Lemon Curd (More Appetizing Than it Sounds)

When I first moved to England there were a number of new tastes I had the pleasure (or not) of discovering. Salt and vinegar flavoured crisps (yes!), Marmite (no!), lemon barley water (yes), Ribena (not so much), tea (took me a while, but yes!), Christmas pudding (with all the will in the world, no).

Lemon curd I loved at first bite,even the store-bought variety, but it wasn't until a friend gave me a small pot of homemade that I really came to appreciate its rich, silky, tangy lusciousness. A few years ago, on a visit to my parents, I took the opportunity to pick a handful of lemons from one of their trees and attempt a batch of my own. It's surprisingly easy, if somewhat time-consuming, and you do have to pay attention. I made another batch while we were there at Christmas and then another last week when we had company to dinner. I'm kind of addicted now.

There are various ways you can choose to make it: directly in a pan, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water; with yolks only or with a combination of yolks and whites. Liking a culinary challenge (and feeling, obscurely, that taking shortcuts in cooking is somehow "cheating") and also the richest taste, I've only made the yolk-only, water-bath way. Eventually I'll try one of the other methods and see if it really makes any difference.

The recipe I've been using is this one from Chowhound. Mom and Dad have a couple of Meyer lemon trees so that's what I used at Christmas and I loved it so much I searched out Meyers to make it at home as well. I think some people like the sharper taste of regular lemons in curd, but to me the fragrance of Meyer lemons is an ecstatic experience, so I adore the curd it makes.

I am very bad at remembering to take pictures of food so this picture is not mine - I got it from The Galley Gourmet website - it just looks so gorgeous, I couldn't resist it. I'll try and remember to take pictures next time I make it!

Wendy

Knitting Update January 2016

Just a quick update on the small amount of knitting I've done in the past few months.

I made these socks from wool I bought in a yarn shop in the Shambles in York last winter. Unfortunately I can't find the ball band, but it was a fairly local yarn.

I knocked up a quick rolled-brim hat out of the Maiden Hair I bought in Kelowna in 2014. I haven't blocked it yet.

And I finally finished off the Multnomah  with a bit of mauve yarn I had in my stash. I think it blends in pretty well.

In the summer, after the experiment with the cabbage, I went on to dye another skein of sock yarn with loquat leaves I picked off my parents' tree. I'd read that you can get a pinky colour, but mine turned out a rather lovely pale pumpkin-pie. Normally I'm not fond of orange, but this shade's not bad.

I've also knit or crocheted several scarves of navy blue acrylic for our homeless project at church but I didn't get pictures of them.

I still have a couple of projects I keep picking up and putting down (and sometimes ripping out entirely). One is a beaded lace shawl I just can seem to get right. I love the pattern but it's tricky and I just can't get the edge to look nice. I may just have to give up and try another pattern. The other is a spring green shawlette I started last summer when I was a little depressed and needed something bright to knit on. I'm not sure why I can't seem to get this one done. I like the yarn and the pattern. I think I'll just have to sit myself down with a good audio book and force myself to get past the section I'm stuck on.

Wendy

Catching up on 2015

So...2015. Quite a year, huh?

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I had a lot of trouble with my arthritis last winter, and it followed me into spring and summer (which were very late). I missed a lot of work, either not being able to come in at all or, more often, coming in late because my joints are worse first thing in the morning.

I finally got a mixture of medications that seemed to work pretty well, but by that time I'd given some serious thought to trying the work-from-home route. It's something I've always wanted to do but, as a secretary, my skill-set didn't lend itself to remote working. However, in the past few years I've picked up a fair amount of copy-editing experience and, more importantly, contacts. So, in August, I finished up my job and went into business for myself.

I am now sole proprietor of Taylor+Foote, freelance research and copy-editing. So far I have four clients, two of which are fairly substantial and one which may become so. I don't have enough coming in yet to match what I made before, but I think I can build it up in the coming year.

In the meantime, I very much enjoy getting to sleep in, slouch around the house in pajamas if I feel like it, and work whatever hours suit me (when the work comes in). I may have mentioned that I am not a morning person.

I'm also really loving having the time and energy to do more things around the house. Especially cooking. I've been making bread, and finally managed to get a wild-yeast sourdough starter going (after a few failures). I've also been experimenting with fermenting vegetables and kombucha, which I'll post about another time.

I've also been rearranging my work spaces. I decided to have the room upstairs strictly as an office and move my sewing and crafts to the basement (except the yarn, which, as Bartholomew-bait, stays shut up upstairs). I cleared a corner of the basement, moved down my sewing table, and put up some shelves and I'm gradually getting things organized and put away down there.

I haven't been knitting a lot - I suffer from startitis, but not much motivation to get things finished. I'll try and get some pictures of the few things I have done.

Now I'm off to peruse seed catalogs - it is January, after all.

Wendy

Happy New Year 2016

I only have one New Year's resolution this year...to write a blog post once a week, all year long. Unlike "exercising more", "eating more healthfully" or "losing some weight", this is specific, and do-able.

This first post, being New Year's Day, is on a Friday, but I'm going to try to post every Sunday here on out - the first will be a catch-up post since I haven't posted since last summer. We had some big events last year so I may spread those out over a couple of weeks. We will be traveling to some interesting places this coming year, including India and Turkey, so there will definitely be travel posts. I'm currently writing this in the United lounge in San Francisco airport, on our way home after 10 days with my folks over Christmas.

In the meantime, Happy New Year to all my friends, and may 2016 be blessed.

Wendy

Natural Dyeing Project #1: Red Cabbage

I've been wanting to try natural dyeing, with things I have to hand, for a while and a couple of weeks ago I discovered a rather manky red cabbage lurking in the back of the fridge. We love cabbage so it usually gets eaten quite quickly, but we'd been away and it had been pushed behind some other items on the back shelf. I did a quick survey of my facebook friends to help me decide whether to try making sauerkraut or dyeing with it and the results were pretty overwhelmingly "make dye". (I still want to try my hand at sauerkraut and the crock I just found at the fleamarket is going to come in very handy later in the summer.)

I've collected a number of old canning pots from local thrift stores to use for crafting, so I chopped up my cabbage, covered it with water and simmered it for an hour.

In the meantime, I soaked two skeins of Filatura Lanarota Natural sock yarn (90% superwash merino wool/10% nylon) in tepid water for about 20 minutes and then simmered it for an hour in 3 tsp each of alum and cream of tartar as a mordant. This is supposed to help the dye bind with the wool.

When the cabbage was done I strained the very purple water and the now much paler cabbage went into the compost.

 I ended up with four quarts of dye, which I divided in half.

I had read someone else's blog about dyeing with red cabbage and she changed the pH of the dye by adding baking soda and vinegar to get two totally different colours and I really wanted to try that. She didn't give measurements so I randomly added 2 tsp of baking soda to one half of my dye, and 3 Tbsp of vinegar to the other. The first instantly turned a lovely teal green and the other a fuchsia pink.

I added one skein of the mordanted yarn to each and simmered for 20 minutes.

They looked gorgeous soaking in the dye

 
Unfortunately, when I rinsed them a lot of the colour came out, particularly of the pink one.

The green one is still quite colourful but the other one has gone to a pale grey with a slight tinge of purple. Still pretty, but not quite what I was aiming for.

Mulling it over, I think there were a couple of things I did that may have affected the uptake of dye (although I'm not sure why the green stuck and the pink didn't - maybe the vinegar affected it?).

1. Although I soaked the yarn before I mordanted it, I didn't actually wash it. I noticed when I rinsed it after dyeing that it felt kind of "soapy" so it may have had something on it that interfered with the dye absorption.
2. I took both skeins out when they looked the colour I wanted and then chucked the dye before I rinsed them. There was quite a bit of colour left in the dye baths so I should have kept it anyway and tried dyeing something else, but I certainly should have kept them until I was sure the colour was going to stick. If I had, I could have put the pink back in to simmer longer or even sit in the dye pot overnight. Well, live and learn.

Now that I've given natural dyeing a try I have a list of other things I want to experiment with. I have a skein I dyed this weekend with loquat leaves I scavenged from my parents' yard drying now (more on that later), and I'd like to try black beans (blue) and avocado pits (pale pink) next.

Wendy

Socks

David asked me why, if I loathe handwashing so much, I keep knitting him socks that he wears once and then sit on the top of the washer for six months. It is a very, very, good question.

I've decided that unless I find a luxury sock yarn that absolutely MUST be made into a pair of socks, all my socks from now on will be made of superwash wool.

When I planned to knit all my California family socks for Christmas last year I determined to make it as easy as possible on them, so all my Christmas knitting was superwash. Knit Picks is my friend - all these socks were knitted with Stroll I ordered online and had delivered to my door.

From top to bottom these socks were for Lauren, Dad and Mom - Lauren's and Mom's I heavily adapted existing patterns and Dad's I kind of made up as I went along.

Fin's were my favourites. I'd been wanting to try doing something with Latvian braid and I found this pattern just about the time I was planning my Christmas presents. All the trim was done using bits from the other socks.

 I knit Ally's and Madie's socks using a basic sock pattern but added an eyelet cuff (cause I love eyelet) and did duplicate stitch on the heels for their initials. I couldn't get the colours to come out quite right in the photos - Ally's are a little more purple and Madie's are a really vibrant hot pink.

 By the time I got to Cedric's socks I was running late so didn't initial his heel. However, I don't think anyone's going to be confused about whose socks these are.

Over the winter I did manage to coordinate our church's Homeless knitting project and we ended up with over 200 donated items (some handmade, some bought) - here are a few of them.

One lady brought all hers in individual ziplocs with hand-written notes inside, which I thought was a nice touch.

 For the rest I printed little labels and attached them with a bit of scrap yarn.

 Since Christmas I've only knit one pair of socks for David (no pictures yet) and one sock out of a pair for me. I loved Fin's so much I found another pattern with Latvian braid and am doing myself a pair in purples.

I have a long-ish list of requests, including a knitted viking helmet/beard from Lauren which I was hoping to have done for his birthday, but I'm so far behind it may have to be a Christmas present. I'm also commissioned to knit Evie's young man, Greg, a Jayne Hat but his birthday's in October so I have time to get to that one (this request deeply satisfies the geek in me).

So, that's my knitting for the last few months. I'll try and get pictures of David's new socks (superwash for the win). I have a flight to California coming up next week so hopefully I can get the second sock of my Latvian pair done then and pictures up soon.

Wendy

After a Long and Painful Absence

This winter was long, cold and very painful. I have rheumatoid arthritis and until last fall the medications I was on were keeping it under pretty good control. I'd have the odd flare that would last a day or two and then I'd be OK for a while. But in September the flares starting coming more often and lasting longer and in November my whole body seemed to flare up - I was having pain in every joint. A couple courses of steroids helped settle that down, but my hands just hurt all the time. My rheumatologist has been trying to find a new combination of drugs to control the flares but we are still tweaking it. I'm on a longer course of steroids right now so I'm pain-free for the moment and after nearly six months of constant pain it's such a relief!

I found that when the pain and fatigue are unrelenting, not only can I not make much physical effort, I can't even think about making physical effort. Now I love planning, sometimes even more than the actual doing! I love looking at knitting patterns, browsing yarn websites, poring over seed catalogs, reading about travel, watching youtube videos refinishing furniture. But chronic pain narrows your focus down to just getting through the day, and anything else just sucks away the little energy you have. Even blogging and posting on Facebook seem like too much of an effort.

Also, I found that it's downright depressing thinking about all the things I can't do. At the worst of it I was missing a lot of work and I kept thinking "if this doesn't get better I'm going to have to quit work, and then we won't be able to afford house payments, and then we'll have to move, and how am I going to move house if I can't even move my hands, and I like my house, I don't want to leave it". Getting back on my antidepressants helped a lot with the anxiety, but it's still an issue I may have to deal with.

However, at the moment, while I'm pain-free, I'm taking advantage of the reprieve and in the last couple of weeks have had a little flurry of baking, knitting and gardening that I really missed during the winter.

I realized I never posted pictures of my Christmas knitting so I'll work on a post to show those, and one to show the beginnings of my veggie patch this year.

Here's to warmer weather and feeling better.

Wendy

Six of Nine

Earlier this year I made the fateful decision to knit my family in California socks for Christmas. That's seven pairs of socks.

I know this about myself - I'm not a fast knitter, and am easily distracted, so I started early. Mom and Lauren sent me everyone's shoe sizes and preferred colours. All the adults chose blue. Fortunately Lauren and Dad gave me alternatives so I didn't have to knit four pairs of blue socks in a row - that way madness lies.

I knit the first two pairs (for Mom & Dad) while we were in Australia this summer. Socks are the best travel knitting. I didn't have a pattern for either of them, just a basic sock recipe, to which I added cables to Dad's and lace to Mom's.

A couple of weeks later we went to California for campmeeting and I actually remembered my plan to trace the kids' feet so I had a visual for their socks, rather than just a shoe size.

I had given myself the goal of getting everything knit by the end of October, which would give me plenty of wiggle room in case I knit even more slowly than usual, or something catastrophic happened, and I wouldn't be frantically wrapping and posting seven pairs of socks on Christmas eve.

I'm pleased to say that I've finished Lauren's, Fin's, Ally's (adult size 4) and Madie's (adult size 6!) and only have Cedric's (who, mercifully, has the smallest feet) to go.

This means that I have knit four pairs of socks (and most of a shawl) in about seven weeks - I am basking in the awesome. And simultaneously worrying like heck about whether any of them will fit. Remote knitting is a bit of a crapshoot.

Also, in a moment of weakness, I recently asked Evie and David if they'd like socks for Christmas and they both said yes. Honestly I wasn't expecting Evie to because she's not a big sock fan but I'd just (again in a moment of weakness) sent her a link to a Spirited Away chart

and she couldn't resist the soot sprites. She also wants them to be tabi socks because her big toe likes its personal space.

This means I have three more pairs of socks to go. Six more socks - fine yarn, tiny needles, thousands of stitches. I love knitting socks, but when I've finished my Christmas knitting I'm casting on something involving bulky yarn and size 15 needles.

Sneak Peeks

Although I can't show you pictures of my current knitting, I can put up a few pictures of some of the yarn, and the awesomeness that is the swift I got for Christmas last year.

Totally beats hand-winding yarn off my knees.

Behold the beauty of tangle free yarn -

And perfectly wound yarn cakes -

These are Knit Picks' Stroll Tonal in Blue Yonder and Thunderhead. I love tonal yarn. Love. It.

OK, here's a little peek of how it's knitting up

All the Knitting, All the Time

Actually, there wasn't a lot of knitting early in the year. I had that crisis in Portland that resulted in these socks:

In February, a girl I work with had twins and it took me a while to decide what to make for them, so I didn't get really going until our trip to Kelowna, when I started knitting the first blanket. I (foolishly?) promised a blanket/sweater/hat set for each of them and I've only just finished it over the holiday weekend. Here are the blankets blocking on the guest bed (my first attempt at steam blocking)-

They are the Honeycomb Stroller Blanket, and I love how they look much more complicated than they actually are to knit. I may have had to block them somewhat severely to keep them from being knitted strips, rather than blankets. When you've got that many stitches on the needles it's really hard to tell when you've got a square. I crocheted a border around to help disguise the rather messy edges and I'm OK with the way they turned out.

 I love this little sweater pattern so much. It's Beyond Pueperium and I liked enough to pay for it - usually I'm all about the free stuff.

 The buttons on the green cardi are little white roses

Unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture of the buttons on the blue cardigan. They are the cutest navy blue airplanes.

The hats are just striped baby hats, with little i-cord knots on the top.

The photos were taken on a table at work as I'm hoping to get them to the babies tonight or tomorrow, and see if any of it still fits. They were born at the end of February and were a couple of months early so I made size 6 months - fingers crossed.

What I'm knitting now is for Christmas so I can't put pictures up or it will spoil the surprise.

SSK

This post is going to mean nothing to a non-knitter so if you want to just scroll back to previous posts about travel, furniture or news updates, I won't be offended.

I've been knitting for just over four years now. I've been knitting socks for just over four years. Oh, the joy of socks. The hypnotic rhythm of 2x2 ribbing, the soothing stocking stitch of the leg, the fun of a heel flap, the cleverness of turning the heel, the intrigue of picking up stitches for the gusset without leaving little holes at the corners and then...screeching halt as we come to decreasing the gusset. The first decrease, the k2tog goes fine, nice tight little right leaning stitch. We knit across the instep and then, then it all goes pear-shaped. For four years I've idly wondered why, when k2tog makes a tidy, even, pretty little column of stitches, the ssk makes this loose, sloppy, ugly column of stitches. Being an intrinsically lazy laid back person I just accepted that the left leaning decrease was going to look like that, and knit on.

Bearing in mind that I taught myself to knit using library books and the odd youtube video, I thought that you always slip a stitch purlwise - that's just the way you do it. Imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that with a ssk you slip the stitches, one at a time, KNITWISE! This tightens up the stitch and you end up with a tidy, even, pretty little column of left leaning stitches.

This may not seem like an epiphany to anyone else but as a committed (dare I say slightly obsessed) sock knitter, this is like discovering you aren't supposed to drive with the handbrake on.

Gingerbread and "What I Bought on my Vacation"

The last of the travel posts, just because I love the Victoriana so very much.

Ferndale, CA

There is a vintage car convention in the area every year around this time, so there were a number of these little cuties spotted.

This was my favourite building - I'm totally in love with those colours and all the detailing.

Even the public restrooms are cute.

This is the yarn I picked up at Foggy Bottom Yarns when we were in Ferndale.

They didn't have any local yarn, but they did have a new shipment of Sweet Georgia Cashsilk Lace, which is 55% silk, 45% cashmere laceweight, in the colourway, botanical. I was havering between this and a purple and I came down on the side of the green since it reminded me of the redwoods we were camping amongst.

When I travel I do try to look out for local yarns when I can. Art of Yarn in Kelowna in May didn't have anything in  that was truly local but they did have Hand Maiden, which is hand dyed in Canada, and which I'd been wanting to try for a while. I bought a skein of Maiden Hair, 67% silk, 23% kid mohair, 10% nylon sport weight, in the Blomidon colourway. It's lovely and sqwooshy.

In March, when we went to Portland, I realised (after it was much too late to turn back) that I'd left my knitting bag by the front door, so the day after we arrived, while David attended some meetings, I googled the nearest yarn store, Wool 'n Wares, and went in for some emergency stash. Turns out that Portland was having a yarn crawl that weekend so they had some really gorgeous local yarn, which I petted and sighed over, but when I asked the price I had to sit down - from $120 to $400 a skein! I quickly bought a ball of Zwergers Garn's Opal Flower Power self-striping sock yarn, a set of 2.5mm dpns and cast on a pair of socks to calm my nerves. 

The next day, our coffee tour with Lora ended near Knit Purl in downtown Portland, so I dragged David in for a quick look. He's so good about going shopping with me.

I bought two really nice skeins of wool in Portland (apart from the Opal) but I can't remember now which one I bought at Wool 'n Wares and which at Knit Purl.

This is Madeline Tosh, Prairie - a 100% merino laceweight in the Cathedral colourway, which I think I got at Knit Purl -

The other is an Oregonian yarn, which I think I got at Wool 'n Wares, after I picked my jaw up off the floor. It's Alexandra's Craft, Baby Silver Falls, a 60% superwash, 30% bamboo, 10% nylon, fingerweight in the Kaleidoscope colourway. I forgot to take a picture of it skeined up but here it is being knitted up. Although I like the way variegated yarn looks in the skein, I usually don't like the way it knits up, but the colours in this were just irresistible. They remind me of an early evening sky. And it really suits the garter stitch.

It seemed appropriate that I use it to finally make the Multnomah shawl (which I'm calling my Keeping Portland Weird shawl).

Unfortunately, I still have a four-row pattern repeat, plus the bind-off to knit, and I only have this much yarn left,

So it's on hold until I can rummage through my stash and see if I can come up with a complementary yarn I can use to finish it off with. I can totally pretend that it's a intentional border. Yeah.

Wendy

Ruthlessly Pillaged

I've snagged some of the photos taken by iPhone this year from my David's Facebook page. What's his is mine, right?

First up is the coffee cart stop of our Third Wave Coffee Tour in Portland. I discovered on this trip that Portland is my spiritual home.

That's Lora there in the middle checking her phone. I can't remember the name of the cart (memory like a sieve, me) but they were the ones who provided us coffee with that lemon/rosemary/Douglas Fir syrup, the latter of which was sourced from their own yard. They also had a great pay-it-forward system - you can "sponsor" a free cup of coffee for someone in the future. You pay for it, it's marked  up on a blackboard, and anyone who comes along, feels the need for a cuppa, but is short of cash, can take it up. Very cool.

In Kelowna, David was there to speak at their "campmeeting" held in the local school, and we were tickled to find this when we arrived.

The Okanagan is beautiful, as I said before. This is a view of the lake from the local lavender farm Lori-Anne took us to while we were there.

Unfortunately the farm itself didn't open for another week but the shop/tearoom was open and we spent a ridiculous amount of money on lavender-related goodness, and had hand-blended tea on the back verandah.

The elegant and charming Lori-Anne is on the right, in an Audrey Hepburn-esque turtleneck, and the adorable cheeky monkey Amelie is making eyes at us at the front. Oliver was off doing whatever small boys do when the grown ups are being boring.

David and I drove along the lake and a short visit to the beach, where a few of those crazy Okanagans were sunbathing and swimming. David took the first picture of me in a very long time that I actually really like.

While in Canada we also discovered the awesomeness that is...deep fried pickles. How did I not know about this? Why has no one told me?!!!

We had them twice. It's just as well we weren't there for longer, really.

On the food-related theme, we were in Australia on my birthday and David's brother Geoffrey took us on a drive to Byron Bay, where we had lunch at what he said had been rated the 2nd best place to eat in town. Imagine our surprise when it turned out to be a cafe attached to the local Adventist church.

Manna Haven is a vegan restaurant with really, really good food (sadly, often not the case at vegan places) and a hot mint-carob drink that David could have and, despite my long-standing bias against carob, would have fooled me into thinking it was chocolate if I hadn't known otherwise.

Geoff oldest son, William, wasn't feeling well and didn't come along, but his wife Anne and Ben, the youngest, in all his curly-headed-Trim glory, were there to help me celebrate heading into the back stretch of my 40s.

Although still suffering from the colds we came down with the moment we arrived, we had a really good day. And despite being winter, the weather while we were in Australia was perfect - hovering around 70F most of the time.

I'm including the photo below because it's funny, and because I think I look surprisingly cute with a hard-hat. We went on a tour of the new section of the Sydney Adventist Hospital, which is a building site, so everyone had to wear hard-hats and day-glo vests. (David has several pictures of senior church officials looking silly in hard-hats and safety vests, but I will not be posting them here, to preserve their dignity.)

I rocked the hat, not so much the vest.

Next time I'll show pictures of the Victorian extravaganza that is Ferndale, CA, and my souvenir yarn.

Wendy