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Pink potatoes

I was slicing little fingerling potatoes and layering them in a baking dish and it occurred to me that the combinations of colors, pink and purple, were very pretty:

I don’t know the varieties, but they looked so lovely in the pan, like candy more than like potatoes somehow.

I was making a gratin with some oyster mushrooms. First I sliced and layered the potatoes, with a little dot of butter about half way through. Then I sauteed some shallots in a combination of butter and olive oil. When the shallots were soft I added some oyster mushrooms, sauteing them until they just began to give off their liquid.

The oyster mushrooms shared the same soft pretty soft pastel colors:

I added the mushrooms to the casserole on top of the potatoes. Then I added stock to the skillet and brought it to a boil, scraping up any remaining little bits of shallot or mushroom, then added a little heavy cream, some nutmeg and salt and pepper and simmered it just until it started to thicken. I poured this over the potatoes and mushrooms and baked them, covered, until the potatoes had absorbed most of the liquid and were soft and beginning to brown along the top.

Oooh it was soo good! The house smelled heavenly. And we were both so hungry we just dove right in and ate it all up before I even remembered to take a photograph.

November 10, 2007
More hats

I had a post written in my mind on Thursday but it languished there and never found escape.

I had another post on Friday, but was too tired to write, probably because I came home from knitting group/class and then sat up knitting until 2:30 before finally going to bed and having to be rousted up by workmen 5 hours later.

There has been a little bit of knitting, but not enough. I did however spend a lot of time on Ravelry, beginning to add some kind of accounting of my yarn stash — a truly daunting process.

And I have spent a lot of time looking at patterns, and my yarn, and thinking about what projects I will have to work on while I am also working on Vancouver; you know, the kind of projects that I need for time spent in the car, or those evenings when I am too tired to think while I knit, or for jut plain old-fashioned escape knitting.

In the meantime I am still knitting hats. They fit my purposes at the moment:

There is a child’s wool hat knit from a leftover skein of something or another:

This will go in my box of hats, scarvse, and mittens that I donate to Morse school in Poughkeepsie every year. It is not fully populated this year, that box, so perhaps it is a good thing that I think there are several more hats in me before I get tired of knitting them.

I also knit two hats for Owen

The brown one is leftover Karabella SuperCashmee about 2/3 of a skein that was left over from my rice stitch cardigan. The cotton hat matches a little sweater I knit Owen last year, before he was born but which just about fits him now. I dont’ usually think about knitting winter hats out of cotton, but it may be more appropritate for a Tennessee winter than the heavy cashmere. But then again, nothing is too good for one’s grandson now is it?

November 10, 2007
Orange

When I was in San Francisco in September I saw a bright orange patent leather purse. It spoke to me from across the floor in a large department store. Well, truthfully it was so bright it was probably shouting at everyone, but I was the person who heard it that day.

Still I tried to resist its charms.

I left it on the shelf.

But, every day I thought about that purse. I thought about it while I was sewing. I thought about it while I was eating. Several times I thought I would just run down and buy it. But somehow the time never worked out quite right.

The day I was supposed to leave I was still thinking about it. I had about an hour between the time the store opened and the shuttle picked me up for the airport. Of course I bought it.

Then I feared I had lost it when the airline lost my luggage. I didn’t.

I wore it Wednesday when I went in to NYC for a short jaunt where I had several errands I had to run, and a very short period of time in which to shop. I wore it with black and a particular scarf with which I had resumed a mild flirtation after several seasons of neglect:

Prior to finding that scarf I had been thinking that I needed some other shot of orange for my wardrobe, having forgotten the scarf. I don’t need an orange outfit. I always envisioned the orange as an accent with other, for the most part more sober, colors.

I don’t usually wear a lot of orange. Although my mother might remember a pair of bright orange leggings I wore in the 80’s when they were fashionable.

Before I wore the scarf I was thinking I needed orange shoes. I could picture bright orange pumps peeking out from under a navy or black pantsuit. So I was rather focused on orange shoes. But I couldn’t find any that were the right orange, or that were wearable. I actually found several pairs of orange pumps with 4 inch heels and even some with higher heels. I really can’t wear 4 inch heels. Oh I can walk in them, but not for long, and I don’t see the point to that. 5 inch heels? Well I wouldn’t even consider it. I think I like to be in control of my shoes, not have my shoes be in control of me.

Besides I realized that I didn’t need the orange heels. I have the scarf. I like the idea of carrying the orange color to some other piece of my outfit and the scarf worked well. The oranges are not the same, but they worked well together.

Instead of shoes I bought a pair of gloves:

They go with my brown coat. But notice the bit of piping on the gloves and how it picks up the color from the scarf if not the purse. I could wear this lovely scarf, which is silk and wool by the way with my brown coat and still have that bit of orange. And if the world really needs a spot of color I could still wear that orange purse.

So it looks like orange is going to be one of my themes for this fall, even it is only a shot of orange here and there. And these two or three items make a nice little bundle that can be used to spice up multiple outfits.

One of the last things I found, as I put things back into my closets was an old belt that I had picked up to go with a particular outfit for a particular occasion. It is not a particularly precious belt and it is cheaply made, far more cheaply made than the I felt the price warranted. The clasp broke almost immediately, but I always got compliments when I wore it and I still find the belt intriguing so I saved it. And now I think I need to finally repair this belt and use it again because I can see several ways to make use of it this season with clothes that already exist in my wardrobe (as opposed to that fabulous fantasy wardrobe that continues to evolve in my mind).

As you can see it too will go with the scarf but not the purse. It is actually probably more golden amber in color than orange, but it has enough orange in it that I can make it work with either oranges or ambers.

Isn’t that strange? I bought the purse but the scarf that has been hanging around in my closet for several years is going to be the star of this year’s show. I have found several accessory groupings that revolve around the scarf, and there are quite a few potential outfits. How fun.

And the purse, I love the purse. It will be used and loved. Some years it will be the star, and sometimes it will be muzzled and stored on the shelf.

And if I happen to run across the perfect pair of shiny orange patent pumps I might bring them home as well.

November 10, 2007
Introducing Vancouver

There has been enough commitment phobia around here of late. It was time for it to end. I present a beginning:

I have started the Anny Blatt sweater I posted about a few weeks back. The yarn was aired out and some of it was reskeined, washed and then wound back into balls.

This will not be a speedy project. I am working on size 3 needles, which is good for me as the pattern is written for size 4 and I ONLY WENT DOWN ONE SIZE. Even so, I am using three different yarns and the pattern involves a 9 row pattern repeat which includes garter stitch, one row which is bound off purlwise, and then three rows of crochet before the stitches are picked up again and the entire process is started over.

When I started the swatch I was grumbling constantly. primarily at that point about the binding-off. I don’t like binding off purl-wise, but already I am getting pretty adept at it, and certainly by the end of the sweater it will be completely natural. I also had trouble seeing the stitches to pick up for the crochet rows, but navy is difficult to see, not perhaps as impossible as black on aging eyes, but still. The light at Thursday night knitting class/group is not good for this and this will not be a Thursday night project. This of course means that I have to find a Thursday night project, a task not yet accomplished.

So although I grumbled, I am in fact enjoying this project very much. I moves s.l.o.w.l.y. It requires light. It requires attention. Even though I could crochet before I could knit, maintaining gauge in crochet does not come as naturally to me as it does with knitting. Still, I am happy and calm when working. It will be a pleasure. I like the process. I like the fabric I am creating. It will be a joy to wear the finished cardigan, whenever that may be.

Expect to see several other projects in the meantime.

November 6, 2007
Hats for Alex

After I read Marji’s September 26th post I immediately sorted through my odd lot bag for some yarn for baby hats. I wrote about the first hat here.

It took me a little while to get back to this project but I finally did, knitting one hat on Thursday and another yesterday evening:

These hats are knit in remnants of Mission Falls 1824 Cotton and are ready to be shipped off, along with the first hat, on Monday.

It had been a while since I had knitted a hat and it has been perfect knitting therapy, short and sweet and easily knitted when one is tired or just a little scatterbrained. I seem to be avoiding casting on for a more major project right now, just as there are several projects lined up in need of finishing. I am sure the need to knit something more complicated and interesting will resume, but for the moment these hats are the perfect thing. I have started another one, this one out of lilac superwash wool, but this one will be larger, a child’s size, to be donated to a local school. I think all the local schools accept hat, scarf, and glove donations but I tend to give mine to the Pre-K to 2nd grade magnet school in Poughkeepsie, a school that serves a large inner city and welfare population, and never seems to have enough hats and scarves to go around. Although it still seems unseasonably warm, winter will come and I hope to have something ready.

October 28, 2007
Resorting and Restoring

I truly did not realize it had been so long since I had posted anything here. October seems to have just slipped through my fingers, there was a luncheon I really wanted to attend but it came and went before I even managed to get onto Kayak to look up airfares. Sometimes I think I need a minder.

Anyway, when life gets really really busy it tends to be my way to just withdraw into myself for a little bit and cut out all the extraneous communication. Not that this blog is really extraneous, just that when "me" time is at a premium, those quite reflective moments get first dibs. Otherwise all is well, just busy.

My clothes came back from the cleaners on Friday and they are NOT all put away. Friday night I managed to sort and fold or hang the scarf and shawl collection because they had been piled on the bed and we were in danger of suffocating if I did not get the huge pile of dry cleaner’s plastic, much less the scarves, out of the way. It is amazing how in 30 years of collecting, even at an average rate of only 2 scarves a year, a huge collection can be amassed.

Today was reserved for getting the fabric out of bags and off the hangers so that I can then have space to hang clothes. As I had previously mentioned there was quite a bit (although only a small portion of the entire collection):

This is a portion of the bill from the cleaners. There were no blankets, sheets, or pillowcases. What would I do with 32 pillowcases anyway? Although I suppose that they might have been appropriate for pricing some pieces of fabric although there were few I would consider as small as a pillowcase, well maybe a skirt length.

We are actually most tickled by the idea of "Fabric, very Medium".

At any rate, putting away the fabric seems to be a day-long activity. I had all the fabric indexed on 3×5 cards. But of course, it does not come back in the order it was sent out. So first I had to pull out all of the cards for fabric that was stored in the Master Bedroom Closet. This took a while as the index cards are stored in shoe boxes and sorted by color, requiring me to sort look through the entire filing system, looking for those pieces labeled with "MBxx". This of course lead to a few delays as I was occasionally distracted by a particular piece of fabric and spent time revisiting fabric-shopping memories and dreaming of future garments.

Here are the cards and the storage boxes that house the fabric collection master list.

Now, after arranging the index cards by color, I am pulling the fabric, removing it from the hangers, folding it and storing it in the appropriate box. This way a fabric will still be in the appropriate box when I go to try and find it, although there are a few fabrics I am rearranging as I see new possibilities for coordinating outfits, and as I see a few pieces that may want to be made up this fall.

Although this all takes some time, spending time playing with fabric is always fun.

October 28, 2007
And I forgot to mention….

The Vogue Knitting wasn’t the only new knitting magazine to arrive last week, but it was the only one that was probably worth mentioning.

The new Verena also arrived.

When I was first notified that Verena was no longer going to be published I was devastated because they had so many sweaters I loved. Then, when I was notified that they were resuming publication I was filled with glee and quickly dropped the required cash for a new subscription.

I shouldn’t have bothered. This is the second issue of the "new" Verena I have received and both have been completely boring. What a disappointment.

October 27, 2007
Vogue Knitting

Here it is more than half way through the week and I am still catching up with last weekend. And not all bad things happened, and I did indeed enjoy my short visit to Rhinebeck. Any problems were purely of my own doing and stemmed from the generally overwhelmed mental state in which I was operating.

There were some good points though.

For the first time in a few years, the winter issue of Vogue Knitting arrived BEFORE the sheep and wool festival. I distinctly remember running around Dutchess and Ulster Counties on a Saturday evening two years ago looking to purchase a copy of the magazine because mine had not come and I desperately needed more information on a pattern for which I wanted to purchase yarn.

In fact, even though I missed time at the fairgrounds and a party or two, I was happy to spend stolen moments curled up with this issue of VK. I like this issue far, far more than the last one, the much touted anniversary issue, which I thought was quite disappointing.

Admittedly I was first attracted to this sweater because of the color.

But when I looked more closely I found that I still loved the pattern. I actually have some of the recommended Colinette yarn in my stash, although perhaps not enough for this sweater. I purchased it for something else, for which it may or may not be suited.

In fact this seems to be the color of the season, at least as far as my attraction to the Russian collection in the magazine, because I was also attracted to this sweater, which is fabulous for its color, and the lovely shaping and detail, enough interest to keep it from being a boring knit, and yet no so busy that it doesn’t get worn.

I have mentioned several times lately that I seem to be increasingly attracted to color work again, although you haven’t yet seen me start any sweaters that require multiple colors in any form. Still I feel myself getting closer and closer.

This issue has three sweaters that are really tempting me to take the color plunge:

But it is not all about color, or at least bright color. I also love this classic cardigan shown in the section on Paulina Porizkova:

I find all of Tom Scott’s designs fascinating and I am particularly attracted to the interesting shaping of the garments, although this simple wrap uses no shaping and I love it. This is the sweater from this group that I am most likely to get made first, and it is the only one in the set where I actually like the fringes as part of the design.

Still, this short, one-sleeve wrap is also high on my list and looks like it would be fast an entertaining to knit and wear:

Although I love beautiful knitted lace, lace garments are among the least likely in terms of my actually wearing them, so they aren’t usually high on the list. None the less, there is an absolutely beautiful beaded shawl that I would love to knit:

And Shirley Paden’s lace skirt and top also attracted, especially after I noticed that it was indeed two pieces and not a dress. I don’t think I would knit or wear this as it is written, but I am very intrigued by the design and I am already dancing around a few ideas.

Of course the likelihood of my getting to any of these projects in the immediate future is even further in the world of fantasy.

October 26, 2007
The knitting goblins were out this weekend

In many ways the past weekend was a bitter disappointment. Not that anything bad happened, just that what was hoped for also did not occur, and exhaustion and frustration truly ruled the roost.

To begin with, I had sincerely looked forward to going to Rhinebeck. The NYS Sheep and Wool festival was going to be my escape from the hubbub that has surrounded me the past few weeks, not that the fair grounds would be quiet, but that it would be a different kind of activity, one in which I could either partake or just sit and watch as the mood struck.

It didn’t happen quite that way.

The woodpeckers were back and I have gaping holes on one side of the house. I don’t know what prompted this. We have lived in this wood sided house for 24 years and never had woodpecker problems until last year. I thought they were gone. They’re back. The WPP (Wood Pecker People) could only come on Saturday and I knew where my priorities had to be. Then someone else, another contractor, needed to come on Sunday to finish up a job that had been rained out earlier in the week. There were too many people around, schedules were being changed constantly, nerves were frayed.

Saturday morning we got a call that the crew would not be out until after 2 so I thought it would be a good chance to run up to Rhinebeck for a few hours. DH wanted to go too, but we were both tired and short on sleep, and none to focused. It was probably a mistake. We looked at the animal barns and I thought I took pictures, but obviously there was an operator malfunction and only one picture, of llamas, actually was retained on my camera:

I also saw a few favorite bloggers, talked to a few people, looked around, and even bought some yarn (more about that in another post).

One thing we were looking for was a nice wool that I could felt to make a nice thick, soft on the feet, bathmat for outside our shower door. I can’t find one that is just the right shade and size, and since, for various reasons, we decided to replace the wool carpeting in our bedroom with an actual floor, I thought a soft wool mat would be a nice compromise.

I knew that I did not want superwash wool. We found two vendors that had something in the color we wanted, but one was superwash and therefore not right. But we were running around, and we were tired. In the end, I was getting overwhelmed from the choices and DH was getting grumpy and we had to go and I just bought the yarn….

AND GUESS WHAT?

I bought the wrong one.

DUH.

Beautiful yarn from Brooks Farm. The lovely colors are just perfect for my master bedroom and bath. But it doesn’t felt. You can beat it up in the wash, run it through the dryer all you want, and it just becomes softer and softer, but it does not felt.

Only afterwards did I look at the label and say "Oh". I got confused. And that wasn’t the least of it. I wound one skein of yarn while I was so exhausted that I just wanted nothing more than for the two workmen to go home so I could sleep. I was interrupted in the middle and I apparently let the yarn wind back on itself inadvertently, and I may have wound it too tightly as well, because when I pulled the center yarn from the ball to start knitting a huge tangled mass leapt off my lap and spun itself around the room in a tangled mass of fibers which will take me hours, if not days, to unravel.

And you know, in the end it is all kind of hilarious. And I have a 10 x 11 inch doll blanket, or cat blanket, or something. I’ll just buy Cascade for the bathmat. And I am not going to save this yarn, not because I don’t love it, but just because sometimes it is better to just cut one’s losses and move on.

There are two skeins remaining (see above photo, lower left for a picture of the yarn).

Brooks Farm Yarn
Solana Superwash merino wool
5.8 ounces 320 yards each (640 yards total)
Color ES18
beige/natural/blue
MSRP $24.00 per skein.

$30.00 will buy both skeins plus a partial wound skein (I will not subject the tangled mess on anyone) including shipping. If you are interested email me at:

mardelATsewdistractedDOTcom

with a subject of YARN and I will get back to you with PayPal information.

October 23, 2007
Bird of Paradise Socks

I lost interest in fiber-related pursuits for a short time there. Partly this was just because life got in the way, and partly because I felt myself to be on hold. I didn’t want to start anything new and I didn’t have the time or patience to work on finishing Passel or other projects that are awaiting final assembly. But I didn’t even work on simple projects like my socks or another baby hat.

Even knitting seemed like too much trouble, and it is rare that I fall into that void.

Luckily it did not last long, although I haven’t started the next sweater yet.

The Bird of Paradise socks are done and I love them:

The next project is started, another small one. And I am thinking about knitting again so a sweater will follow shortly.

October 22, 2007