The Scullery

Breeze, Modeled

The post you've all been waiting for! My lovely niece Mikayla modeling her new sweater. I've started on another one for her, another MarieGrace design, Lark. Guess what color?!!! :D

Food!

I haven't posted a recipe in ages, but last night I went to a small dinner party at a friend's, and brought a salad to compliment the Tex-Mex chicken chili which was to be the main course. There were some technical difficulties (how do you peel a papaya, FPS? and, the food processor WOULD pick last night to die) but it was actually quite tasty.

From my favorite out-of-print cookbook, 365 Great 20 Minute Recipes by Beverly Cox (it took longer than 20 minutes, due to those technical difficulties)

Santa Fe Chicken Salad
(note: I skipped the chicken completely, but am including it here so you'll have the whole shebang)

1 1/4 lbs chicken breast tenders
6 T. EVOO
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 C fresh lime juice
1 small red onion, halved
1/4 C cilantro or fresh basil leaves, tightly packed (I used cilantro; I think basil would really change the flavors)
1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeded
1 ripe papaya, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1" chunks
1 large ripe avocado, cut into 1" chunks
1 C diced peeled jicama or green apple
1 head of romaine lettuce

1. If you're including the chicken, toss with 2 T. of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper, and grill or broil til lightly browned outside, white but still moist inside. Cut into 1" chunks and set aside.

2. In a food processor (ha!) combine lime juice, red onion, cilantro, and jalapeno. Process until finely chopped. With machine on, gradually add remaining 1/4 C olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

3. In a salad bowl, toss chicken and any juices, papaya, avocado, and jicama with dressing. Serve on a bed of romaine lettuce.

The dressing is pretty potent, so it needs something substantial to balance it. The chili and cornbread at dinner was perfect. If you included the chicken, that would probably be enough to handle the lime/cilantro zinginess, but you might want to add just half the dressing to the salad, and try it first, then add the rest to taste.

Knitting Time? What's that?

Ummm, so, as you may have guessed, classes started a couple weeks ago and I have fallen into that black hole of reading, research, and recreational consumption of adult beverages that so characterizes grad school. Plus I'm still working anywhere from 30 to 40 hours a week. So there hasn't been a lot of knitting progress, which makes it kind of odd that I went to the LYS the other day and got yarn for three more holiday gifts. They had advertised that they'd be serving cupcakes from my favorite bakery, and clearly I have no willpower whatsoever. The cupcake was yummy.

I'm working on a pair of Pomatomus socks with the orange BFL I spun last month. They look fabulous, but you'll have to take my word for it because I could not get a decent picture of the blazing orange. I realized, once I got to the gusset and picked up the pattern stitches on the top of the foot, that the K2tog that starts waaaaaay back up at the top of the leg was supposed to be K2tog TBL. oops. Not ripping back and fixing it, even though now that I am doing it right, the ones on the leg look atrocious. But it won't read from the orchestra. [Huh. My theatre prof used to say that, and I thought it was a fairly well known expression, at least in the theatrical world, but Google doesn't know it. My goodness, I've stumped Google! Do I get a prize?]

Just a Burst of Creativity

In an attempt to avoid working on two big writing projects, I've been playing with fibery things. Finished the purple socks from the last post, am on the third pair of baby socks (first two pairs sent off to Mom to deliver to cousin, new pair for co-worker), still working on the handtowels sporadically. I've been doing a bit of spinning, going through the stash for the oldest bits of fiber, mostly small amounts that I picked up at wool fests here and there. Some I'm happy with, some not so much. Here's a happy:
That's 400 yds of 2ply sock-appropriate BFL, soon to be knit up into socks for me as part of the Sockdown Challenge on the SKA board at ravelry. Doesn't Harley look thrilled to be posing with something orange-ier than he is? Not.

One of my vacation acquisitions was this sweater pattern and 2 hanks of Henry's Attic dk weight alpaca. If you biggify the pic, you'll note that this isn't your typical sweater pattern. The proprietress of my mom's LYS always has these gorgeous model sweaters in the shop, her own designs, and I totally fell in love with one of them on my recent visit. She hadn't written out the pattern, but after a little design chat she was apparently convinced I could work from a sketch and a stitch notation, so that's what I got. The blue ink is my handwritten notes, the black is what I started with. I need to do some swatching and a few more sketches for this, but I think I can pull it off. The yarn is actually dark charcoal; the unusual lack of sunlight here today made for a very dark photo.

OMG PONIES!!!1!!

IOW, I've had an attack of Teh Cute.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

oh hai.

I'm back from vacation, after a crazy couple of weeks trying to finish up projects so vacation could happen. There was a little knitting in all of that.
Most of the vacation knitting was this pair of socks. The yarn is Cestari cotton/wool fingering weight. It's very soft, and I'm hoping I've finally found a cotton sock yarn that will be comfortable to wear. It's 25% wool, which should be enough to help it keep its shape. I'll report back once wearing commences.

I'm experimenting with handtowel patterns and yarns for some upcoming gift-giving occasions. The finished towel is Berroco Flax, 100% linen, and really a pale purple, not the bluey-lavendery color in the pic. The cream yarn is a 50/50 hemp/wool blend. Both are pretty harsh in the knitting, but the flax softened up nicely with a trip through the washer and dryer, and we'll soon see how the hemp/wool fares with similar treatment. The pattern is my own version of the Mason-Dixon Knitting Moss Stitch Windowpane towel - I don't have the book, so I just made up a graph in Excel, and it sorta worked.


Vacation included some yarn-shopping, as it often does. This is from String Theory Yarn in Blue Hill, Maine. (note that there is another String Theory Yarn Company out there - different folks.) This is the hand-dyed merino dk. I got three hanks of Icarus (the lighter pink) and one of Shiraz (the dark) to make Lark for the niece. There might have been some other yarn purchases, too, but I'll save those for another post.

Yet Another Raglan Cardi

There is something to be said for quick and easy, and for knowing what works for you. Still, I probably ought to try for a little more variety in my sweater wardrobe. There are a LOT of similarities between
Sunkist, by Kirsten Kapur of Through The Loops, and my recently-finished Chocolate Jeans. Raglan cardi, stockinette with ribbing trim, 3/4 length sleeves, Araucania yarn....  but hey, one's wool and one's cotton! There's an important difference!

I need to teach Harley how to use the camera, so he can be my photographer (would YOU trust Cyra with a camera? Me neither) This self-portrait thing isn't really working for me. And yeah, I need to learn to stand up straight. Blocking the sweater might be a good idea, too, but I was in such a hurry to show it off to y'all.   

Happy 4th of July!

If today is a holiday for you, we here at Chez Harley and the Terrorist hope it's a lovely one. Here's my contribution to the color scheme of the day: the almost-finished Sunkist sweater, the red yarn from the recently-frogged Brisa, and the off-white hemp and wool yarn that I got to make net grocery bags.

There's been spinning here lately.
This is some of the so-called black bluefaced leicester, 3.7 oz from a hank that had been around for...ummmm, a long time. I got about 375 yds, squarely in the sportweight category both in wpi and ypp. I was trying for fingering weight, and obviously I'm not there yet, but I'm getting better at achieving a density that matches the wpi. In my early spinning years, most of my yarn was ridiculously dense. Here's a good example:
I got this rambouillet-silk noil batt back when I lived in Colorado Springs (the FIRST time!) and spun the skein shown here soon after acquiring the fiber. It's about 250 yds, still sportweight in terms of wpi, and almost 5 oz! oops. I'm working on the rest of the batt now, but I don't think the two skeins will end up in the same project.

The Terrorist is busy arguing with the squirrel in the tree next to the balcony, and Harley is relaxing under the bed, having made his point about the customer service around here:

Food? Sometime this year?

Wrapping Up a Few Loose Ends

Let's see, news updates. Harley is recovering nicely from his booboo. Thanks to Cathy's advice, most of the antibiotics ended up in him instead of on me, though he still runs for the safety of under-the-bed when I approach. I finished Breeze and am very happy with the result. It's getting mailed off to the recipient this weekend, and as soon as I get a photo of her modeling it, I'll post it for you all to admire. Last night I started Sunkist (scroll down the Free Patterns list) in some Araucania cotton that's been sitting around the stash in search of a workable pattern for ages. It's going to be a great little summer sweater. The designer, Kirsten, also designed the Tahoe pattern that I made last summer, and I get lots of compliments on that sweater. And I solved a knitting problem! Remember these poor socks?
They stalled out with no second toe when I ran out of yarn. Everyone else who's used this yarn was able to get two whole socks out of a skein, so I took another look at them to see what was wrong. On close examination, I had made the heel flap several rows longer than necessary. I ripped back to the middle of the heel flap and tried again, and this time we made it all the way to the toe! That little bit of yarn in the bottom of the photo is all that was left over. Whew!

Portrait of the Kitty as a Cranky Patient

apologies to James Joyce....

Trying to figure out how to get under the bed to his favorite pouting spot

He's got a big ol' booboo, and has to wear the collar and take antibiotics for a couple of weeks. Surprisingly, Cyra was in no way responsible for this turn of events. Unsurprisingly, she's pestering him endlessly.

If anyone has advice on how to give a cat a syringe full of medicine, I'm listening. I got the first dose in him, but most of the second ended up on his face. Which he can't wash by himself. It's gonna be a long two weeks.