Admitting defeat

Over the winter I signed up for a weekly half-share of produce from a local farm. This is a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, wherein you pay X dollars to a local farm during the off-season and get a box of produce per week during harvest season.

You not only support local farms when they have minimal income during the off-season but you get awesome super-fresh produce delivered practically to your door all summer long. Plus, possible hot farm boy sightings every week.

I think it’s genius.

And I like to cook and really, really love vegetables, so this seems like a perfect arrangement, right?

Well, this is what I’ve received so far:

2 bunches swiss chard
2 bunches kale
2 large bunches arugula
2 heads lettuce
2 huge bags spinach
2 bunches of beets, with (you guessed it) greens
2 bunches radishes
2 pints strawberries

I understand of course that it’s early in the season and this is what’s ready to eat in New England right now. That’s actually part of the charm of a CSA – you’re 100% guaranteed to be eating seasonally. And the greens are seriously gorgeous.







But I live alone, so the vast majority of this stuff needs to be cooked and eaten by me. And quickly. I’ve made countless salads with the tender greens. I’ve sautéed pounds of kale and chard and spinach with garlic and oil. They're particularly tasty with polenta and roasted portabello mushrooms. I’ve tossed leftover cooked greens with orzo, parmesan and good olive oil for pasta salad.



I’m done. I can’t eat any more greens. The greens have won. Anyone local want some of this stuff???

Also, despite a valiant effort at cooking them and a sincere appreciation of their beauty, turns out I am not such a huge fan of beets.





Or, if I can't share the wealth with you, do you have a favorite recipe for greens??? Cuz I’m getting a whole new batch of them this weekend…

It's a Christmas miracle!

Squeezing in just under the Six-Months-Late mark, my mom's Christmas socks are finally done! I like to think of this as extending the magic of the holiday season. And holiday magic in the form of socks is just what my mom needs.

She's heading back to Tucson today, where the forecasted high is 103 degrees, so really my timing couldn't possibly be better.



Pattern: Charade, which has been much celebrated in blogland, as it should be. I will definitely knit these again.

Yarn: Crystal Palace Panda Cotton, Fall Herbs colorway, 2.25 balls for size 10 women's socks. This yarn splits like a bastard, making it possibly the worst choice for a slip-stitch pattern, with an afterthought heel. Also, the yarn has no give while knitting, so it was a little rough on the hands. Well worth it though for the lush, cushy, amazingly soft fabric it produces.

Needles: size 2.5 (3 mm) Knitpicks DPNs

Modifications: because I liked the way the yarn was variegating and am apparently not bright enough to grasp short row heel instructions, I did an afterthought heel instead of a heel flap. Dave over at Criminy Jickets suggested this kind of heel the last time I was bitching about pooly gussets.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the results. The afterthought heel looks a little weird off the foot...



And frankly a little weird on the foot...


But because you don't increase stitches at the gusset, the yarn patterning doesn't change. And when the yarn looks this good....



...you don't want to be f*cking with it.

So, um, Merry Christmas, Mom! I'm so glad you came to visit. I had a really great time the past few weeks!

Sights

My mom’s been in town for the last few weeks, and we’ve been busy seeing the sights. Boy, are there a lot of sights.

We’ve done six museums, Salem (of witch trial fame), the New England Aquarium and parts of the Freedom Trail. We even saw the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus perform their “ExtrABBAganza” – which featured many ABBA songs, dancing men in sequined outfits, and one of my favorite-est coworkers sporting a spiky blond mullet wig and faux-Swedish accent. You really can’t go wrong with that combination.

Mullets and sequins aside, the high point of the mom visit so far was spending a long weekend on Cape Cod.

We stayed in Eastham, aka the gateway to the Cape Cod National Seashore, said seashore being something like 40 miles of uninterrupted federally protected coastline stretching from Eastham all the way to Provincetown.



So what does 40 miles of beaches mean for a vacationing knitter?

Why, knitting on the beach, of course….



The sock quite liked the beach. Though he kind of resented the way the ocean was horning in on his color scheme.


Not every day was nice enough to knit on the beach. Thankfully, my family lived in Oregon for years and we think it eminently reasonable to slog through rain and mud and mist to see cold grey water. So there were still plenty of coastal trails to traverse and gorgeous vistas to see.





Mmm… damp… The way the outdoors should be…



Hope everyone else is having a fabulous summer too!

Those three little words you long to hear

I had this conversation with my friend Kelley last night:

Kelley: OK, email me tomorrow.
Me: Will do.
Kelley: I love you, too.
Kelley (via text two minutes later): Dude, did we just love each other?
Me: No, I said will do, then you said you loved me.
Kelley: HA. I can't believe I said it first, I feel so vulnerable.

Funny, but those aren't the three words I'm thinking about. All I'm thinking about right now is MALABRIGO SOCK YARN. Seriously.

It's not available to the public yet, but Karen's got some in her hot little hands.

Go check it out. And start budgeting accordingly.

Let's pretend it's still May for a moment

Damn, I've been busy. In a good way, but enough so that I've barely had time to knit, let alone blog. So belatedly, here's my Mass Sheep and Wool Roundup...brought to you by the letters "I-S-U-C-K-A-T-B-L-O-G-G-I-N-G-R-E-G-U-L-A-R-L-Y."

When we got to MA Sheep and Wool, it was immediately obvious we were among our people. Even in the parking lot...




Fleece on earth. Good wool to ewe. Nice.

Once inside, there was plenty to see. But I think the most impressive thing of all was Jenny's mad spinning skilz. My introductory spinning pamphlet said spinning can feel a bit like trying to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time.

Well, fuck rubbing your belly and patting your head, I want to be able to do this...

...Spin AND WALK simultaneously. She's kind of my hero. Also, in the intervening weeks, she has handspun some seriously impressive yarn (scroll down).

We took a break to fortify ourselves with "taco in a bag," arguably the single best festival food in the world, adorably spokesmodeled here by Jenny and blog-free (but super-crafty) Suzy...



We made friends with some fiber animals...



And came really close to talking Sarah into taking this one home. Doesn't she look happy? Doesn't she totally deserve a bunny of her own? And Jenny and I would be more than happy to take all that spinnable fiber off her hands.

Oh yeah, speaking of spinnable fiber...Meet The Sheep Shed's merino, one-half pound of billowy gauzy delight....I can make a whole lot of lumpy yarn with half a pound of merino.



And 4 oz. of Sliver Moon Farm Superwash Merino Tencel roving. Which could totally make pants-crappingly gorgeous sock yarn, were I a hugely better spinner than I actually am.



And since I clearly have a lot to learn before I can make my own sock yarn, I also picked up a skein of "Bambu" from Ancient Threads Farm...



I know I say this all the time, but this is my new favorite-est yarn. It's dyed entirely with natural dyes (turmeric, osage, cochineal, etc) and is so beautiful I have it on my coffee table so I can stroke it several times a day. Let's take another look at it, shall we?



The nice lady at Ancient Threads mentioned that she gets all her dyestuffs from Botanical Shades, who just happened to have a booth at the festival, too. So I'm now the proud owner (co-owner actually, with Jenny) of a natural dye starter kit, with enough natural dye extracts (and mordants and such) to dye ten pounds of fiber.

Now if only I had ten pounds of undyed fiber...

I'd better get crackin' on that.

Regularly scheduled blogging, reading blogs, commenting on blogs, actually knitting, etc. to return in a week or two.

Six things I learned at WEBS

I had the supreme pleasure of going to WEBS again today. I know not everyone is so incredibly lucky, so I thought I'd share some of my acquired wisdom.

1. Knitters are awesome (though I knew that already).



2. I am a twelve-year-old boy (not exactly breaking news either).



3. When you want to knit a sweater, the WEBS annual sale isn't just a happy coincidence.

For months now, Kelley has been professing her love for the Must-Have Cardigan, in florid, romance novelesque terms. Coincidentally, I thought it looked like an especially fun knit, but had no desire whatsoever to actually wear it.

And so a plan was born - I would knit the sweater for her! In whatever color she wanted! Enter the WEBS annual sale, with particularly steep discounts on several ideal sweater wools.

I firmly believe it would be just plain irresponsible to ignore that kind of sign. Clearly, the knitting fates wanted me to buy a shitload of yarn.

4. You're gonna need a longer list.

I hoped my list would act as some sort of magical talisman last weekend, to keep me from being overwhelmed by the enormous quantities of reasonably priced wool. And it worked! Though having a really, really long list almost certainly helped with the whole "sticking to the list" thing...



Last weekend's purchases, left to right:
- Burgundy/pink Cascade 220 Heathers (a sweater's worth)
- Brown/red Cascade 220 Heathers (a sweater's worth to keep me from getting bitter and envious about the yarn I bought for Kelley)
- Valley Yarns Huntington (one skein each chocolate brown and pale rose)
- Classic Elite Alpaca Sox in what I think of as the "Shag Me Rotten" colorway

Destined to be Kelley's cardigan, something fabulous in cables for me, the Endpaper Mitts and awesome, respectively. The awesome sock yarn was the only thing that wasn't on my list. But, DUDE, alpaca sock yarn discounted over 30%. And it looks like this:



5. New yarn makes all your old yarn seem stupid.

After the first WEBS trip last Sunday I wanted to abandon every single one of the new projects I started recently. To make matters worse, today's WEBS trip was just a detour on the way to MA Sheep and Wool. And I already love today's newer new yarn way more than last weekend's new yarn.

Plus, baby's got a brand new spindle and some sweeeeet new fiber to play with (more on that later).

Thankfully, being a knitter (and currently flirting with at least three different socks herself), Kelley probably understands that her sweater might never actually be finished take a while. Which brings me to the last thing I've learned...

6. Teaching your friends to knit is always a good idea.

Almost certain temptation

My friend Kelley and I are off to WEBS today. The sheer quantity of that much inexpensive tweed wool can be overwhelming, but I have a list and a plan...



I'm prepared. The girl scouts got nothin' on me.