the middle knitter

Posting resumes! Sorry about the long absence, guys . . . it just kept slipping. Anyway, I have tons of stuff to post about, so I'm just gonna jump straight in. First, I owe the blog a big mea culpa; I somehow managed to completely forget to photograph my Rome gifts before I gave them away. On the very last night in Rome, I finally remembered, and at least managed to grab a couple (very bad) pictures of Aud's gift.

From this pattern, because Aud is very much a Gryffindor. I made it with just Patons Classic Merino, because it was all I could get in the local Michaels. The colors are somewhat better in person.

I wasn't sure I'd have enough of the gold, so I made the back like this, instead of the way the pattern had it.

This is my first real attempt at stranded colorwork, and it's actually not as lumpy as it looks--the reason it looks so lumpy is because the lining turned out to be a bit too large. I have a feeling it'll work out once the bag is full.

I'm quite fond of the way the pattern used crochet techniques. I actually added a bit more than was directed, crocheting around the top instead of working it in garter stitch. There's something in me that is seriously bothered by the thought of working garter stitch in the round, and I try to avoid it when I can. (Well, that and I cast off before realized that I'd completely forgotten to do something to stop the top of the bag from curling.)

I don't want to overwhelm the blog too much, so check back tomorrow for more Harry Potter knitting fun! (Eventually there will be posts about Rome as well, but I'm kind of holding out until I get back to school where the connection is faster. I'm on dialup here at home, and I have a LOT of pictures to process from Rome.)

I'm sick. Completely and utterly down with bronchitis. I've been in bed for three days, and it just keeps not going away.

So, given my low energy level, I'm just gonna throw up some photos of my latest baby.

It's a Deathly Hallows earflap hat of my own design, and I'm actually quite proud of it. If you haven't read the latest Harry Potter book, this won't make much sense, but I was quite taken with the idea of the Deathly Hallows, and I've sort of claimed myself as a follower, I guess. I've been scribbling up the symbol all over my living space--it drove my roommate quite mad last semester. Now I have it in a hat.

Close up of my less-than-perfect Fair Isle work (hey, it's only my second project). The earflaps were done in double knit, though I think that was a bit of a mistake--I didn't have the needles to go down a couple sizes like I should have, and as a result the gauge on the earflaps is much bigger than the rest of the hat, making them look puffy. Ah well--it's still cute.

Instead of trying to do ribbing or something along the bottom edge, I just left it, and after the hat was finished, I crocheted around the edge. I think it looks very neat, and also rather subtle, and after blocking the edge doesn't curl at all. (Before blocking, it did flip up a bit, but when on my head it would stay put.)

I've got more, but I'm tired. Good night, blog.

Posted on LJ-knitting today:

I freely acknowledge that this garment has absolutely no practical purpose, and I have no idea where or with what I'm going to wear it, but it's so pretty.

Ladies and gentlemen, a knitter's world in a nutshell.

(And it IS so pretty.)

(I should preface this by saying that the reason it's important enough to merit such a long post is that I'm just barely beginning to spread my wings and cook for myself, so it's exciting.)

Last semester, I hatched the idea to get around my lack of lunch three days a week by making a semester's worth of soup, freezing it in individual baggies, so that I could put them in a thermos for lunch! They all had to be bean soups, because apparently soup doesn't freeze all that well, but beans do. Well, today was Soup Day.

I got up before 9am so that I could go shopping at Wal-mart for ingredients (thanks to the lovely Ginny's gracious driving). I bought ingredients for three soups: black bean soup, lentil soup with vegetables, and three bean soup with ham. I set the beans to soak as soon as I got back, and the cooking started at about 3:00.

I tried the black bean first. It didn't work out very well. It scorched on the bottom, and the scorched flavor managed to get through the rest of the soup. Also, even setting that aside, and setting aside the fact that I was practically dumping in cumin and cayenne, it didn't have that much flavor. Eh, you win some, you lose some. I'm not throwing it out, because I only had enough freezer bags to make exactly the right amount of soup for the semester, and because I didn't know how well the other soups would turn out, 13 of them are filled with the black bean. I'll eat the others first, and if I decide the black bean is edible, I'll eat it--if not, I'll throw it out.

The lentil soup turned out fantastic. I made a good lentil soup at Thanksgiving while I was staying with a friend, and it sold me on the beauty of a simple lentil soup--I was shocked at the idea that a soup could taste great without any sort of fat or anything in it. The soup I made today had lots of garlic and onion, and carrots and celery, but I also added a little bit of cayenne pepper, which made a huge difference. It wasn't enough to make the soup spicy, just enough to give it a little kick. I came downstairs and told my roommates that I had just made a kickass lentil soup. EV said that soup isn't generally something that can be described as "kickass", but I maintain that this soup is.

Finally, the ham and bean soup also rocked. I used pinto beans, great northern beans, and black eyed peas, with some chunks of . . . well, something that amounted to big hunks of pig fat. I dunno--it was in with the hambones, but there were no bones. It was only $2.50, so I'm not arguing. And lots of garlic and onion, of course, both fresh and in powder. And since the cayenne worked so well with the lentils, I added a bit of that too. It tastes great!

Now it's 11:30. I just spent seven hours in the kitchen--I think the technical term for that is "slaving over a hot stove". Things I learned:

--I like cooking, but it gets old after five or six hours.
--Cumin smells really, really good.
--Cayenne is awesome. (And a little goes a long way--but I didn't learn that the hard way!)
--It's really hard to spoon soup into plastic freezer bags. And really messy.
--I can actually make food that tastes good!
--I learned a lot more about cooking from my mom than I thought I did.

I also discovered that I cook a lot the same way that I knit. I can try to follow a pattern, but I much prefer just to make it up as I go. And if I do try to follow the directions, I'll inevitably end up changing the number of stitches and decreasing differently and dumping in a bunch of parsley and extra garlic (always!). It's just so boring to follow directions--there's so much more opportunity to be surprised if you're always making everything up as you go along.

Of course, I know a lot more about how knitting works than I do about how cooking works. So, the opportunity for completely screwing up is still pretty open. But, if that happens, it happens.

I spent $66 in Wal-mart. I bought several things that weren't for the soups, so let's say I spent $55 buying stuff for soup--and that includes a big pot, a bottle of olive oil, and a few jars of spices, stuff most people would already have around. With that $55, I made enough soup to keep me in lunches three days a week for the rest of the semester.

There are 14 weeks in the semester. That comes out to just under $4 a week. That's like one trip to McDonalds, and my food is a lot healthier. The point? Beans are basically the best thing EVER--they're cheap, filling, nutritious, and easy to make. Oh, and super versatile.

Amberdulen asked for the recipes for those soups I made yesterday. The idea of me posting a recipe is kind of laughable, especially since I was basically just chucking stuff in a pot to see what happened, but it occurs to me that I might want to recreate these soups someday, so I'll describe what went down as best as possible.

For the ill-fated black bean soup, I tried to follow this recipe, but ended up straying a lot. (Also, I was using dried beans instead of cans.) I'm pretty sure the failure of that soup was nobody's fault but mine, but I also have no testimony that that's a decent recipe. You know, FYI.

Kickass Lentil Soup

Ingredients:
lentils
carrots
celery
onion
garlic
olive oil
salt
cayenne pepper
oregano
parsley
onion powder
garlic powder (yes, I doubled up on the onion and garlic--I regret nothing)

I used three pounds of lentils, one large onion, and about four cloves of garlic, and I got way, way more soup than I needed, even to last the entire semester. Lentils don't need to be soaked, so just wash them briefly and put them in a big pot with water. (I always need more water than I think, but it's easy to add water as you're cooking, so don't stress over the amount.) Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil, if you like. I did.

Once you've got them on the stove, you can toss in the first batch of seasonings--definitely salt the water, and if you want to throw in the other seasonings, you can. The longer they're in there, the longer the lentils have to pick up the flavor, but on the other hand, it's easier to know what to add once you can taste the soup.

While the lentils are cooking, chop up the onion and garlic. Saute the onion in olive oil, and once it's started getting translucent, add the garlic and saute them both until you're satisfied with them. Then, dump the whole thing, oil and all, into the soup.

You can chop up the carrots and celery while you wait for the lentils to cook. Add the carrots when the lentils are getting pretty soft, almost completely done. (It won't hurt them to cook after they seem done, and you don't want the carrots getting mushy.) Wait until the carrots are getting soft and the lentils are pretty done to add the celery, since it cooks a lot faster than carrots.

Keep adding seasonings throughout the cooking process--I have no idea how much of anything I put in. The only suggestion I have is that a little cayenne goes a long way, so start small and work your way up.

Fun fact: Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a pot of lentil soup. (At least, that's what they told me in Bible class.) I can totally, totally buy it. Lentil soup is amazing.

Three Bean and Ham Soup

Ingredients:
pinto beans
great northern beans
black eyed peas
ham of some kind
onion
garlic
olive oil
salt (but not too much)
cayenne pepper
parsley
onion powder
garlic powder

The best way to get ham would be to wait until you've made an actual ham and then use the bone and leavings--that's what my mom would do. Since I didn't have leftover ham, I bought some at Wal-mart. It shouldn't be nice ham. You can pick up a couple hambones, or something similar for just a couple of bucks. Also, with the beans, I used half pinto beans, a quarter great northerns, and a quarter black eyed peas. But you can do whatever you want.

It's a very good idea to soak the beans first--it reduces the cooking time, and can help cut down on the gas after you eat them. There's lots of information on soaking beans here. Once you've soaked them with the method of your choice, drain off the water. Put the beans in a pan with water and your ham. You can salt the water if you want, but ham's pretty salty already.

Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil exactly as described above--start with the onion, and add the garlic later on. Dump that whole thing in with the beans once it looks good.

From there, you pretty much start throwing in seasonings until it tastes good. Again, a little cayenne goes a long way, but this would taste good either as a really mild soup or as a really spicy one, so have at it. I can't remember if I put oregano in this one--I only had four spices on hand, and I was kind of throwing them around willy-nilly. Do what feels right.

When the beans are completely done, take the soup off of the heat and pull out the ham. Cut away any meat you can salvage from the bone/fat, and chop it up and throw it back in the soup.

I think carrots and celery would not be amiss in this soup either, but I had used all of mine on the lentils. I suspect this would also taste really good with dumplings. (Some people have suggested to me that dumplings belong with chicken, not with ham. Try it, though--you'll like it.)

Dang. Now I'm really hungry, and dinner's not for another hour.

I've got a huge backlog of finished objects to share, and since the photos are already all edited and everything, I figured I should start throwing them up here. Here's something I've been wearing pretty much constantly since I finished them. I started them on the plane coming home from Rome, and finished them while I was holed up at home with bronchitis.

These were made with leftover yarn (Knitpicks Essential Tweed in Plum) from a pair of socks I haven't posted yet (I've abandoned chronological order at this point, but will post the socks eventually). The cables were inspired by the Deathly Hallows symbol, but I couldn't figure out how to make a triangle and had to settle for a diamond. I'm pretty sure I saw a method for making horizontal cables online once, but when I made the first of these, I was on an airplane somewhere over Greenland, so I had to work with what I had. I think the cables look nice, anyway, if not particularly Hallows-y.

I've decided that the trick to Harry Potter knitting is to take techniques that look traditional and skew them just slightly from what you'd expect. (Actually, that's the trick to the Harry Potter aesthetic period, even outside of knitting.) So, instead of a more common rope cable along the edges, I did this snakey thing. It is a traditional cable pattern, but I've always thought it looked weird, which was perfect for this project.

I'm liking the fingerless mitten thing so much that I'm considering making myself another pair. If I do, I'm going to do a gusset thumb instead of an afterthought thumb like I used on these. I'm finding that the afterthought thumb is just not that comfortable--it stretches strangely across my palm.

Here's another one from the backlog . . . and this one's really from the backlog. I finished this baby back in September, and I've been wearing and enjoying it since then. I just never got around to posting it. Remember that double-knit Ravenclaw scarf I posted a while back? This is the companion hat.

I thought to myself, double-knit is like the answer to intarsia--you can do it in the round, you don't have to worry about floats, and it makes the fabric double thick over the ears. It's perfect!

The words on the hat say, "Wit beyond measure . . ." The entire couple is from the Harry Potter books, and reads, "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." Oddly enough, it's present on the diadem of Ravenclaw, so a hat is an appropriate object for it.

Like the Ravenclaw scarf, it's made with Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Sapphire Heather and Amber Heather. The WotA was much too rough against my forehead, so I had to sew in a patch of fabric there, but I'm still in love with the colors.

People seem to be impressed with the fact that I figured out how to put words in my clothing. I'm a little amused by that. My only regret on this hat is that my cast-on edge is incredibly sloppy, and I'm a little self-conscious about that. Other than that, though, I love it.

Next post will have nothing to do with Harry Potter, I promise.

I promised I'd post something that had nothing to do with Harry Potter, so here it is! This is the pair of socks I worked on on my trip to Rome.

When I knit something, the circumstances under which I knit it tend to get associated with the item for me, so that particular item always represents certain memories. Well, these socks represent airplane hell.

I started them in the airport in Denver. By the time I finally got to Rome, I had finished all but the toe decreases on the second sock. The first lesson I learned was never, ever try to connect through Chicago in the winter. The second lesson I learned was that when you finally have a seat on a flight out of Chicago, DO NOT say, "No, this is great--once I get to London it will be easy!"

It was not easy. Nothing about London is easy. I'm fully convinced that Heathrow is built over a portal straight to hell.

I ended up spending twelve hours in Heathrow, trapped on a crowded concourse with not enough seats for all of the other stranded passengers. I had no money, because all of my money was in dollars, and I couldn't change it into pounds since my final destination was Rome, and I didn't want to deal with the massive fees to withdraw a small amount of money to hold me until I left the airport.

So, for twelve hours, I sat in the airport, knitting on these socks and eating the trail mix I had just happened to pack in my backpack (thank heaven I hadn't finished it on the plane), and trying to get enough out of the drinking fountain to quench my thirst. I did at one point meet a very nice British woman who gave me some chocolate. (She didn't even know that I was starving. At that point, I was so jetlagged and travelworn that I didn't even know I was starving.)

At any rate, after some time on standby, I finally made it to Rome, where I discovered that not only had my luggage been lost, but also every ATM in the airport was nonfunctional. So, I was hungry, and exhausted, and in bad need of a shower, and I was stranded in a foreign country at 3am, with no money. I think it was only because I was on the verge of tears that I managed to convince a cab driver to take my credit card.

That's the story. Once I made it to Rome and met up with Aud and got to bed, the trip was amazing, but I admit, there was a point there in Rome's airport where I sincerely wondered why I had thought it would be a good idea to leave my warm fire and my soft cat and travel halfway around the world by myself.

Oddly enough, though, I really like these socks. They're made from Knitpicks Essential Tweed in Plum. I tried a 6x2 rib on the leg and foot, and I really like the look. (Also, it was much less annoying to knit than, say, a 2x2 rib.) I also corrected a lot of the things that have been bugging me about my other handmade socks--feet that are too short, and heels that are not deep enough, so that the sock gets worn out right above where the heel stitch starts.

I hate to say it, but this post is probably about the closest you'll get to an account of my trip to Rome. I had big plans to go through day by day and post pictures of what we did and talk about it, but . . . I don't think it's going to happen. I'll throw up the photos into an album eventually, though, and you can look at that and pretend it's accompanied by witty and pithy narration (which is more than you'd get here anyway).