Stashie Stuff

Hee! Went to Michaels this afternoon and got a few balls of neat yarn. I've never worked with soy fiber, so since they were having a sale, I got some of the Patons SWS... It's stripey; maybe it'll work for mittens. I also got some that's an odd moss green, which I think I'll use to make a couple of those knitted frogs. Hee! Froggies! Also got some more Patons merino yarn in a really, really dark olive green. Hmm... pity I didn't get enough to make Christie's scarf. Why is it I always think of these things after the fact? Grrrr. Ooh. And it looks like I have another opportunity to do a yarn review.

State of Cardiness

I've been grumbling about this cardigan for a few weeks now, but I'm getting closer to being finished. At present, I have a bit of sleeve--I said I'd post again once I did the sleeves and finishing-up bits like the neckline and the button bands. I'll just go back and add it to the post that's already up--which I've decided to work in the round rather than flat. But what does one do when one doesn't have double pointed needles in the right size? I've been seeing posts on the sock forum about this thing called The Magic Loop method; it seems like some people (gasp!) prefer it to working with all those double pointed needles, particularly because it eliminates the need for said DPNs by replacing them with a pair of extra-long circular needles.
Okay, I thought. I'll give it a try and see what's so faboo about it. Honestly, like a lot of other aspects of knitting, it boils down to personal preference; I've decided I like double pointed needles better. It does work for socks, according to the folks on the sock forum, so why not a sweater sleeve that's worked in the round? It eliminates the seaming on the underside of the sleeve, but if you've got colorwork on the sleeve, it can make it a bit trickier to deal with because there's a little hiccup at the end of the round. When you're knitting in the round, you're not working in a stack of flat circles; you're working in a spiral, which means that the end of the round is higher than the beginning; that's what causes the hiccup. There's something called the Jogless Jog, which is supposed to correct the little hiccup; I haven't learnt how to do it, though.
In the meantime, I realized I'd been reading the sleeve directions wrong. No wonder the number of stitches didn't seem like it would work out to 120! I finished the seaming on the shoulders and sides the other night--mattress stitch is kind of tricky!--so it shouldn't be too much longer until the whole thing is finished. :-D Yay!
Also below is an icon denoting... well.. see for yourself.

Faux Asian Pasta Salad

Here's another bastardized recipe. This one was originally featured on "Everyday Food" on PBS; as usual, there are some substitutions and quite a few additions.


16 oz rotini pasta, cooked and drained
1 medium head of broccoli, peeled and cut into bitesized pieces (including the stem)
1 green pepper, cored and thinly sliced
1/4 lb snow peas with the ends trimmed
1 tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 package skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bitesized pieces and browned
chopped peanuts for a garnish

Sauce:
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
4 tbsp creamy peanut butter
1/2 tsp black sesame oil
wee dash of cayenne pepper (if you don't have red pepper flakes... we never do)

In a large nonstick skillet, heat the oil and toss in the garlic. Cook the chicken (if you haven't already) until it's cooked through, then add the vegetables and salt. Sautee until the veggies are tender, and turn off the heat; leave the lid on so the whole thing can steam, which will soften the veggies a little more without rendering them mushy.
In a large measuring cup, whisk the ingredients for the sauce; the consistency will be a little bit thick, so don't panic. Toss the pasta with the vegetables, chicken, and sauce. Sprinkle peanuts on top and serve warm.

Torrid Love Affairs With Socks

Yesterday, Barb continued to astonish me with her leaps in progress. Right now she's working on the baby-sized sock from Sensational Knitted Socks; it's going extremely well. While she was visiting yesterday, she mentioned that she's been working on the sock during her breaks at work, and that people occasionally stop and stare when they see her hands with their needles bristling in all directions; I laughed and said, "It feels good doesn't it? You could tell them you're having a torrid love affair with your sock." For the rest of the afternoon, we giggled about the idea of torrid love affairs with socks and I decided I'd do a couple of little blog-type icons which are stored here.
While Barb labored away on her little yellow sock, she noticed that something seemed amiss: her sock was suddenly garter stitch, and she had no idea why. I looked at it and suggested that perhaps she'd gotten things turned around and was knitting in the wrong direction. I took pictures of this--at her behest.
"Yellow Sock" doesn't show it very well, but you can sort of see a couple of rows of garter stitch around the top of the sock, before I frogged it for her. I have yet to explain the gentle art of frogging, but... sometimes it just has to be done in order to correct a problem.
"Chagrin" shows Barb--is she laughing really hard or sobbing? It's hard to tell--hiding her face so she can't see the frogging.
"Yellow Sock 2" shows Barb with her sock in hand, knitting merrily away.
"Teacher Sock" is the sock I'm knitting along with her so I can show her what to do at each step while she figures out how to puzzle through the pattern.
Anyway, next week she should be able to do one on her own, and then she said she wants to learn how to do colorwork and cables. A small sweater of some kind, maybe?
THIS is going to be my next sock project: http://www.spindlicity.com/winter2006/nordic_lights.shtml. Aren't they pretty?

Progress Report

Barb has made astonishing progress with her knitting. She's mastered the basics and gone on to do things like very small (as in Wee Folk small) garter stitch shawls using yarn over increases, and this afternoon she finished her first proper project... a two needle watch cap in yellow Lion Brand WoolEase. In an attempt to preserve her privacy, I've taken the liberty of.. erm.. altering the photo I took (much to her great amusement), but the hat is there in all its buttery yellow glory. Her next task is learning to master the best shock-and-awe knitting tool in existance.... double pointed needles. She's currently using that pretty yellow yarn to knit a bunch of tiny little tubes as a precursor to taking the plunge and knitting an entire sock. I'm extremely pleased with her progress and she continues to astonish me with how quickly she picks things up. I think I said in an earlier post that mom said either you have it or you don't, and Barb definitely has it. I'll post a picture of her sock progress after her next lesson, which is probably next week some time. Much applause and many gold stars, Barb!

Basil Pad Thai (sort of)

It's been so bloody hot here. Hot and humid, which means no one feels like doing anything, and that includes cooking; but since it's a weekend, I figured I'd make take a stab at making something stir fry-ish. A friend recently shared a recipe for Thai chicken, which I very much wanted to try; however, since we don't usually have things like fish sauce or fresh ginger in the house, I usually end up making a lot of substitutions. Fortunately, it almost always works out. So, thanks, Tae-bean, for sharing your friend's recipe. Here's my bastardized version. I did most of the chopping and mincing this morning and let things lurk in the fridge until it came time to make dinner.

2 T macadamia nut oil
2 large cloves garlic, minced or mooshed
1/2 large onion
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 small zucchini, diced
1 can sliced water chestnuts
1/2 package matchstick carrots (unless you happen to feel like messing with a bunch of carrots)
1 package boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3 T soy sauce
1 tsp ground cumin
3 or 4 small sprigs of lemon basil
1 package pad thai noodles
1.5 T ponzu or soy sauce
1 T orange curacao
1/2 tsp cornstarch

Cut the chicken breasts into bitesized pieces and toss with the 3 tablespoons of soysauce; let it rest in the fridge for a few hours, or until you're ready to cook. Dice the zuchinni and green pepper and toss them in a bowl with a pinch of salt; let the veggies rest for a few hours, same as the chicken.
In a wok or other suitably sized pan (gotta love that cute little Le Creuset soup pot), heat the oil and throw in the garlic and cumin. Add the chicken and stir it until the chicken is cooked through. Add a little bit of water and stir some more. Let the chicken steam for a little while with the lid on. Chop the onion and add it to the chicken, and cook it until it's tender but not mushy. In a separate bowl mix the ponzu, orange curacao, and cornstarch; add it to the pot along with the rest of the vegetables and the basil, toss to coat things--this isn't a thick sauce, and it's subtle. Put the lid on the pot and turn off the heat; let the vegetables steam until they're tender, then remove the pot from the burner.
Cook the pad thai according to the instructions on the packet, drain, and rinse, then serve with the chicken and veggies.

It's Not Easy Being Imaginary

Yet again I find myself prefacing a blog entry with "I don't usually use this as a place to rant and rave, but...", and I think it's definitely justified this time. Over the weekend, as some of you may be aware, Cingular completed its metamorphosis from Cingular to another arm of the multi-tantacled AT&T conglomerate; they've been advertising this change for about a month, but over the weekend, the network got a big ol' tweaking that resulted in a not-very-comfortable transition--at least, for me. On Friday, I began noticing an unusually high number of dropped or failed calls--all the calls I made on Friday were either dropped or failed to go through, with the exception of a call to a cell phone in NC. By Saturday, I could make calls to cell and landline phones without them failing or falling through the cracks in the ether, but the people I was trying to reach couldn't hear a word I said, which led to a lot of "Hello? Hello! HELLO?!" from both sides. On Sunday, the people I called could either hear crackling static with the occasional word here and there, or nothing at all. On Sunday evening, Mom--who gets to use my cell for making long distance calls--was convinced it was a problem with the phone, and told me I ought to look at getting a new one. Monday, I didn't even try making any calls, but I was so fed up I called Cingular to demand an explanation; I was told the system was updating, and had been updating since Saturday, and that the updates had originally been anticipated to end much earlier... even though they were still going on, and could I please either call back in at least two hours or the following day. Grrrr.
Which brings me to the main part of the rant: My physical address appears not to exist, which apparently means I don't either. This must really leave the folks at the local utilities scratching their heads, because we get water, electricity, telephone service, and DSL, and none of them have ever questioned the validity of our physical address. We also order things from Amazon, and from a number of other online retailers (YARN!) without any trouble. These purchase are handled and shipped by the United States Postal Service, which, as if the employees don't have enough to deal with, is now responsible--according to the twit at Cingular--for verifying people's physical addresses. I asked one of our local postal employees if this was true. She said not, and told me it falls to the county's emergency services to make sure people's physical addresses are properly recorded and verified, and that, since we do not get mail delivered to the house, it was unnecessary for the USPS to be involved. You have no idea how many times I've had to try to explain this to people in the past four days! So, yesterday, I called the county. It turns out the number on our house is wrong, but the nice lady at the County Assessor's Office has now fixed our records and verified our address for us. Which means, theoretically, I can now give the idiots at Cingular the correct house number.
I tried a couple experiments today with this in mind. First, I went on Amazon--which has NEVER had any trouble sending us anything, either by USPS or by UPS--and filled out all the appropriate forms as though I were signing a new contract with a cell service provider. And I was promptly told that my physical address was invalid! How very strange. I then went to the website of a cell service provider and filled out all the same forms. And the same thing happened. Which leads me to believe that the system is extremely flawed, and that it needs to be fixed. I can't imagine that in the whole of this sleepy little town, where almost all the inhabitants have an extra organ known as the cell phone, no one has a valid physical address, or that every single customer of a wide array of service providers all get their cell phones shipped to their places of employ instead of their post office boxes. Bearing this in mind, if the mail all goes to PO boxes, then why is one's billing address required to be a street address? And WHY is Cingular outsourcing its customer service to Canada? I don't believe the Canadian emergency services use 911 addresses--or, indeed, 911--to find their way around, so it stands to reason that the little cucumber I spoke to would have no idea what the answer to "So, you want the 911 address, then?" would be.
So, yes, like George, I am a figment of someone's diseased imagination, and do not exist at my own cell phone number. Nor, apparently, do I exist at my own physical address. It's so hard being imaginary!

Dye Therapy

This weekend has been utterly crappy; not even macaroni and cheese makes it any different. Nor do pickles. This means that serious measures are called for, i.e. dye therapy. One of my friends came over today to help me with it, and by the time she left, both of us were covered with various shades of blue, yellow, purple, and red. Most of it comes out in the wash, though, and the end results were nice. It's Barb's opinion that two of the three batches we did look like multicolored sprinkles in vanilla ice cream, especially when the colors begin to run. The third looks like lemon curd smeared with blackberry jam. The yellow/purple one is on the Morrit sheep's wool I got at MDSWF this year; the other two are done with the Brown Sheep Yarn Co. roving I got from the Sheep Shed Studio. The darker red/black on white reminds me a little bit of some type of jasper. These guys will look interesting when they're spun, I think.
While she was here, someone called her cell phone and asked to speak to George. Apparently this has been happening for the past couple of weeks, and she's gotten something like fifteen or twenty of these phone calls for this George, whoever he is. She answered the phone and said, "You guys have called me fifteen times looking for George. There is NO GEORGE HERE!" Five minutes later, the person called back and she handed her phone to me. I answered it and said, "There is no George at this number. George is a figment of your diseased imagination. He doesn't exist!" The person still hasn't called back yet. Yay, me! Points for rudeness!

Fair Isle and Immortality

Bill Moyers is bloody brilliant. He should be immortal.

Okay. Today saw another setback with the knitting, but at the same time, there was progress. My student is making enormous strides with her knitting. She's mastered the basics and is now working on a simple triangular shawl with yarnover increases at the edges; next week I'll get her started on a two needle hat and see how it goes. After that, I'm confident she'll be able to progress on her own--with books and patterns to keep her company, of course.
My own new project came to a crashing halt, though, because Dad just now mailed me the measurements for his cardigan. It took him an entire month to do so, during which time I lost patience and got started without them. The picture in my WIPS list is of the back piece of the cardigan before it was about six inches long and, obviously, before I ripped it all out. Yup. I frogged the whole thing and wound the yarn back up. It was painful to do, but I don't think it would have been easy or comfortable for someone with a 47 inch chest to fit into a sweater that's been knit for a 42 inch chest. So, it got frogged, every blasted stitch.
Chart's attached; feel free to make use of it. Once I finish the cardigan, I'll post the pattern and pictures.

Oh. A semi-funny thing happened at the store this afternoon. This store only has one bathroom now, which is the men's room (with urinal and all that, and no stalls), because the women's bathroom is out of order. I went in and thought I'd locked the door, and just when I got ready to stand up, some guy opens the door and starts to come in. I screamed, he shut the door, and when I left the bathroom, I made a beeline for the opposite end of the store. It was extremely embarrassing. I remarked--jokingly!--later on that it might not have been so bad if he'd been at least a little appealing.

Respectobiggle

There are just some days when you want comfort food. Maybe there isn't a reason, but you want comfort food. For me, today was one of those days, and macaroni and cheese was the comfort food of choice. I've never made it from scratch before, but I'm pleased with the results; they were, well, comforting. I'm really not sure what it was about today that made it a comfort food day--do you really need a reason for macaroni and cheese?--but since I felt like cooking, this was the result. I don't think I'll ever do the boxed macaroni thing ever again....

A Respectable Bechamel (macaroni and cheese):
1 lb penne pasta (or whatever noodles you prefer)
3 cups soy milk (or dairy milk, if you prefer)
3 tbsp butter
1/4 cup flour
1 small onion, minced
1 tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp pepper
9 oz grated cheddar cheese (or whatever cheese you like)
2 oz grated parmesan cheese (fresh adds a bit of kick to it)
1 cup cracker or bread crumbs

Cook and drain the pasta and set it aside while you work on the sauce--it's okay if it's cool when you get around to throwing the noodles into the pot; I used the same pot to make the sauce as I did the noodles, just to save a little cleaning up. Start preheating the oven to 375 degrees.
Melt the butter over medium heat and throw in the onions. Stir it around for a minute or two, just until the onions soften a little bit; add the flour gradually and stir it in. Keep stirring until the flour turns a light golden color, then start gradually adding the milk while you're stirring, thus getting rid of any big lumps of cooked flour. Let the milk mixture cook for 6 to 8 minutes at slow boil, then add about 2/3 of the cheddar and a little bit of the parmesan. Keep stirring while the sauce thickens; add salt and pepper. Continue stirring the sauce over medium-high heat--it'll thicken up some more, so that it coats the back of the spoon--for 6 to 8 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the pasta; stir until the pasta is evenly coated with sauce.
Butter (or use cooking spray) the bottom and sides of a 9x13 baking pan and pour the pasta and sauce into it. Mix the remaining cheese with the cracker crumbs and sprinkle over the top of the pasta before you put it in the oven. Bake at 375 for 25 to 30 minutes, or until bubbly.