Sonya, jacket, soup and Misfits

Today started with a great Zoom discussion among Sonya Philip, great clothes designer and nice person, and the Modern Daily Knitting duo, Ann and Kaye. They're great knitters, purveyors of yarns and other knitting needs, plus great supporters of indie designers.

Sonya is a knitter, also a great clothes designer and teacher, about creating and upcycling simple wearable stuff you want to wear. 

She has a new book out: The Act of Sewing. That's what the presentation was about. She's a lovely person altogether, just wants people to make what they want to wear and not worry about what the industry wants. She assembles colorful unusual combos that make you want to do likewise.

MDK, given in full above, has a terrific newsletter with all kinds of readable people writing for it.  It's where I discovered Franklin Habit, to whose vlog I am now devoted, and others. So I recommend them too, even if you're not a passionate knitter, for the entertainment value.

Anyway Sonya is such an original, happy person, who always looks exactly right in her own designs, and anyone can learn to.

So these are free shout-outs to all of them.

And I have finished stitching together the Mitered Squares, so now I have to weave in 136,685 ends before I steam it, then stitch up the seams. 

Spent a while weaving in ends. Watching Sonya renewed my confidence in this project. Also the spring weather here is still cold enough to wear the jacket without waiting for Fall, so there's that.

Then I needed lunch so I made a cream of rainbow carrot, celery and white bean, which, decorated with dandelion leaves and chives was decorative and pretty good, too.  Art as food.

I  spent a lot of the afternoon watching a presentation on Greek embroidery of the 17th and 18th centuries, with a foray much earlier than that. From Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. I'll blog it tomorrow when I get the screenshots organized and cropped and my breath back.

Then finally Misfits arrived, a day late, though they did warn me, and short a can of broth, which I expect they'll refund.

Is this not a natural artwork

Soooo, here's Friday night's salad, on Saturday instead.  Romaine, tomato, cheddar, chickpeas, tuna, crowned with a strawberry.

Today turned out to be much fuller and richer than I'd expected.

May Day,asparagus part two, condo part 1,354

Yesterday was mostly about asparagus and stitching up the Mitered Square jacket in knitting group.

We will draw a veil over the stitching. I was chatting and stitched a sleeve square to the back by accident. Had to unpick. Onward.

The asparagus was more successful. 

First a steamed plate of spears, with Irish butter and lemon juice sauce. Nothing else needed. Springtime on a plate.

Then a pot of cream of asparagus and dandelion greens soup. Spring tonic.

Just a bit of Old Bay, not enough to show. The flavor here is delicate. I added in the leftover lemon butter sauce, too. 

Ahead of the game in the food department.

Still very much in the good fight on the plumbing and electrical front. Friend finally managed to find a shutoff he hopes will fit, and two possible electric outlet parts, different sizes. 

So this afternoon fitted into his busy schedule, is yet another meeting at the condo to see if we can get the washer working st least. If all goes well, I can order the dryer. 

We're not yet any further on than before. The last meeting was just to let him see the shutoff to determine if it's soldered or not in place. Evidently not, so he can try replacing it and save me a big plumber's bill.

My doctor also, speaking of parts, noticed a little something and wants a special mammogram and ultrasound. I've scheduled that for earliest possible, week after next. At that point all may be changed anyway, and possibly the whole condo issue may seem comparatively trivial. We'll see. Good vibes please.

White Rabbits and May Day!

Plum torte or tart, and Mitered Square Jacket progress

This is the Marian Burros recipe that appeared any number of times in the New York Times, and was reprinted in other people's collections. 

I think my copy is from Arthur Schwartz, who credited her and pointed out that it sometimes appeared as tart, sometimes as torte. I think tart's a misprint, because this has a cake dough, not a pastry one.

Anyway here it is, been waiting ages for plums to make it with. They've been hard to find for a couple of years, wonder if there were late frosts cutting back the harvest.

I divided the butter half and half Kerrygold and regular supermarket, mainly because I forgot to thaw out butter to use ahead of time, so I used what was available.

Here's the doings. The lemon juice, cinnamon and sugar are for sprinkling after it's mixed and assembled. The plum pits went out for the squirrels, who will probably run away in top of the fence and bite into them, leaving the shells for me to sweep.

And here's  how it looks with the halved plums studding the batter. One hour at 350°f.

The house smells lovely right now.

And here's the result

I expect Handsome Son and maybe a neighbor or two will help with this.

Meanwhile I've been stitching Mitered Squares. 

It's like stitching your way out of a maze. Very confusing. I think I may be about a third done but who knows.

Mitered Square Jacket

It looks as if the mitered squares are becoming a jacket. I laid it out to see if it needs more squares, then loosely basted it together. This involved quite a bit of moving and rearranging the design. The original four joined squares are on the back.

Here's the squares just laid out, to see the design. They're on a sheet because that way I can roll it up to move the project to the table easily. You know you're at an advanced stage when your project needs its own sheet.

Basted loosely, here's the back. Those big orange stitches are the basting, which will be removed when I join the squares. All the trailing yarn ends will be used as joining threads.

And the front

Here you see it flat, from the front

And, side and sleeve seams not yet attached, here are the fronts opened.

I need to keep it flat for the next stage, the attaching together of squares. And the finishing of yarn ends. After that I can close the sleeve and side seams.

I think I may add a row of squares to the hem, since I like a long jacket. And I may still change the position or direction of a couple of squares. You can't really see the design till this stage, when it takes the shape of a jacket.

This went faster than I thought. I'm not ready to stop knitting squares! But I do plan on pockets.

Wondering if the pockets should match. And if the hem should be solid colors. And when I'll be stitching on my Coat of Many Colors and Stitches. And if the cold spring weather will continue so I can wear the Mitered Square Jacket before next fall..

Questions, questions.

Twenty five squares and counting

 With the addition of this cheerful mob

recently, the selection has a lot more energy

and here's steaming in progress

In fact all the current squares are steamed and squared up. From this point I'll lay them out on the dining table, which is the computer table, the cutting out table, and the tax filling out table,  to see how to arrange them, as I go. Since there are no beloved cats to rearrange and bite them, the squares can stay out as I go.

I need to decide how many solid colors I need to knit to balance the stripes. And laying it out will tell me what manner of thing it will be in the end. 

The four squares I started with and knitted together will probably work like a center or anchor piece. 

Meanwhile I have to keep my reading and watching going. 

I've been waiting forever for the Joan Didion essays. Her work is so measured and modest and mind-blowingly accurate that it's great to find something of hers I haven't read yet. She's a California person with a viewpoint I like to know more about.  And a world class analytic ability. Crystalline prose style. 

Flambards I know nothing about except it's a costume drama, and I'm in it for the hats. And horses. And carriages. And interiors. I expect there's also a storyline, too, come to think of it.

And the craft book was recommended by a person who loves crafts. She keeps renewing her library loan, so I need to see what it's about.

And that's us today, steaming, knitting, reading, watching. I was hoping for tea on the terrace, well, patio, when Handsome Son comes over later, but the weather changed and it's tea in the drawing room, milady, instead.  

Salted butter cookies, chocolate postscript

 Since handsome Son is visiting tomorrow bringing groceries, I baked a little something to go with tea.

This is the recipe, half a recipe, to be exact, enough for now.

I used whole wheat pastry flour, which always seems to need more liquid. So I added in a couple of teaspoons of plain whole milk yogurt to enable the dough to hold together.

I shaped it a bit before cooling, just for a  change. Then 350° f oven for what ended up being nearly 20 minutes, rather than 12-15, because of the yogurt.

The shapes are interesting. I was aiming for fancy langues de chat, cats' tongues. They're more like dog biscuits now I study them. I might drizzle a bit of melted chocolate over. 

I sprinkled coarse seasalt over, really cool contrast, which put me in mind of the chocolate drizzling idea. Seasalt and chocolate are friends.

Don't go away...

Here's what happened next

Chocolate chips melting over hot water

Piping bag being made. Tiny corner clipped off baggie. No need for fancy equipment.

My Mom, the professional cake decorator, made her piping bags from parchment paper she made into a cone, dropped a piping tip into it, filled with royal icing, and decorated like Raphael.  Such hands. Such control.

My own piping is more modest.

Here's the piping bag, loaded, and I'm squeezing down the chocolate to that tip, ready to wave about to make drawings.

Since the chocolate has just come off the hot water, this is a sizzling job for your hand, but it's in a good cause.

And here are chocolate hieroglyphs or something. Hoping I haven't committed some obscene mistake in a language I'm not familiar with..

Testing, testing.

In other news, the lovely yarn from dear C arrived and was instantly employed in brightening up the dark colors I had on hand. 

After this, and before baking, I fitted in getting dressed. 

Some of these things are not like the others

 This is a selection of the squares, and, as expected from using a wide variety of yarns, they're not all the same size, though they all have the same number of stitches and same needles. 

So this is where some of those trailing yarn ends come into play, to crochet edges on the smaller ones, equalize the sizes, and join them all. There may be contrasting joining color throughout, to unify this wild work.

And there will definitivo be steaming before any crocheting happens, to see just how close they are in finished size.

The small handweights are the result of a discovery yesterday. 

I thought for once it would be a change to take a bath instead of a shower. I have grab bars, all that, and it's worked up to now to take a tub once in a while.  I also have my phone right by the tub always.

So I enjoyed a soak, lavender and almond oil, and then went to climb out. Only to find that my recent weeks, of vaxxing and the search for the vax, involving exhausting hours round the clock, recovering from vaxxing,  and neglecting my weight lifting, had reduced my arm strength.  

To where I couldn't raise my poor old bod from the tub. I did manage to scramble out, from all fours. But I decided I'd better recover some form.

So I dug out the weights and found my larger ones that I used regularly, until a few weeks ago, are now too heavy!  So for the moment I've dropped back to these littler ones, until I get back up there.  I don't always want a tub, but I do want the option.

And I did a series of upper body lifts, to get started. These smaller weights are going to be right in sight, so I remember to work with them. I'm hoping I'll soon be up to my heavier ones, but my arms will tell me when.

Thrills but no spills, glad to report.

And today soup happened. Cashews soaking overnight, and I blended that Misfits vegetable broth with the last of the split pea batter, carrots, garlic, onions, ginger, dash of chili powder, no nutmeg this time.

And it made a good soup for yet another cold rainy day.

So that's us from this damp corner of the planet.

Running between the raindrops

The raindrops are metaphorical, meaning a sudden bunch of worries and a glimpse of the end of my tether after the year of no social life, no touch, not even an animal. Worries involving other things I can't fix right now, mostly.

Now I'm also taking on helping get my, finally eligible, frontline worker son vaxxed. He's very computer literate, far more than I, but has no computer access in his working day, so he'll never manage without an assist. My heart sank as I started the process again, stressful. 

Anyway outside, the neighborhood kids have invented a new game. You throw a football, and it's batted away with a badminton racket. No rules, I think, but loads of fun 

And a further lift to my spirits came in the mail from Mary Anne, from Magpie's Mumblings.  She's a fiber artist, temporarily sidelined by surgery, so it was all the better to receive this lovely postcard artwork.  Thanks so much!

And an art card from honorary granddaughter next to it, lifting me up further.

This is my favorite place to sit, make art, knit, read, do business, and the side of the furniture is a useful bulletin board for notes I have to keep handy. Post-Its work best.

More knitted squares are happening, though that red one on the right fell prey to my general anxiety and I didn't decrease right. Ended up at first with a weird paralellogram. I ask you, simple knitting and I couldn't get it right. Shows how jangled I was. Am. It's fixed now.

If you're wondering if all those trailing threads are another symptom, no, they're on purpose. They'll be handy when I come to attach the squares into whatever they end up being.

Another nice thing: the state has reinstated a special program of real estate tax relief after several years of not being able to afford it (!) and my next quarterly tax bill, I just heard, will be several hundred dollars lighter as a result. Since NJ has the highest real estate tax in the US, we're Number One, yay!  this is good.

Especially since the Feds have still not started reimbursing seniors with the third covid-19 relief $$. A lot of  NJ people didn't get the second one either. Can't help being darkly suspicious about whether this is yet another blue state issue 

Appointees from the former guy are still employed at the irs and SS..one of whom finally admitted, under pressure from northeastern members of congress,  to delaying the handover of the vital files to enable the payments. I have my congressional rep, the blessed Rep. Bonnie (Watson-Coleman) on it now. Her caseworkers are in touch. 

But moving on, I finished reading Home by Marilynne Robinson, and it was really great. So intense that I may not venture into the others in the saga, at least not for a while. I do recommend it though.

And now that my pounding allergy season headache has abated, my spirits are doing better, thank you, sitting up and taking nourishment.

Blueberry Newtons, mitered knitting

Slow start, cool rainy Sunday, reading Maisie Dobbs An Incomplete Revenge, knitted another square 

while listening to p g Wodehouse audiobook, Galahad at Blandings, then finally had to get to today's task.

I started last night, making blueberry jam, ready for a filling. The idea is a fruit filled soft cookie, like Fig Newtons, but I had blueberries. 

Dough mixed, some reserved for topping, the rest pressed into parchment lined dish. The parchment is important here if you ever plan to get the finished product out again. Soft rich dough.

Base baked, now the filling is spooned in. I made a lot of jam, using all the blueberries, so there will be extra.

That extra bit I rolled out and kept in the freezer until ready to put the lid on. I had just guessed at the size of the top, because the rest of it was in the oven, couldn't measure.

When I peeled it off the parchment paper, it was exactly like taking handmade paper off the felt, same process, same attention to edges in order to retrieve it in one piece.

Pretty good guess about size. Now it all goes back in a 350°f oven to finish baking.

It better be good after this performance. Now it has to cool in the pan for two hours. Two hours. I'll have forgotten baking it by then.

I cut into it while still warm, no harm done and here's the result

And here's the extras

Jar for the neighbor who's driving me to my second vax, and one for home consumption. I had some for breakfast, on toast, pretty good.

This may be one of those recipes that turns out well, takes ages, you're glad you did it, you're not hurrying to repeat it.

And there are various versions of why Newtons, ranging from Isaac to a town in Massachusetts. That usually means nobody really knows. Probably some colonial Mom, Mrs Newton, making a treat for the kids to use the ripe blueberries. Oh no, that was me. It's supposed to be dried figs. But who's counting.