My Goodreads Reading Challenges, part 1: 2020

 A few years ago, the end of 2018 to be precise, I thought I would have an easier time reading and finishing many of the many, many books in my To Be Read pile. The reason was, I was no longer a full-time employee anywhere, but freelance, and given my lazy approach to finding work I thought this would mean more time to knit, more time to read, more time to Do Things that were not directly employment related. For example, I finished writing a second novel, and kept working on my third and fourth! And started cleaning out our crowded apartment of superfluous things. And pampering my plants.

As for more time to read? Once upon a time I read short stories voraciously, subscribed to all the SFF mags and bought collections and anthologies. But my tastes shifted over the years, and I began craving longer and longer stories practically to the exclusion of true short stories. The quality of available reading material had nothing to do with it. Just personal taste.

Things didn’t happen quite the way I imagined. During 2018, when I still commuted an hour each day by bus, and often spent lunch time at my desk, and we flew on lengthy trips several times, I read a lot of books. Seventy two! Same as 2017! And back in 2016 I read 77, perhaps an all-time personal best. I’ll write about those books some other time. (And yes, I’m using Goodreads to track all that.)

In 2019, I made the same modest goal of reading 50 books that I had for years past. And read 55! I blamed it on shorter bus rides, not traveling by air as much, and having generally more stuff to do.

Then…pandemic. Surely, even the distraction of having Spouse home all day working from home could not prevent me from continuing to tackle my book-reading goals head on. Surely I’d get lots of knitting done, lots of reading done. I once again set a goal of 50 books, which seemed eminently doable.

But I read only 39 full books in 2020. Many were but novellas, or even shorter. Graphic novels, with not much dialogue. I know now, that between pandemic and politics I wasn’t alone in struggling to concentrate enough to get through some very anxious periods. I thoroughly enjoyed what I read. But I worried about my aging brain, and set the same goal of 50 books for 2021. Which I missed. By a lot.

(I will report that thankfully neither I nor Spouse actually contracted Covid that year. Nor since, so far.)

2020 books included:

The Death of the Necromancer, by Martha Wells
Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy, and Network Effect, by Martha Wells
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
Paladin’s Grace, and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher
Life of David Hockney, by Catherine Cusset
Stormsong, and Midnight Bargain by CL Polk
Gideon the Ninth, and Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
Beneath the Rising, by Premee Mohamed
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djeli Clark
Color, by Victoria Finlay
The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie
Blackfish City, by Sam J. Miller
The Empire of Gold, by SA Chakraborty
The Vinyl Detective: Low Action, by Andrew Cartmel
Rag and Bone, and Slippery Creatures, by KJ Charles
Storm of Locusts, by Rebecca Roanhorse
The House of Sundering Flames, and Of Dragons Feasts and Murders, by Aliette de Bodard
Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh
A Pocketful of Lodestones, by Elizabeth Crowens
The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels
Daemon Voices, by Philip Pullman
The Physicians of Vilnoc, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Girl Genius: Queens and Pirates, by Phil & Kaja Foglio

(I am omitting several things I read mostly for research purposes for my own writing.)

TO BE CONTINUED...

Variations on a Tuna

Saw an interesting idea for lunch in a recent NYT Food newsletter, and tried it today. SUCCESS. We both loved it! 

 
Mix canned tuna (1 can for 2 people) with a little soy sauce, a little sesame oil, as much mayo as you like (I am using Kewpie these days), mix with chopped cucumber (I used 1 small seedless for 2 people) and chopped scallion. Put over hot rice. Add a few shakes of furikake (flaked nori and sesame seeds).

Not so much a recipe as a procedure, as all is to taste. Other ideas included were chopped radish, avocado and tomato. I'll definitely try those!

Previously, my fanciest tuna salad lunches were scallions, dill, olives, capers and mayo and olive oil, sometimes sliced grape tomatoes. Diced celery is good too, but I usually only buy celery in fall and winter. Other times too lazy, just use mayo, capers and lemon pepper or Italian herb blend. I'm going to try chili-lime spice blend too! 

You can use whatever canned tuna you like, of course, solid or light. We eat canned tuna once a week or so, alternating types. 

My tuna salad notions came about after many years of my being convinced I didn't like canned tuna, while my Spouse claims he practically lived on tuna sandwiches for years while a bachelor. I gradually came to appreciate it, now I even crave it sometimes. 

I started out ages ago making a "Tuscan Tuna Salad" we ate in pita pockets or over beds of lettuce. 

• Sauté in olive oil: sliced scallions, diced fennel, red bell pepper, 1 can small white beans until warmed. 
• Mixed with tuna, diced cucumber, chopped parsley and dill. 
• Chopped olives are optional. I like them. 
• Simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. Lots of fresh ground pepper. Salt. 
• Again, not a real recipe, more a procedure. Spouse can't eat raw onion, for example, so I use scallions instead, but you could use diced red or sweet raw onion. 

Quantities vary. I literally never measure chopped or sliced veggies in any recipe. I go by what would serve the 2 of us, depending on whether we want leftovers or not. Tuscan Tuna Salad could absolutely become leftovers for lunch, so eyeball it. Quarter a fennel bulb for 2 servings, half for 4. Peppers come in all sizes, so maybe half a cup for 2 servings or 4. An entire small Persian cucumber for 2, or a few inches of a larger greenhouse cucumber. 

Then I started making several tuna-based toppings for pasta. My first version was: 

• Sauté shallot, garlic in olive oil; 
• Add petite diced canned tomatoes, basil pesto, chopped black olives, capers, flaked canned tuna, crushed red pepper and lots of black pepper. 
• Use whatever pasta you like. Curly pasta holds the topping really well. 

My delicious version of Pasta Puttanesca is really easy for a pantry dinner when I'm tired. Again, for 2 people:

• Sauté small chopped onion or large shallot in olive oil, with lots of garlic. 
• Add a generous heap of anchovies, 1 can of drained diced tomatoes and at least a heaping tablespoon of basil pesto. Cook down a bit. Stir a lot. 
• At the last minute, add the can of tuna, a handful of chopped olives and a few spoonfuls of capers. 
• Shake on some hot red pepper flakes, and plenty of grated Parmesan. 
• Serve with red wine! 

OF COURSE Salad Nicoise is still the king of tuna salad meals. I try not to make a huge production of it, as good tomatoes and green beans and baby potatoes are in the Greenmarket just when I don't want to heat up the house by cooking. So I cheat! 

• Cut the baby red potatoes in half. Boil. When they have boiled 5 minutes, add the green beans to the same pot. They will come out done at the same time. Drizzle with dressing while still warm. Let cool a bit. 
• Hard-boil eggs preferably some other time if it's hot in the kitchen. Peel and slice in half or quarters or whatever you like. 
• Meanwhile, prepare vinaigrette dressing (olive oil, lemon juice or red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard). I sometimes add some mayo. Lots of ground pepper. 
• Prepare the lettuce. Mix it with a bit of dressing. Slice tomatoes. 
• Break up the tuna you're using (the jarred filets are best but canned is fine). I like to pre-combine it with plenty of small olives and plenty of capers and plenty of drained anchovies. Fewer bowls to wash! Mix with a bit of dressing. 
• Serve however you like. I fill our bowls with lettuce, then we pick the rest. 

I have a David Rosengarten recipe for "Lemony Tuna and White Bean Antipasto Salad" that I still haven't tried, but it's pretty simple. Tuna, canned cannellini, olives, sliced celery, capers, parsley, roasted red pepper, all combined with a lemon juice & olive oil vinaigrette plus lemon zest. Maybe next week! 

Welcome to My World: The Magpie Prince Tales

Books help soothe us, inspire us, inform us, distract us, thrill us, terrify us, amuse us. Etcetera. I love to read all sorts of stories. Turns out I like to write all sorts, too, all within what I'm calling The Magpie Cycle, or Tales of the Magpie Prince. 

SEVEN FOR A SECRET, the first novel I finished a couple of years ago, is not soothing. It's a story about trauma, hubris, psychological abuse, misuse of authority, the urge to violence, and the terrible burden of trying to love one's family no matter what. The characters are nearly all demon-bred witches with varied magical powers, none of which keeps them from making terrible mistakes. There is bloodshed. Children suffer PTSD. It's set in 1955, in postwar northern England, and things that happened during WWII are still fresh in people's minds. The story is narrated by Gerry, the child most affected by events in the books, describing events from the perspective of an older man looking back.  

I don't think I realized quite how nasty all that was, when writing it, but it felt right, given the set of characters I'd created. They are likeable and also dangerous. Some of them have done terrible things but it's brushed off by those who love them, owing to social expectations. It's okay if this person has done terrible things...the results were worth it! They did it for the best reasons! And children take that in, and some of them learn to also accept it, and others do not and never will. 

This is the descriptive for the sales sites:

Gerry Llewellyn's mother is teaching him death magic, and his grandmother thinks he might help their family take over the world. He's eight. 

Waning magic in their land, and a legendary curse, meant British demon-bred witches were unable to enter the Otherworld, source of their strongest magic, for 200 years. Gerry and his father are the first seventh-born witches in all that time, a signal the curse may soon end, heralding a new era of greater power for them. But even his family can't agree whether this is a good thing. They have peaceful lives, blending in with the rest of humanity, doing much as they please in the more tolerant postwar years of the 1950s. Are vague promises of fabulous divine gifts worth upending that?

Already scarred by family secrets and politics, precocious Gerry hates being treated as a miracle child. And now Gerry's eldest brother is getting married, so the Llewellyn children have lots to do besides dealing with their emotionally damaged parents, death demon siblings, and a sundry lot of fractious relatives.

They are all about to learn that seventh sons are special all right, but it's their mothers you really need to watch out for...

THE RAGE OF CALIBAN is, I think, more amusing and inspirational.

I won't include spoilers, but will explain a bit. The book takes place ten years after SECRET, and includes many of the same characters. SECRET is set in 1955, CALIBAN in 1966. Lots and lots of things have happened to those characters since then, both good and bad. Gerry, the narrator of SECRET, is mentioned as “Morgan’s baby brother” but not by name, and does not actually appear. That was deliberate, as Gerry tends to take over a room. His brother, sisters and father are major characters, however, and his Manchester aunts and uncles, and even his grandmother. 

CALIBAN's main character, Phoebe Starwood, marries Gerry's older brother Morgan in 1964. She alludes to the wedding having been a bit of a disaster because of Gerry, but they remain happily coupled and now have an adorable and very loud infant daughter. 

I’m working on what may end up being three VERY long stories that happen between SECRET and CALIBAN. All are told from Gerry’s POV, and document his adventures between 1960, when he turns thirteen, and 1965, when the massive mess he’s made of his life really catches up with him. LUCKY THIRTEEN, GIRLFRIENDS AND BOYFRIENDS AND OTHER BAD HABITS, and HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL will show up…eventually. Most of the story is written, but not properly stitched together. I'm writing as fast as I can. 

Phoebe and Morgan’s wedding takes place in GIRLFRIENDS. Other characters in CALIBAN, including Lizzie and Daphne, show up in HELLHOUND. Saying anything else would be spoilers…

I'm also working on a related book that takes place at the same time as CALIBAN, with other characters we see in Gerry's stories and who are mentioned in CALIBAN. I'm tentatively calling it THE STINK OF MAGIC. 

My explanation for my (extremely fictional) demon-bred witches is that long ago, demigods (offspring of humans and godlike beings, see many ancient mythologies) kept mating with mortal humans gifted with a certain amount of fortitude. Some of those offspring went and did great deeds in the mortal realm—both good and bad—while others withdrew to the Otherworld of wherever they lived, and marinated in magical power and became what many mythologies think of as demons. A lot of magically gifted people ran into all sorts of trouble, and over the centuries their numbers rose and fell and rose. They learned to escape persecution, they developed new cultures within their families and clans, and now and then mated with demons to bring fresh magic powers into their blood lines. Non-human magical beings also exist, but are largely unseen by non-witches. I have a lot of fun with this idea.

I do also have a LOT of fun designing my book covers. Art school had to be good for something. 

Reading is Hard

 I used to read something like 50-60 books a year. 

I never thought I would burn out on reading. Or just find it difficult 

I have burned out on knitting, a couple of times, for varying lengths of time...once for nearly two years, more recently for about a year. Odd, how that coincided with my reading burnout. But I'm not alone, in that people who have taken the pandemic seriously have often found it hard to concentrate on things that were once enjoyable pastimes. Many of my friends have complained they can't focus on reading fiction anymore, or finish simple knitting projects, or paint, or...whatever they do. My plant growing friends seem to be an exception: the plants need care, and abandoning them seems cruel. Um, likewise. My orchids are doing pretty well. New shelf arrangements, new light fixtures, new plants via online order. 

The knitting is still going v e  r   y    s   l   o  w  l  y  these days but my once-a-month knitting group helps a bit, I actually made progress on a new piece the other day. And I'm nearly done with a super-super simple garter stitch shawl I only work on during long phone calls. 

But finding myself unable to dig into books properly, and read for several hours on end like I used to, is a whole other world. I began hitting a few roadblocks several years ago, even before pandemic times. I started to fall asleep while reading. Didn't matter what book, what subject, how fascinating...after about 20 minutes, zzzzz. Self hypnosis? Annoying as hell, whatever the reason. I get plenty of sleep! I don't work in an office, I sleep late if I need to! 

I used to read a great deal while commuting to/from work, on city buses that often got stuck in traffic. Yay, more time to read! Tore through a lot of paperbacks that way, then started to read ebooks on the move instead, with the Kindle app on my phone. If I wasn't knitting knitting knitting on a longer trip, I was reading reading reading.

Then something happened. Was it writing my own stories that absorbed all my reading desires? Was it just a shift in mindset? I still WANT to read. But starting a book...stopping after a few pages...not returning to it for days...that just wasn't ME. And the sleepiness thing often curtailed my stubborn attempts to dig into a new book. 

I came up with strategies. Read shorter books! Read novellas! Fortunately several favorite authors (Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher, Premee Mohamed, CL Polk, KJ Charles, Martha Wells) are also prolific authors of shorter works. Other faves came out with new books I absolutely had to read (Becky Chambers, SA Chakraborty). I caught up with several rock musician memoirs, finally started tearing through the Johannes Cabal books (Jonathan L. Howard), finally read The City We Became (NK Jemisin), Piranesi (Susanna Clarke), Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) and some older novels, as well as some pretty interesting non-fiction. I tore through both of Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb novels as soon as they were released, so there's that, too, and hope the third will be equally easy to devour. 

So I'm feeling a bit better now about my reading pace. It's MARCH dammit and I only just finished four books so far this year! Two of which I started LAST year! 

The two big things on my reading plate: The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson) and Perhaps the Stars (Ada Palmer). Tyrant is third in an incredible trilogy, a masterpiece of worldbuilding and character development, and I TORE through the first two books. This one is still sitting moribund in my Kindle queue. I haven't been confident enough to attempt it. But I will. 

The Palmer book is fourth in a series. I hardly ever buy hardcover fiction, but I made an exception for these books. The long wait between each one was no obstacle, for the first three. But now...I opened the new book and my heart dropped. I'd FORGOTTEN everything. I couldn't remember the salient details of what happened in the third book, or the others. I read five pages in a total fog, and realized to my dismay I'd have to go back and at least partially re-read the third book. That's fine, as I loved it. A lot happened in it. But oh, the delay in gratification...

Shelf-Stable Goods

I visited the NY Botanical Garden with my BFF yesterday, whose special-needs kids will likely be home for weeks so I won't get to see her for a while. They won't get educational therapy while they're at home, so she despairs of keeping them entertained while trying to get work done.

The orchids were very pretty. There weren't many people around. We had lunch in the sit-down restaurant, overpriced but tasty; the place was more than half full.

I went with my friend to the Aldi on Broadway in the Bronx. The lines wrapped up and down the aisles, and she later reported the shelves weren't being restocked because the cashiers are supposed to do that. I didn't need anything from there so I went home; I had a shopping list for my own neighborhood, as Spouse started working from home today.

The express bus passed the Met Museum, where fewer people than usual were lingering on the steps. I felt heartsick for the street vendors who won't have thousands of tourists thronging their carts for weeks and weeks. I hope they can survive.

As I rode a bus home, my iPod offered up, in a row:
The Weeping Song, Nick Drake
I Wanna Be Sedated, the Ramones
Bad Medicine, Bon Jovi

THEN the supermarket all-70s muzak offered up OH MY MY by Ringo Starr. "I called up my doctor to see what's the matter, He said come on over, I said do I haveta..."

THANKS UNIVERSE.

I bought a lot of durable groceries this week, to supplement the stuff we already had: rice, pasta, ramen, canned tomatoes, butter, cheese, potatoes, turnips, carrots, hummus, peanut butter, crackers, chocolate, cookies, frozen sausage, frozen veggies, matzoh, popcorn. Hot sauce for all the rice and beans in our future. WINE. Got a hunk of corned beef for the weekend and a head of cabbage, enough to share with Spouse's elderly aunt whom we are still planning to visit on Sunday.

(We already had beans, coconut milk, jam, canned soup & shelf-stable broth, corn chips, pumpkin, couscous, bulgur, cornmeal, coffee, tea, cereal, raisins, nuts, granola bars, chutney. Ordered more Birds & Beans coffee the 2 of us usually drink 3 cups a day total.)

Eggs keep for over a month in the fridge. We eat a lot of eggs. I bought a lot of eggs. There were plenty in the stores.

The supermarket has lines, as does the gourmet market, but I've seen worse on just regular weekends. Shelves were being restocked all week. The usual stuff was flying out: paper goods (we have plenty), bread (we have enough), Clorox wipes (we have LOTS). I did buy extra laundry detergent and dishwashing liquid. Gourmet market coffee was partly cleaned out today -- a lot of people won't be going to Starbucks next week as usual.

I got good at prepping due to 9/11, Hurricane Sandy and various big blizzards. I know how to cook meats and veg nobody else seems to bother with. Today I got oxtails that I can freeze, and make stew whenever, same as I did during Sandy when more popular fresh meats were scarce. The freezer also contains random sausages, a package of ground bison for chili, and a roast chicken carcass for soup.

Pretzels don't seem popular with food hoarders, while chips & popcorn go fast. Judging by what's gone first, I suspect a lot of the folks emptying the shelves don't actually cook very much, and aren't entirely sure what to buy or how much. They aren't buying things to eat NOW -- fresh fish or fresh produce, only fresh meat, so maybe they're freezing all that chicken? First rule of prepping, don't eat the storeable goods until all else is gone!

I should've bought fish for tonight's dinner but I forgot as soon as I had ground lamb in hand, so oh well, so much for my own advice...

NaNoWriMo 2019 OMG

WHAT HAVE I DONE

I wrote 40k words of a NEW NOVEL in one month. I did THE THING.

National Novel Writing Month has become quite a phenomenon among young writers. I do NOT say would-be writers, as all writing counts. I don't care if you only write fanfic for personal consumption, or share it on AO3. I don't care if you only write blog posts twice a year. I don't care if you have dozens of short stories that still haven't sold, or have sold only one story of those dozens. Writing is writing. Art and self-expression matter. If you're not a writer, maybe you draw or paint or knit or sew or bake cakes or sing karaoke or dance or weave or make your own soap or take pictures of birds or collect cat figurines. If you're not hurting anyone with your art -- including yourself -- then enjoy it.*

And even if I didn't already believe that with all my heart, meeting a lively group of fellow NaNoWriMo participants last month would convince anyone. These were terrific folks who love to read and want to write but need some extra incentive to sit and commit words strung together into stories. Some were doing NaNo for years already, and had never finished anything, or worked on their novels the other 11 months. That's ok. Others had finished novels of varying lengths but hadn't done the cleanup necessary to try and find an agent or publisher.

Some of these folks are incredibly busy working and raising kids and managing elder care and facing all sorts of other challenges. Some are just young and still finding their voice. Others are trying to find the right idiom for their expression and aren't thinking about being published.

All of it is good. NaNo is a great challenge to just SIT and WRITE and get a story told. I'm glad more and more people take the challenge. Now, I do hear that agents and publishers get absolutely inundated with barely-finished, sub-par 50k novels every December and January -- that a lot of NaNo folks feel their stream-of-consciousness masterpieces are DONE once the calendar ticks over to December 1. Well, those folks are unfortunately delusional, and are cluttering up the lives of publishing professionals with unprofessional work, and that's a shame.

Very few people who write ever get published. That's a fact. That's why there are millions of self-published stories and novels out in the world now (hey, including mine). Publishing is a very weird business and not everyone can stand the weirdness. Lots of writers have one published novel and then are never heard of again -- sometimes its the publisher's fault, sometimes the agent's, sometimes the writer just can't produce more good work, sometimes the next work gets rejected. It's disheartening to hear the stories writers can tell about this.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE. Here's what I did: I took what I thought was a pretty good short story, took my writing group's advice on making it much much better, and then started looking at SFF genre short story markets. They are incredibly hard to sell to. There are thousands and thousands of really good writers selling short fiction and I've realized I'll never be one of them. I don't think in 1000 - 10,000 word bursts. I'm one of those elaborately wordy bitches who can't build a world or a story that short. The story I wrote, "The Rage of Caliban," takes place in the same world as Seven for a Secret, with many of the same characters (now about 10 years older). The group thought it was a great opening for another novel. NOOOOOOO. I was already working on three other novels in that story cycle!

But I thought about it for a few months, and ultimately gave in. So in September I started expanding the existing 8000 word story, and by November 1 I had 23k done. I plunged into NaNoWriMo with great enthusiasm. It seemed the ideal way to approach just getting the whole darned thing done.

And it worked! I fell short, I only achieved 39k on the scoreboard. Tacked onto that original 23k I ended up with 62k of a nearly-finished novel. I've kept going, I have no intention of NOT finishing this sucker. The Rage of Caliban will probably end up around 80k, a respectable length. I've started back-editing as a way of correcting some continuity issues, and shuffling characters around,

Seven for a Secret is about the angst of a young demon-bred witch boy born into an impossibly damaged family confronting an impossible situation. Gerry's not a "chosen one" among his people, he's the thing that allows someone else to do the thing a chosen one customarily does. And that's much worse, from his point of view.

The rest of his story cycle -- four more novels and novellas, if I'm dogged enough to finish them -- takes Gerry on his life journey towards adulthood. He's not nice. He's scarred, selfish and arrogant, thoroughly an asshole, though he tries to be better. He loves deeply and hates fiercely. He makes some terrible mistakes that ruin other people's lives. Everything good he tries to do goes wrong. The people around him try to forgive and forget -- he was born special, after all, and they can't quite shake that -- but eventually the mistakes pile up and force him to humility and responsibility. This arc covers 1955-1965, mostly in northern England. The cast of characters is bloody enormous, and I refuse to apologize for that. It's still smaller than that of Game of Thrones. I also really enjoy all the British Invasion blues and rock research I continue to do.

The Rage of Caliban takes place in 1966, with Gerry's older brother's wife as the focus. (Gerry doesn't appear in the story at all, except for a couple of mentions.) I adore Phoebe Starwood, I created her years ago but didn't do much with her--mainly, she stood by rather helplessly as Gerry and his girlfriend unintentionally wrecked her wedding. I knew she was an artist. She liked snapping pictures of family events and travel scenery, and made the best of having fallen in love with a member of the most notorious (and dangerous) coven in Britain. When a story idea popped into my head, I knew she would be the POV character, and would deal with the situation with stubborn intelligence. I knew I would really enjoy torturing her! It was also really fun to get myself out of Gerry's head, and into hers instead. Unlike her terrible brother-in-law, Phoebe is not an asshole. 😁

I really hope I can finish Rage by the end of December...I'll definitely do a new round of agent queries with this one. Wish me luck.


*"Harm" takes many forms. Endorsed bigotry and racism and misogyny in a story is harmful, as opposed to your narrative making it clear why those things are bad and have bad consequences. Harming yourself or people around you can happen if you begin to ignore the real world and its responsibilities, and possibilities -- you might start acting like a dick without even realizing it or getting therapy or other help. Don't be a dick.

Lamb: it's what's for dinner

Having grown up eating lots and lots of lamb, I'm happy to keep figuring out new ways of incorporating it into dinners. I'm lucky that Spouse also enjoys lamb any number of ways.

Lamb shanks are a favorite winter stew. They take 3 hours to cook properly, but it's worth all the trouble. My base recipe is onions, garlic and a few cups of durable chopped vegetables--turnips, carrots, parsnips, mushrooms, winter squash, cauliflower--plus either beer or wine as the cooking liquid, and generous amounts of whatever seasoning suits our fancy of the evening. I'm particularly fond of Herbes de Provence, Kofte Kebab spice, or sorta-kinda Italian herbs.

If you're lucky enough to find breast of lamb riblets, as I frequently am in my local supermarket, they are a bit of trouble but are absolutely delicious. They need VERY long roasting for such small amounts of meat, but it's nearly impossible to mess up. Just cut up the breast section into smaller pieces -- 3 or 4 ribs per piece -- season with salt & pepper and any spice mix you fancy with lamb, and lay them on a bed of onion, celery and carrots in a deep roasting pan. Roast at 350F for between 2 and 3 hours, which will seem ridiculous but honestly, it's necessary. The meat just won't be tender otherwise. The result is tender (but still slightly chewy) meat that falls of the tiny bones, with richly browned fat. Don't bother trimming before cooking: just be resigned to eating and ejecting some gristle. If there's enough meat to use a knife and fork, yay! Otherwise just pick up and nibble, same as any other ribs.

Roasted breast of lamb ribs with a lot of roasted veggies. 

My parents ate a lot of lamb mostly because it was cheap when I was a kid. My dad bought my mom a hacksaw JUST so she could cut up whole legs of lamb we bought on sale. Each leg fed us for over a week: steaks to broil or saute, hunks for stew, shanks to freeze until we had enough for another stew. Just roasting that leg entire was a treat for Easter. I still make roast leg of lamb if we're having company, but I usually buy a butt-half leg partially boned, or have the butcher bone the whole thing so I can stuff it with garlic and herbs. 

If I buy a supermarket boned leg, it usually comes wrapped in a string net, and is a royal mess that needs cleanup with a good sharp boning knife. All that lamb fat needs to come off. And that thick membrane, the fell, that covers muscle groups...you can't eat that, and the seasoning won't penetrate it, so you gotta use that knife and gently peel it all off. 

If roasting or stewing lamb is too much effort and the grocery budget allows, loin lamb chops are amazing. Tiny T-bone steaks! Thin ones can be pan-sauteed. Thicker ones can be pan-roasted (started on the stovetop, moved to the oven to finish).

But ground lamb is our favorite thing these days. There is so much you can do with it! I get that not everyone can easily find it, but if you have any kind of access to it, try it. It's mostly made from lamb shoulder meat. It's a bit fatty, that's unavoidable, but i

There are tons of lamb burger recipes all over the internet. ALL OF THEM ARE GOOD. You can't go wrong. I have settled on a simplified Ur-Lamb Burger -- ground lamb plus salt, pepper, seasoning of choice, 1 beaten egg per pound, 1/2 cup bread crumbs (either dry or fresh). I'm not fond of burgers stuffed with cheese bits, but YMMV. Bulgur and yogurt are nearly always good sides. Note that pan-fried burgers will end up swimming in their own grease. All you have to do is put them aside to drain them. Grilled burgers have no such problem, of course.

On days when seasoning and mixing and forming and cooking burgers is too much trouble, which is most days nowadays, I do what I've come to call a Lamb Scramble. You can call it whatever you like, and use ANY lamb stew, tagine or curry recipe as a starting point. Here's a mock-Moroccan dish I made with ground lamb, onions, garlic, butternut squash, olives and peas. (Probably a few other things I've forgotten.) Side here is mashed golden potatoes and golden cauliflower.

This lamb & butternut squash stew (from Cooking Light) is a great guide for experimentation. (Don't use beef stock! Use wine! Or beer! I don't care for so much liquid in this recipe anyway.) Use carrots instead of squash, use spinach instead of kale. When I made it, I used Kalustyan's KOFTE KEBAB seasoning in addition to the recommended spices, and the result really honestly tasted like kofte kebab, or doner kebab! (Oh, I also didn't bother to use the oven, I did it all stovetop.)

Pretty much any lamb curry recipe is faster to make using ground lamb. I tend to make what I consider Fake Curries, flinging a bunch of things in a saute pan after glancing at a recipe book. I gave up using lamb shoulder chops ages ago. The results my way are quicker and tenderer.

Tonight, I started with a pound of ground lamb and a bunch of Greenmarket veggies that needed to be cooked. Started by sauteing the lamb in olive oil, with lots of kebab seasoning. Added chopped onion and red bell pepper (a banana pepper or poblano would be awesome too), a coarsely chopped zucchini, green beans (big ones, broken in thirds), some butternut squash noodles (which dissolved and disappeared), a chopped tomato and a couple of handfuls of baby spinach. I also had some freshly cooked fresh cranberry beans on the stove, so I added a few spoonfuls. It was a glorious, delicious mess. Served it with bulgur wheat. Forgot to serve some yogurt on the side.

Try lamb scrambles with: winter root veggie medleys, a meat-and-mushroom mix, springtime greens, summer tomato and peppers, or any combo thereof. Beans are a terrific addition, especially lentils and chickpeas if you want a Middle Eastern, North African or Indian vibe.

And, of course, the same goes for ground beef, ground turkey and ground pork.. for which there are no shortage of recipes out there.

Catching Up, Part 1: Summer 2018

Been a long time since I made a blog post. Much has happened in our lives since I last nattered on about birds and orchids and cookery and books I like. I reckon I’ve felt distracted.

We recently went to Ireland for a week to attend the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, and that seems to have knocked loose some inspiration, some renewed desire to natter on again outside of Facebook.

Spouse and I made two trips to new places back in 2018: San Jose, CA (again for Worldcon), and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (for a birdy vacation). (SEE NEXT POST for more about that trip.)

California is a delight to us because we know delightful people there. We stayed in Piedmont (part of the Bay Area) with a delightful family for a week, from Spouse’s group of amazing friends. They made us comfortable and fed us and entertained us and we did our best to be good guests. We love and adore these people and feel so lucky that they seem to like us too. The August weather was cool and bracing; we enjoyed the open windows in our guest room every night, and only once in that week did we catch whiff of the terrible wildfires destroying huge swathes of northern California that month. (The fires did come much closer in the next few weeks, but we were gone by then. Our friends were fortunate to suffer only from the choking smoke, though for asthmatics that is plenty terrible.) (See above for a sunset view from their home.)

One thing we did that was necessary was to visit the American Museum of Bookbinding in San Francisco. Our hospitable artist friend needed to see the place, and we wanted to see author and friend Madeleine Robins again, as she now works there. (Do please visit her page in Book View Café. We are fans of hers as well as friends.) I highly recommend this museum to anyone with a love of books, a geeky love of the history of technology, and a love of the arts of covers and type. Witness the efforts people have made over the centuries to make the written word not just more widely accessible but also attractive to have and hold.

What else was wonderful was our new appreciation for the bird life of the Bay Area. When last we visited it wasn’t quite one of our obsessions yet. But now? I paged through the guide to Western US birds on the plane, with emphasis on those creatures featured in the eBird lists Spouse had shared. One of my rewards was to stand on our host’s rear deck overlooking a forested canyon road lined with native scrub as well as hill gardens, and know INSTANTLY that the twittering cigar with wings swooping at eye level had to be a White-throated Swift. The backyard also yielded Anna’s Hummingbird, California Scrub Jay, Lesser Goldfinches and Hermit Warbler. Spouse later saw Bushtits, and I was sorely vexed to have missed those. They remain a target bird for me.

We visited Lake Merritt and we found an Oak Titmouse and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, a Bewick’s Wren, California Towhees and Brewer’s Blackbird. California and Western Gulls were abundant, as were both White and Brown Pelicans. Black Phoebes were on the wires. No Bushtits. Argh.

San Jose was close by but oh so different. The sun felt so much hotter, for one thing. It’s a smaller city than San Francisco or Oakland, but has quite a distinct personality of its own. The public transit trams run frequently, there was bike and scooter sharing, and a lengthy pedestrian (and tram) street mall lined with shops and good restaurants. The Museum of Art was small but quite wonderfully inviting, with intriguing exhibits and good public space inside.

Our convention-block hotel, the Fairmont, faces Cesar Chavez Plaza. Spouse had learned from eBird and elsewhere that Acorn Woodpeckers, a normally shy and non-urban species, had established themselves in the palm trees of the park, and when we actually arrived at the hotel and saw the park we were skeptical, to say the least, that shy birds would enjoy living there. But lo! We exited the hotel after checking in, and FIRST THING we saw looking up was not one but two Acorn Woodpeckers flitting about above our heads. It turned out there were dozens of them. Magic. We soon got to know their favorite trees for acorn storage, and really enjoyed watching them going about their lawful woodpecker business every day. Furthermore, there were Black Phoebes casually perching on the backs of benches, something we’ve never seen Eastern Phoebes do in Central Park. Made more remarkable by the large numbers of people using the park every day.

Worldcon 2018 was quite enjoyable, shared with multiple friends also in attendance, and I might’ve bought a few books and um, some jewelry. The panels were good, except that towards the end the crowds did exceed many room capacities. I'll always have fond memories for attending. 

Too Much Yarn, Part 1

I overdid buying yarn last year. And the year before that, and before that. And at the beginning of this year. One night not long ago, I realized that I’d forgotten to enter a whole 2-gallon bag of yarns from late 2016 into my Ravelry stash. (I knew they existed, but not being on Rav they weren’t ready to be claimed by queued Rav projects.) I wasn’t a very good girl January, February and March of this year either…but I’ve been good ever since. I HAVE TO BE.

No regrets for these final skeins. None at all. 

Digging into more neglected parts of the stash in order to log them properly, I found myself seriously wondering WTH I was thinking on some occasions. Just 1 ball of Lion Brand Kool Wool?? I gave it away. (Along with a bunch of other odd skeins not worth combining with others in a project.)

One thing struck me very hard, as I was hunting for a couple of skeins for a new project.

All those storage bags and bins of yarn I have -- eight or nine, packed pretty full -- represented dreams and POTENTIAL when I bought that stuff. Potential new sweaters, new shawls and hats and scarves. SO many pretty things -- so many patterns! I locked myself into a yarn shop of my own desires. At my present best rate of usage -- about 12000 yards a year -- I’m set for the next ten or fifteen years of knitting. And I’m in my mid fifties.

Mild regrets for this stuff.
I'm sure I'll love the sweater I'll make 5 years from now. 

Giving away the excess yarn -- something I’ve been doing for years anyway -- is becoming an even bigger goal than just knitting it up as fast as possible. I give a few bags to a friend for charitable knitting every year, some to a women’s shelter. I sell some on Rav. I give some to friends who are down on their luck but love to knit. I'm keeping only what I really love. 

But even if I give away more things than I keep, there’s still only so many sweaters my spouse and I can wear or stuff into drawers. Only so many scarves and hats. Only so many throws to pile on the sofa. I surprised myself by giving away a shawl I spent weeks and weeks working on; I didn't love the colors once it was finished, but my friend had been admiring it so now it's hers. 

I like piling up small projects like hats, cowls, scarves, simple shawls and baby sweaters to give away. It’s entirely win-win. I get to enjoy the yarn for a while -- or not, as sometimes happens. I get to try another new pattern. I get near-instant gratification of a finished project. And I get that yarn out of the house entirely! So back in April, I decided to make a game out of my goal, similar to plowing through a book a week, to cut my To Read list down a bit each year. I decided to knit a hat or cowl every week for the rest of the year, in addition to the usual scarves and shawls that I work on while I commute. Depending on the gauge, it takes me 3-5 days to make one.

This one took 2 sessions watching TV.

To speed things up a bit, I organized the stash better, and made a bag of "ready-to-knit" skeins that don't need winding (thank you Big Yarn Companies) or I already wound. Imagine my joy when I dug into one bag and came up with a bunch of Deep Stash skeins I'd forgotten about, all set for hats and stuff! I’m capable of whiling away a whole evening browsing my pattern printouts and fondling bags of stash instead of actually, you know, KNITTING. But I hit a new realization, as I was digging in the bag of Ready To Knit skeins a little while ago.

Like, What the hell was I thinking?

Noro at its worst...

While it feels good to have rediscovered some yarn I once loved -- I quickly made a giveaway hat and planned a few others -- I have to curb that impulse a bit. Because my stash is vast and life is short, I need to -- I deserve to -- knit the yarns and patterns that I love the most first. Not just stuff that happens to be easiest to access because it’s sold in pull skeins. Good thing I already wound a bunch...

Why I HATE the current crop of Republicans

Some leading Republican politicians think poor people still aren't poor enough. Hence their redoubled efforts to take yet more money away from the mass majority of Americans, and fork it over to insurance company CEOs instead. Never mind that actual human beings -- including children -- will go hungry, or suffer pain and hardship because of untreated illness, or end up sleeping in their cars because they can't pay rent. Here's a lovely list  by John Scalzi, of so many of the effects of poverty on a person. (And here is a followup post he made, too.) 

My family didn't have much money when I was a kid; we lived with my grandparents and aunt and uncle, we made do until I was in 3rd grade. When I was 5 I didn't know that my supermarket meltdown over a box of heavily advertised cereal -- that I then refused to eat -- meant we did without other things that week. I didn't know why we bought bread at the Silvercup day-old store instead of across the street at the supermarket. I didn't know fabric and thread for homemade clothes were cheaper than store-bought clothes. I thought shopping in bargain odd lot stores was fun, not just necessary. Things got much better after my dad got a new job. When he got very sick -- twice -- and needed hospitalizations, operations and lengthy recuperation, the union he belonged to made sure we had health coverage, and made sure his job was still there once he recovered.

And, I didn't know how many of those poverty habits were left over from my father living through the Depression, or my mother surviving as a teenager in a Displaced Persons camp after World War II. They never took good times for granted. Ever.

I become absolutely ENRAGED when smug Republican shitgibbons try to suggest poor people are just stupid, or unworthy, or a lower class of animal. Poverty can happen to anyone because bad shit can happen to anyone. 

Yes, I'm one of the privileged now: we don't have to choose between a smartphone bill and a grocery bill, we have health insurance, renters' insurance and we have retirement funds. But not a lot of things have to go wrong for us to upend us. And I have too many friends who truly live on the edge of disaster, through no faults of their own, to ever feel comfortable enough to not worry about growing old in a society being overrun by these hypocritical shitgibbons who lack sympathy, empathy and humanity.

There's a lot of poor-shaming going on. A lot of well-off people think poverty is somehow a "choice" or that poor people aren't being inventive or aren't "thinking positive" or praying hard enough or whatever shit they use to excuse their own lack of caring about other people. There are people who think they are Christians who go to megachurches and pray very loudly, but don't actually pay attention to anything Jesus or his disciples were quoted as saying. These "prosperity gospel" fatheads aren't Christian. They belong to a much older type of religion in which the gods were sometimes kind and sometimes cruel without reason, much like the view of god in the Book of Job. They're basically pagans with a Biblical veneer. 

I'm not a Christian either, so I can wholeheartedly say, without fear of burning in hell, that I hope those smug smiles get wiped off their faces by Fate someday. I hope they end up dumpster diving for their next meal someday. I hope they have to buy an interview outfit at Goodwill. I hope they feel desperate someday. I hope they learn humanity. 

2015, a Good Year for Life Birds

Well, I didn't have nearly the exciting birding year that some people did, but it was quite satisfying nonetheless. I didn't spend as much time twitching in Central Park in 2015 as in the past few years. Partly that was due to a torn hamstring/torn ligament combo that spanned Thanksgiving 2014/January 2015, and caused me to spend the first half of 2015 limping about with a cane and extreme caution. While walking was part of therapy -- along with many, many leg lifts and stretches -- the uneven ground in the park was uncomfortable at first. So it wasn't until late in spring migration that I really got out and about again.

Once the leg was mostly fully healed, hiking up and down the hills of the North Woods and the Ramble became positively therapeutic besides enjoyable. And handling the binoculars and camera was much easier without the cane needing attention. I didn't see a lot of spring migration but did have a few really good days, shared with Ed and with other friends. No life birds, though, at first. And there wasn't much to see in the summer except for the usual suspects, so I didn't make much effort to follow Ed on his weekend bird hikes again until the fall migration began.

There were opportunities away from the city. Our annual summer trip to the Catskills got Ed several life birds over the past few years, and this year I got one too: I finally saw a whole field full of Bobolinks! There were many pairs breeding in an uncut hayfield just one driveway past our friends' farmhouse -- twittering their odd song, flying up to the surrounding power lines perhaps to distract predators, perhaps just to keep an eye on the territory.

My photo, not Ed's

I was feeling kind of lazy to visit Central Park until migration began, when some really cool birds began moving through. In mid October, an injured Sora was spotted in the North Woods. Ed saw it several times, and I finally saw it too not long before it disappeared. This is one of Ed's photos of it, as I had stupidly forgotten to recharge my spare camera battery and therefore was unable to shoot the darn thing myself. Not that it was visible for very long when I was there.

Ed's photo, not mine

We also had a few really good October days seeing warblers, kinglets and woodpeckers -- there were a dozen Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers in the elm trees between the Pineatum and the Reservoir one afternoon -- but nothing else really new. Then in early November reports began of a Great Horned Owl in the Ramble, I'd missed the previous bird in 2012, I wasn't going to miss this one! So I was there the second weekend he/she was hanging out. I was well rewarded with a gorgeous autumn day, and the sight of a GHO's extremely fluffy butt, seen from below.

My photo, on a really windy day the owl did not enjoy

There was also an extremely lost and scruffy Western Flycatcher (which doesn't exist, as the taxonomy splitters claim that species is actually 2 different species THAT LOOK THE SAME) hanging around near the Boathouse, and we were happy to bring friends to see it same day as the Owl. Alas, the flycatcher soon disappeared from the park. We fear it met a sad end.

Then in December a Painted Bunting appeared in Prospect Park, and there's no good excuse for that bird to be in Brooklyn. It became quite the celebrity. We HAD to see it, despite my birder friend in Ft. Lauderdale noting he had a dozen of those a day at his backyard feeders. As I grew up living a block away from Prospect Park, I was especially pleased to return to the site of my earliest birding adventures. The Bunting was gorgeous. It glowed, as if it were painted with fluid from blue, red and neon green glowsticks. It also wasn't hard to find, as there were nearly 100 other birders tracking it.
I didn't get excellent photos of it, but Ed decided to return the next day and got lucky.

He's right there in the middle. 

As we walked from the skating rink to the Zoo, along the eastern shore of the Lake, we spotted a few ducks. One of them turned out to be a female American Widgeon -- and that was my sixth life bird for the year! If I'd only gone with Ed back to the park, I'd have gotten a seventh -- a Black-headed Gull has also been hanging out in the Lake, but I've been entirely too lazy to nab that sighting. Wouldn't be the first time. Or the last.

I'm About to Commit Novel: SEVEN for a SECRET

SO this is the saga of my fantasy novel "Seven for a Secret":

Many years ago, I had a vague idea for a novel and brought a few random chapters of absolute crap to my writing group. Then about 9 years ago the whole idea suddenly clicked, and most of those chapters ended up in the shredder but a few scenes stayed.

I started with an idea for a slightly magical kid in Northern England in the 60s who fell in love with blues music and went on to become a rock star. Big twist, he'd discover hidden magic talents along the way. MEH. The click I needed was to have the kid always know he was magical. In fact, he's part of a growing tribe of born witches living under everyone's radar, but becoming bolder now that society is more tolerant of those claiming magical abilities. He was born already walking a hero's journey, knowing he's special, but he's pretty sure it's a mistake...pretty sure the daring feat he's born to achieve is hardly worth achieving. Other witches beg to differ. Which of them are right?

(Yes, the Chosen One kind of story is overdone and lame, but frankly I hate the "ordinary person suddenly sprouts magic and saves the world" kind of story too. In myth, the hero is always a demigod with the gods stacked against him. So how badly can a demigod mess up? See Jason & Medea, for starters. Yes, it is popular belief that ordinary people can perform magic, even if it's just casting an evil eye from jealousy. We all ask water spirits for wishes in return for coins -- that's simple divine intercession on our behalf, similar to prayer. Divination by tarot cards, love charms with herbs and candles, they're all part of popular belief that pretty much anyone can learn magic spells if they just try hard enough. In my story, In these stories that simply isn't true. I have no opinion whether it's true in our reality.)

Eventually the story arc broadened out into 4 books. I kept adding story complications, and my reallllllllly long "teen witch blues saga" grew backwards into Gerry's traumatic childhood.

I've been shopping book 1 to agents and publishers for several years now -- alas I now realize my early pitches were just terrible, and I do still have some agent queries out there and have more to send. But at my advanced age for a never-published author, I really have nothing to lose by just getting the damn book OUT THERE so I can STOP FIDDLING WITH IT and move on and finish books 2, 3 and 4, most of which are written. So doing this is both cathartic and practical! So there.

I created my own cover for the darn thing, too.

A 22-Week Reading Challenge...

So there are 22 weeks left in 2014, and I've set myself a new goal that is kind of already 2 weeks old: to read and finish a book a week.

Since I've got 39 books in my To-Read section on Goodreads, and lots more than that just sitting on the actual shelves of the actual house -- and a few on my Kindle-for-Android app for good measure -- this ought to be easy. Especially since most of them aren't Huge Thick Weighty Tomes, but a bunch of reasonable length novels. (Aside from Vernor Vinge's "Children of the Sky" and the final 6 books of Neal Stephensons "System of the World", that is.)

I do most of my reading while commuting, so that's about 40-50 minutes of reading time a day. Last year I somehow only read about 20 books, but then 2 of them were enormous Iain M. Banks novels, one of which I only got through as quickly as I did thanks to some plane travel.

So far this year I've managed to start AND finish a whopping 15 books of varying lengths: from quick-read graphic novels Saga #3 and Girl Genius #13, to short story collection "Her Husband's Hands" by Adam-Troy Castro, to weighty "The Monuments Men" (less than 2 weeks, yay). "Annihilation" and "Authority" by Jeff Vandermeer only took like 1.5 days each. "Emma" by Jane Austen took a week. I just finished the last of the Diana Wynne Jones Howl books, "House of Many Ways" in just a couple of days -- quite a fast read like most of her books. "The Ghost in Love" by Jonathan Carroll, though ultimately disappointing (and I love his work), was a quick 4 days.

I suspect, though, that my current choice, "Cloud Atlas," might just sink my efforts straight off. It's a big thick tome. It's kind of like reading 6 books at the same time.

And I haven't quite decided what's next after that. I've got some nifty contenders. Guess it depends how I feel once done with this one.

Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2012

I missed the 2011 Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival for the saddest possible reason: the death of my good friend with whom I traveled there. Her funeral was the weekend just before the 2011 Festival. Our relationship hardly centered on knitting: we had known each other for over 20 years and she only recently had become a crazed knitter accumulating stash. We went to many, many craft fairs together over the years, took several vacations, suffered losses, celebrated triumphs. Her death from cancer was a cruel, prolonged forgone conclusion nearly 8 years in the making.

But, as they say, life does go on, though I miss my friend a lot. New friends come along. And one such new friend, who is also a total Fiber Fiend AND a Fabric Fiend, insisted we visit Rhinebeck in 2012. And so we did.

And I shopped like mad, although I swore beforehand that I would be frugal and sensible. I returned to the booths of some extremely favorite vendors from the past. I discovered wonderful new vendors I had never seen or shopped before. I also ate a lamb hot dog that was absolutely incredibly delicious.

I really like the yarns I bought this year. Though OOOOH LOTS OF COLORS still caught my eye first and foremost, I was a tiny bit more discreet with some purchases and went for gorgeous saturated solid colors too. I bought a lot of purple and blue as usual, but also some warmer colors, including some out-and-out reds. Partly I realized my stash was getting a wee bit overwhelmed by one end of the spectrum, and I really don't dislike reds and golds -- I just wasn't inspired, for some reason. Some recent madelinetosh yarn purchases might have cured me -- gorgeous rich shades of red and various siennas -- and Rhinebeck helped lock it in. (Also didn't hurt that I've been keeping my hair very dark-nearly-black red, and a fellow selling silk scarves at Lincoln Center Crafts opined that gold and amber tones are flattering to pale, older skin. Hm!)

Although I'm only now getting around to posting the whole stash picture, I've done pretty well making inroads to this year's purchases. I've made a hat, and I'm halfway through a smallish shawl. Also, I've done a lot of anticipatory winding. Hooray!

Knitting Ambition

Is knitting compatible with laziness? Well, sure...you sit there, you knit. Great lazy way to pass the time, especially if the TV is also on (which automatically adds to the lazy quotient of any household activity, much as adding rocks to a box makes the box dumber and dumber). But finishing what you knit...urk.

I went to the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival last week. Here it is 7 days later, and I've taken no pictures of the new yarns I bought. I didn't have much time, being out late 4 out of the past 7 nights; but I did fondle the stuff, examine it, sort it, dream about what I'll make of it all. I tried to make my purchases with specific ideas in mind...shawl, cardigan, hat. I won't do any winding until I've taken pictures of the entire enormous heap.

But my Ravelry queue shows so many WIPs, so many UFOs, that guilt is starting to cloud my vision. A whole mess of projects I started in the past few years are just sitting there. Some are recent small things that made great carry-around knitting for bus and subway. A hat and a scarf are ready for finishing this weekend; a baby sweater for a friend just needs buttons. Yesterday when I picked up a hibernating project bag, I found a small cowl, nearly done, inexplicably tucked into the bag containing the latest Husband Sweater, utterly forgotten. That has to be a bad sign...I never even added it to my Ravelry project page.

What else lurks in my project bags?! The half-finished black lace alpaca top-down cardigan that I'm afraid to try on, partly for fear of breaking the delicate yarn, partly for fear it doesn't fit right and I've wasted a whole lot of work. Also the brown-and-green Classic Cotton thing I've been struggling with for at least 3 years, frogged and re-did at least once...how hard would it have been to just start with a nice lace cardi pattern? I've got lots! But no, I wanted to do My Own Thing and improvise. Sometimes that works pretty well, but I think I have to face the facts: these days I don't have time to waste trying things and ripping back and re-knitting. I want instant gratification! So after I finish the hat, scarf, cowl and baby sweater, I'll have another look at some of those UFOs and see if they need frogging or finishing too.

Cos then I've got all that fresh shiny uh 2009 and 2010 Rhinebeck yarn to play with...!

Not to mention all the Cephalopod Yarn I've been buying...

Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2008: Bamboo Silk

I was never much of a fan of one-skein projects before I discovered handpainted luxury yarns. Ever practical, for years I preferred to buy yarns in bulk and make sweaters. Anything left over could become a scarf. I really didn't make hats, and I never made a shawl. I do remember buying massive amounts of rainbows of acrylics to make huge afghans and throws when I was in high school and college, but that ardor cooled...cos really, how many of those do you really need?

My current yarn stash began in the mid-to-late 90s, when I took up knitting again with a vengeance. At the start I once again thought in terms of sweater projects instead of mini projects. Now and then another scarf or hat experiment. The only yarn I regularly bought in small amounts was to make stuff for my friends' babies and kids.

The combination of Ravelry and Rhinebeck blew my attitudes out of the water. Hats! I wanted LOTS of hats! Well, I needed some anyway, my old ones were a bit old after all. And new scarves! I'd only made a couple in the past 10 years and one of those was so massive (imagine a fuzzy fluffy overly warm gray Tom Baker Dr Who scarf...) I hardly ever wore it. Rhinebeck got my mind percolating. "I'll make hats and scarves and shawls and who knows what else!" I fingered skein after skein of yummy colorful expensive stuff, and bought things I really had no idea what to do with...but I had to have them. Like the stuff picture above.

Maple Creek Yarn bamboo silk blend. OMG. Soft, silky, drapey, shimmery, sweet beautiful colors, but the price! I couldn't make a garment from it. Maybe 2 skeins? No, just one. I came home with just one. And what to do with it? Well, a skinny little scarf, I figured. Something light and springtimey. Lace. It took 2 years for me to actually get around to it, but I did it. Happily, it even turned out to be useful! This little Moebius loop scarf I made drapes perfectly to cover...um, the deeply plunged necklines of several sweaters I made while I was not working 9-5 in an office. Not too warm to wear indoors all day, and it feels nice against my skin. What more could I possibly want?

Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2008: Good Shepherd Yarn

Color, color, color, color...Rhinebeck is all about color, from subtle to gaudy. I always knew I had an eye for gaudy but managed to keep it under control...but handpaint yarns really push that button.

And so I came to Good Shepherd, and found many many beautiful colorways in single ply wool. And so I siezed 4 skeins of the Arizona Sunrise. I normally don't gravitate towards orange and yellow yarn, if only because I'm sure they look terrible against my complexion. Somehow I found myself buying 2 different yarns in shades of orange that day. Strange, that. (I wanted another colorway very badly, but they only took cash and I hadn't enough. I took care of that little problem in 2009.)

There wasn't really enough yarn for anything but hat & scarf combo. I rather like the pooling of colors on both pieces. I used checkerboard patterns in order to mix up the colors between smooth & bumpy stockinette, yet another way to really push exotic handpaints around.

A little bit scratchy on my head, alas, but then so is most wool that isn't superwash or ultrafine merino. More washing of the hat might help, but I don't want to risk felting it.

I was good; I made this set only a couple of months after the Festival. So in the course of blogging these yarns and projects, I've come to the happy realization that I have made 5 entire projects (well, the CD purple scarf is still a Work in Progress) from my Rhinebeck 2008 stash, have begun a 6th, and have firm intentions for 2 more in the near future. I honestly thought I was even worse off than that...but some of that yummy stuff remaining is going to prove a bit of a challenge, for various reasons.

Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2008: Creatively Dyed Gloves

While I made many many happy discoveries of talented and awesome fiber artists at Rhinebeck 2008, perhaps my most happy discovery was Creatively Dyed Yarn. The lady COOKS. Her yarns are crazy gorgeous. Wild wild color combos, itty bitty bits of color next to big stretches of contrasting color, everything pops, everything sings and dances and cries out to become something beautiful that you can stare at and be constantly inspired by.

Well besides just sticking a couple of her skeins in my Inspiration Basket -- I might have to explain this another time -- I got busy winding the 2 hanks of deeply magenta-purple-violet merino sock yarn I had to had to had to have. Lace scarf and gloves, no question about it, and maybe a hat as well. I delved into Ravelry's free lace scarf patterns and found one I thought would show off the yarn best.

I worked with handpaint yarns enough by then to appreciate a few tricks. One is that while some colorways blend beautifully into plain stockinette, others need a little help. Slip stitches make a great fabric, mixing up colors from row to row. Chevron & other zig-zag stripes are a popular solution -- lots of Koigu patterns do this -- to blend multiple colorways used together.

Lace...that's a trickier one! Hadn't done much with lace before, but in studying pictures of variegated lace I saw that a very open pattern suits both fine yarn in subtle variations and chunky yarn in bolder color changes. Well, I wanted to see some flat areas of the purple CD stuff to appreciate the colors all right up against each other, with a bit of shaping to really mix them up as well. So I picked a design with more flat than open areas, that got the yarn moving in ripples. Also, it would be warmer as a scarf.

I cast on that scarf two years ago...it became my steady Take-Along knit project for nearly a year...and I've nearly finished one skein. One!! DAMN sock yarn takes bloody forever to knit into a decent length! It didn't help that I lost track of the 2nd skein for a little while...urgh. So I let the project hibernate until I found it again YAY! and felt confident to resume. But my first action upon finding the 2nd skein was to grab the DPNs and make fingerless mitts.

After all, here I was after 3 Rhinebecks the proud owner of um, yeah, LOTS of CD yarn, and I had yet to make and FINISH anything in it! Honestly I do wonder about my brain sometimes. Is it self-torture? Strength through denial? Mostly I think it's indecision. With somewhat costly yarns of strong character, you have to be cautious approaching the moment of cast-on. Horrible mistakes of judgement are harder to put behind one.

The mitts took 2 days of really easy knitting. I've been wearing them for the past 2 months. I love them. They are warm and really pretty (and make wintertime photography much pleasanter). Couldn't be simpler either: Ann Budd's all-purpose pattern for gloves, minus the thumb tip and fingers, ribbed at the top. Should've made them a bit snugger, but that's a pretty mild complaint.