Monday, January 31, 2005

Was so on a roll and then...

I found a crazy ass mistake in the hoodie. I'm about six inches up the back having not accidentally gained or dropped anything; and a third of the way through a knit row I find a weirdass circle of yarn creating a hole.

I'm not sure whether I twisted a stitch or whether I knit when I should have purled, and thus accidentally yarned over, but at least I caught it in the next row and think I can fix it. The question, of course, is whether I have to unknit about 75 stitches or can simply drop the stitch and pull it back up again.

All this happened right when Boo came home last night, so of course I parked the errant stitch on a crochet hook and left the other two needles as they were.

Should be entertaining to try and fix, but at this rate, by the time I get to my beginning knitting class, I'll be able to teach it.

Friday, January 28, 2005

DIY recipes

I've had a butternut squash staring me down for weeks. And I picked up some shiitake mushrooms earlier this week. I kept looking at one or the other and thought, instinctively, those two would go good together. In a risotto. I have no idea where this brain noise came from, but I found recipes for it. Unfortunately, I didn't have more than half the ingredients. So I improvised, which is totally punk.rustic.

1 medium butternut squash
2 c. water
2 chicken boullion cubes
3 T. butter
1/2 of a vidalia onion, chopped
1 package shiitake mushrooms, chopped
good sprinking of thyme
salt and pepper
1 cup rice (preferably arborio, but I only had jasmine on hand)
1 tbsp honey
1 can cream of chicken soup
parmesan cheese


Halve and roast the butternut squash for 40 or so minutes at 400˚. Meanwhile, chop the onion, and clean, stem, and chop the mushrooms. Dissolve the boullion cubes in hot water. Melt the butter over medium heat; add onions and cook a couple of minutes, or til they start to soften. Add mushrooms and thyme; stir around a couple more minutes until the mushrooms have taken on the butter and darkened a bit. Add the salt, pepper, and uncooked rice. Saute for a few more minutes; put boullion on to boil. Add rice mixture to boiling boullion mixture. Add about half the squash to cook down and a tsp. of honey. Cover and let cook, but give it a stir now and then. You may have to add more water.

Add the cream chicken soup once it's close to done and uncover it. Add the rest of the squash. Heat through. Add parmesan to taste. You're done!

This is totally vegetarianable by using a veggie stock and a real cream mixture. And it would definitely gain from some wine being added. But *someone* I know had... thirds! and the picky eater in the house gobbled it right up!

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Frogging!

So the scarf is finished. It's about five feet long, and I darned all the wholes from my accidental yarn overs. It was a good learning project.

And, feeling ambitious, I've already started a second project. I was thinking it would be a hat, or a bag, or something. But no... I decided to knit myself a hoodie.

It's a lion brand pattern, and it uses homespun yarn, which has a really strange texture. My first attempt at ribbing looked horrible, so I frogged the whole thing, and... realized that frogged homespun is exactly like regular homespun. that's how loopy the yarn is.

At any rate, I've now re-knit the first 18 rows, and while it still looks kinda drunken, it's a vast improvement. I've figured out how to tell whether the next stitch is a knit or a purl, and I've caught three major mistakes in enough time to only have to un-knit ten or fifteen stitches. I've picked up a dropped stitch, and caught all my accidental yarn overs this time. It's a lot easier to spot accidental yarn overs in stockinette than it is in garter. I've also managed to not accidentally increase, yet!

So i'm feeling optimistic that my first sweater won't look like chicken skin. It's got lots of pretty colors in it, but we'll see if I can get the colors to match up when it comes time to knit the front.

On the cooking front, we had lots of good food this weekend. Roast chicken. Beef stroganoff. And Blueberry Buckle. I need to reconfigure the recipe box!

Weird energy in the home front right now, but it will pass. Another transition at hand, and it will be a painful one.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

boston

i have had two naps tonight, and again I head to bed to wake up in four hours.

tomorrow I should have some time to chat, and my livejournal active again.

thanks for checking in.

punky, if you're out there, i miss you, liebling.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

I wonder how this would look in an eyelash yarn.

Bristol Centre for Applied Nonlinear Mathematics Publications 2004 Abstract of preprint 2004.3

I'm not sure that most crafty folks will appreciate this, but just in case you're really into crocheting and chaos theory (and not as it applies to balls of yarn and earnest kittens), here are the instructions for crocheting your very own Lorenz manifold.