No Foolin'

As the lockdown increases, and more people are voluntarily staying home for as long as possible, I've seen a lot of suggestions about how to "stay normal" such as continuing to follow a normal routine to get ready for work in the morning, if you now work at home:  shower, breakfast, dress, hair, makeup, jewelry, whatever.  My routine has been a bit less normal, as I have made pancakes or waffles more often than not, and my usual workday breakfast is cold cereal and yoghurt, maybe fruit, a granola bar.

Pumpkin pancakes with blackberries.

Wild blueberry waffle.

Yes, I am still eating at my laptop, but it's much nicer than I usually consume.  I am trying to make a point of not "going to work" until 8:00am unless I have an earlier meeting or a hard deadline, and this gives me a bit more time to cook breakfast instead of grab-and-go.

One sadness is that today I should have been on my way to Texas for DFW Fiber Fest's Quinceañera, but like so many things, it was cancelled.  

It's a huge amount of work to put on an event like this, and just as much to tie up all the loose ends from cancelling it.  One loose end was the vendors and their wares; many planned for DFW Fiber Fest to be a major part of their income.  And yet, wonderfully, many are contributing to DFW Fiber Fest (which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, if you'd like to contribute also) some portion of sales, either from their commemorative colourway or otherwise.

So of course, I took the money I didn't spend on airfare (well, I have a credit that I'll use for a future trip), hotel, and car rental, and put it to purchasing from the vendors:

A Thing for String's show colourway,
on two different bases.

Crafting My Chaos.  The two on the
left will get worked into one garment.

Fiber Seed.  Such bright yarns!

Fiberlady - they got their start at
DFW Fiber Fest #2, and this is their
fundraiser colourways, all three of them!

        

Forbidden Fiber Co.

The colours in their Pandemic Survival set.

   

Hill Country Weavers - commercial
yarns, but they give discounts to fiber
people in need.  I paid full price.

Lazy Cat - my favourite show colourways.

I loved Leading Men Yarns' tote.

Mahogany Sheep does pins, including
sheep doing yoga.  We need yoga.

Schmutzerella

The Sexy Knitter.  Socks plus ?????

   

WhimzeeStitches one-off colourway.

I also picked up a few patterns from some of the teachers.  So now I have decided that since I cannot go to DFW Fiber Fest this year, I'll wallow in it by wearing, for the next four days, one of the fiberstuffs-related T-shirts and leggings that I would have worn had I gone.  And I am putting aside other knitting to work on yarns from DFW Fiber Fests past and cancelled.

Speaking of putting aside my knitting, given that my March mini-Resolution was to make a baby blanket for friends, and then finish items for the Mittens for Akkol grads, how did I do?

Well, the baby blanket is partly done but not finished.  I was going to hand it off to friends to deliver, since baby and parents live overseas, but all that was upended in mid-March.  So I'll finish the blanket and send it when it's ready.  Maybe later this month.  Photos to follow.

The grad items are done and not-done.  On Leap Day I set the intention to make four items:  a sweater and coordinated scarf in red and yellow or gold; a purple scarf; and a blue-and-orange hat.  While updating my progress of the items on a Google-docs chart, I noticed a couple other items that needed makers and which would also use up stash: a hat to go with a dark pink sweater, and another to match a navy/colours set.  I had some yarn that I wanted to use up that fitted both of these, so I claimed those and made them and mailed four items:

I'd planned a different pattern for the orange-and-blue hat, but couldn't find it, started what you see, and by the time I found the pattern I was well into the first band of slip-stitch and the stitch count was too different to switch, so I stayed with what you see.  The scarf is a lot of Shaker rib stitch in different shades of purple (hard to see, but different) and the pink hat is a slip-stitch honeycomb with a solid single-ply over a handdyed.  The other hat was the last ball and a half of an Italian yarn that feels lovely soft, and I did a bit of rib patterning.

The sweater is close to being done: 

MarlyBird was doing a knit-along, and while I knew I didn't have time to work on the sweater then, I liked one of the patterns and decided to use it for this sweater.  It's zooming along although I have to pay attention to the patterning.  You use a slightly larger needle to help compensate for the drawing-in that often happens with colourwork like this.  I like that there will be very little sewing-together at the end, just some underarm grafting.

So, I'm calling it good enough.  I should be able to finish the sweater and scarf in April.

For my proper

Resolutions for April

I plan to finish one item FOR ME, and out of yarn from a DFW Fiber Fest vendor.  With luck, I'll finish more than one.  As you can see, just from this year's shopping I have an embarrassment of source material, so to speak.

And I need to make at least one shawl for my grandmother, so I can mail it in time for her to receive it for her birthday, which is at the beginning of May.  But that's not really a resolution since I'd do it anyway, provided I select among the yarns and patterns queued.

Still no progress on the books.  There's too much to read online, plus work was madly busy between having to assist customers whose businesses are heavily affected by COVID-19, and it being the end of our fiscal year, so my eyes usually had enough reading by end of day.

Instead, I've been indulging in all the cool stuff available online, from the Met Opera and Playbill's weekend free musicals, to The Globe Theatre and National Theatre in the UK.

Catching up with Cooking

Like much of the world, I am staying in lockdown.  While I don't have any of the medical markers requiring self-quarantine, I am staying home to avoid dragging the virus around.  I go out of my neighborhood by car about once a week; I get mail at a post office, not at home, so I have to collect it.  This past week I went out on Thursday because I had a discount coupon for Walgreens that expired that day, and it turns out they didn't have anything I wanted, so I'll be back to a Saturday trip next week.

When the weather is good I try to go for a walk outside the neighborhood.  On Friday I put an out-of-office message reading "Following the recommendations of our leadership for self-care, etc., I have gone for a walk.  It's lovely out today and the weather this weekend is supposed to be drek.  I'll respond to email and review things when I return, which will be before sunset."  And indeed the weather this weekend is not conducive to walking:  From sunny and mid-60's(F) on Friday, it's been between freezing and low 40's(F) with waves of sleety rain alternating with heavy rain all weekend.  I was very glad I'd gone walking when I did.  I walked down to the reservoir and back, about three miles, and I saw a lot of cars parked on the north side of the road.  It seems they had decided enough people were there and they closed the reservoir and were turning away even people on foot.

The strangest thing to me about being at home All The Time is not having to constantly pack a suitcase or overnight bag for each week's travel.  It was odd enough before to have a week when I didn't travel, although I enjoyed being home to do local activities.  Now I've put away the suitcases into the closet, and I'm participating in some local activities that have moved online; SWAN DAY shifted to ten nights of online concerts from some of the performers.  It's fun to do even further away things that I might not get to see or hear, such as the Metropolitan Opera's daily stream, or Paris Opera, or touring museums, and going back in time with Playbill's weekly showing of a musical.  I'm hugely excited about some of the shows the National Theatre (of Britain) is going to show.

All of this does mean that my reading has slacked off considerably.  Oh, well.

Since I posted last, there have been several holidays for which I've done cooking.  First up was St. Patrick's Day, and since I don't do corned beef and cabbage, and I had to work with what I have in the house, and work was going NUTS because we had to figure out how to respond to the COVID-19 effects on our customers, I didn't have much time to do anything elaborate.  Of course, I did make soda bread:

Whole wheat flour, oatmeal, baking soda.

Stir in buttermilk, form.  One half had caraway seeds added,
then cut into quarters or "farls", the other dusted with oatmeal.

Finished!  Hot and buttered and YUMMY.

When I finally had time to prepare supper, I was too hungry to bother with pictures.  It was supposed to be a venison casserole, but I made it as a stew because I have ground beef.  So instead of flouring and browning chunks of meat, I browned the ground beef in some bacon fat, added onions (should be browned in the fat, but I'd missed getting fresh ones in the panic stockup people did so had to use dehydrated) and the rest of the ale from the Apicius cooking a few nights before, plus the seasonings: juniper berries, allspice berries, orange rind, ground pepper, cider vinegar, and a bit of stock.  The upside of ground meat is that it cooked fairly quickly this way.  I have a photo taken the next night, when I ate leftovers:

Stew on soda bread with roasted brussels sprouts,
because they look like miniature cabbages.

The last bit of pear and
blackberry pie for dessert.

I had a bit more time on St. Joseph's Day to make "Carpenter's Pasta".  It should be spaghetti or something similar, but I'm not fond of long noodles so used rotini, which I have on hand.

Step 1:  Brown breadcrumbs.
They are supposed to represent
a carpenter's sawdust.

Step 2:  Soften onions and
garlic until they are golden.

Step 3: Add chopped tomatoes,
basil, and oregano.

Pasta cooked, tomato sauce over, breadcrumbs on top.
Steamed asparagus and fresh figs, the latter of
which is also associated with St. Joseph.

It was easy and rather tasty.  I used soda bread crumbs, of course.  When the bread got a bit dry, as it does due to the lack of fat, I toasted slices and put butter or cheese on top.  Still rather yummy.

I've done some cooking since, but nothing very photogenic.  I tried making pumpkin waffles, to use up the pumpkin from the Ides, but my waffle iron is old and not cooperative.  So the batter became pancakes and I added the rest of my fresh blackberries:

As you can see, I was eating "at work".

Last night I made a Tuscan Stew using a packet of herbs I'd gotten some time ago.  The idea is that you follow the recipe using the premeasured amounts in the packet, and then keep the recipe (it's on a punch-out card) so you can remake it later.  I had everything on hand except chicken, so I used some extra-firm tofu that has been waiting in the refrigerator.  I also subbed frozen greens (put in the freezer last summer) for fresh spinach, and swapped half the beans with some potatoes that needed to be cooked and eaten.  Overall, the result is very good.  It does make a LOT of stew, so I have meals until well into the workweek.

On the first Monday of spring, we had a snowstorm:

       

It didn't daunt the crocus:

Pi Day and the Ides

The title sounds something like a one-hit-wonder band, doesn't it?

Yesterday, I made a pie, as I do on Pi Day:

This year's is pear and blackberry, combining recipes from an old favourite cookbook and baked in a 6"x3" springform because I don't have small-sized pie plates and didn't want a full-sized pie.  Not for just me.  I used the recipe for a single crust, mixing:

• One cup whole-wheat flour
• One half-cup all-purpose flour
• Half a stick of cold butter
• Enough cold water to make a paste

Then I rolled out about a third and cut a lid, using the pan as a measure.  The remainder (and trimmings) rolled out to fill the pan.  I chopped up about three cups of peeled pears to about the same size as the blackberries, and mixed them with not quite all of a six-ounce box of blackberries from the shop; a few went into the cook to determine sweetness of the filling.  I added about a tablespoon of lemon juice, a tablespoon and a half of sugar (quite a bit less than the recipes said, because I do not like sweet pies), and about two tablespoons of all-purpose flour.  Filling in, lid on, sealed, and the traditional π cut for juices to escape, although as you can see, they ran out around the seal as well.

Today, Ides of March, and I decided to pull out Apicius.  Often I do roasted carrots, but I've had a carrot-based curry this weekend, so I decided to do something else.  First to figure out what I can do with what's in the larder; a recipe for Pumpkin and Chicken intrigued me (ditto a more Thanksgivingesque option), but couldn't find poultry in the freezer.  I did find a package of ground bison, and decided to split it between Roman food for the Ides and something for later in the week.

Some more browsing turned up recipes I may try in the future (especially a nut tart) but being limited to what is onsite, I decided to substitute a patty of bison for roasted meat, make a sauce for it, and have pumpkin on the side since I've got pumpkin.  Changes I had to make was using ale instead of wine (because I have the former, and need a partial bottle later in the week) and skipping some of the greens I don't have, such as lovage, which to be honest I never have.  The result is:

• Broiled bison patty with a sauce of ale (4-5 oz), honey (about 2T), allspice (5 berries), and pepper (about 9-10 peppercorns), based upon a recipe for Roast Neck.  Many of the recipes include cumin but since I have it in the vegetable, I looked for a different combination here.
• Pumpkin (one cup) mashed with oil (1T), oregano (1/2 tsp.), cumin(1/2 tsp.), caraway (generous 1/2 tsp.), and onion (generous 1T minced), a combination of recipes 74, 78 and 79.
• Salad, because I have a little, and the Roman dressing is oil and vinegar, much as today.  I used olive oil and red wine vinegar.
• Asparagus, because I have some, and Apicius mentions it just cleaned and boiled.

Overall, it's nice, although as noted the two green things didn't have much done to them.  I simmered the sauce to about 3T and strained it over the meat.  In the future, I would use half the cumin and caraway, as they overpowered the rest of the flavours in the pumpkin, but it wasn't unpleasant.  The photo shows about half the pumpkin; the rest went into storage for lunch tomorrow.

It's definitely a week for creative cooking, since I'm staying home except for once or twice a week, important things like the dentist (an old crown needed replacing, with some infection underneath) and post office.  Upcoming are St. Patrick's Day, and y'all know I don't do corned beef and cabbage, and St. Joseph's Day.  Catching up a bit, I made boxty for the first-Sunday brunch this month:

..... remembering too late that it was St. David's Day and I should have done bara brith or some other Welsh thing instead.  These, being similar to American biscuits, were well-received.  Most boxty are a sort of pancake,  but I have a scone-like recipe and used it.

A few days later was the North Texas Irish Festival, and despite COVID-19 becoming serious, I went.  Good thing, as Performer Products (the area where I work) was understaffed - not enough volunteers, one manager flaked out, and another ended up in hospital with an allergic reaction.  The rest of us pulled together and it all worked, and I got a few minutes to go out and see dogs in costumes, and stormtroopers in kilts, and hear music at stages other than the one next to our booth.

  
I will say, there's a benefit to being a manager, when you go to the staff-and-performers-only hospitality area:

Leap Day!

What does one do on Leap Day?  I went to yoga, did errands, and worked on projects at home.  Pretty much the same as any Saturday.  Keep Hartford Warm held a distribution event; I dropped off a toddler jacket that I was given to pass along, but did not stay.  It's been a busy month, and I needed to catch up on laundry and decompress.

Work took me to Chicago, then I went to North Carolina to see Kinky Boots with family (DNiece #1 loves it as much as I; over Christmas I introduced my nieces to the original film) and stayed for the discussion afterwards.  It was not about the show, as talkbacks usually are, but about LGBTQ+ persons and their lives in North Carolina.  My mother ended up talking to one of the panelists about adoption and all kinds of things, until we all were kicked out so they could set for the next show.  If you haven't seen the show - you must do, if only for the showstopping Act I ending.

I stayed a couple days for a recital by Lawrence Brownlee, which was wonderful.

From there I went to Stitches West to help friends at their booth.  As I said last month, my mini-resolution was to make a sample bag from their hemp yarn.  That didn't work out because I was rushing and the yarn was snarling and it was a bad combination.  So on the day home between trips I grabbed a couple hanks of Makimo that I had lying around for other purposes, and before Stitches West ended they had a sample of the bag in their own yarn:

Closeup of the bag bottom
and the lace pattern.

The small pink balls are all the yarn I had left after finishing the bag.  There is more pink on the handles than the pattern instructs; I was using the Makimo doubled (the original used a worsted weight cotton, and Makimo is a DK weight), which gave a little less yardage than the original yarn.  I started the pink when the purple ran out.  So you can make the bag with two hanks of Makimo.

I bought almost nothing (some stitch markers as a gift, and a couple patterns) because I don't need yarn and didn't find anything that made me excited to dip into my purchasing money for DFW Fiber Fest.  The big names that I really like will be there, and I enjoy buying from small indie dyers who mostly cannot afford to be at Stitches events.


I returned just in time for Fat Tuesday.  A local makerspace held a Fat Tuesday party but it was also Science on Screen night at Real Art Ways, so I made a cameo, dropping off some from-the-pantry jambalaya on the way to the talk and film.  It was fairly interesting, the talk more than the film.  I look forward to the next two but may be out of town for one.

Wednesday I went to a library cookbook club that I'd just found out about, where they cook from a specific cookbook each month, sample and talk about the recipes.  This month's choice was Food52's Genius Desserts, and since I didn't have time to swing by the library to select a recipe I did some online research and chose World Peace Cookies.  We agreed that having nothing but desserts was a LOT to take, even if you just do a bite of each one - and most were too good to stop at a single bite.  Luckily for me, about tw0-thirds contained chocolate, so I didn't have as much to taste as the others.  But what I did taste was fantastic:  Lemon cookies (with a hidden ingredient of avocado); Guinness stout cake that was like the tenderest gingerbread ever; espresso gelato; blueberry cake with pecans; the famous 62nd Street Lemon Cake; almond cake.  Most of these I would make, yes.

Not for tomorrow's monthly brunch, however.  If I had Guinness around I might make the cake, but I decided to make potato cakes instead.  These are something between boxty, which is a griddle-cooked bread, and scones.  I doubled the recipe and am leaving out the seasoning, so they will be plain and make nice sandwiches - if any are left!

Resolutions for March

As noted above, I completed the knitting mini-resolution I set for February.  For March, I am going to make a baby blanket for friends.  I bought the yarn some time ago, and thought I knew what pattern I'd do, then a new one came out and I decided to do it instead.  No photos until it's delivered in April.

Then I have to finish the items I am making for Mittens for Akkol's grads program.  I signed up for four:  a purple scarf, a blue and orange hat, and a red and yellow (or gold) sweater and scarf.  I chose these because they will use up yarn in my stash.  I have a purple scarf, but decided I may offer it for sale at an upcoming sheep-to-shawl-and-beyond event, plus I had some other yarn reclaimed from the sweater that I pulled apart, making the multicolored yarn used in part of it into a scarf.  I'm using broken rib stitch and it's going fairly fast.

Books:  Still finishing The Ballad of Frankie Silver.  I don't have much sit-and-read time, but I am enjoying the historical chapters, which are written in the first-person voice of a young frontier lawyer and court clerk.  So I'm behind on the February book but decided to finish The Agony and the Ecstasy, which I started some time ago and put aside for an unremembered reason when I was halfway through.  Hopefully I'll get caught up in March.  I do have the "book with a nature word in the title" set aside, and it's fairly short - more about it in the next post, once I've started reading.

In Other News..........

Covid-19 is big in the news.  With stories like Communion of Dreams and others, could it become a truly devastating pandemic like the 1918 Flu Epidemic?  I guess we shall see.  My parents are pressuring me to skip the North Texas Irish Festival this year.  I am a manager and we are shorthanded and I hate to not go.

We had more snow today - the weather went from clear and sunny, to a snow squall, and back to sunny within an hour:

Many years ago in Dallas, I worked for a company called Affiliated Computer Systems, or ACS.  After I left, they were acquired by Xerox.  A couple weeks ago, the building where I worked was slated to be demolished.  The usual way to do it in a city these days is by a controlled implosion.  However, that didn't work.  It's been fun to watch the reporting (a wrecking ball is now in use, slowly), and I have to say that this is my favorite photo so far, titled "They finally brought in an expert":

Another one coming

I did my last post during a storm, and we have another coming tomorrow.  So of course I am flying to Florida.  It's not fleeing from the storm; I've had this trip to visit my grandmother on my schedule for a while.  I admit it's a convenient coincidence.

My last post was also during the final football playoffs of the season.  Last Sunday I watched the Super Bowl with friends and their family and neighbors.  Quite a game!  Having more friends in Kansas and Missouri than in San Francisco, I chose to root for the Chiefs.  I missed the first half because I went to a matinee (and was very glad I did so, the show was amazing!) but the second half - really, the fourth quarter - was edge-of-seat playing.  I am glad the Chiefs made the final touchdown, because if people argue about the penultimate one, they still won when you subtract those points.

Work has been busy, so I don't have much more to report on my Resolutions.  These are the scarves I finished and have yet to finish, except one:

Finished:

• Stitch Studio Sweet Dreams in Creamsicle (center row, second from left)
• Patons Lace in lavender and Porcelain (next on the right)
• Browns - Bernat Super Value Stripes in Beechwood, knit, and Caron Jumbo in Chocolate Variegated crocheted on the sides (center row, second from right)
• Caron Chunky Cakes in Trifle (center row, right)
• Red Heart Fleece Hugs in Jungle (bottom row, right)

In Progress:

• Ferris Wheel (top row, left)
• Premiere Serenity Chunky Big Ombre in Walnut (bottom row, left - the yarn was badly snarled and tangled, so much time was spent getting it useable)
• Big Twist Premium in Peacock Stripes (center row, left)
• Patons Lace in Woodrose (not shown)

I will probably have the Chunky Big Ombre scarf finished this week.

I also made a chemo cap for a friend of my mother's who asked for one in cornflower blue:

I also finished the scarf for my niece, to go with her Christmas hat and mittens, and the extra blue mittens.

No idea why the colour is so odd on the close-ups.


On a completely different topic, since it's Girl Scout cookie season, I've made purchases both to donate boxes to the troops and taking them to work.  We had a team leader get a promotion so for his last week, given that we are in the facility of a federal contractor and options are limited, this was his farewell party:

OK, we met after dinner one night at a local sports dive bar, and alcohol was consumed, but for the in-the-office celebration, amusement and cookies were appreciated.  He made off with the boxes that contained his favourites, Do-Si-Dos and Tagalongs.

Resolutions for February

Now for my micro-resolutions for February 2020.  Even though I didn't finish all the scarves I had on the list for January, I made good progress plus finished four (or three, if you count the pair of mittens as a single item) other items.  This month my resolution is to finish an item for Fiberlady to display at Stitches West.  I'll be there helping them again, and they invited a local lady who wrote a book to spend time in the booth and sign copies.  I decided to make a tote bag from the book in Fiberlady's hemp yarn.  I chose it because it looks like a quick and not too fiddly knit, and because I have a bunch of their hemp yarn lying around not turning into anything.

I added another series of resolutions.  Many online reading groups do a by-the-month reading list, and I found one that appealed to me:

My choice for January is The Ballad of Frankie Silver, a past-and-present murder mystery.  Thick book but the story moves even as multiple threads have to wind together.  I was hoping for something smaller but it's the only qualifying book I had at home, I didn't have time to shop, and I don't like traveling with library books.  I still have a bit to finish, but hope to choose a shorter book for February.  While Little Women seems an easy choice, or 1984, I am going to look through my shelves for something less expected.  Stay tuned.