A Week Down

Well, nearly a week. But that's on top of two weeks already this month! Tricksey viruses.

One afternoon I read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and enjoyed the story and the creepy pictures...

I ordered these Harmony needle tips in a size 4 from KnitPicks, 

because they are pointy and will work well with my yarn from Wolles Yarn Creations in these beautiful colors...

and I ate lots of these...

and began knitting a pair of fingerless gloves and baby booties. Last night in a burst of ambition I spent a few hours in my sewing room, and started a cargo skirt from a length of very nice fast drying/sunblock fabric. This friend (I know, how great is she?)

Photo, Jacob Wallace

has suggested that a similar style might be nice for climbing, so I'm thinking of designing one with that in mind.

I also discovered that being sick in bed with this

is much better than being sick in bed without it.

Cute Aprons!

I made these two aprons and matching headbands as a special order for two young women. I love the fabrics and hope they last for years in their kitchens! I am so grateful for my daughter who rarely refuses my request for a model, even after a long day.

Michael Miller. Double pocket with contrast trim, purchased bias.

Really bad lighting but you get the idea. Super cute headband.

Love this fabric but I can't remember the designer. No pocket because the center motif was so pretty, handmade bias to match, and a selvedge hem.

I love these headbands.

I made this apron pattern around 15 years ago, and I've lost count of how many I've made. Last month I also made a trio of them in a beautiful red and green plaid Kona broadcloth for myself, my daughter-in-law, and her mother. They were lovely, but I would like a break from bias tape and ties!

New Year, New Moleskine

But the convergence of the date and the new book is a coincidence.

Being sick in bed for four days straight and sick in a recliner for four more is bad enough, but to have to miss the annual family ski trip in Vail? What? There are no words! 

Two of these span roughly two years of use, one was filled in a year, and the fourth was a three week trip to Italy.

On day five of my fun-sucking illness I felt a little better and optimistically decided to make a list of things to do while home alone. (Ha! I've done none of them!) My Moleskine was filled but there was, of course, one in reserve, sitting right next to the stack of used ones.  

Ooh la la, brand new and waiting for me.

I opened the new one by writing the start date on the inside cover; we'll see how long it takes to fill it with the epherma of my life. The task now is to look through the one that is being retired and transfer any relevant information. A quick look and I find: 

• Contact information for people I've met.
• Yardage amounts for sewing and knitting projects I want to make.
• Verizon renewal dates for all our cell phones. This is more important than you might think, for some of us.
• Books and movies recommended by friends.
• Project ideas.

These journals are multipurpose, serving as planner, list repository, record keeper, and visual journal. Glue sticks are my friends, as you'll see.

Obviously, I love paper and find a way to use markers and pens and pencils as well as all the technology in my daily life. I am equally attached to my ipad and the fact that I can access Remember the Milk from my phone, ipad, computer, and ipod. So yes, I had that flight information on my phone, but it was also there in the book when I needed to refer to it and it will be there as a record of that trip in years to come. 

Leonard Cohen needs no caption.

Hastily sketched dimensions for kitchen window curtains.

Sometimes I combine electronic planning and my Moleskine. I like it.

These pages are the result of one of those times when there is so much on my mind I have to force myself not to think until I can get to a pen and paper and let my thoughts flow, so I don't lose anything.

I love keeping things like this last-minute map my stepfather drew of the Piazza del Populo in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, so we could identfiy the places he knew as a child growing up there.

A list for customs

A few years ago at Stitches, a huge knitting event, I had checked my felted tote bag and it was admired by my fellow knitters. One woman asked the attendant to tuck this note into the bag for me. How fun! It lives in the back pocket of the journal.

Pretty wraps from a very thoughtful present from my daughter, glued into a page, along with her note.

A cable pattern, written out while in the car because the chart was just too big to handle in the front seat.

It's been fun flipping through the books and sharing a few pages with the blog. Moleskine journals come in all sorts of configurations and their website is worth exploring. It's also interesting to check out what other people do with theirs, and you can spend a long break surfing around that subject!

Oh Boy!

You might think I'd be frantically creating posts to catch the blog up on the holiday preparations and celebrations but no! Not going to do it! I am going to share this picture of something I made for a newborn, born into a family near and dear to my heart, and going into the mail asap. Daigen, I hope you like these for the brief time they'll fit!

I could not resist stacking those books for the picture.

I loved using "big boy" sock yarn instead of a traditional baby boy color scheme. I have made socks for my (quite grown up) sons from this yarn; in fact I have one in progress.

How cute is that?

The yarn is Froehlich, a high quality European yarn known for durability. It comes, in fact, with a fine matching reinforcement yarn that can be knitted into the heel, or held for darning. When I heard production was going to stop on this line I scooped up several skeins and stashed them. Durability is not an issue here for Baby Daigen, of course. Further details on the knitting are on Ravelry. 

Happy New Year!

Looks like fun...

If you are attending the Brandywine Wallace Boutique sale this weekend, here's a raffle ticket for you!

Last CSA Day

Yesterday was the last CSA pickup of the season, and it was quite a box. This is the end of the summer growing season, the weekly boxes of awesomeness, and an end to reverse meal planning. It's fun to pick up a box of vegetables and figure out what to do with them, instead of planning recipes and going out to find the ingredients.

Cauliflower, onions, mizuna, tiny bok choy, leek, cabbage, red lettuce, tatsoi, scallions, romaine, cilantro, bell peppers, collards, radicchio, and broccoli.

The box reflects a seasonal return to lettuces, and has enough for a week of gorgeous salads. I have a pile of squash, white potatoes, and yams from recent weeks as well but they'll be gone in a few weeks. I froze a bag or two of blanched greens when I couldn't use all of them, but everything else was used in our weekly meals. 

This was the first year we were members of the Lancaster Farm Fresh Coop and I'm quite happy we made the change from our old CSA. While I do miss the experience of going to the farm and wandering through the barn and gardens, the variety available from a coop is attractive. This list, while long, isn't complete (edamame, for one) and doesn't indicate the variety of items included. For example, "herbs" makes one think of basil and not sorrel (delicious).  We liked knowing which farms our food came from, and which items were certified organic or grown with sustainable/IPM methods. 

For those of you thinking about joining, this is a wholehearted recommendation. There is much more to the organization, including a buying club, fruit shares, flower shares, and a CSM (Community Sponsored Medicine) share. (We had a CSM share this summer and loved it. More on that another day.) Next year I plan to include both fruit and flower shares, since I peeked at them all summer and liked what I saw. If you are interested but don't see a location near you, contact them about becoming a site yourself. Our pickup location was arranged a few years ago by a woman who wanted to be able to participate, so she worked to get enough people committed to the coop and offered her garage as the site. 

This week's menu, from that last box? So far it's looking like this:

Broccoli soup with added greens

Pepper, onion, and bok choy, and mizuna saute

Millet mash (cauliflower and millet "mashed potatoes")

White beans and collards

A poached leek, somewhere

Dinner salads

I look forward to sharing next year's first pickup!


Other posts about cooking with this year's harvest from LFFC can be found here,  here, and here.

Nice Try

Monday. Wake up and think, Hey...I think I have a nice long day of sewing and listening to an audiobook. Make coffee, turn on laptop, start remembering things to do...

Maybe not.

Drying Herbs in the Microwave

A few days ago the weather service was warning us of a freeze here in southeastern Pennsylvania, so I cut the last of the marjoram and thyme and brought the big pot of rosemary indoors. (That was optimistic, since the rosemary will simply die a slow death in the house instead of a fast one on the deck, but one of these days I may succeed in overwintering one.) It's a very good thing I cut then, since this is what my herb pots look like this morning:

I didn't cut the parsley because dried parsley is, well, dried parsley. It's easy enough to buy a bunch at the market and leave it in a glass on the sink, like a vase of flowers. The basil, chives, sage, mint, and cilantro are long gone but I had a huge amount of marjoram, and while the thyme will hang on, it was time. Sorry.

Sometimes I hang lovely bunches of herbs in the window of the laundry room, where they dry in days and look good while doing so. These jars are full of herbs that I dried that way, that we'll use for teas over the winter.

This time, however, I didn't have carefully cut and arranged bunches of herbs tied with twine. I had three large tangles of herbs, sopping wet from the rain.

I read about flash-drying herbs in the microwave in the September issue of Cook's Illustrated. A few weeks ago I tested the method on a few sprigs of marjoram, rosemary, sage, basil, and thyme. The kitchen smelled amazing but the only herbs that retained their scent and flavor were marjoram, thyme, and rosemary. Using their method, then, I wrapped a "single layer" (messy tangle) of herbs in a layer of paper towels and microwaved on high for 90 seconds (thyme) and 120 seconds (marjoram).

Marjoram, looking cozy.

Marjoram, looking crumbly.

The herbs cool quickly and are then easily removed from the stems, although I am careful not to crush them. This is easier with the larger leaves of marjoram than with thyme, of course. I had to remove a few stems that were still a little damp after microwaving simply because of how wet they were going in, and gave them another 30 seconds. That step was unnecessary when I first tested this method.

In the end it's a few minutes, a great smelling kitchen, and a few more herb jars for the cupboard. Quite nice.

Even though I welcome all the seasonal changes, even this unusual early snow, I always miss having a huge variety of culinary herbs just a few steps away from the kitchen. There is rarely a day of cooking that doesn't include something from the herb pots, and my cooking changes without them during the winter. I have, however, just planted herb pods in my Aerogarden, which was a new process for me last winter. Progress reports to come!

Valentine Wrap

Valentine because that's the color name of the Cascade Eco+ Wool I'm using.

Wrap because it's the awesome Snug Hooded Wrap from Knitting and Tea that I have been wanting to make. Four things to know:

1. It has pockets.
2. It has a hood.
3. The hood has a tassel.
4. That's right, a tassel.

My phone is tucked into the beginning of a pocket. Stitches, which will be picked up later and ribbed, are being held in front of the phone. A separate lining was knit into the space behind the phone, which neatly accounts for the stitches held, creates the pocket, and prevents any missteps in the cable pattern. I've blogged this picture to help anyone who might be confused about the lining insertion.

More as it grows!

Pumpkins!

A little late by a few weeks but it's time for the pumpkins!

The table is overflowing. Going to have to get a new table. 

I add one each fall and a dear friend gave me a new one a few months ago, so I shouldn't look at them whenever I go out. But that seems like a technicality.

The Iron Maven

Iron Maven, J420. Best name for an iron ever.

Well, for a steam generator, technically.I've been debating a steam generator for over a year, and after finally deciding to buy one I agonized (hey, it's hundreds of dollars, I agonized!) over whether to go with the Reliable Iron Maven J420 or the Rowenta DG8030. With a difference of only $50 between them I couldn't use price as a factor, and since they both have their supporters on the sewing boards and are established manufacturers, I went with the one that looks way cooler.

I have a shelf under the ironing board that can hold it, but DH and I decided it would be best to reinforce the shelf first since this unit is heavy. For now I have set it on this (recycled newspaper) hamper that I use for storage in the sewing room, placing it right in front of the ironing board, opposite me. This works well because....

...I have this heatproof ledge on the wide side of my board. Handiest thing. If I didn't have a ledge I could remove the plate from the unit and leave it on the ironing board:

That's a nice feature, allowing the iron to rest where you need it when doing close work.

I have used it a few times and am happy so far. I was pressing some bias strips and found myself reflexively pulling my non-ironing hand away from the iron until I realized that unless I press the steam button, this really is a dry iron. By that I mean that with my Rowenta Professional regular iron, I could not use a steam setting and keep my other hand near the tip of the iron without burning my fingers. This is amazingly good. The steam is a burst if the button is pushed, or continual if locked down. Let me tell you, there is steam.

Sauna steam, there-goes-your-hair steam. Now that, of course, is if you are keeping the steam on continually and doing a lot of work, as I did when testing it recently by pressing a large pile of pillowcases.*

It really pushes steam through the fabric, even thick fabrics. I tested it out on a pair of jeans and was surprised at how the other side looked without pressing. The pillowcases were so fast - everything is faster - that I stacked two at a time and it was fine. 

It does take about 7 - 10 minutes to heat, and can be refilled while it's still hot. In the first few days I worried about my decision and wondered if I should have ordered the Rowenta as well and given them side-by-side tests, then I got a grip on myself and let it go. 

It's early, but I think this is a good addition to the sewing room. The steam, weight of the iron, ability to hold more water than a portable iron, and genuine difference between dry and steam are all good qualities. I am concerned about leaving it running for hours at a time while sewing, and the instructions do indicate that it should be turned off to cool down after an hour of use. 

 *Yes, sometimes I press the pillowcases and my more expensive sheets. This helps prevent fraying and wear from the creases along the edge that will eventually "crack" the fibers. Since I'm not a pressed-to-perfection person I have to remind myself that this falls under the category of properly taking care of things and just do it.

Tutorial: A Better Dust Ruffle

Dust ruffles are practical (they hide the stuff under the bed) and pretty (they finish a bedroom nicely) and annoying (they never stay where they are supposed to and are often a little too short or a little too long) and sometimes hard to come by (in the right color, mattress size, and length).

I fixed every one of those problems. You're welcome. 

One of the bedrooms needed a black dust ruffle, full, ruffled-not-tailored, and with a 20" drop. Impossible to find in town, easy to order online, although as a 21" drop. After thinking through the steps of making a perfect dust ruffle for my master bedroom redecorating project, I came up with this method of altering a purchased dust ruffle to make it easier to install and live with. No velcro, no hot glue guns.

Keep in mind that a dust ruffle, or dust skirt, has two parts: the "deck" which is the flat piece of fabric that covers the box spring, and the ruffle, or skirt, which might be pleated or gathered. Either style of skirt will work with this method. You need your dust ruffle, shears, and a package of twisty pins, otherwise known as upholstery pins. You'll find them at fabric shops, dollar stores, and sometimes department stores. 

1. Cut the center of the deck out of the ruffle by leaving a 4 inch border on top of the seam where the dust ruffle is attached. In my picture the ruffle is black, the deck is white (they usually are), and I have left a 4 inch border all the way around the dust ruffle.

Keep cutting around the entire dust ruffle, maintaining the same 4 inches, being careful to only cut the deck fabric. You will end up with this,

a rectangle of fabric from the center of your dust ruffle. Rip it up, it will be a great addition to the rag pile. The dust ruffle is now a long strip, like this:

2. You need to finish the long edge you just cut, or it will continually unravel and be a nightmare after you wash it. You can serge the edge or zigzag it if you have machines. If you don't you could press a small hem and use fusible tape, or put in a movie and settle in for a handsewing session. I serged.

3. Press the dust ruffle before attaching it to the box spring. The mattress does not need to be completely removed but can instead just be pushed off to the side a bit to give you room to attach the skirt border with pins. Start with a corner since the skirt has more gathers there, or possibly a split, to allow for a smooth turn.

4. Work your way around the bed, paying attention to the hem and how even it is along the floor. Use as many pins as needed to keep the ruffle from shifting.

Easy to remove for washing, it will stay in place when the sheets are changed, and it can be adjusted all the way around. Not a bad 30 minutes!

Sewing Machine Hypnosis

While thinking aloud to a sewing friend about the process of making this dust ruffle, I realized that I would be running 20 yard lengths of fabric through the machines several times as I hemmed, serged, gathered, and attached the pieces. I confessed that I like mindlessly sewing long seams. There is something hypnotic about the combination of the sound of the motor, sitting still, and basically staring into one focused spot.  My friend instantly understood, replying, "Listen - there are days when all I should do is take the needle out of the sewing machine and just sit there with it running."

I am still laughing.