Cruciferous goodness

Mmmm... I made the BEST dish the other day... a friend gave me a seasoning packet a while back for gobi, a spicy Indian dish made with cauliflower. I finally decided to make it, got everything assembled and was at the point where the spices needed to be added to the skillet, and opened the cardboard outer wrapper to find taht there was no spice pack inside! So I checked the list of ingredients, and went to the spice cabinet to sort of wing it with what I had on hand. I added curry powder too, which wasn't on the list, but sounded tasty. It turned out fabulous! The curry may have nullified the intended flavors of the dish, but it tasted so good that it didn't matter.

Here's the recipe:

1 large head cauliflower, cut into small flowerets

1/2 c. olive oil

1/4 c. fresh sliced ginger (about one large chunk, peeled)

1/4 c. chopped green chilies (one small can)

2 plum tomatoes, chopped (i used about half a pint of cherry tomatoes)

salt

pepper

1/2 - 1 t. cumin

1/2 - 1 t. turmeric

1/4 - 1/2 t. red chili powder

1 T. minced onion

2 t. curry powder

(these are estimates -- I'd say do them to taste)

Heat the oil in large skillet over medium heat for 1 minute. Add ginger, green chilies, tomatoes and stir for 1 minute. Add spices and stir for 2 minutes more. Add cauliflower and cook approximately 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Can add 1/2 c. water at end for extra sauce, but I didn't.

Delicious! And it's one of those meals where you can hear your body going "Ahhh" when you're done, from the goodness and curry heat. I had it all week for lunch over mixed brown and white rice, and found myself looking forward to lunch every day. It would be really good with a little farmer's cheese or some other mild white cheese on the side.

A spinning world

It's been quiet around here during the holidays and since, and I've finally made time to get into the wool room and try to impose some order. I came to the conclusion that I did indeed have a boatload of fiber, and that it was really fun to use the carder to make more. This leads to a dilemma, however -- fluffy fiber takes up more room than fleece, and the ramifications of this on the already-tight storage situation was becoming dire. What to do? Well, it means more spinning is in order.


I'd been neglecting my poor wheel for ages, since it was hidden behind the loom, but before Christmas I moved it out of the living room, uncovering the wheel. I've been trying to make a point of spinning a little bit each evening, with the goal of spinning a pound a month this year. But choices, choices -- what to spin first?


This basket o'heavenly blue had been sitting around for some time, winking and fluttering at me, so it was the first to come down for a little Lendrum lovin':
Dorset (or could be Suffolk, I am not positive) dyed in the wool in the crock pot, then blended with mohair dyed the same way. Both fibers (if it is Dorset) are from local animals. A little angelina in different blues/purples makes it sparkle like the ocean on a late, sunny afternoon. This picture is washed out a bit, but the batts grade from aquamarine through blue to purple. I'm splitting them in half and spinning them in order, and plan to ply the two halves to keep the colors together for the most part, but to allow some barberpoling where they meet. It's just lovely to spin, and I'm spinning it long draw to keep it woolly and lofty. There's nothing like spining from your own batts -- they are so soft and draft like a dream.

This was spun between Thanksgiving and Christmas to try and meet a Christmas deadline... the spinning got done, but not the knitting. It's fur from my good friend's dog, and she asked if I could knit her son something from it. Miss Heidi (the dog) is and Akita mix, and this is both undercoat and guard hairs. I'd never spun dog hair before, and decided to just grab handfuls and spin it up on the chunky side. It turned out much better than I expected, and I'm going to knit Thorpe, an earflap hat. It should be perfect for keeping his ears warm though the Maine winter.

Nice and even, although very fuzzy, but soft and not scratchy. I am pleased.

This is superwash merino in my own colorway that has undergone a number of name changes... but thanks to my lovely guild friends, it is now called "Clown Barf". I was SOO tempted to order myself a Threadless tee shirt for Christmas that had a clown barfing a rainbow on it...

This is an experiment that I've been wanting to do for a long time. I took about 8 ounces of Suffolk fleece and dyed it in a roaster pan in the oven with a bunch of different colors of dye squirted on. Then I separated the colors as best I could, hand carded them, and spun them all into one long single that I Navajo plied. It's my Noro-esque yarn, and it really turned out well. I've wanted to spin COLOR ever since I started spinning (see clown barf above), and this is how I wanted to do it. It is a bit lumpy in spots (because my hand carding sucks, I am impatient), but it turned out exactly as I planned, and that makes me happy.

It's a worsted weight, and I haven't measured yardage yet. I am reaaly looking forward to playing with this techniques some more, especially with thinking of each batch of fiber as an individual unit of colors and how they will blend together. I have a bunch more of this fiber (this Suffolk is from a local farmer... and it was all free!) that I dyed in different colors to play with like this too. Now all I need is time.

This is the mohair/wool laceweight I whined about in an earlier post, but I am very happy with after all. 660 yards of creamsicle bliss. I am waiting for the right pattern to jump out and holler for this stuff.

And finally, the end of the fiber parade... this is the last of more than two pounds of Dorset I dyed and spun for a lady who was making a blanket out of it. She's a good friend of the farmer I got this from, and she didn't bat an eye when I told her what it would cost. The blanket was for the farmer, and it is stunning. I'm glad I got to see it while I was still spinning, because it gave me the incentive to finish! The only things that kept me going here are the fact that the farmer is a great fellow, and I love the colors. The money was nice too, and I appreciate it, but I am not sure I am going to spin on consignment again, at least for a while or for a project this big.

My next big project after the blue heavenly batts is a Suffolk fleece I got at MDS&W that I dyed with black walnuts and am carding through a second time to mix the colors better. I am thinking of knitting a sweater for myself out of it -- plan to browse through "A Fine Fleece" later tonight and look for inspiration. If I had to pick only one book of patterns, that would be it. I could knit every single item from it, and I've never found another pattern book that I could say that about.

Golden slumbers

One of the highlights of the year around here is the county fair. It's a small county, so the fair is small too. The midway is, of course, my boys' favorite part, especially the ping-pong ball toss game. You know it -- a table full of glass bowls, and you toss the ball to try and get it into the bowl. The prize is a goldfish, or sometimes a lizard, and you see kids and parents carrying little plastic bags around the fairgrounds with the hapless goldfish bouncing around inside. It's not a surprise that we've never had one survive longer than a day or two, even if we were very careful and had the game guy "hold" our fish for us until we were ready to go home. This has never been a bad thing, because I've never been a fan of plain old goldfish. I've had lots of fish, but always more exotic stuff, and every time we won a goldfish it was not exactly a great prize in my book -- just something else to feed and take care of. But because my younger son is a midway barker's dream and is a pretty crack hand at the ping-pong ball toss, we've had more than our share of fair goldfish. Finally, this summer, Nick won a goldfish at the midway, who we named Chaz, and who miraculously is still alive. Then at the fair this fall, we added two more, Rocket and Bob and they are also thriving. To be fair, he also won Patch, but he only lasted about a week. Still, a seventy-five percent survival rate is phenomenal when you've been zero-for-howevermany. We even went out and splurged for a real aquarium with a filter, since the fishbowl got too nasty too fast.

I live with lot of animals. I've learned to understand what they want most of the time -- when they need to go out, when they arere hungry, or want attention. The dogs and cats know when it's dinner time, and at bedtime they follow me to the bedroom and jockey for position. But the point is, they know; whether because it's dark outside, or from my actions, they have a cue that lets them know we're headed for the barn. But I have never had a non-mammal that did this, that knew when it was time for bed. Until I watched Chaz, Bob and Rocket last night.

I turned off most of the lights, except for their aquarium light, and worked at my desk for a while. When I went to turn off their light, this is where they were:

They were just sitting there, on the bottom. The two little catfish that share their tank were nearby, also just hanging out on the bottom (which is what they do most of the time, since they're catfish, but hey, they weren't moving around either). From left to right: Chaz, Bob (bright orange), and Rocket (white). Aren't they handsome? And then it occurred to me what they were doing.

They'd put themselves to bed.

They weren't moving, and didn't budge when I got up in their faces with the camera. I'd noticed that in the morning when I come out to turn on the lights and feed them, they're ususally in that corner near the bottom, but I'd never seen this before. And as I sit here typing this, I've been watching them swim around, but now it's 9:30 and getting near bedtime (we are an early-to-bed bunch for the most part), and they are in their corner again.

This just makes me smile. I'll never badmouth plain old goldfish again.

In the bleak midwinter

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter,

long and long ago.

Tonight is the longest night of the year. It has been a very long year, very dark in many places but full of light in others, the light of friends and of family, and perhaps of hope. Cocooned in a blanket of snow and shadows, I will leave a vigil candle burning through the night, a tiny flame of hope through the long darkness, foreshadowing the greater light that is to come.

One step at a time

There are so many projects I am working on right now that I want to just finish and be done with, but I have little enthusiasm for any of them. I don't have startitis either; it's more like I have no focus. Sometimes I get sidetracked from one project and go off on something else for a while, and only much later return to the first thing, but all the while I at least have energy and creative juices flowing. This seems more like a long slog in the cold rain.

I have the ten-foot triangle loom that I borrowed set up in the living room, and am about a quarter done with the shawl I'm weaving, but am tired of weaving a thick and thin wool with mohair, in dark colors, under bad light. It's going to be absolutely stunning when I'm done, and it's for me, but it's hard to get excited about it. I finally got myself a headlamp to wear when I work on it, so I can see what I'm doing. I took a break from the two pounds of hand dyed Dorset roving to spin up some wool-mohair roving I got at MDSW (what is it with the mo? No mo mo!), which decided it wanted to be laceweight, and so took much longer than I had planned, and so was less of a break from the blue slog than a slog of its own. It's done as of last night, though, and I'm going to wait to ply it until I have another bobbin of blue done so I can ply them at the same time. The LB Homespun shawl finally has a destination, and is almost done -- another three or four rows and I can bind off, thanks be. There are a few more things, but I'm waiting to finish the shawl before I see what to deal with next.

Cold, rainy slog yes, but it's important to focus on the little steps. The shawl is almost done; the weaving is coming along; the orange crush laceweight is done, and the blue has an end in sight. I want to look ahead at all of the ideas that I have for next things, but have to restrain myself -- I have enough energy and time for what I have in front of me. The time and energy for the rest will come. One step at a time. Now if all the junk swirling around the rest of life would settle down and resolve itself the way the fiber projects do, I'd be ecstatic.

One step at a time.

All I need...

Nothing like something really simple to amuse me... this one is courtesy of Mel. I've seen it before, but the answers I got this time are much more amusing than the first time I tried it. Just type in your name on Google, followed by the word "needs" and see what comes up. I just took the first ten things and have included them here. Apparently, I am much worse off than I ever suspected:

Miranda needs:

1) a loving home (check)
2) psychological help (check!)
3) her very own playpen (!!!)
4) to be with family (but there IS such a thing as too much togetherness!)
5) a new walker (now really... )
6) a companion (hmmm...)
7) your help (to go along with #2?)
8) advice (always a good thing)
9) a nickname (too late... pipiens it is)
10) to polish up a bit (ha!)

And on that note, I'm off to watch the Oscars and knit awhile.

Moody blues... and purples, reds, yellows...

I've been chomping at the bit for the weather to get warm enough for me to get outside and do some dyeing. I like to work on the deck, where spills aren't a big deal, and where I can be outside. Anything to get away from the computer! And the sounds and sights on the creek are an inspiration once I get my dyeing groove going.

I had a whole bunch of ideas saved up over the winter, and the Celtic Festival coming up with vending opportunities, so I spent four days cranking out roving and yarn. I ended up dyeing 37 4-oz. bumps of roving, and 8 skeins of yarn...yowza. Not too bad for a one-woman operation, considering that I'm still learning.

I'm still working from the 150 lbs. of Dorset roving that I got last spring from a local farmer. It takes dye well, and spins up into a soft, bouncy yarn. I spun about 1200 yards of my favorite colorway into a DK weight two ply, and last fall at our annual Mannings field trip/retreat/class/fiber binge, I used it to warp the loom and wove a pair of coordinating scarves with it.
The warp for both of these was "Lonely Hearts Club", a mix of reds/pinks/black. The weft for the one on the left (yes, the one on the weft...haha) is Jaggerspun wool, black, I think 2/8, while the one on the right is alsio Jaggerspun, but wool/silk. I love them both, and wore them often this winter. I have enough of another colorway in purples/black/gray to do another, with the weft thread the same Jaggerspun wool/silk but in purple.

I spun another two skeins of the same roving into sportweight, and sold them at a local yarn shop. They'll make some great heavyweight socks. This particular roving likes to spin up at about that weight, it seems, but I haven't pushed it much finer than that, because I really like the way it looks and behaves.

Dyeing is such therapy -- I love to stand back and look at what I've done on a given day, to see where my mood was when I started compared to when I got done. Take a look at the left side of this picture, the first rovings I dyed, and then look at the right side, where I ended up. Dull, dark colors... bright, happy colors. That;s what a day in thesun with dyes and wool will do for a cruddy attitude!

And this weekend is Maryland Sheep and Wool! I'm planning on going both days, and this year will probably be going solo for the first time ever on Saturday, as the family have other plans. I have to admit that though I love going with the guys, I wasn't too upset... Boy 1 has a scout campout, Boy 2 (my spinner) will go up with me on Sunday, and B (spousal unit) announced that he didn't want to go this year.

I'm not looking for anything in particular this year -- but I am looking forward to seeing some vendor friends (hi, Jacey! ). And I have another ten Dorset fleeces to take for processing, and some beautiful border Leicester. Tomorrow is fleece-skirting day -- and perhaps a little gratuitous dye therapy, if Charlotte can make it over to play too.

Tonight I plan to finish some spinning, so I can go to MDS&W with a clean conscience (yeah, right) and fondle fiber. And then I may tackle some carding that needs to get done, and perhaps tidy the Unruly Wool Room. Just as a warm-up, you know... got to get ready for the festivities on Saturday!

Happy Beltane!