Shrimp Chowder for Dinner

Gosh, no recipes blogged in months...what have I been doing with myself? I hardly know any more! Fortunately I did take photos, occasionally, so I have at least some record of what we ate from late summer through early winter. I used to keep an informal record of home-cooked dinners using a desk calendar, but kept forgetting to add entries; considering the main purpose was to keep me enlightened as to just when I made that soup and yes, it was still safe to eat, being so forgetful was not helpful. So I abandoned the calendar instead of making, you know, greater efforts. Much easier.

I came across this Shrimp Chowder photo from September, and realized that while I remembered the soup was spicy and delicious, I had no recollection of the recipe! I can piece together the basics...chopped onion, probably some chopped pepper, chopped fresh tomato, fresh corn, and lots of well-seared bits of fresh shrimp. All topped with diced avocado. Details? Um. I think I see fresh thyme leaves. Don't remember there being zucchini, but that would've been OK. Maybe some ancho chili powder? Coriander? Turmeric?

There's no help for it. I'll just have to make it again and see where my palate leads me.

Maxillaria uncata

I have a deep love for miniature orchids, going back to my very first orchid explorations. Something about a complete organism being so small, so lovely, is absolutely irresistible. My first Maxillaria uncata was a tiny plant, a division of a friend's vigorous specimen. It bloomed several times before I managed to kill it. I got another, kinda small, and killed that too.

After over 20 years, I finally got another one! A huge mounted beast from Tom Nasser, sure to survive even my wonky conditions. I dealt with the issue of it being mounted by sticking the base in a decorative glass bowl on a hanging chain, and then hanging the whole business fairly close to the end of my tube lights.

I water it by half-filling the bowl; the tree-fern slab is soon saturated, and the moss around the root mass wicks moisture to the lowest growths which then drip daintily onto the sleeping terrestrials in a tray below. Not a great ecosystem, but it seems to work. Eventually those lowest growths rotted a few leaves, but the upper growths put out so many it hardly mattered. Being close to the lights, the plant stays warm, even in winter when the windows are open a bit or the steam heat fails to keep up with the changing seasons.

The adorable stripy flowers are pretty large, by my estimation.

Now if only Mystery Maxillaria (from a GNYOS raffle) would bloom...I would be 3 for 3 for blooming this genus in just one year!

Knitting up Rhinebeck 2012: Dancing Leaf Farm Boogie Woogie

They say you shouldn't shop for groceries when you're hungry, and they're right. I've done it, and I nearly always regret it. I end up with too much stuff, or weird stuff, or just the wrong stuff.

At least yarn doesn't have an expiration date, except for how our tastes might change! I really do try to shop for yarn with at least a vague idea of what I might make, but now and then optimism triumphs over organization.

In the case of this wonderful fat squishy bouncy happy yarn from Dancing Leaf Farm, I was actively looking for a big fat wool that I intended to use for an oversized-lace shawl pattern. It wasn't until I got these 2 skeins home, and examined the pattern, that I realized the colors would obscure the lace design. Too many, too short intervals. Oh well!

Fortunately I had a Many Hats Project underway, and the yarn made an absolutely gorgeous hat. I pretty much improvised the pattern, with no regrets. I sent it off with a friend who lives in Vermont.

One skein remains. I think another hat will come of it. Different pattern. This one for me!

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 Up Rhinebeck 2010: Handpainted Aran Wool

When you're about to wade into an intense shopping experience, it helps to set a few goals first. Budget is one -- meet but don't exceed. When yarn is involved, it's good to allow serendipity to lead you to unexpected treasures, but also having some patterns in mind helps a great deal (Hm, I need 700 yards for that shawl I really want to make, 1300 yards for that lace cardi, etc). 

One of my side goals at Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool in 2010 was to buy a few hanks of wool from outside my usual comfort zone, and from vendors I hadn't fully investigated before. 

Some Rhinebeck vendors do it all: raised the animals, gathered the wool/fiber, spun it and then dyed it. That's real dedication. I paid closer attention to the wider range of their woolly goods in 2010, which I sometimes had dismissed as being "too scratchy" or otherwise not inspired enough for the kinds of projects I had in mind. Turned out that besides the vendors I had already learned to love, I found several more whose yarns were simply yummy.

Hatchtown Farm Handpainted Aran Wool...I likey very much. The hank of yarn I got was 250 yards of firmly spun wool from Coopworth sheep, dyed the most delicious shades of chocolate brown, black and gold. It was fated from the start to become hats. When I finally started on the Not-Cabled-Hat pattern (that I absolutely LOVE for quick gift hats) I discovered that the black and gold sections had the wonderful good sense to arrange themselves into leopard spots! 

I still have half the skein left, and fully intend to do a teeny bit of experimenting to see how to replicate this effect in a different pattern hat or cowl. Because, AWESOME.

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: Creatively Dyed Shawl

One-skein projects seem to be my New Thing. I grew up thinking of yarn as Sweaters. Now and then I'd buy a couple of skeins just for a scarf, but mostly I bought 1000+ yards at a time, picturing stacks and stacks of gorgeous cardigans and pullovers. I mostly bought yarn on sale so I could afford to indulge in 10+ skeins at a time -- a big body needs lots of yarn to cover it adequately -- and sometimes ended up scratching my head wondering just exactly what I was thinking, buying so much gray alpaca or so much really hideous lattice ribbon. (Having the Smiley's Yarn sale close by every year, where bags of 10 skeins are all you can buy of the better stuff, wasn't helping.)

It took Ravelry and Rhinebeck to really coax me out of that Sweater mentality, and over into the land of Accessories. It wasn't a difficult transition, really. As an incurable Yarn Magpie, I was completely blown away by the acres of wool at Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool, and I could only afford some of the available yarns in Sweater quantities. Once I realized that, about halfway through my first visit there, I relaxed. I could buy a bigger variety of gorgeous yarns if I bought only a couple of skeins instead of 4 or 6 or 10! Besides, how many Sweaters can one rotund person who dislikes being overly warm wear, realistically?

 Creatively Dyed was one of my very first discoveries at Rhinebeck 2008. I bought lots of that yarn, and didn't worry too much about what I would make of it. Sock yarn is so versatile! I imagined hats and scarves mostly. I had never knitted a shawl then...well, that situation has certainly changed.

I've filled my Ravelry queue with all manner of lace shawls, from dead simple to ridiculously elaborate. So far, I've only made smaller ones, kind of starter shawls, testing my patience for lengthy repeats and ever-changing lace charts. Many simpler ones are perfectly suited to sock yarns, like the Demiluna, which is a half-circle rather than the triangle shape of many shawls. So confronted with a beautiful crazy-colored CD yarn I simply HAD to knit...and still refusing to knit socks...I decided to make a small, simple shawl from the skein of Carnival that I had to had to HAD to have. But now that I've scratched the itch and enjoyed using half the skein to make this awesome thing, I have to do the right thing. That's right. I'm going to give it to the young daughter of a friend. It belongs on a sweet young girl. I can't wait!!