Knitting up Rhinebeck 2008: The Original Stash

 

Despite the fact I've finally been digging deep into the immense yarn stash I've accumulated over the past 10 years, I seem to have forgotten to remind myself just how fast the stuff can accumulate...as it did in 2008.

I did not approach my first Rhinebeck, NY Sheep & Wool Festival thinking I would find bargains. I wanted the amazing artisianal stuff that would inspire me as I fingered and smooshed it and sighed over it. I happily paid the dyers and spinners what they asked and deserved, and I loved what I got.

Oh boy. I went nuts. I always went nuts at yarn sales before, buying 10-skein bags at crazy prices and thinking always in sweater quantities. But this was different. Intoxicating in different ways. So I filled up a couple of bags with yarn yarn yarn yarn YARN and then I went home and took the picture above.

Then life got busy, and though I wound a lot of the yarn into ready-to-knit balls I was a bit slow to work on them. I didn't have a lot of hat, scarf or shawl patterns lying around. I had to find one-skein projects for my wonderful new stash. (Not too hard really, as some of those skeins were BIG.) Fortunately I had just joined Ravelry a couple of months earlier, and so the world's greatest database of knitting patterns was at my fingertips. Bwa-ha-ha!

Recently, I was quite pleased to realize that most of the 2008 Rhinebeck yarn is actually used up! I still have a few skeins of navy blue lace-weight (a couple of shawls are queued for this), 8 hanks of orange and green-grey rayon blend (really still no idea), some very neon-bright purple/green/turquoise worsted that really better become a sweater someday, and a couple of random, very colorful sock yarns.

Knitting up Rhinebeck 2008: Sliver Moon Rose Garden Shawl

Knitting lace shawls is endlessly entertaining. I credit my visit to Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool in 2008 for starting me on my shawl odyssey. I picked up a lot of sock-weight and lace-weight yarns mostly because ooh pretty but I really did intend to stretch my knitting horizons, one skein at a time.

This very pretty orchid-purple fingering yarn from Sliver Moon Farm was completely irresistible, and so much of it for so few $$! I first envisioned a sweater. As time passed and I became addicted to shawl-knitting, I decided to use it for that instead. So 1/2 the skein became a pretty Rose Garden Shawl (free pattern, yay!) for my friend who recently completed grad school. (She hadn't completed it when I started this, but I had faith!) Even the name fit...her younger daughter's name is Rosie!

The rest of the yarn is destined for a shawl, too. Haven't quite decided which one.

Fuente del RITMO

Finding a great new wine is always a thrill! The shop nearest my house now has a refrigerated walk-in room with all the white wines in stock, and for some strange reason I always feel more adventurous picking wine from there instead of the regular shelves. Maybe it's the idea that I could drink it right away...?

Discovered a Spanish white called "Fuente del Ritmo", Centro Espanola, La Mancha, 2012. Made from a grape I never heard of, Airen. I feel kind of silly about that. My explorations of Spanish wines clearly leave something to be desired, well beyond Tempranillo and Albarino!

It turned out the wine was absolutely perfect for a quick throw-together meal of green veggies, roasted potatoes and smoked trout fillets with capers. Another bottle went great with sashimi.

Cool, refreshing, semi-dry, full-bodied. The overwhelming flavors were tropical fruit -- lychee, pineapple -- with a strong peach element. Reminded me a bit of peach schnapps or a great Moscato! Nice acid on the back of the tongue too, which is why it was sooooo good with fish.

Imma buy MORE.

Clowesetum Raymond Lerner

It seems hard to believe I've been growing orchids under lights alone for 20 years now. That is to say, for twice as long as I grew orchids on windowsills. And I still have so much to learn. Changing over from T-12 to T-8 light fixtures is going slowly, but excellent results so far. More light for the same $$, and the plants really seem to enjoy that wider-spectrum boost.

I picked up this Clowesetum Raymond Lerner not long after I was forced into all-lights growing. I absolutely love Catasetums, and desperately wanted to try growing one even though bringing a large deciduous plant into a limited space setup was, frankly, crazy. I knew Catasetum pileatum could get quite large, but hoped the Clowesia russeliana parent would keep the plant size down. I totally lucked out...not long after I got mine, I saw one at an orchid show that was ENORMOUS, with two really long spikes full of flowers that looked very much like the Clowesia. But my plant stayed pretty compact.

For 10 years, it bloomed with a couple of flowers every 2 years. It piddled along, growing but not really thriving. Repotting definitely helped. Feeding helped. But then the next 10 years were sad. Even while other orchids were making me happy, the CRL was not happy. It only bloomed three times, and one time the spike blasted. I was not happy. The back bulbs shriveled, as they will in this genus. Repotting time again.

And a big rethink of the rest period. Warmer and brighter, as Fred Clarke and other Catasetum geniuses say, is better. So after the leaves died, I stuck the plant, still in only a 6" pot, on the bottom shelf of my lights off to the side a bit, instead of on the Windowsill of Exile and Doom. Watered it every 7-10 days to keep it alive, as the winter humidity is root-puckeringly bad. Watched

This spring, the second year in the "new" mix, I saw nice upright aerial "basket" roots forming, on a really nice fat new bulb growth. Yay! I decided to keep it where it was, as the leaves seemed quite OK from the amount of light they were getting -- near the center of the T-12s, but a couple of inches away to the side.

I was being really good about feeding my plants this spring. And I spritzed everything like mad, once a week, with MegaThrive, including the Catasetum.

And then the spikes appeared. TWO of them. This happened.

Needless to say, I'm going to be really nice to this plant from now on.

Knitting up Rhinebeck 2012: Red Hypernova Shawlette

It's not easy being a yarn magpie. Well, the shopping part is easy. But then deciding what to make of each skein, or set of skeins...and figuring out where to put them in the meantime...those are problems we usually don't think about when we're doing the shopping.

I did try to be mindful, when shopping at Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival 2012, of what I already have and why I have it, and therefore avoid duplication and fill in gaps with things in my current taste. Because as I've been playing with my stash over the past year, rearranging the storage bags roughly by Do These First, Do These Next, etc., I realized that a whole bunch of older yarns had fallen out of favor. Stuff I really wanted to work on last summer, suddenly not so much. Which is great, because now I just have to relocate them to a new Giveaway bag and re-prioritize everything else.(And the trouble is, all this playing with stash takes time away from actually knitting any of it. But really that's another post.)

While my absolute favorite colors remain dark turquoise, leaf green and deep purple, preferably all together in one yarn (indie dyers all over seem to agree), I'm not committed to having all my yarns be just variations or combinations of those. I like black, hot pink, orange, red and dark blue too. Even gray. Even brown, if it's delicate and toasty and warm. I think the color least represented in my stash has to be red. Several friends of mine are fiends for red, and it suits them, but putting it too close to my fair skin doesn't work all that well so I learned over the years to avoid it (despite the bright scarlet sweater dress I wore in my 20s, among other experiments). I certainly wouldn't knit a red sweater for myself.

But a shawl? In exotic shades of red ranging from chestnut to pink? Well, there it was, hanging on the wall at Persimmon Tree Farm's booth. 2 skeins of unique Piggy Toes merino sock yarn, luscious squoooshy soft 560 yards of pure awesomesauce. 2 skeins was enough for a cropped cardigan, but really one skein just cried out to become a Hypernova shawlette. The destiny of the other skein awaits, but it certainly will become some other shawl...one of the couple of hundred patterns in my Ravelry queue. 

Chicken with Fresh Apricot Sauce

Improvising dinner isn't all that hard, if you have a base recipe in mind and accidentally happen to have a great combination of ingredients on hand. Tonight proved that to me, again.

I had errands to do on the way home from work, that usually tire me out, but I really didn't want to resort to takeout or delivery again. So I picked up a package of bone-in/skin-on chicken thighs, figuring I'd make my favorite and very reliable Chicken in Mustard Sauce, based on a recipe from one of Jacques Pepin's books that I've been making for years and years. It's utterly foolproof. Also really best made with dark chicken, but that's a personal preference.

I happened to also buy a dozen lovely ripe apricots at the same supermarket, and by the time I got to the stove the recipe was evolved in my mind into a fruity sweet/sour sauce. Last year I discovered the pleasure of adding halved fresh apricots to the pan when roasting a chicken. Well, same difference!

So, recipe for 4 chicken thighs: begin sauteing the chicken in olive oil, seasoned with just salt and pepper, in a just-large-enough nonstick pan over medium heat. Add 1 small chopped onion to pan, and a good sprinkle of thyme. Turn chicken pieces and place over the onion bits.

When onion begins to brown, add a splash (that is, about a tablespoon) of decent sherry (NOT  nasty supermarket cooking sherry). Stir, let bubble, and cover the pan and lower the heat a bit.

After about ten minutes, add 4 or 5 small apricots -- halved, pitted, each half cut into 3-4 pieces. (Use fewer apricots if you've got big ones.) Stir. Add 1 teaspoon Palm Sugar Jaggery -- this stuff is like wet brown sugar, and is great to cook with. Stir. Turn chicken. The pan should have accumulated some juices.

Cover again, let cook another 5-10 minutes until chicken is pretty much done. Add about 1 teaspoon good balsamic vinegar, stir juices and now-dissolving apricots. Turn chicken again. Simmer a couple of minutes uncovered. Turn off heat. Let sit 5 minutes to let chicken juices settle.

I served this with sauteed potatoes and asparagus. Anything that soaks up the sauce is allowable. The fruity, tangy, tart-sweet sauce went really well with dry, fruity, non-oaky Fetzer Chardonnay.

I can hardly wait until I make this again! Like next week. Apricots will be in season awhile!

Angraecum didieri

Mini Angraecums are a peculiar addiction that has affected all too many of my friends. Surely such small plants could hardly be a problem...and then you have twenty of them, all of costly, several needing Special Conditions or at the very least a bit of coddling. In return, you may or may not get lovely fragrant white flowers in varying quantities, for varying periods of time. Sounds fair to me!

My personal forays into the Angraecoids were mostly limited to Aerangises, which have performed poorly for me. Or I let them down. Either way, I decided to give up. But lo! Last year Cal-Orchid released a large selection of Angraecum didieri, multiple growths, in spike or just blooming size. I had to have one.

I flowered it, and then nearly killed it. What the hell! Yellowed and then browned leaves, bottom to top. The crowns barely hung on. I suspected thrips and washed the plant. I doused with cinnamon. I watered, spritzed, shifted to another spot. It sulked. It did nothing at all but remain alive. I suspected I'd overwatered and cut back a bit. The mix seemed OK, so I didn't mess with that.

So naturally I got another one this spring, when opportunity arose. And...

Well, it sort of sat there for a month, which wasn't surprising, really. Tentatively, it made a leaf from one of the two growths. Extended a few root tips. Sat there some more. The two tantalizing spikes did nothing. It got watered with everything else, with both plain water and MSU fertilizer (at irregular intervals). Then I decided to finally open the bottle of MegaThrive I got late last year, and spray it all over everything, twice a week.

Buds and flowers on EVERYTHING. Well, not everything. But the newer Ang. didieri burst into bloom literally within ten days of being sprayed. One of the tantalizing spikes evolved nearly overnight. One more tantalizing spike remains...

The older plant, meanwhile, remains alive. It now clearly needs repotting, along with a couple dozen other plants, so hope springs eternal.