March 2006 Archives

I bought a yarn for Tally's afghan that is lots of fun. The green and blue thing in the last entry.

Amoré (TLC) made by Red Heart sucks.

That's it really. I'm so disappointed. Every skein, every one, has had flaws in it. Ugly knots come out of nowhere. This, I can usually deal with, and I just keep crochetting. Yet, last night, after crochetting several rows in the afghan, I all of a sudden lost a ply, a strand. I went from 4 ply to 3. And this was right after a bug ugly knot, again. I checked to see how much of the skein was useless. One-third. Ouch, especially for skeins that cost $4.20 at Pat Catans (and aren't that big). Oh well. I set it aside and I'm looking for my receipt. Hopefully I can return it. Maybe I can use it for fringe. No more of that yarn for me. So, buyers be warned: avoid Amoré. And, if you do cave and buy it, don't get rid of your receipt until you're done with the yarn forever.

To begin, here's the latest beading accomplishment:

All of the beads started as glass beads. They were a bit of an experiment. I wound them with silver wire, glued them (super glued them) and then lacquered them. They're so lovely now, and so not-costing-me-$5-a-bead.

That was from before break, because I'm back into my crochetting mode. I'm almost done with the never-ending afghan. When I was making an afghan for Emma, Mendon kept saying that it was small, that it was short. So, I listened when I decided to make one for us. For whatever reason, I overlooked the fact that when one makes something bigger, that it takes much more time to make and finish it. I cannot wait to be done. Regrettably, I've more to do than the stitches. I have to make strips, whip stitch them together, redo some of my previous whip stitching (most all of it) because it is too tight and, in my opinion, ugly, AND THEN, I still want to reinforce it because it is too large to support itself very well. Lesson learned: think ahead.

The beast:

Additionally, Tally, my crazy cousin, is getting married. She's crazy, in my psychologically sound opinion, because she lived in Mongolia for two whole years. Do you know, Mongolia is cold! I'll be off at her wedding in a week or two and was struggling with how I could find a nice gift for her. It's so convenient the way hand-made anythings make up for the I-have-no-clue-what-you-need factor and the I-really-don't-have-any-money factor at the same time. I joke with that, but I love crochetting when it's for other people. There's a different feeling to it than when I make things for myself. Additionally, I'm a sucker for gifts that people make for me, so when I put effort into gifting, I have a tendency towards the same.

Here's her "moss":

Also very awesome:
Once I finish with these projects (ha. hahaha.) I have a task for my new skill, knitting. I could do a backwards garter stitch before, which got me some very homemade-looking scarfs. Now, I can do a correct garter stitch and I can purl, which means I can do quite a bit more. Maman taught me this weekend. :) Although, I was stealing her attention while Mendon was trying to get it to do taxes... oops. The best part about this new ability to purl is that I can now do a project that I had previously just given up on before. The project, a blanket, called for the ENTIRE thing to be done in single crochets (i.e. slowly). The problem with this is that the project was able to stand up on its own because of this. Now, with my new yarn powers, I can knit it and it will be softer than the door mat it was going to be. Yay!

PARIS - Divers have discovered a new crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster and is covered with what looks like silky, blonde fur, French researchers said Tuesday.

Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new genus and new family for it.

A team of American-led divers found the animal in waters 7,540 feet deep at a site 900 miles south of Easter Island last year, according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea Exploration, or IFREMER.

The new crustacean is described in the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The animal is white and 5.9 inches long, about the size of a salad plate.

In what Segonzac described as a "surprising characteristic," the animal's pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands. The diving expedition was organized by Robert Vrijenhoek of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.

What really amazes me is how excited I was over a blonde crustacean. I can't even spell crustacean! What do I know? Why should I care? My ever-optimistic reasoning is that humans are curious buggers. We love to learn. Love to hear about new and exciting things, love to learn about our world. What a good example something like this is. So, I guess that the thought I need to remember for the next time I start questioning why we are doing one line of research or another should be something like, "because of the blonde lobster." At which point, I should probably get really confused.

Oh, and the other thought that I had: Did anyone else notice that the article said that the blonde lobster is just about perfectly sized for a salad plate? Hm... Coming soon to a restaurant aquarium near you.

Make challah bread!

I got a call from my girlfriend, Beth, last night asking if I wanted to hang out and make bread. I, of course, said that I would love to and we decided that today would be perfect; we'd walk over to my flat after violin studio. And then, last night, I realized that I would be spending hours of the first day of the Fast making, kneading, and baking the most amazing smelling bread. Ah! It almost drove me crazy with desire to eat. So, in between getting some work done, Beth and I mixed and heated and let the bread rise. We did some dishes, talked about fasting, tried to braid long, sticky snakes of dough. We got flour all over her nice black pants. And all over the kitchen floor (but it looks better there). In the end, we had 3 lovely loaves. One of them is going to the Oxford Bible Fellowship's women's luncheon this Saturday. Another is staying here. Beth and I split the third. :) So good.

Here's a link to Grandma Rosie's Recipe. I highly recommend it; both fun and easy. Oh, and as a warning: the recipe is for a full 3 loaves. So, do yourself a favor, and don't blindly double it.

Also warm and fuzzy: I'm having some tea right now that Rachael sent to Mendon and me for Ayyam-i-Ha. It is mint green tea, and it makes me think of my mommy. I think that mint tea is her favorite.

Now, understand that this is only the beginning of my gourmet breaking of the Fast. The following is from the house chef:

I felt it in my bones. I bought yeast about two weeks ago with a hankering for making bread. I'm glad that Kristen was the one to finally go ahead and make it.

Dinner tonight was a very interesting invention of food. It was pretty good though. I only had a vague image of what I wanted to prepare, I wanted a light pasta, with some lightly grilled checken, and what? I didn't know. Kristen had suggested making a lemon caper sauce for the chicken but couldn't find the recipe that her grandmother gave her and when I googled it the best recipe I could find called for extra dry Vermouth. As good as it sounded, Kristen and I are plum out of Vermouth and, oh right, don't drink or use it to cook with anyway! So, I cheated, I figured I'd improvise a lemon caper sauce for the chicken (improvisation is something that I have gotten pretty good at lately) by stealing a white sauce recipe and converting it.

It turned out wonderfully. I sauteed some onions and minced garlic in the frying pan and set up the white sauce (substituting milk for fish base) with a little butter and a clove of minced garlic for good measure. Then I realized that I had a box of garden rotini on hand to go with everything. It should be noted, I did not sautee the minced garlic (which was minced by hand with a wonderful knife from Locarno) in the butter. Rather, I added some flour and then the milk. After sauteeing the onions and garlic in the frying pan until I was satisfied that they had been lightly cooked, I transferred about 2/3 of them into the white sauce with some salt, pepper, mozzarella cheese, and some ricotta cheese, oh yeah, and some frozen spinach.
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Frozen spinach tastes terrible, if you attempt to use it as a primary ingredient in anything, such as a side of spinach. My mother likes to make it with a little bit of balsamic vinegar and salt. As far as I can tell, the only thing that makes that spinach edible is my nearly undilutable affection for balsamic vinegar. However, frozen spinach makes a fabulous ingredient in such things as Lasagna, spinach and cheese dip, and spinach and cheese gourmet white sauce.
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After grilling, to near perfection, the chicken, I transferred most of the remaining and severely carmelized onions in the frying pan to the white sauce. The chicken had managed to pick up a fabulous onion-garlic glaze while luckily having attained almost perfectly the quality of meat balanced between medium and rare such that it melted like butter in our mouths. The only possible shortcoming of the meal, after adding a small quantity of extra virgin olive oil to the garden rotini, was that the white sauce was just slightly on the bland side. I think that, if I make such a sauce again to accompany my pasta and chicken, it will require another clove of minced garlic.

That said, I served the white sauce on the chicken and pasta and we ate a meal that was fit for, well, a lesser monarch, like Victor Emanuel. The dessert was what really topped off our meal. You're thinking that we had fresh challah with butter and cinnamon and clove honey more pot de creme (which I was thinking of preparing but decided agains at the last moment). Well, you're wrong. We had Peeps instead. It was terrific.

Yes it is.

...the ways one can justify not doing homework.