Klosekraft

Future project?

This wool felt patchwork blanket on the Purl Bee a week or so ago got me thinking:

This exact version is a little rustic for my own personal taste – I'm partial to more dynamic, seemingly random arrangements of squares and rectangles, like this Ellsworth Kelly painting – but it has possibilities.

I also really like this pixel fabric (via Apartment Therapy):

So I'm thinking about felting a bunch of thrift store sweaters and playing around with similar patterns. You know, someday...

Bye bye Bridie

So, Bridie wasn't working for me. For one thing, and most importantly, I'm not convinced that I have enough yarn for it. And my gauge was so far off from the pattern that the armholes and the asymmetrical bit at the front were going to be a huge hassle. I could rejigger the pattern, but why make myself crazy if I don't need to? Especially if I'm going to run out of yarn anyway. I'll make it in the future in a yarn that matches the gauge. Mark my words!

The knitwear that I wear the most, I've come to realize, are the shawls that function as large scarves. I am a lazy slattern of a blogger and haven't documented any of the shawls I knit before got this little creature underway, but there are a lot of them. Maybe I'll show them to you sometime. The triangles and full circles don't see a lot of wear, but I wear the rectangular or half-circle ones constantly and could use some more.

So I cast on for the North Sea Shawl (ravelry link) from Folk Shawls. So far, so good.

Weekend randomness

1. Sunday, Anna and I went to the Brooklyn Flea and wandered around, marveling at all of the pretty, pretty people and the fact that neither of us were at all tempted to buy anything. The only thing that really stood out to me was this fantastic vanity from RePop made from old steamer trunks (check out our yin/yang trenchcoats in the mirror):

I like the idea of unabashed girliness that goes along with a vanity table, but most of the examples I've seen don't do anything for me. This is the first one I've ever seen that I really coveted.

2. I got to the waist on my handspun raglan.

I'm thinking that I'm going to have to redo the neck to put some front and back shaping in. Originally, I chose to do a reversible boatneck to, I don't know, save wear on the elbows or something, but I'm finding myself tugging at it just to take these pictures. Actually wearing it like this would be kind of a drag. I'll go back after I finish the body and sleeves, snip off a couple of inches and add the shaping then.

3. I made a batch of brownies on Saturday. I had excellent intentions of making a fancy scallop and mushroom soup from one of the Jean-Georges cookbooks, but couldn't be bothered to go anywhere that sold good scallops. I'll do it some other time. In the meantime though, here's the recipe I use for a small batch of brownies, which is from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. If you need a 9x13 pan's worth, the recipe on the back of the Baker's chocolate box is great. I'm doing this from memory, so I can't swear absolutely that it's right, but I'll check tonight and correct if need be.

Brownies
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 scant c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 t. instant espresso powder (not in the original recipe, but it's a nice addition)
1/2 c. flour
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350. Butter an 8x8 pan. Melt chocolate and mix with butter until smooth. Add sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and espresso powder. Add flour and salt. Bake 20-25 minutes.

They're especially good with ice cream.

What I've been...

Reading: I just finished a couple of really, really terrific literary mysteries: The Genius by Jesse Kellerman and To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman. The Kellerman I'm recommending to pretty much everyone I talk to these days — it was awesome — but the Lippman will only appeal to the ladies, I think. The main characters are high school girls and you have to have been one to really get the byzantine system of loyalties and feuds that the plot hinges on. Then I wanted a non-fic, so I picked up The United States of Arugula, but I've gotten bogged down in his chronology of French chefs working in the States; like, dude, I get it. You did your research. Now please start talking.

Eating: I've barely cooked this week, though I have some plans to be in the kitchen this weekend. I ate well this week though.
There was barbeque Monday night (and the first meal of the year outside):

Brisket, pulled pork, ribs, sausage, german potato salad and sour pickles. And no, it wasn't all for me.

Tuesday, there was homemade sushi(!) at Elyssa and Eyal's. I didn't help at all, just got in the way and gossiped and stole pieces of cucumber off the cutting board, but I managed to figure out the basic steps.

1. Chop stuff up.

2. Spread rice on seaweed.

3. Pile on fish and vegetables and roll it up.

4. Slice rolls into, um, rolls.

And, no pictures, but the night after that, Erin and I went to a great French place in Chelsea. The food was excellent, prices were good and the atmosphere was lovely. We ended up sitting there talking for three and a half hours without anyone trying to get us to leave. In fact, after we finished our bottle, the waiter gave us a couple of glasses (each) on the house. Totally worth the headache in the morning.

Knitting: The little knitting time I had this week was spent finally getting through the ribbing on the back of Bridie. I managed to start the main pattern last night and it's going much more quickly, especially since I went up from size 1 needles to 3s.

Doing to bring myself up to 2003: I finally got around to setting up a Facebook account [edited to add link], mainly because it's easier to send to potential roommates to show that I am who I say I am. I don't necessarily want everyone whose ad I answer to read the blog. Feel free to add me as a friend or pass me notes or whatever one does on there. (What is poking? I don't understand. Get off my lawn, you rotten kids!)

Ah, sweet, sweet internet

People, I was without internet access here at the office for MORE THAN THREE HOURS today.

It was AWFUL.

I had so much to say. Like this:

I was waiting for the subway sort of late one night last week. I had just missed a train so I was alone on the platform except for one guy who had asked me for the time, then whether I'm Russian and then whether I'm Italian (or possibly whether I was tired; he wasn't so big on enunciation), at which point I smiled politely and went back to my book and he wandered off.

Eventually, I looked up to see two uniformed NYC police officers ambling down the platform, one in his late 40s, I'd guess and the other in his 20s, both pretty heavy guys and unfortunately porcine in aspect. They stopped in front of this ad:

and stood there looking at it without speaking for a good solid 30 seconds, I'd say. Then the older cop said, completely deadpan, "You think you could hang with them?" and the younger cop replied, equally deadpan, "Oh yeah, I had all those years of training at Juilliard." And then they turned and kept walking down the platform.

Weekend update

Friday night, I went to the Armory Art Show, which was pretty good for people-watching, but art-wise, it was kind of a crapfest. Some great photography, but not much else of interest that I saw. There was one painting of a panda that literally stopped me in my tracks with its spectacular badness. If you had told me it was a paint-by-numbers kit, it would have made perfect sense. But most of the stuff on display was neither here nor there, sort of vaguely conceptual without any apparent concepts to back the work up. I had free passes from someone I know who's involved with the show; if I had paid $30 to get in, I would have been pissed. We did have some great sushi afterward though.

Saturday, I spent most of the day helping a friend move out of her fifth-floor walk-up. I got home around 7:30, took a shower, made a batch of tomato soup (brown an onion and some garlic, add two big cans of whole tomatoes in juice and one carton of chicken broth, heat to boiling, then blend with an immersion blender. Mix in a little cream and salt and sip it out of a mug while watching Flight of the Conchords.) and then went to sleep for ten and a half hours.

Sunday, I washed and blocked the pieces of Demi.

I'm still having trouble visualizing exactly how the buttonband on the shoulder is going to come together, but I trust that it'll work out if I follow the directions. I'm not sure I'm going to have time to put this together until this weekend — it's a busy week — but definitely then.

Then I went over to Zoe's in the afternoon and had all kinds of cheese and bread and olives and pickles and leftover cake from her boyfriend's birthday and fresh apple/pear/lemon/ginger juice and the most addictive hazelnut praline spread I've ever tasted. And we watched kind of an embarrassing number of episodes of Buffy and knit.

To no one's surprise, I imagine, I started a new project:

Bridie, in the Knitpicks Gloss (ooh, they have a few new colors!) that was originally going to be Thermal. The gauge is way smaller (7.33 sts to the inch instead of 5.5), but following the directions for the largest size should yield the size I actually want, provided that all of my math and measuring is correct. I'm currently lumbering through the ribbing for the back; 3.5" of twisted rib on size 1 needles takes a while. After three episodes, I had just under 2". And I knit pretty quickly. I think the gauge would have been closer to the pattern if I had double stranded the yarn, but I didn't want this sweater to be that heavy. This will just be a long-term project.

The movie quotes that no one got:

4. He was a great agent. I loved him like a brother, I loved my wife like a mother and a hooker, and look where it's got me — alone, afraid, and I just wanna die!
Steve Buscemi as sad-sack lounge singer Happy Franks in The Imposters.

5. Velcro. Next to the Walkman and Tab it is the coolest invention of the 20th century!
I was a little surprised no one got this — 80s dance-off classic Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

6. Yeah, I can remember a few things. Apparently you don't. The end? Katharine Ross has just married this really cool guy — tall, blond, incredibly popular, the make-out king of his fraternity in Berkeley — when this obnoxious Dustin Hoffman character shows up at the back of the church, acting like a total asshole. "Elaine! Elaine!" Does Katharine Ross tell Dustin Hoffman, "Get lost, creep. I'm a married woman"? No. She runs off with him. On a bus. That is the reality.
I would have been really surprised if anyone had known this one; it's from Barcelona, which is a movie I'm convinced no one likes but me.

This was fun to put together. I may well do it again sometime I'm casting about for blog fodder. I keep thinking of great, quotable movies I left out.

Movie meme

I've been busy, but not the kind of busy that leads to much blog fodder (helping a friend pack, going to see a Brazilian dance troupe at BAM, looking at apartments — no luck yet; the roommate at the only place I've really liked so far ended up having one of her friends move in, so I've been playing Sour Grapes a bit (small kitchen! kind of ugly block!) and setting up more appointments over the next week or so.

So in lieu of anything else to write about, I'm doing the movie meme that's floating around these days.

The rules:

• Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
• Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
• Post them on your blog for everyone to guess.
• Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
• Looking them up is cheating. Please don’t.

1. I've just decided to switch our Friday schedule to Monday, which means that the test we take each Friday on what we learned during the week will now take place on Monday before we've learned it. But since today is Tuesday, it doesn't matter in the slightest. Pencils ready! Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, original flavor. Spotted by NerdGirl.

2. That's the kind of greeting a girl likes! Not this "Hello-you-look-wonderful" stuff, just a good straight "Who do you know that's an authority on San Francisco his—" Liz got this one right away: Vertigo.

3. She batted them pretty little eyes at you, and you fell for it like an egg from a tall chicken! Charade — Sonja got it.

4. He was a great agent. I loved him like a brother, I loved my wife like a mother and a hooker, and look where it's got me — alone, afraid, and I just wanna die!

5. Velcro. Next to the Walkman and Tab it is the coolest invention of the 20th century!

6. Yeah, I can remember a few things. Apparently you don't. The end? Katharine Ross has just married this really cool guy — tall, blond, incredibly popular, the make-out king of his fraternity in Berkeley — when this obnoxious Dustin Hoffman character shows up at the back of the church, acting like a total asshole. "Elaine! Elaine!" Does Katharine Ross tell Dustin Hoffman, "Get lost, creep. I'm a married woman"? No. She runs off with him. On a bus. That is the reality.

7. Would you excuse me? I cut my foot before and my shoe is filling up with blood. Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion; Debi got it.

8. "He's three years old, gentle as a kitten, and likes dogs." I wonder whether Mark means that he eats dogs or is fond of them? Jenny knew this one: Bringing Up Baby.

9. This is pure snow! Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is? Better Off Dead. Rebecca and Suzanne both got it.

10. As Mr. Sloan always says, there is no "I" in team, but there is an "I" in pie. And there's an "I" in meat pie. Anagram of meat is team... I don't know what he was talking about. Ali knew this one — Shaun of the Dead.

Fried macaroni and cheese: not a great idea

Yesterday, for some reason, I decided to make fried macaroni and cheese.

I had some leftover mac and cheese from a buffy-a-thon with Zoe Sunday night (recipe here; I added a pinch of cayenne to this batch). I love homemade mac and cheese but it doesn't reheat particularly well and apparently I thought that the way to treat a dish that becomes unpleasantly oily upon reheating was to actually reheat the food in oil. It's like a double negative, right?

Sometimes I can't believe that I've managed to keep myself alive this long. I mean, I read sentences like that and just have visions of myself, like, petting an angry bear on the nose and saying "nice doggie."

I absolutely drew the line at deep frying because A: gross and B: scary, so that eliminated most the recipes I found online right off the bat. I used this as my technique guideline. I totally missed the part about dredging in flour though, so consider that step optional. I sent the link to Liz and told her that's what I was making for dinner and she wrote back that if she ever wanted to break up with her boyfriend but didn't feel like telling him, she would just make that exact thing for dinner and he would leave an Otto-shaped hole in the door in his haste to get home to his barley.

Here's the set-up:

Cubed mac and cheese, beaten egg, bread crumbs.

In progress:

It was kind of fun to see it work the way it was supposed to, I have to say. Applying heat makes food brown!

Dinner:

That's more than one serving, obviously. I made more than I wanted because I'm new to this frying thing and wanted to be prepared in case I ruined some.

A close up:

I have to say, after all that, they were just okay. Nothing special. They weren't particularly greasy and had a nice, crunchy coating. But they didn't really taste like mac and cheese anymore; they just tasted like fried. And since I'm not used to eating fried food, I felt kind of sick for hours afterward. The novelty value was reasonably high though, so that's something.

Knitting update

1. Demi. It's in the home stretch. Back and both sleeves are done and I'm up to the armhole on the front. I would really, really like to finish this in time to wear it once or twice before the season passes.

2. Top-down handspun raglan. I've finished the yoke and am a few inches further into the body than I was when I took this picture. I had a minor setback with it last week, due entirely to my own hubris — I hadn't bothered to look up how to handle the body/sleeve split because I've knit plenty of seamless sweaters and have a pretty good sense of the proportions and how to calculate to fit myself. So I set aside 8% of the stitches for the underarm and knit merrily away on the body. It seemed Not Right though, so I looked it up and learned that when you're working from the neck down, you need to add stitches under the arms instead of taking them away. Which sort of makes sense if I don't focus on it too much. I actually have knit top-down sweaters successfully in the past, so I either did it wrong before and it turned out fine anyway or I did it correctly and then blocked out all memories of the process. Brains are weird.

So I ripped back a ways since not only had I screwed up, but I also had 8% more sweater than I was really interested in having. It seems to be back on track now. I'm putting in some princess darts, but just to nip it in a few inches at the waist. Since this isn't next-to-the-skin yarn, I'll have to wear something fairly substantial under it and don't want the shaping to be too extreme. The neckline looks a little wonky in the photo, but it isn't really. That's one mistake I *didn't* make.

3. Road to Not-Golden. I'm stalled on this one. I got a few repeats in and lost interest completely. I think the problem is that it's just not something I'll wear. I like the colors, but I'm not all that wild about the pattern itself. So I think that I'm going to rip out the colorwork portion and do stripes instead. Same proportions, same cap sleeve effect. Just narrow stripes instead of crazy multicolored diamond-y geometric nonsense.

I had wanted to do this sweater to see if I still had the chops to do stranded knitting before I tackle Venezia. Turns out that I do.

I like the wrong side better.

I actually started Venezia at the end of February, but had trouble with the hem flaring out after a few inches of colorwork and ripped back. Instead of the one called for in the pattern (cast on provisionally, knit a few inches then unpick the cast on row and knit it together with the live stitches — pain in my ASS, let me tell you), I think I'll do a sewn-down hem with a purled turning ridge. It may be just the eensiest bit less elegant, but should lie flat more dependably, so it'll look much better in the end. I did take pictures, but managed to delete them without uploading and never got around to posting about any of it. I want to rechart it for myself to make it clearer which color is background and which is foreground and I'm not going to start it again for a while anyway, so I'm not counting this as an active project. Just one that'll pop up eventually...

Happy Easter!