Klosekraft

Hallo-random

1. I started a scarf from the pinkest! yarn! ever!

It's the fountain lace pattern from either BW 1 or 2. I don't find it particularly intuitive to knit, but I really like that two repeats of a single lace pattern look like you combined two or three different patterns.

2. One of my co-workers brought in a version of these cupcakes today. It's not often that food is both delicious and hilarious. I love it! I'm pretty sure she used her own standard cake and frosting recipes instead of the ones provided and just followed their directions for the bloodening. I'm intrigued by the marshmallow frosting though (cream cheese frosting would be good too, A) since it always is and B) because with the cherry filling, it would be like one of those diner cheesecakes with cherry pie filling on top and who doesn't like those?) and I tend to like anything with almond extract in it. (Which, unfortunately, makes me vulnerable to poisoning by cyanide. Also, I kind of love Agatha Christie. Does anyone outside the Christie-verse ever actually die from cyanide poisoning via tasty baked goods?)

Yes, I did have two cupcakes and a handful of candy corn for lunch. Why do you ask?

3. Last night, I drafted out a pattern for the cardigan I posted yesterday. And by pattern, I just mean that I figured out all of the dimensions that I want, swatched the yarn and plugged my gauge into the measurements I had already established. I think it'll be relatively straightforward to work up. It's a simple enough shape. The only tricky bit is going to be handling all of that ribbing at the end to get a lush, fold-over-able collar without flipping the whole front edge open and even that is just a matter of some careful short row calculations. I had yarn on hand that'll work really well for it, two cones of 2/4 Donegal from Webs. I skeined up a bit last night and washed one of the skeins. It's amazing what a huge difference that makes. Once in a while, I'll work with a coned yarn that isn't horribly nasty pre-wash, but it's rare.

Unwashed on the left, washed on the right:

Just a quick wash made it so much softer and fluffier and springier and even blacker? Maybe?

4. Do you know what you're doing for the Blueprint/Apartment Therapy contest? I do!

5. I signed up for NaNo again. I didn't finish last year because I got so much freelance work, but I'm committed this time. My idea is more ambitious and more interesting. It's going to be fun. Sleep, shmeep.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

is to find a pattern for something similar to this gorgeous creature:

From French fashion blog Punky B (via Wiksten-made)

Sure, I could write a pattern for myself, and probably will, but I'd like to see what else is out there first.

Prezzies!

I won a contest on Phoe's blog and got this gorgeous loot yesterday:

A bracelet she made herself, in my favorite deep colors. Here's her etsy shop, if you want one of your own.
A British brand of hand-dyed sock yarn I'd never heard of, in fantastic shades of plum and blue. I love that the label says it was "produced at home."
A cd of some of my favorite music, French singers from the '30s and '40s: Edith Piaf and Yves Montand and so on.

Thanks again, Phoe! (And thanks to the Royal Mail, who seem to have finally caught up after their strike.)

Weekend update

I had a great weekend, just the ideal mix of time alone and seeing friends, new places, old favorites, much-needed stuff done, great food. If I had sat down beforehand to design my ideal weekend, it wouldn't have been far off from this.

Some highlights:

Cultural:

• A free concert at Bargemusic, a boat-turned-performance-space that's moored under the Brooklyn Bridge, with  Becky and her friend Courtney, who was visiting from Philadelphia. They don't announce the programs for their free shows beforehand and it turned out to be a classical pianist with the most, um, expressive face I've ever seen on a musician. There were points when I thought he was going to start crying, he was so moved by his own playing. It was more than a little ridiculous, honestly. But the music was lovely and you could look past him and watch boats going by.

• The Obsessive Consumption show on its last day at the Jen Bekman Gallery. It was mainly works on paper with a couple of textile pieces. I had thought it was the other way around, but still liked it. She chronicles her relationship with consumerism by drawing everything she buys.

Food:

• Saturday morning, I took myself to breakfast at Eisenberg's, a New York institution I had never been to. While I ate my egg and cheese on a roll (breakfast of champions!) and drank my coffee, the guy behind the counter told me about his back problems and we talked about the Breeder's Cup. It was a nice way to spend 20 minutes or so, especially since it came on the heels of the one kind of bummer note all weekend — I went to my favorite early yoga class and learned that the teacher I really liked isn't teaching anymore and that her replacement is the sit-around-and-visualize-our-chakras type, while I like the kind of yoga where you sweat a lot and it hurts to raise your arms for three days afterward. 

• Tae and I had a fantastic dinner at Five Points and I meant to take pictures of the food, but completely forgot about it (beet salad and housemade ricotta cavatelli with butternut squash and mushrooms). She brought me flowers and when I referred to them as my 'break-up flowers,' corrected me to say that they were for no reason other than I'm lovely. Aw.

• Last night, Erin and her mom and I went to Di Fara's, frequently hailed as the best pizza in the five boroughs. I've been meaning to get out there for a couple of years at least and can't believe it took me so long. There is no ambiance to speak of (fluorescent lights, sticky laminate tables) and the air is so thick with greasy, sooty smoke from the ovens that our clothes and hair and skin reeked of it afterward, but there's a real sense that you're having An Experience, that you're watching a supremely gifted man at work. And the pizza...  I was ready to be disappointed by the pizza. I figured it would be good, but didn't honestly believe that anything could live up to the hype. It does though. It really, really does. It's the best pizza I've ever had. Any of the write-ups I linked to will give plenty of information about the man behind the pizza and so much more descriptive descriptions than I seem able to pull together now. I should add though, since I don't think any of them mention it, that the sauce is so good, I would happily eat it with a spoon. Or out of my scooped bare hands, if there wasn't a spoon handy.
  

Dom DeMarco stretching some dough:

In motion (love the cash register and that fantastic green on the walls):

And the pie itself [drool]:

Embellished doors:

Etc.:

• I gave blood, sort of spontaneously. I had a little time to kill and walked by a blood drive. I've been meaning to get back to donating regularly, so this was a good start.
  

• At Purl, I bought the most amazing yarn ever. I mean, the yarn itself is just brushed mohair (Promise in fuchsia), but the color is like nothing I've ever seen. I nearly yanked it out of Becky's hands after she unearthed it in the 40% off bin. I think I actually pulled a random skein out of the bin and offered it to her, saying something like, "Wouldn't you rather have this green one?" (She ended up buying a cream and peach skein, the polar opposite of this one, so I don't feel bad about getting all puppy-dog-eyes on her.) My god, I love this yarn. I can't take a decent photo of it, it's so intense and saturated.  It seems to generate its own light. This color is to pink what scotch bonnet peppers are to ketchup.

 

I've had this song in my head all day.

" 'cause I'm Rob Base, the one who knows about things."

Bob's Yer Uncle

(alternate title: "Hey internet, look at my hair!")

I wasn't kidding about the haircut.

The photo is a little misleading, since it's still sort of wet and more tousled than it ends up being. When it's dry, it's much smoother. Not quite Anna-Wintour smooth, but in that vein. I took a few arm's-length self-portraits earlier tonight while I was waiting for the train and was going to post a little teaser about having been on my way somewhere pretty awesome and then not say where until tomorrow. Unfortunately, all of those photos made me look like a homicidal Slavic mail-order bride, and I'm not going to post them (though I do suddenly have an idea for my Halloween costume). I will say that the photo above was taken after I got home from somewhere pretty awesome where there was so much greasy smoke that I couldn't stand the smell of myself and had to take a shower as soon as I walked in the door. Full story tomorrow.

This means that I'm currently sporting the same hairstyle I had when I was a toddler, as you can see in this seasonally appropriate photo of me and my dad:

I know, bitchin' sweater on the pater.

This photo, of me and my Uncle Dave at my grandparents' house, cracks me up every time I look at it.

Because the first time I saw it, I had the following conversation with my mom:
me: Mom, when were we in West Virginia for Halloween?
mom, looking at photo: Oh, that wasn't Halloween. That was Christmas.
me, confused: Then why am I wearing a costume?
mom: Oh, that's what you wore to sleep in.
me, incredulous: You made me wear a hat to bed?
mom, emphatic: You loved that hat!

Linkfest

Since I'm busy with the traditional post-break-up festivities (getting a haircut, seeing friends every night this week, exercising, buying really nice new underwear and so on) and not making a lot of progress on my large, dark and interminable knitting projects, I've put together some links to things that are much more entertaining than I am at the moment.

I was saving this to include in a post about oh, all kinds of things: standards of behavior, self-respect, the dangers of the path of least resistance... but don't know when I'll get around to writing it. I had a post from Abby bookmarked that was about how frustrating it is that people think that handspun yarn is supposed to be lumpy or has to be imperfect because it's too hard to make it even and how there's no reason not to be as good at something as you possibly can be. I was going to work it into the same post. But I couldn't find it in her archives or my bookmarks, so maybe I dreamed it?

The colors in this photo just knock me out.

Do you know just how hard Mr. Rogers rocked?

Someday I will make this, the most beautiful dessert I've ever seen.

This woman in Montana infiltrates terrorists' chat rooms in the guise of different characters and gathers information to build cases for the FBI.  Just wild. Any bets on when the Erin-Brockovitch-kicks-terrorist-ass movie about her comes out? My money's on early 2009.  (via Jezebel)

I know late to the game with this one, but man, I love Pandora.

It's too bad the exchange rate is so bad right now, because this headboard decal would look great in my bedroom. Chair too, please.

Interesting piece from the Times about design that both sells well and bombs around the country. Definitely check out the slideshow. I've had a crush on the Ghost Chairs for a while and love those skeleton plates. It says they're decoupaged, which makes me think that I could easily put together something similar. Maybe not eat-off-able, but I would want to hang them anyway. I'll have to think on that... I have a couple of the Ibride trays (including the owl) on the wall in my kitchen — they're some of my favorite things in the apartment. But the ceramic cupcake? So dumb.

Build up your stores of random knowledge with this treasure trove of word/phrase origins and The List Universe.

Recycle your paper into blank books. Here or prettier ones here.

What I've been...

Reading: I started A Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney a few days ago, based on Anna's review of it. So far, I'm really impressed by the writing and characterization and am completely sucked in, wanting to know what happened and why and how all of these people and events are connected. It's a dense and chewy kind of book, which I mean in the best possible way. It needs attention and rewards it.

I interviewed the author of Eleanor vs. Ike last week and read about half of the book before I had to hand it over to the reviewer. I'll go back to it after she's done. It's an interesting, well-researched look at what might have happened if Eleanor Roosevelt ran against Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election.

And my drifting-off-to-sleep book at the moment is Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

Cooking: I made one of my favorite quick, good-for-me dinners last night: pasta with broccoli rabe and dandelion greens last night, which was delicious. It was also the only time I've ever really, really wished I had a sous chef or personal assistant or helper monkey — anyone to do my prep work for me. I'm used to greens, especially farmers' market greens, having literal dirt on them — and I expect them to. But both batches of  greens last night were so sandy and dirty that I had to rinse each of them at least five times in the ol' salad spinner. I could have repotted a plant with the dirt I rinsed away. 

Knitting: Gina recently posted about counting her active projects, inspired by the Knitting Daily poll. I figured that I might as well take stock of mine too.

Active:
1. Kerry Blue shawl. I just finished the last patterned section last night and have a lot of stockinette to go, then the outer border, then I need to figure out what kind of edging I want. I don't like the crocheted loops especially.
2. Hex Coat. Still working on the sleeve
3. Flicca. No progress
4. Black cashmere scarf. I don't know if this should really be on the list since I finished the knitting yesterday, and just need to wash and block it. This will be quite possibly the least exciting knitted object that you will ever see. Also, I will quite possibly wear it every single day this winter.

Not Quite Active But Still in the Game:
1. Entrelac scarf. No real reason I haven't been working on it. It takes attention and the shawl has been scratching that itch for me, really.
2. Cotton cardigan. I need to do some math and see how I can maintain the patterning while doing the yoke decreases.
3. Opal socks. One done, one started. I want to finish these up soon and give them to my mom for her birthday in December.
4. Red and white socks. I wasn't happy with the heels, not sure about the fit on the foot. Might just start over, top down.

Spinning: Some grey romney and something(?) with a little bit of glitz from Fantom Farm. Bought at Cummington maybe five years ago? I don't have much of it, so it'll probably end up as a scarf eventually. I love scarves.

Watching: Just finished the first season of 30 Rock, working my way through Freaks and Geeks. Thinking I want to get back to the movies in my queue. And go to the movies.

Plotting and planning: Good stuff. Lots of good stuff.

Small good things

Some random good stuff from the last few days:

1. Dinner last night: roasted delicata squash with brown sugar

2. While the squash was in the oven, I separated the seeds from the guts and toasted them in a frying pan with a little butter, rosemary and salt. Next time, I'll roast them in the oven. Even using just a little butter made them greasier than I'd like.

3. I found $20 while I was doing my laundry last night. It fell out of the dryer when I was pulling the dry clothes out and at first I was a little annoyed at myself that I had almost lost it, then realized that the laundry was all gym clothes and underwear and shirts, nothing with pockets.

4. There's a nice piece about Jack Lenor Larsen, one of my favorite textile designers, in this week's New York magazine.

5. A funny story: one of the friends I was with on Sunday sat down on the subway one day recently next to three guys who were deep in conversation: two young guys in fatigues and a slightly older guy with a buzz cut. They saw her grading papers, asked if she's a teacher, blah blah pleasantries. Eventually, the two guys in fatigues get off the train and she asked the other guy if he was going with them. He says no, they weren't together, he's going to school to be a social worker. At this point, she's thinking he's cute, she and her boyfriend broke up about a month ago, she's ready to get back out there. She asks if he's in the military too. He says he's not but adds, "I'm a commander in an organization you may have heard of: The Latin Kings." And he just got out of prison. That morning.

6. I inadvertently made ricotta the other day. I had set out to make another batch of mozzarella, but even though the milk I bought definitely said pasteurized, not ultra-pasteurized, it never set up.

It makes me a little concerned going forward that the milk that should work won't, but this time ricotta worked just as well for what I had in mind (calzones of peril!). Let me tell you, there is nothing that makes you feel like a good little hausfrau like wrapping your cheese curds in muslin and rigging up a way for them to drain. Quite satisfying. And look at all that water running out!

7. I had been reading a lot about baby kiwis online recently (basically: if you see 'em, grab 'em). Since it sounded like they were on the exotic side and kind of rare, I was surprised to find them at the produce stand next to my train stop. For a dollar.


They're delicious, like tart, sweet, juicy candy. Unfortunately, if I eat more than three at a sitting, the back of my throat starts tingling and itching.

Field trip

Yesterday afternoon, I called a friend to tell her about my thoroughly crappy morning and she said that her mom was in town and they were heading to the way upper west side to walk around and I was welcome to join them. I hadn't seen her in a while nor been to that part of town in ages, plus she said the three magic words (Hungarian. Pastry. Shop.) that can get me to do anything. Although, actually, you really just need the first two. Or just the middle one.

We met at St. John the Divine, which was hosting some sort of incongruous afternoon concert, but is still quite grand and lovely, even with an odd smooth jazz soundtrack.

I was really taken with these lamps(?) incense holders(?) bells(?):

I guess they're candle holders, now that I look more closely.

Not coming from religious tradition that involves candles, I find them compelling and rather moving.

These were my favorites from a small group of illustrations on display:

We walked along Morningside Dr., through the Columbia campus, visited Grant's Tomb and headed back downtown through Riverside Park.

Then back uptown for Hungarian! pastries! I don't know what mine was called since I just pointed at it in the case, but it was three layers of crumbly walnut cake sandwiched together with tart raspberry jam and a thin, thin layer of dark chocolate glaze just on top. So good. And one of my favorite places in the city. I can't believe how long it had been since I've been there.

Thanks so much for all of the comments and private emails about my ridiculous break-up. I feel pretty much okay (because, really, who wants that?), but it's much appreciated nonetheless.