There is no joy in Yarnville

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Yarnville — for Snapdragons has flown out.

It’s true, folks. This morning I flew out on a real-for-sure business trip, less than 48 hours after getting back from my Thanksgiving adventure (why yes, it did rain and snow and get dark on the way back also, coincidentally). I also got a little bit of a bug on the last day at the cabin, and was feeling pretty yucky and grouchy on the trip back. When I got home, I high-tailed it for bed with my laptop and a pot of apple tea, where I got warm and then slept for eleven hours. I had one day safe at my desk at work, and now… I’m on a business trip, at a conference that has absolutely nothing to do with yarn or tea or quilts or anything nice. You all encourage me to keep up the great posting… would that I could, darlings, would that I could!

I didn’t bring any knitting with me so that, in my free time, I can work on NaNo. It is November 27 and I have only 34,500 words. I am a bad, bad writer, but I still have hopes of finishing.

Meanwhile, I am comforting myself with thoughts of nice things that will be waiting for me when I get home:

William Morris patterned wellingtons
A bobbin lace kit
A personalized embosser
Raven Clan yarn
Chocolate tea
And a pile of classic board games, including Scrabble and Monopoly…

Well, you know. It’s gotta be earned, and it’s gotta be spent.

Pointy points

Things are looking up. Most of the points are pointy.

Thimbleberries and optimism

After yesterday’s disappointment with Flock of Triangles, I moped for about thirty seconds, then I rallied with an idea for another quilt, made out of Thimbleberries fabrics and involving triangles, but only in the easiest possible way, that I have handled before and am sure I can handle again. There are a lot of quilt shops in the vicinity, but only one with any sizeable amount of Thimbleberries–and she just happened to be in the store yesterday, so my mother and I braved the icy roads. There was fabric at the other end, you know, and a very friendly calico cat.

I spent yesterday cutting out a metric load of squares and today I am beginning to sew. I am full of optimism. Every single point in this quilt top is going to be… pointy.

These colors are traditional sorts of colors, I suppose because they resemble colors that can be achieved with natural dyestuffs. By the way–if you are ever at loose ends about what to do with ten minutes, read up on dyestuffs and pigments on Wikipedia. It’s wonderful. Anyway: my own house is full of light, clear colors, and these muddy ones don’t go at all. But I have always admired the effect of lots of these kinds of quilts piled together, and the way that the colors all go together no matter what, and anyway I’m steeped in Kim Diehl and Lynette Jensen books here, so I’m in the mood. Hooray!

Denyse Schmidt 1, Snapdragons 0

Well, Denyse Schmidt has won this round with me. After oh-so-carefully cutting out all those hundreds of 90-45-45 triangles for her Flock Of Triangles quilt, and oh-so-carefully sewing the first pairs together, sewing pairs of those pairs together has defeated me. I cannot get the edges to line up. Sewing together triangles, if you didn’t know, is sort of hard. And this quilt is all triangles, and there are no tricks or shortcuts to making it, so it’s not only sort of hard, it’s awfully fiddly. And I’m putting it aside for the time being, until I get the patience to take a half-square template to it, and trim up all the blocks. Grrrr.

So let’s look at this mini-quilt that my mother made, and that won first place at a quilt show. My mother is one of those gifted people who can measure something twice and get the same result both times. She can also cut straight, and, if you can believe it (and I can’t), sew seams that are consistently 1/4″ deep. So much talent, none of it inherited by me. Sigh.

And here is the guest room I am staying in. This house does not have my bedroom in it, of course, so I stay in the guest room. It is very comfortable, almost completely soundproof and it even has a television. It has six windows, too, amazingly. My mother made the quilts of course.

Fire talk

Let’s cuddle up in front of the fire, and sip hot cocoa, and talk about the winter to come.

Here is a nice story that someone told once on a message board that I read. This person (I really don’t know who it was) grew up in Norway. He said that every morning before school, his breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal surrounded by a moat of cream, and with a pat of butter melting on top. Then, he would bundle up, and ski to school. In the afternoon he would ski back, and cuddle up with the dogs in front of the fire. His advice? “If the German Shepherd is smoking, it’s time to adjust the spark guard.”

Now. Tomorrow is the day after Thanksgiving, which means it is officially the Holiday Season, which means it is culturally, if not astronomically, Winter. Let’s see out the cultural Autumn by listing what we’re thankful for. I did the Thankful Meme recently, in which I listed the major things I’m thankful for in life. So I’ll shoot for the next lower tier, here.

1) For having a good job that lets me live in a pretty house and buy whatever small things I want

2) For having found a really nice group of friends–for discovering that people my age have grown up and turned into interesting human beings

3) For having such a cozy and nice Thanksgiving

In response to comments: I know I didn’t post much last week. Life is happening, in a good way. I had a lot of evenings away from home in a row, and houseguests two weekends in a row, and when you work full time… you know. And this week I am up here in the sticks for Thanksgiving, and next week I have to travel for business, and oh goodness gracious me. When ever will I do my Christmas baking?

Little quilt studio in the Big Woods

They had been dancing around it for several years, but what it came down to was that my dad wants to fly fish–a lot–and my mother wants to make quilts–a lot. They tried some half-measures. For the fishing, they first took vacations to Colorado and then bought a small fishing cabin up here. For the quilting, my mother started with a longarm sewing machine, then tried a cut-rate quilting frame. In the end, though, they realized that what they needed was a permanent house up here, on a fishing stream, with a room that could accommodate a Gammill.

Quilters, feast your eyes. The 17′ x 19′ loft of the new cabin is my mother’s quilting studio. It has an 8′ square work table, and a Gammill on a 14′ frame. Yes, it’s pretty unbelievable and yes, the room is rather crowded.

It has two magnificent views, one out of its own windows to the front of the house, and another over the loft railing into the two-story-tall windows in the living room.

She has covered the loft’s railing with quilts, which are visible from the living room. Notice also the tall river-rock chimney. Dad is building a fire in that fireplace right now. Very cozy.

Snow and cedars

Happy Thanksgiving! After an epic eleven-hour journey, I arrived at my parents’ log cabin late last night, in the middle of a snowstorm. We all fell into bed, exhausted, and had long winter naps. They moved up here this summer, and this is the first time I’d visited them. From about the sixth hour of the journey onward I was seriously wondering why on earth they had found it necessary to move so far away.

Well, okay, this morning I understand why. They had had a fishing cabin here for years, so I understood the woodsy, camp-like appeal of being here, but staying in the cabin was not a particularly comfortable experience. Their new cabin–which is really a house–is both comfortable and picturesque. It’s very good.

It is the middle of rifle-hunting season here, so we’re all a little wary of going outside, but there are lots of windows and it’s very cozy indoors. The two trees in the photograph below are on either side of the path to the trout stream. There is a screened-in porch. There is a rack full of waders and another full of rods. There are snowshoes. It’s all good.

I plan to make several posts today, so stay tuned for recipies, pictures of the cabin, and a list of things I’m thankful for–

Diana’s minestrone

Oh Woe Are Us. It is mid-November. The beautiful leaves are nearly over. The gardens are dead. It is chilly without snow. It is dark at 4:30. We need… soup.

This recipe comes from my friend Diana, who got it elsewhere but has tweaked it substantially. This is really good stuff, hearty, nourishing for body and soul, and as a bonus–it cooks up in less than an hour. I do recommend it.

The recipe, in her own words:

Warm 2 T oil in a soup pot on medium heat; add 1 c. onions and 4 garlic cloves and saute for 5 minutes. Add 2.5 c each of cubed winter squash and potatoes and cook, stirring for a couple minutes. Add 2 stalks chopped celery, .5 c chopped carrots, 1 t dried oregano, 2 t salt, .5 t ground pepper, and 6 cups stock (I used vegetable last night because we had vegetarians; I’ve used a mix of vegetable and chicken in the past). Cook for 10-15 minutes or until potatoes are almost done. Add 4 cups chopped kale, a can of cannellini beans (drained), a can of diced tomatoes, and a small can of tomato paste.
Simmer for another 5-7 minutes, or until kale is tender and beans are hot.

Saturday Dinner

My parents stayed at my house this weekend, and I decided that it was time to prove that I really am a Good Cook, even without the goat cheese trick. What is the goat cheese trick? To make any recipe that involves goat cheese–because it’s guaranteed to be delicious, no matter what your culinary skill level may be. So goat cheese was strictly verboten this weekend.

After presenting them with freshly-made minestrone on Friday night (I suppose I should have blogged about that first, but it’ll have to wait), I pulled out all the stops on Saturday and served them what was left of the potato and fennel gratin along with a pork roast and sauteed green beans.

The pork roast is Ina Garten’s recipe, one of those with fennel. In some of the others, there is actual fennel wrapped up in the roast, but in this one it refers to fennel seeds in the crust, along with garlic, rosemary, mustard, and lemon zest. Ohhhh, it was edible, you know. The green beans were steamed in the microwave then quickly sauteed with a little olive oil and some pressed garlic. It is my mother’s own standard mode of preparing them, so I knew they would be acceptable.

For dessert, two apple tarts. I used the crust from Ina’s recipe for plum tarts, but because there were no plums in evidence at the grocery, I filled the crusts with apples (a mix of Granny Smith and… something else red) and cranberries. Just look at the dusting of sugar sparkle! I didn’t get a picture of them after baking, but you get the idea.

Oh, you heard me say that there were two tarts, and you want to see the other? Well, since you insist.

That one had leftover crust-crumble on top of it. I think that I am firmly established as a Good Cook, now. Hooray for small victories!

Little Pink Socks!

I am good knitter! I finish socks!

Elfine’s Socks, knit in Socks That Rock “Rhodonite” on US1/2.25mm circular needles, toe-up, Turkish cast on, foot worked over 61 stitches, short-row heel done without redistributing stitches… is there anything I’m forgetting?

Oh yes: I love my little pink socks little pink socks.

Have started the next pair: toe-up Monkey socks, in Claudia Handpaints “Twilight”. Hooray!

The dining room

Today’s big news is: my new dining room furniture arrived!

I am still getting used to it. I have people in the house this weekend, so I haven’t really had time to sit and stare at it, but it’s generally good. Before, I had a rickety second-hand set, with dings and squeaks and all of those problems. This stuff is solid. Just look at the table leg:

And it has FOUR of those. Wow! I am so happy with the china cabinet. I was worried that my bottles of things wouldn’t fit in its open space, but they just barely did. All of my glassware is in the cabinet now, as well as my Spode breakfast cups. It’s wonderful.

The Windsor chairs are a little unusual, as you can see. They have an oval shape in the back. I have two arm chairs and four side chairs. The table surface is, technically, the same dimensions as the old table, but because it’s rectangular instead of oval it seems enormous. The tabletop is actually covered with laptop computers and magazines… you just magically can’t see them in this picture. Everyone wants to sit around the table.

Joy.

Can’t blog–must NaNo

I am blogging this (naughtily) from a NaNoWriMo write-in, at a coffee house on campus. Is it quite the same thing as playing hookie? I am at 14,638 words and still blathering on happily. To entertain you–some marvellously successful pictures of a bunch of white stock that I bought this weekend. Today’s sunset happened at 4:43 p.m. It is going to be a long, cold, dark winter.

The most wonderful time of the year

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

Always.

Spring is the most wonderful time of the year, because of the sunshine and fresh air, and all of the wonderful growth after so much stagnation.

Summer is the most wonderful time of the year, because swimming pools feel so nice and because one begins to see God (and cucumbers) in the garden.

Fall is the most wonderful time of the year because, after so many weeks of unbearable heat, it’s safe to go outside again, and everything is bronzy-beautiful.

Winter is the most wonderful time of the year, because you get Christmas and lights and friends and food, and the first wonderful fluffy snowfall.

But right now, it’s Fall. And it’s wonderful.

Ain’t misbehavin’

I don’t stay out late
Don’t care to go
I’m home about eight
Just me and my radio
Ain’t misbehavin’,
Savin’ my love for you

Or maybe I ain’t misbehavin’ because I don’t NEED to go out… because I have a YARN STORE in my HOUSE ZOMG PONIES!!!!!!11111eleven!!!!

I win. Admit it. I win.

P.S.: fennel is a lovely vegetable that tastes of licorice. Yes, really, it does. The gratin is a great recipe. I also like to roast it with carrots and zucchini, to have with curried chicken. When I lived in Italy (briefly), the cafeteria in the building where I worked served steamed fennel at lunchtime every day.

Fennel and potato gratin

I hope that you enjoyed the lovely fennel bulb yesterday, because it’s gone today. I didn’t buy it entirely on a whim: I wanted to test Ina Garten’s fennel and potato gratin recipe, thinking that I might possibly make it for my parents when they visit. They’re demanding an Autumnal meal when they’re here next weekend, and you know, I ought to oblige.

The sun is at such a steep angle these days that my kitchen almost never gets nice suffuse light, but instead these sunbeams that make for dramatic pictures. Here is the fennel–successfully butchered–sauteeing with some onions.

And the finished gratin. I didn’t use half as much cheese as she called for, and went with half-and-half instead of cream. It’s still awfully tasty, I must say, though I apparently don’t know as much as I thought I knew about butchering fennel. Some of the pieces of it are very tough, while others are very tender. It’s still tasty, and the whole house still smells lovely this morning.

In other news,

NaNoWriMo: The Agony Continues

More vegetables

I like to like things, and I like to look forward to things. I look forward to precisely this time in Autumn almost all year–those one or two crisp, sunny weekends when the foliage is in its full glory and one hasn’t yet seriously thought about the long, miserable winter to come.

Decorative pumpkins, with the same markings as my favorite sugar dumpling squash. They’re so pretty, I just couldn’t resist, even though I’d said “absolutely no decorative vegetables this year”. They didn’t photograph well for some reason, but they’re gorgeous with greens and oranges and yellows.

I went to the Farmer’s Market even though I had planned to have given up, by now. I still haven’t forgiven myself for not buying those orange cauliflowers two weeks ago. So this time I bought two beautiful squash that make smashing closeup pictures.

I mean really. What possible purpose does that serve, except to be beautiful and to give pleasure?

I hope they’re as tasty as they are pretty. Also, because I’m such a sucker for heirloom and novelty varieties, some multicolored carrots.

And because it was so dramatic and beautiful, and so much larger and wilder than the ones in the grocery store, a bulb of fennel.

Jammies & Na-X-Y-Mo

November! It’s November! And that means it really is the chilly season. October, even, is iffy around here–but November is always cold. What a relief to have the whole changing-of-season suspense out of the way. The Fall colors are beautiful right now, and temperatures have been hitting freezing at night. Time for new pajamas!

Yep. Target is my bestest pajama friend. Besides these wonderful starry lovelies, I got some pajama pants that are going to look smashing with my Silk Garden #84 sweater. I mean… red and pink and orange go together no matter what, right?

I’m not sure that you actually want to see my belly button, but you do want to see the fluffy pink ribbon at the waist.

The Little Pink Sock is progressing nicely. I knit all the way through Pride & Prejudice and am now trying to decide what to go for next: The Dickens Collection, which is long and pleasantly boring and probably not worth keeping one’s eyes on, but very little of which I have seen before, so I’m not sure that not keeping my eyes on it is a good idea. Or, Our Mutual Friend, also longish and which I have seen many times… possibly enough that I wouldn’t mind keeping my eyes on the lace chart while I listen to it. Hmmm. Dunno.

Okay. First, random answers to things:

1) The red “brain” flowers at my dinner party are colloquially called coxcomb, apparently.
2) One should carve up pumpkins and squash using the kiddie pumpkin carving tools, not big butcher knives and cleavers. Interesting.
3) My little pink sock is being knit out of Socks That Rock “Rhodonite.” It’s still discontinued, but now we have a name for it.
4) It is possible to play mahjong with two or three players, it just isn’t traditional to do so. With each player you subtract from the standard four, gameplay gets a little less interesting.
5) My blog has received over 200 hits in the last two hours, none of them from identified sources. Is it some kind of feeble denial-of-service attack?

Second, announcements about November: I have added three Alongs to my side bar.

The first is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which I am participating in for the first time this year. The concept is easy: write a novel of 50,000 words in the month of November. Yes, I am sure I can do it. No, you can’t read it.

The second is its under-achieving cousin, NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. To qualify for this, one has only to post to one’s blog every day in November. I have already disqualified myself here, though I have a personal blog elsewhere that will qualify. So there.

Third but not least is NaKniSweMo (or NaNoSweMo… or NaSweKniMo… no one is sure), National Sweater Knitting Month. My cousin’s wife had a baby boy yesterday, and I’m sure that he needs a Weasley sweater, and it’s possible that I will knit it in November… but don’t hold your breath. Just as (un)likely is that I will finish an Hourglass sweater I started last year at this time. We’ll see.

Happy November! I’m off to knit.