Orchid abuse

See, this is what happens when you shove a plant into the back row so it gets enough light, but then you keep forgetting to hit it with the watering can, and the plant food, and also you forget to repot it even though it came to you with clear signs of needing new mix. (Like old mossy bits of bark, and half the roots being exposed.)

Nice flowers, a rich dark velvety red. Too bad they're on a growth half the size of the old ones, and they're barely out of the sheath while the old browned flower stalks are several inches long.

I won this plant in a GNYOS raffle last year. As there's no label, I've no idea what this is, my only clue being the $45 price sticker on one leaf. It might be Pot. Ching Hua Flame 'Red Rose.' I mainly doubt it's Jewel Box because of the price; "Dark Waters" is a good match for the color of the flower, but also the plant is too compact and upright. Jewel Box is a sloppy plant that gets rather large if allowed.

I'll repot the poor thing as soon as I see a new growth with new roots. Meanwhile it's getting plenty more water, along with all its mates in the back row.

Cuil not cool yet

Has anyone tried Cuil yet?

So far most of the picture links are missing, and for several searches I ran this morning it didn't pick up even a small percentage of the hits I get from Google.

Thinking of my Yarn Archive blog, I typed in "missoni yarn knit" and got 4,850 hits in Google (including, thank you, my yarn blog). I got 3 in Cuil.

For a laugh I typed in "cuil blogs" in both engines.

Google returned a load of blog pages referring to the new search engine.

Cuil returned a load of pages...about a town in Ireland.

Ha ha.

Heckboy II

I don't consider myself a "fan" of too many artists, musicians, actors or directors, but I suppose having seen The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy and now Hellboy II I've probably seen a larger proportion of Guillermo del Toro movies (relative to total ouvre) than most.

PL, the first of his films I saw, perhaps set my expectations pretty high. The grim story, the unflinching magical realism, the (for American audiences) exotic setting, the superb acting and everything about it was a real treat. (Never mind disagreements I've had with a few people over a couple of plot points.)

DB was next (though an older film I only saw it on cable about 18 months ago) and I was blown away by its very human story and characters: people behaving badly in terrible circumstances, some rise above and others sink deeper than ever. The supernatural element was important but not dominant, the acting again superb and the directorial challenge of having a lot happen in just a few tighly-controlled sets worked really well.

Hellboy was a wild thrill-ride romp. I'm glad to have read GdT was a fan of the comic before he directed it. Unfortunately my indie comic-collecting days waned a couple of years before that series began, so I missed its debut and never followed it. I might have to fix that wee oversight, as the tropes and characters are certainly right up my alley, sort of Alan Moore-lite.

I liked the film's grim cocky humor, I liked the characters even if I didn't understand most of the origin stories, and I liked the silly plot just jumping right in with both feet. I definitely felt like I was being brought into a well-established universe with its own rules. And I never would have guessed the same director created DB or PL.

Hellboy II...blah. I wanted really badly to like it. I've read more of the comic but was fine with this Golden Army thing being an original plot devised just for the movie version of Hellboy. I was anticipating European legend being stirred into the American-slanted mix in interesting ways, especially with The Hobbit looming in GdT's future. But...blah.

What it is, I'm really tired of BIG BIG BIG SETS with BIG STUFF HAPPENING that makes no sense. After a promising start setting up Big Intrigue and lost magical talismans, the fantasy elements became soooo generic I found myself longing for even a few Celtic knots and claymores. I mean, Elfquest is more true to source! And please, I had a real problem accepting Elvish golden robots. And if you're going to have the entrance to the Otherworld near the Giant's Causeway, then show the bloody landscape properly! If there's a Celtic mythic connection, use it! (An army of the dead risen from Arawn's magic cauldron would make better mythical sense and be much creepier...but that's my movie, not GdT's. Sigh.)

That said, Johann Krauss stole much of the middle of the film. Great voicing, and really great puppet work humanizing his robotic suit. The opening puppet-story sequences are brilliant as well. GdT just does that sort of animation better than nearly anyone.

Sudden flashes of absolute genius

I'm sure I'll later go looking and find this advice on a dozen other knit blogs and forums, but here goes.

When knitting the two fronts of a cardigan at the same time -- because not doing that is just plain lame -- and knitting the button-band and buttonholes into the front edges, do yourself a huge favor and knit a "reminder" stitch into the band where the button will be attached.

This occurred to me the old-fashioned way, i.e., I made a mistake. I knitted a buttonhole on both bands of my current project, and didn't realize it until many rows later. I decided it wasn't worth doing a tedious undo-three-stitches-crochet-upwards-after fixing thing, since I would be able to just sew the button right over the hole -- BING! In the case of this project, a lacy scrap of stuff made slinky and exciting with Classic Elite Cotton BamBoo, the button band is 5-stitch wide garter and I am now using a single centered purl stitch on the same row as the buttonhole. I will do this for the rest of my knitting life. It is SO much easier than tying in a yarn marker.

(I think I recall reading someone's clever advice -- probably Elizabeth Zimmerman's -- that when knitting a baby sweater in advance of the happy event, you should knit buttonholes on both bands and then sew the buttons over the appropriate side once the gender is known. Frankly I've lost track of what's male/female sided any more. I have jeans that zip one way and shorts that zip another. I've never been too good with gender-assigned clothing convention, other than Real Men Don't Wear Lace.)

Vina Aljibes Rosado 2006

Another intriguing Spanish rosado came to our table tonight. Vina Aljibes, "vino de la tierra de Castilla" looks elegant with its silver label trappings, and provides surprises in the glass. "Obtained from our best Syrah grapes, this rose is produced using a low temperature fermentation process." I've had Syrah-based roses before and quite liked them, so here goes.

First off the color is not the typical rosy pink of a rose or rosado. It's dark in the clear bottle and in the glass, the color of mixed fruit juice like a cherry-cranberry mix. The bouquet is rich, fruity, spicy. Chilled, the flavor is dry and spicy, very distinctly mingled cherry, black-currant and blackberry, but not jammy like a full Syrah or sugary like some roses. I think there's some black-pepper notes too.

Spouse thinks it would go very very well with lamb but might overwhelm beef unless it's richly sauced! (I'd rather have a red with beef, hands down.) Also he suggested glazed ham and chicken mole, but not any plainer version of chicken. And veal stew or veal parmesan, richly seasoned, would work well. Perhaps a rich vegetarian curry, or one of my fave pasta/bean/bacon dishes. Definite no to fish or seafood. I think tomatoes would clash, but Spouse disagrees. We'll have to try.

We drank this with irresistible pork chops I found on sale, very simply browned on both sides in olive oil with salt, black pepper and oregano crust. The key to really tasty pork chops is to get that fat well-browned, if only on one side. Sides of organic broccoli, organic golden haricots vert, final sugar snap peas of the season (what kind of microclimate does that one Greenmarket farm have, for heavens sake?? all the other ss-peas were gnarly and looked inedible) and an heirloom striped/ridged zucchini sauteed in the pork drippings with sliced red pepper and Vidalia onion. To follow, a peach/white peach/raspberry/blackberry pie.

Transmogrify Pesky Stomach Fat Into Gold!

How perfectly lovely that the first "sponsored ads" that popped up as I perused Arthur Waite's Collectanea Chemica under Forgotten Books/Google Books were for oil management systems, potassium permangate by the pound and only secondarily for tarot and mastery of the astral plane. Woo. And pyrotechnic supplies. Woo. And, of course, how to lose stomach fat. I think stomach fat ads are guaranteed to pop up regardless of the subject. Woo. Although as the early pages of the Hermetic Tracts concern themselves with the Alkahest and the superiority of human urine above all others for alchemical purposes (good as then there's no need to go bothering any other beasts for some), well, I suppose fat reduction and colon cleansing ads are just possibly appropriate...woo woo.

And of course, a peek into The Corpus Hermeticum yields ads for spiritual guidance, and Hermes boutiques. Woo.

Summer in a Glass

Screw recipes. See what's good in the fridge. Take down a pint glass. Add: a few strawberries cut in pieces, mostly ones that aren't perfectly ripe and might otherwise go to waste. A handful of fresh blueberries. Enough chunks of watermelon to overfill the glass. Pour contents into blender jar. Add a couple small extra chunks of melon for their liquid content. Blend till frothy. Drink. Ahh. Bonus points: calculate # of servings of daily 5 fruit/veg that were just consumed without any added fats or sugar. Three, I think, as the pint glass holds about 3 cups. Ahh. That pluot eaten just before the smoothie, that was pretty damn good too. Nearly the size of a baseball, weighed nearly a pound, deep ruby red flesh, juice explosion...ahh.