbs. of potatoes.  And oh, the number of potatoes, carrots, onions, and apples.

In my last year in DC a farmers' market opened in my neighborhood - it started at 9:30am, which in DC during August means you're already facing 80 degrees or more.  I did, however, discover garlic scapes:

They grow above the garlic bulb, can be used like tangy green onions, and then there are the blossoms:

If they're dried they last for ages, and you can use the seeds in your cooking, too.  I was very impressed with these discoveries - and after the Garlic Festival here in Gilroy, I have plans for growing my own garlic plant, complete with scapes and blooms!

In California, the farmers' market is a year-round affair.  Annie and I meet each Sunday in the wee hours, bribe her young son into the car, and head over to grab breakfast at a cafe on the same street as the market.  We take turns chasing the 2-year-old around as we make our way down the street.  And each week there's something new to try:

Lemon cucumbers!

Watermelon radishes!

English peas!

Squash blossoms!

The squash blossoms were my experiment in recreation - a favorite restaurant in DC had these on the menu, stuffed with goat cheese, battered and fried.  Annie dared me to recreate it, so I took a deep breath, picked out three promising blossoms, and returned to the Cowgirl Creamery booth for a creamy cheese to stuff inside those orange blooms.

I got home, and did a quick sweep online for suggestions, and that's where I learned that the blossoms I bought were male plants - the female plants are fertilized in order to grow the squash, which, ironically, leaves them with the appearance of male genitalia:

Female squash blossom

I have to say, I think I bested the DC restaurant.  I used a milder cheese that didn't over-power the squash blossoms, and made a beer batter with an English cider from Yorkshire's oldest brewery.

Cheesy Squash Blossoms

1 Tbsp. flour
1/2 Tbsp. corn starch
salt
black pepper w/ lavender (I keep these together in a second pepper mill)

Mix the above together well.  Whisk in cider until batter is both smooth and of the consistency you want (I made mine a little runnier than I probably would next time - it's a learning process).

Gently cram some Cowgirl Creamery Inverness cheese into the squash blossoms, roll them in the batter, and drop them in a hot pan with olive oil.  Cook until batter is golden.  Enjoy with the rest of the cider you didn't need to make the batter.  It's was wonderful.

Served with quinoa, rainbow greens tossed in a mustard vinaigrette, and spaghetti squash.

That's how I roll.

Love: a definition

My knitterly resurgence has brought about a lot of learning moments - challenging projects, the making of yarn, and perhaps the occasional leap without looking.  I've taken on a plethora of knitting projects for other people, and each one has taught me something about the measure of love.

Love, it turns out, can be measured.

Love looks a little like this:

• Five inches of mohair lace, ripped back because I found an error.  Mohair.  (And this project was finished a while ago, and given to it's intended recipient, but seriously - mohair.)
• Grey lace, knit at dusk.
• Two-at-a-time socks, converted to two magic-loop socks.
• 470 yards of laceweight, hand-wound into a ball, with the knowledge that there are three more skeins where that came from, and I still have to figure out this whole life line thing.
• A sweater, when I offered socks, and there's an owl sweater I want to make myself.  Owls!
• Double-pointed needles and complicated instructions, for something I don't know for sure that you'll wear.
• Sheer certainty that another someone will be getting a gift card, because the number of projects on the needles is approaching insanity.

And since there are people reading this who will, come Christmastime, know the lowest point of a project, I'll also add that there is the giddiness that comes with each one:

• Beauty.  And the pride that comes with both the first lace and the first serious repair.
• A delightful fabric, and a lace pattern finally memorized that's become a blues night regular.
• Two new tricks learned at once, and one discarded as less practical.
• The pure joy that comes with knowing I've found the right yarn, the right color, and the right pattern for the recipient, even if the timeline is less clear.  You won't mind if I wrap it still on the needles?
• Appreciation for blind faith in my talents.
• Hope that I've finally picked something that this someone will wear...
• Hope that another someone will like their gift card.

I'm a little stressed with the sudden advent of October, which comes with the knowledge that December isn't really that far away.  I went a whole week without knitting last week, and just think about all that wasted knitting time!  But I've been excited about the prospect of giving these gifts since I conceived of them, and the low points in each project makes each one that much more special at the end.  Each project represents a new lesson learned, and who doesn't love learning new things?

But a swift, ball winder, and set of interchangeable needles are all on my Christmas list.  And perhaps a lace chart magnet reader, since an iPad just for the knitting apps seems excessive. 

The Second First Sweater

My very second knitting project, after a very simple scarf, was a sweater.  I've always been an over-achiever.  However, I had not yet learned that patterns should be altered for the individual, and copious measurements should be made throughout the process.  Instead, I followed the instructions...  and ended up with this:

I apparently had a short-waisted, broad-shouldered, long-armed being in mind.

For years this sweater was stored in with my yarn stash - never worn, just occasionally pulled out to be examined and admired.  From the get-go I was a ridiculously OCD knitter, so my stitches were even, and the fabric wonderful, if I do say so myself.

Finally, after my knitterly re-emergence, with lace, stitch designs, and baby sweaters under my belt, I found myself looking longingly at sweater patterns.  I bookmarked them on the web, I pored through all my knitting books and magazines, and kept coming back to the same pattern over and over.  I loved the drape, the style, and the creative simplicity in the design.  I realized that it needed the same yarn weight I'd used in the ape-human sweater, and I still loved the blue - I could picture the sweater in that blue over a shirt and my favorite jeans.  In this land of above-freezing temperatures, the short sleeves would be a good way to offset the warm wool.

Finally, I was in.  I pulled out the never-worn, much-labored-over First Sweater, and with complete abandon, and growing excitement, painstakingly pulled out the seams.  I discovered that the arms were big enough around to be the torso to a sweater that actually fit me.  What was I thinking all those years ago?  I gleefully pulled out stitches to create loops of yarn hopelessly kinked by all that time spent in knitted form, like this! ------>

So each skein pulled was soaked, squeezed (NOT wrung!), and hung to dry.  Never more than one at a time, because that kind of foresight is just asking too much for a person so thoroughly convinced that she can accomplish this knitting project.  Instead, as each skein dried I wound it into a ball and sat on the couch with my needles and growing swath of sweater.

(If you're wondering, then yes, it took longer this way, because I continually misjudged the speed of my needles and found myself with no more yarn, and a two-day drying process to wait for.)

Finally, however, and in reality, just under two short months later, I cast off the last stitch.  I researched better ways to work in the ends, despite the fact that I decided on a method that took longer than my usual (but looks so much better).  I soaked the sweater and laid it flat to "block" - a process which helps the fabric conform to the shape it needs, and in this case gave me a chance to obsessively measure the folds that defined the look of this pattern.  It took forever to dry, and of course reached a suitable state on a weekday morning.  Despite being in a late heat spell, I raced home from work that evening to sit in a sunny room on the floor, where the still air made the inside of my apartment unusually stuffy.  I sat in a t-shirted, pants-less state, with a cold beer handy to bear the warmth of the wool on my legs as I sewed up the folds and then slowly picked up the collar stitches required to add that final something.  I impatiently created the i-cord loop and attached it with buttons selected in a panic the previous weekend, when I realized that crucial step had been forgotten.  I drank deeply from the fast-warming beer, and smiled even as my face glistened with sweat, because I was done done done, and my second first sweater was everything I thought it would be.

It's really not wool weather yet, though the northern California nights are obligingly cool, and we even had a dreary, not-quite-rainy Sunday, when I could wear my sweater all day long.  I've only suddenly burst out with, "I made this sweater!" to my co-workers.  I even resisted when I found myself wearing it in a yarn shop.  It's ok, because the I-made-this-sweater! song plays in my head the whole time it's on.

That's the same smile my nephew wears when he accomplishes a challenging task.

Buttons without buttonholes were a big win.

Is there a doctor in the house?

Growing up, I didn't know that mac'n'cheese even came in a box.  Momola wouldn't say that she made the cheesy goodness from scratch; there are some people who can do rue, and they make gravy - others, not so much.  Momola would start with a can of cheddar cheese soup and throw in shredded cheese, spices, hamburger or ham or veggies to suit her mood.  Mac'n'cheese was never the same twice, but it was always delicious.

I confess that in grad school I learned to appreciate the pure speed of mac'n'cheese in a box, though after the very first time, I never made it according to the instructions.  Instead, I stole a page from Momola's book, and let whimsy guide my doctoring spirit.  I make Annie's mac'n'cheese with greek yogurt, sour cream, freshly shredded cheese, and additions.  Tonight it was left-over sauteed onions and spicy peppers from last night's fish tacos - an excellent call, if I do say so myself.

So while the rue-bility may have skipped Momola and landed on me (come to my house on Thanksgiving for my gravy skills), I appreciate the lessons my Momola taught me, and on a weeknight in my kitchen, there's a doctor in the house.