Storm and Songs and Sock

When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

Haruki Murakami, writer, born January 12, 1949 in Kyoto

We certainly find ourselves in and surrounded by storms these days.  Pandemic, protests, riots, flurries of news reports from all sides.  The inexplicable death of a man at the hands of police, and people unable to stop it - and now, unable to stop challenging the status quo that contributed to George Floyd's death.  And so many others.

I wonder if people will think this a frivolous blog, because I haven't been tracking how the pandemic has affected me and my family and friends, and how I feel about all the terribleness in the world.  It's not in my nature to be expressive in that way.  I have been talking with family and friends and in some ways feel "talked out" in the topics of sadness and stress and suffering.  Hence my blog containing other things.

Such as the songs I posted for the rest of the 31-Day Song Challenge month:
Day 17:  I've been in a backup group for karaoke, but never leading (although I might lip-sync, but that's not what they asked), much less in a duet.  Either of these work, both from musicals:  Annie Get Your Gun and Godspell.
Day 18:  I learned this song as a child, and wondered where it originated.
Day 19:  I think a ballet suite counts as a song that makes me think about life.
Day 20:  So many meanings in this song, at least for me.
Day 21:  This was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar.  Not well, but I did.
Day 22:  I first heard "Hafan Gobaith" when I was involved with the North American Welsh Choir.  Sir Bryn Terfel's rendition isn't quite a moving to me, but more than adequate.
Day 23:  I definitely think that everybody should listen to "Fanfare for the Common Man".  So many recordings from which to choose.
Day 24:  It didn't take long for me to choose THE BAND as a band I wish were still together, it took much longer to select a song (and a second) to feature.
Day 25:  I chose Beverly Sills as the deceased artist.
Day 26:  Since I couldn't think of "a song that makes me want to fall in love", I chose songs that make me want to dance with somebody.
Day 27:  A song that breaks my heart.
Day 28:  Since I'd already shared so many songs by performers whose voices I love, I focused on a couple of bass-baritones today.
Day 29:  A song from my childhood.
Day 30:  A song that reminds me of me (and some of my friends), but I never cut class or drank beer.
Day 31:  This song, and performance, comforts my soul, and reminds me of several family events.  And is so ironic to post right now.

Status of Resolutions

The blanket is finished and mailed, but I have not heard that it has arrived, so I cannot show it.  I did not finish the vest or the pair of socks, or even a single sock:

Part of that was trying to get the pattern to work with the yarns, and adjusting the stitch count when it was clear the first attempt was too big around, and then as I bound off I decided I really could make it longer, especially as I have the other lightest colour.  So as you can see, it's close but not yet finished.

I did finish several scarves, because I needed something meditatively simple due to high stress levels this month.  Work has been very busy, and I've felt guilty because so many people I know are out of work or on reduced hours or income.  People are being WFR'd at work.  So - I knit, and crochet.  And socks on US#1 needles need too much focus.

The timing meant I had to cook something quickly for our monthly cooking club, and since it was just before Shavuos I made a noodle kugel with things I had on hand, including shell macaroni instead of flat noodles.  It came out tasty, with a nice spiced sugar topping:

June Mini-Resolutions

Easy to decide to finish at least two items I have OTN, but which ones?  Might be the vest, might be the sock, might be something entirely different.  I also have another secret project for a friend, so I cannot say more, but hopefully will be able to post pictures later in the month.  I already have July planned, so I need to get things done in June.

She waited several hours

My grandmother did, she said, after my birthday package arrived, before she opened it.  "I knew it was something that squished" she said, which was true because I hadn't put the gift into a box before wrapping it, so it would fit into the box I was using to mail it.

This shawl: 

Patons 'Glam Stripes' in Navy

For the record, her birthday is next Monday, and I didn't expect her to wait that long.  It's a bit of a running joke that my grandmother doesn't deal well with curiosity - she wants to know what is in the package now.  Sometimes I wonder why bother wrapping it - but she does have fun unwrapping.

I didn't finish my vest, but I did finish and mail the Mittens for Akkol grad items:

The sweater is more person-shaped when it's not patted out for photographing.  For the scarf I used the same stitch pattern as in the borders on the sweater.  The socks are overdyed wool and I didn't realize the two hanks were slightly different shades until I wound them, so I alternated yarns every three rows, with the darker one used for ribbing, heels, and toe.  The pattern had a texture to it but I left it out given the striping.  I wanted these to be semi-mindless.

The vest is past the dividing at underarms, but it's not nearly mindless enough and I am trying to figure out what to do at the armholes.  That will depend upon how much yarn is left.  I may figure it out this weekend.  For mindless things I made five rectangles for The Linus Project, and two scarves that will be donated to shelters.  All but one scarf are in garter stitch - nice and mindless.

I've also been doing cooking, including some very nice bread and sandwich rolls:

I found out about a cooking group at a library, and they moved online.  We had a meeting this week and everybody showed what we've made from our pantry.  I did a soup with lots of kale, because I got a bag of it at the farmstand last Saturday.  We didn't get to taste each other's cooking this time but we did have fun getting recipe ideas and talking about what we miss being able to cook.

Resolutions for May

I am one for two on the April resolutions, because I made the shawl but didn't finish my vest.  So first up will be to finish the "We Knit In Texas Y'All" vest.

For other items, I will finish the baby blanket I was going to do in March and hand off to friends to deliver.  Of course, all the travel stopped, so pressure to finish was off.  The baby is already in this world but the month that includes Mother's Day seems a good time to get it finished and shipped.

For a new item for me I think I will take a set of red yarns from one of the DFW Fiber Fest vendors and make a pair of socks.  With the colours I can do a very plain pattern and let the yarn be the energy.  My mother loves red, so it seems appropriate - and somewhere I think I have some red socks I was making for her.  I sent a Mother's Day gift so I don't need to make one for my mother, and my grandmother loved a box of soaps I'd sent to her, so I'm done with gifts for a while.

Music for May

A friend posted this challenge, which she'd gotten from her son:

She posted partway through April, and note it has a bonus challenge, so I decided to wait and start it on the first of May.  I'll post the dailies on Facebook and a summary list here each week or two.

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":

Extra-Special Sushi Night

I belong to a Meetup.com group called Fabulous Foodies and once in a while we have a special event.  Tonight it was a meal prepared and hosted by Bun Lai of Miya's Sushi, who spoke about sustainable eating, why certain foods should be avoided (including a number of popular sushi items that do not appear on Miya's menu, such as eel and tuna), and what he is doing to support the environment and create an earth-supporting restaurant.

He served some Emerald Witches' Lips sake, a special house creation (described on their menu, along with the Chinese Firecracker that was passed at the end of the evening) as an apertif.  We all got a piece or two of their homemade pickled (in maple syrup) ginger for palate-cleansing later.

Then, we got to eat:

There was an official photographer, and it was very crowded, so I didn't take pictures of the entire event.  The plate above shows some of the rolls we ate, many from Miya's regular menu:  Tyger, Tyger; Black-Eyed Squid (possibly my favorite); Ride the Wild Donkey (it was about this time that Bun realized he had to tell us all the ingredients, as I quizzed him about the fruit in the "lobster roll"); The Greatest Sushi South of the Mason-Dixon Line (it contained okra - of course it was good!); Kanibaba, Ching Chong Roll; Spicy Broccoli Roll; something with clams (which our hostess raved over); a felafel-inspired roll (OK, that one was really my favorite); and a couple of others.  Not all of which lasted long enough to get on the plate to be photographed, as you can guess.

Afterwards, over beer and more sake, it was great to be able to speak with him and his assistant, Rasheed, who took pictures for the restaurant's blog, passed trays of sushi, chatted about books, and late in the evening enjoyed what he said were his first Mallomars ever.  I mentioned that Miya's Sushi tends to have one of the most popular tables at the annual Celebration of Connecticut Farms, which this year will be at Ashlawn Farm in Lyme, which has their own coffee roasting plant.   Several of the Fabulous Foodies are planning a trek to New Haven to enjoy Miya's Sushi again soon.

Maple-Bacon Cupcakes and Laotian Laap

I know - I'm about to do the SNAP thing, so I post recipes I probably couldn't make on the program. But I've been ruminating about the situation in which I find myself today, which was part of the reason I waited until the weekend to start the SNAP challenge.

The second Friday of the month is the night my cooking club meets. There is a theme, which is supposed to be a vague suggestion of what to do, and everybody brings enough of something for people to try. January was "Comfort Food" and I made my Aunt Lee's moussaka, which is wonderful stuff. Unfortunately I left the remains at the hostess' house - I hope she liked it!

This month the theme is "The Long March." For a long time the hostess didn't post an essay about the theme, and since March is when maple syrup (and sugar, and candy) is made (hence the text colour today), I figured I would riff on that theme and make these. Then the essay was posted, and it's all about the three-day walks for cancer and the March of Bataan and Trail of Tears, and the cupcakes seemed too frivolous to me. Luckily the new issue of Food & Wine magazine arrived, with an article on Laotian food, and the Laap seemed more in keeping with the theme.

I've been thinking about how I could participate in the cooking club if I were in SNAP and limited to $3 a day. I would probably do something with rice, and lentils, and vegetables. I couldn't run to the Asian market for lemongrass and cilantro and fresh limes. I probably couldn't afford the ground meat for the recipe, which was on sale this week. Even on sale, the quantity for our group (usually 20-30 persons attend these evenings) worked out to two or three pounds of meat. I also need endives or something like that for serving.

A big pot of rice (I got a two-pound bag for one dollar) with some lentils added, and maybe a couple eggs for a kind of fried rice effect, and a bag of frozen veggies that I've thawed and stirred in, would make something that costs under two dollars and would make a lot. Not fancy, but possible. So I could still participate in the cooking club even on a very restricted budget. For a different theme I could riff on baked french toast, or buy the 99 cents loaf of italian bread (a Friday sale at one grocery) and maybe make some hummus or a similar spread to put on slices. If I had the ability to acquire sugar and flour I could do a simple cooky. We're allowed condiments and spices, but a reasonable amount. I would guess that some of my more specialty items from Penzeys and the like would not be in the cupboard of someone on SNAP, although they might be if I had them before going into the system.

That's something to consider, and which I've had to face when between employments. Having a good pantry is helpful when you don't have much food money. It's one reason I buy extra when I see things on sale: extra cans of soup or beans, extra boxes of pasta, extra bags of beans or rice. Extra condiments such as hot sauce, or vinegar. Extra bags of sugar or flour. But if I'd been thinly employed for a long time, what would be left?

Last night, a group of us from work went to Barcelona, a tapas restaurant and wine bar, for supper. Even without dessert (we were pretty full after sampling most of the tapas menu plus paella plus a few main plates) the tab was about $50 per person. Because most of the people are here from out of town working on a huge deal, someone put it on his corporate card and they will sort out the expenses. Still, in one evening the per-person amount was twice what I will have to live on for a week. And SNAP funds can't be used in restaurants, or for most prepared foods.

For today, I will make the laap.