I’ve got the gardening itch, but the only thing that really continues to grow outside is kale. I found this recipe for crispy kale via notmartha.org.
It was delicious. If I still followed the Atkins Diet, this dish would be my potato chip substitute. The only change I would make is to wait until minute 14 to start checking for crispiness if you have a large amount of kale. It really shrinks up in the oven.
There aren’t very many good knitting patterns on the internet for masculine scarves. There also aren’t many days of winter left here in The South. Last weekend I had the chance to finish a new scarf for Ty. He wanted a shorter and thinner scarf that the ones he owned.
I started doing a 3×3 rib, but the rib really made the width too thin. I converted the middle ribs to seed stitch, and widened the scarf. The thought was to make it thickest at the middle part. That part should cover him from beard to jacket opening. The two tails should wrap around the back of his neck and tuck back into the jacket in the front. It needed to be a scarf that would work with only a sports coat for his early morning walks to school.
Model picture forthcoming, until then the file cabinet and the violet will have to show it off.
If anyone has some scarf-making to do, I’d be happy to derive the pattern, but only if someone wants it.
If you’re going to keep a blog, you really need to keep up with it. I make a mental list of things to blog about, take pictures at that event, and remind myself to blog about the event. After time the event stagnates in my head, but the first thing in my mental queue has to be kicked out before I can even think about writing the next one.
Now is the time for a reboot! I’m just going to clear out the queue and start from what happened yesterday.
Since I’m a knitter, I have a number of cold weather scarves. Scarves are easily lost during the season to the bottom of the coat rack. The solution is to create an individual hook.
I buy a lot of 3M Command hooks. You can apply the adhesive strips to almost any surface, and they hold up to 3 lbs. The smaller strips hold less. Each package comes with a few extra adhesive strips, so I thought it would be fun to use them up.
It occurred to me that a spool would make a good hook because the white plastic spool seems to be made out of the same material as the hooks. I would never put a heavy jacket on the spool because it just isn’t engineered to distribute the weight correctly.
In other news, it has warmed a little outside. Despite the warm weather, there are no asparagus shoots coming up yet. I did find a volunteer spinach plant yesterday! The kale still looks great, but the carrots are looking questionable, so I pulled one out. It’s edible!
My garden looks pretty miserable right now. I’ve been slowly pulling out all of the dried tomato vines. Last night it rained pretty hard, and softened up the soil and vines. I’ve got all but 3 plants/cages pulled out.
I had to go to the store this morning to get a drain zipper, which I LOVE. It pulls out clogs in the drain up to 18 inches down the pipe. While at the store, I took a detour to the freshly stocked garden area. It turns out WalMart has their entire seed selection out. After consulting with the back of some of the packets, I found that some of plants need to be planted in January in my region! What a good excuse to get some $1 seed packets. This morning I planted some radishes, yellow sweet onions, mustard greens, and some cool weather lettuce. I also finally planted some garlic. My southern gardening expert (and one of Ty’s bosses) said I should have planted it the second week of December when we met at the Hendrix Christmas Party. We’ve still got some 20 F nights ahead of us next week, so it will either be good for the garlic or the other things I’ve planted. The winter onions are sending up shoots.
The kale from last season is battered, but it is still growing without me paying any attention to it. We haven’t been at a loss for water around here, and there is already a carpet of green weeds at one end of the garden, and I’m know I’m early, but I’ve got my eye out for asparagus shoots.
On the way home from work last Monday, I could see little green shoots coming out of the rice fields. So today I got the itch to plant in the soil. After completing that task, I expanded some jiffy pellets and planted some long-term crops: onions, leeks, bell and jalapeno peppers, grape, cherry, and roma tomatoes, spinach, cabbage, kale and cilantro.
I thought I was going to put in a seed order from seed savers this year, but so many of the varieties they offered were out of stock. I’m hoping to go to a local seed exchange in March when more of the outdoor planting begins.
I’m excited about gardening this year because my neighbor Sam will be starting her garden too. We’re both farm girls. Her father, a tulip farmer from the Netherlands, will be here in March to help plant. I hope he has as much fun as my farmer father had helping me plant.
Had an insanely fun weekend. Got to hang out with my friends/band members, celebrated the divine Robin’s birthday where she did not get goosed by Ted Dansen, attended the Oxford American music issue party, and played the ponies at Oaklawn.
Saturday night we went to the Starving Artist Cafe in North Little Rock. I really like their lunch specials and soups. Robin ordered the lamb…If you know a good place in Little Rock for lamb, let her know, because she can’t find it anywhere. I had the Ahi Tuna and it was completely overcooked! Waiters don’t ask how you would like your tuna cooked, because Ahi Tuna should be seared or served rare. Next time I’ll have to stipulate. Ty’s redfish special was pretty amazing.
Next we headed down the street to the Oxford American Music Issue party. All of the music was great, and the atmosphere at OA parties is always fun. We were most impressed with the True Soul Band! I wrote about last year’s music issue party pretty extensively, but this year we just hung out and danced.
On Sunday we went to Hot Springs for the Oaklawn Race Track opening weekend! With temperatures in the 60s, we spent all of our pony picking time outside. It got a little cool when sun went down over Boll Weevil Pawn. I ended up winning about $65! At first I liked how slim the programs at the track were, but then I saw that they contain half of the information of the traditional two-page layout. I think I’ll be pre-printing my program, or buying the DRF from here on out.
My friend David had a new lens to play with and took a bunch of fun pictures that day. If he posts them I’ll link to them!
This was the opening weekend not only for racing, but also for the casino. We registered for the casino’s frequent player program to get extra gambling money and a discount on our buffet. While we were standing in line, we suspected a computer problem, as all of the customer service people had to yell a number out loud to say they were locking or reserving that particular record! Behind us, a raffle was about to take place. A couple of older men turned a hopper to draw 5 $200 prizes. A crowd of really old people began to gather, and one of the older men tried to get a microphone to work. After failing with the second clip-on microphone, he decided he’d just shout over the crowd. I have never seen an angrier mob with a larger sense of entitlement. After each name was called, these old folks would holler, “WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!” For some reason, maybe common decency, the people in the front did not telegraph back the names by yelling back to those people. Some older folks even began crashing our customer service line to get closer to the drawing. We got out of there right before the rakes and pitchforks came out.
Next, we went to the buffet because we had a couple of vegetarians with us, and the only things in the entire clubhouse they could eat were pretzels and bloody mary drinks. I’m going to apologize for whining so much here, but the buffet wasn’t that impressive. There were certainly good parts, and I was surprised by how much I liked the cheesy scallop/shrimp/crab/krab casserole. The pork loin dish with cranberries or raisins was great too. On the down side, the meat at the carving station was very over-done and the bread was all for display! My friend Sasha brought a sesame roll back the table to find it completely shellacked. I should have probably eaten more of the great looking fruit and miniature desserts.
Finished the short sleeved fair isle sweater from the Vogue 2009 Holiday issue.
Notes on this sweater: two rounds of seed stitch is not adequate. Two rounds with a long-tail cast on makes all of the cuffs really flippy. I added a round or two in places. On the neck, when I added a round or two, I continued the raglan decreases every other row. Chart 2 is incorrect. Columns 16 and 28 on row 14 show stitches in light blue. It should be light blue on row 12 instead of row 14. Row fourteen stitches in columns 16 and 28 should be dark blue to complete the cross motif.
A sentimental note on this sweater. I purchased the yarn and the pattern with a gift certificate from my husband while we were on my birthday trip to Fort Smith, AR. The green I purchased for the sweater appeared almost brown when I used it. I needed something closer to a lime green. Just then, I remembered a scrap ball of lime green I had from a friend who passed away in 2008. The tiny ball of green yarn worked perfectly!
Back from my blogging break with fun, crafty updates.
I’ve been working on the Short Sleeved Fair Isle Sweater from the Holiday 2009 issue of Vogue Knitting. The body of the sweater took almost all football season. I would work on it when Ty and I would go to Gusano’s Pizza to watch the Denver Broncos. (Actually, I started working on it right before their losing streak!)
Here are the pictures from when we got back from Nebraska:
Since then I’ve had some time to get the color work done, and that is the fun part:
I’m on the last line of color work now, and I hope to get the neck done, and even block it tonight.
Today I also got outside. It has started to get warmer, so I ripped out a bunch of tomato cages. I’m also trying to figure out my seed order for spring! Seed savers looks like a really cool site, and they even have heirloom soybeans that Monsanto doesn’t own yet.
Received a big package in the mail from the Jaegers! It was a holiday of cooking gifts! Ty got a wok, a ginger grater, and a mortar and pestle. I got a pressure cooker, canning utensils, and canning cookbooks!
Here is the link:
http://www.juleedunekacke.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=6200
I’ve got to go pack some more and help cook dinner, otherwise I would list these individually!
My friend and band mate Robin Becker’s book has a release date!
Brains: A Zombie Memoir comes out on May 22nd, 2010. Click through on the link to find out more about the book, and click on the “Author” tab to see Robin’s delightful face and my first book jacket photo credit!
On Amazon you can pre-order your copy of Brains: A Zombie Memoir today!
The websites I read seem to come up in conversations often. I’m going to post the funniest ones today so we can have a funny conversation later.
Indexed - Just found this site today. The nerd in me loves it.
xkcd - Another nerdy site, this one with comics instead of graphs.
Ok time for some fun ones:
Cake Wrecks - Sometimes I start explaining this site to people, and I can’t do it. I pull up the site for them and hear them giggle for the next 15 minutes.
Fail Blog - I can’t believe the stupidity displayed by this site. Even though I can’t believe it, I am entertained by it.
LOL Cats - I really dislike having to read text-speak on phones, over facebook, and even hearing people say things out loud that were abbreviated into this new language. When animals do it, it is hilarious.
I also talk about woot.com. It is an on-line store that sells only one item per day, unless they have a woot-off, and then they sell different items, one at a time, back to back. The site has an entire subculture following it, and I find that fascinating.
