Dosas, knitting, Textiles and Tea

After seeing Kamala cooking on YouTube, I remembered it's a long time since I made dosas. Kind of pancakes made with red lentils, fermented.

I didn't have red lentils, so instead I ground brown lentils into flour. Red lentils are softer, fast cooking, brown more resistant. So I thought flour would work. 

This coffee mill is about 35 years old, $10 at a local store long gone. It's still working fine after grinding all kinds of grains and nuts and seeds and spices. Also coffee, but rarely.

Made a batter with salt and water. Left it overnight.

Dosas for lunch today with chicken breast. It was edible but not pretty, hence no pictures. I've made other edible but not photogenic meals lately, usual involving cannellini beans. Not much color. But still good food.

The Tuesday knitting group was about beads, this entire can donated to the library for crafting classes. Many of the beads are antique, from the donor's grandmother.

Also Tunisian crochet returned, with a phone case and a bag for clothes pegs 

The resident librarian who officially runs the group always leaves out relevant books from the collection 

Lovely designs. And lovely discussion of hats and fashion and living in New Mexico north of Taos, learning to spin, indigo dyeing, umbrellas, my now-returned and refunded brolly, paper making with various materials, wrens nesting, drawing, spinning cotton, Gandhi, cordage and heatwaves. 

Textiles and Tea featured Laurie Carlson Steger, who not only weaves solo, but does collaborative work too. She has worked in fiber optics for a special MIT project, which ended up being part of a space telescope! 

Nearer home, she's an artist who uses weaving as her medium. You can see echoes of Klee, Rothko and others.

She wove this piece at the age of twelve.

See the Rothko style on her wall

And here Klee and others

This is jazz violinist Stefan Grappelli, from a live drawing at a concert, rendered in black and white then colors

And here's her high tech TC2 loom, with skeins of hand dyed yarn drying in front of it. 

This was an entertaining and far reaching session. Next year she's teaching a weaving workshop using fiber optic yarn to make a lighting-up hat, great fun.

Happy day, everyone, I love my Tuesdays!