Happy Socktober!
Somewhat random Thursday.
1. I made a Concord grape pie out of Nancy Baggett's dessert book a couple weeks back because I didn't have enough grapes to make jam with. Baggett said this was a prizewinning recipe from some grape event in New York. I think that's because a) the other pies must have been really, really terrible; or b) this was the only entry in the category of "purple grape pies."
Oh recipe, my recipe, what is wrong with you? The crust called for vegetable oil instead of solid shortening. Ick. The filling tasted like forkful upon forkful of grape jam. Weird. I'm afraid Concords pretty much taste like grape juice or grape jelly and any other use is doomed.
2. I discovered, when I had to put Jamie in one of the emergency disposable diapers we keep around here for airports and laundry crises, that the only thing the kid has to hold his pants up is his big cloth diaper and cover. In cloth, he wears 12-month pants; in paper, he's lucky to get 9-month pants that stay up.
3. The Fool enjoys talking to me when I am half awake, and I'm only posting this to beat him to it. Previous conversations featured Ron Yaga, the usually anonymous husband of the Russian folklore witch Baba Yaga (the one who rides in a mortar and pestle and lives in a hut on chicken feet) and what Claude Monet's nieces and nephews did when they saw him (answer: Yelled "aaaaagh!") Last night, I explained, in somewhat exasperated tones, that pants are actually called "Joy to the worlds," because everyone is happy to see a person wearing pants and not walking around in their underwear. If the Fool were a dog, that conversation would be the smelly thing he is rolling in with great, overflowing happiness.
4. It is getting colder here and so in honor of fall arriving, and partly because I can, I put on a fresh pair of never-worn-before handknit socks. These are toe up! I have never knit toe-up socks before. I learned how to do this at Sock Summit (I think my reasoning was that I wasn't going all that distance to listen to people tell me how to do things I was comfortable with in sock knitting) from Deb Barnhill's "Toe Up Socks For the Stubborn" class. Next time, I think I need to make the foot of the sock a little shorter. I didn't really understand that until I knit it. I also need to be more diligent about writing down relevant numbers, stitch counts at various points, etc. The second sock had a little creative knitting to it, as I tried to remember how it went.
Judy's Magic Cast-on at the toe, EZ's sewn bindoff at the top, Charlene Schurch's garter rib in between. Yarn is Colinette Jitterbug in Blue Parrot.
1. I made a Concord grape pie out of Nancy Baggett's dessert book a couple weeks back because I didn't have enough grapes to make jam with. Baggett said this was a prizewinning recipe from some grape event in New York. I think that's because a) the other pies must have been really, really terrible; or b) this was the only entry in the category of "purple grape pies."
Oh recipe, my recipe, what is wrong with you? The crust called for vegetable oil instead of solid shortening. Ick. The filling tasted like forkful upon forkful of grape jam. Weird. I'm afraid Concords pretty much taste like grape juice or grape jelly and any other use is doomed.
2. I discovered, when I had to put Jamie in one of the emergency disposable diapers we keep around here for airports and laundry crises, that the only thing the kid has to hold his pants up is his big cloth diaper and cover. In cloth, he wears 12-month pants; in paper, he's lucky to get 9-month pants that stay up.
3. The Fool enjoys talking to me when I am half awake, and I'm only posting this to beat him to it. Previous conversations featured Ron Yaga, the usually anonymous husband of the Russian folklore witch Baba Yaga (the one who rides in a mortar and pestle and lives in a hut on chicken feet) and what Claude Monet's nieces and nephews did when they saw him (answer: Yelled "aaaaagh!") Last night, I explained, in somewhat exasperated tones, that pants are actually called "Joy to the worlds," because everyone is happy to see a person wearing pants and not walking around in their underwear. If the Fool were a dog, that conversation would be the smelly thing he is rolling in with great, overflowing happiness.
4. It is getting colder here and so in honor of fall arriving, and partly because I can, I put on a fresh pair of never-worn-before handknit socks. These are toe up! I have never knit toe-up socks before. I learned how to do this at Sock Summit (I think my reasoning was that I wasn't going all that distance to listen to people tell me how to do things I was comfortable with in sock knitting) from Deb Barnhill's "Toe Up Socks For the Stubborn" class. Next time, I think I need to make the foot of the sock a little shorter. I didn't really understand that until I knit it. I also need to be more diligent about writing down relevant numbers, stitch counts at various points, etc. The second sock had a little creative knitting to it, as I tried to remember how it went.
Judy's Magic Cast-on at the toe, EZ's sewn bindoff at the top, Charlene Schurch's garter rib in between. Yarn is Colinette Jitterbug in Blue Parrot.
Comments
That comment makes me think about the Ricky Gervais podcast again. Are you familiar with it? He and Steven Merchant basically spend the whole time making fun of their engineer, Karl Pilkington. But, really, he kind of asks for it. He talks about waking his wife/girlfriend up in the middle of the night and asking, "Did I ever tell you about the immune system?" So that's kind of made its way into our vocabulary :)