So I’ve left this post set to publish itself Saturday morning while I’m away. Here’s the result of the wet blocking. It still wants to curl a bit so I imagine I’ll have to block again from time to time but for now the results are terrific. You can see the pattern quite nicely! Thanks for all the lovely comments from those of you who weren’t here last year and haven’t seen it before!
I can’t take the shawl with me to the RFL thing since most likely any knitting I do will be in short bursts. I’ve started this little secret project to keep me company and I’ll also bring some sock yarn with needles and a pattern as a backup should I get more knitting time than expected.
Very slowly Madli’s Shawl is growing and the ball of lace yarn is shrinking. Here she is with 9 of the 31 repeats complete. There’s a long way to go yet but I do seem to be able to stay on track while knitting this at SnB so she shouldn’t get stuck in a corner again for a bit.
See you all in a couple of days. I’m off early tomorrow morning for a Relay for Life leadership summit so that I can better help to run the Westford event this coming June 9th.
It seems like I’ve been knitting quite a long time now but it’s only been since February ‘04. I knit this scarf before I learned about wet blocking. At that time I’d only done steam blocking and I didn’t want to press out my cables so I just held the iron above the scarf and let the steam permeate it from above. It’s always had a pretty strong tendency to curl inward so you can’t see the pattern. At the book signing when Stephanie attempted to uncurl it to see the pattern a lightbulb went off and I realized I could revisit this scarf and do a proper wet-block on it. Having also discovered that the color runs I added a bit of vinegar to the water and here she is laid out on the bed to dry.
Well I hope not! These are a bit more like scones because it’s not easy to get White Lily flour up here and I’d prefer not to cook with lard. It’s supposed to be a much softer flour creating lighter biscuits, now it could be that I could substitute cake flour but I’ve never bothered to try. I’ve tried many different biscuit recipes and this is the one I’ve finally settled on as being my favorite. I used to make it with about half the fat as shortening but with all the fuss about trans-fat I think I’d rather just eat butter. They’ll be a bit softer if you use the shortening so if you don’t mind cooking with it substitute away.
Mess of Biscuit
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons salt
8 tablespoons butter
2 cups buttermilk
In a large mixing bowl, stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Cut in the butter, mix until you have a crumbly dough. Stir in the buttermilk just until moist. Turn the dough out,sprinkle with flour and pat out gently to a thickness of about 1/2 inch on a well floured board. Cut out 2-inch circles. Bake on a greased sheet in a preheated 400F oven for 17 minutes. (The time will vary with your oven and bakeware- watch for the browning on top and bottom.) Serve hot with butter and honey.
Until recently I always just used a glass to cut out my biscuits but now I’ve got some fancy dancy plastic biscuit cutters. I don’t like the metals ones, they always bend and rust. I don’t go for perfect circles but just squash the edges in to cut the next one because they really seem much more tender if I don’t reroll. Only the very last biscuit gets sort of rolled into shape.
Also in the week I found time to put together my little birdies from the kit I bought at Rhinebeck. I am not sure if I’ll hang them in the kitchen pass-through or save them for the xmas tree. Either way they need to stay well away from the cats!
Well, with the socks off the needles it seems Madli’s Shawl has finally floated back up the priority list. I’m anxious to start my sweater but I’ve still got this and the lace scarf on the needles. I think the lace scarf can now graduate to my waiting-for-something knitting and the shawl will be the project to work on if I’ve got time where I can focus. I’ve just about finished the third repeat of the main section. Gee, only 28 more to go. Yep, this might take awhile! I’m getting used to the nupps (those dark knotty looking things) and finally seem to be knitting them loosely enough to do the purl on the back side without too much struggle.
Last Friday morning, before I left for Rhinebeck, I made some brownies thinking Jason and Daniel would enjoy them and I could take just a few with me for the ride. I forgot my little container but they were certainly well received as there was only the tiniest sliver left for me when I got home Sunday evening. These are out of Ruth Reichl’s book, "Tender at the Bone", which has several interesting recipes I’d like to try.
Ruth’s Brownies
2/3 cup unsalted butter
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup sifted flour
1 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 400 F. Chop the chocolate and butter and place in a very small saucepan over very low heat to melt. (I use a metal measuring cup.) Stir occasionally and remove from heat when melted, stirring in vanilla. Beat eggs, salt and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer at high speed for about ten minutes or until pale and thickened. Add chocolate mixture and combine thoroughly. Beat in flour just until combined. Pour into a 9-inch round baking pan with a removable bottom and sprinkle with walnuts. Reduce oven temperature to 350 F and bake for 40 minutes. The brownies will be very soft and dense.
After knitting off and on Wednesday night during SnB and then again off and on yesterday I managed to finish the second manly sock. The reinforcing yarn turned out to be a bit different on the second sock but thanks to the tip I got on the wool arts tour I’ll just use a spool of wooly nylon from the sewing store next time and avoid that problem all together. Who knew I’d need two of those little cards of reinforcing yarn.
This week at the high school is spirit week. Here’s Daniel with his class shirt. His class color is maroon and we hunted for maroon hair gel but red was as close as we could come. He’s really trying hard not to smile. He’s been really excited about art metals and is working on a new project in that class that will take him the rest of this term and possibly into the next. Hopefully he’ll bring it home at some point and I can take a picture of his progress. He’s doing a sword-in-the-stone sort of thing with a few different metals that will involve soldering, using a jeweler’s saw, and learning to do a stone setting. Yesterday he used a blow-torch to do the soldering.
Here’s another winging-it supper this week. I happened to have a nice pork roast in the freezer and some cranberry beans in the cupboard. There was a bottle of wine we didn’t use when we had company a few weeks ago originally meant for fondue.
Pantry Pork and Beans
center cut pork roast, cleaned and cubed
1 medium onion
1/4 cup flour
salt
cayenne pepper
4 tablespoons canola oil
crushed red pepper
1 cup white wine
1 pound cranberry beans
1 cup chicken stock
2 cups vegetable stock
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Cook the cranberry beans 30 minutes in a pressure cooker or by your preferred method. Put the flour, salt and pepper to taste into a gallon ziploc bag and toss the cubed pork in this mixture. Brown the pork on all sides in a Dutch oven with the canola oil. During the last few minutes of browning add the onions and cook until they are translucent. Add the wine to the pan and scrape with a wooden spoon to loosen browned bits. Add remaining ingredients and reduce to a low simmer, cook for an hour or until meat is very tender.
The Relay for Life leadership summit was an intensive training session over two days for new and returning event organizers. Last year was the first year for Westford to have an event and it was run by a regional person while this year it’s being taken over by someone who ran the event at her college and wanted to stay involved. Being so far the only two active members of the organizing committee we both attended the summit this weekend in hopes of aquiring some useful knowledge for getting our event a little more firmly established. The hours were long and I’ve come home with a binder full of ideas and a CD packed with even more. As we emerged late Saturday afternoon we were all suprised to see it snowing like crazy. I had to clean at least an inch of snow off the car before I could leave. I’m going to be the online registrar and will be attending a class tomorrow night to learn how to do that. 
On the way home from knitting yesterday morning I stopped to pick up some pumpkins for our Halloween decorations. Daniel created a pirate design, the little word cartoon says, "argh!" There’s a hat design as well that’ll be more visible when I take proper pictures with a tripod tonight. 
I picked up some wood carving tools and used a v-channel knife to create my design. I got the idea from "The Pumpkin Carving Book" which I stumbled across at the library earlier this month and snatched up in preparation for this weekend.
Jason also created a design from "The Pumpkin Carving Book" choosing the "Triangles and Texture" design for his. 
