You spin me right round

This is a long overdue post.  About 2-3 weeks ago I learned how to spin yarn!  It was a great experience.  It was a two days (beginner on saturday, beginner advanced on sunday) 6 hours each of just spinning wool, so fun!  Some people will probably ask why would you spin yarn when you can buy it super cheap online. Well, it's more about connecting with the material and the process.  It's a form of slow fashion which will hopefully make me appreciate the work that goes into a garment and it's impact on the environment and my lifestyle.  Plus it's very fun to see something evolve from the raw material into a finished garment.  Next step if I get ambitious will be to source local fleece from a New York state or USA small farmer. But I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

It was also very cool to learn about different types of spinning and different types of wool.  For example did you know that there are two main styles of spinning: woolen, which is more lofty (good for socks and any garment needed for insulation) versus worsted (not to be confused with the yarn weight, the more dense spin).

Update: I bought myself a spinning wheel so look forward to lots of pictures of handspun, naturally dyed yarn. While I learned on a Louet S51 I actually decided to buy the Lendrum folding wheel because of its portability.  Also my teacher said that it was a great wheel that you could grow with and that it would "do everything you need it to do" which seems like the greatest endorsement.  And it was her personal wheel of choice so there's that.  I've loved the Lendrum so far (canadian made) and have spun enough yarn for another short cardi in corriedale which I just naturally dyed last week (a post on that process soon) as well as a skein for a hat.  All is well in spinning and knitting land.

-Amanda

Mirasol Sulka Cardigan

Unlike my mom who is a pro-knitter, I'm more on the beginner to intermediate level.  I tend to scour Ravelry with the keywords "bulky" and "free" to get inspiration.  I'm always on the look out for relatively quick knits because I fear I may become bored in the middle of a larger project and then never finish.

So the Mirasol Sulky Cardigan pattern was perfect for me. It's a cute cropped cardigan worked flat in double moss pattern (which I previously had not tried but now love).  The overall texture is great and I would definitely make this pattern again in many colors.  I used Malabrigo Mecha in Arapey colorway (reminds me of mermaids swimming in the sea) which I bought at Webs in Northampton, MA (aka best yarn store) while visiting my friends Hannah and Chris. I needed 4 skeins at 130 yards each and I had about a 1/5 skein left over.  If I make this sweater again I would buy 5 skeins and lengthen the pattern to make a full length regular size cardigan. I just finished knitting and sewing up the seams so all that's left is to pick the 6 buttons needed. Hooray! Can't wait to wear this one in the fall over dresses.

Cost: 4 skeins Malabrigo Mecha $48


-Amanda

Every morning I look forward to checking my emails (of course instead of the hundreds of emails that I got when I was working, I now am lucky to get two or three messages from family or friends boo hoo) and then checking my favorite blogs.  This kick starts my day.  It also reminds me painfully that my life has changed post retirement.

I don't know if I am alone in this:  the blog world is making me feel inadequate.  Don't bloggers seem ineffably witty, funny, happy, consequential?  They have hoards of followers.  They are impressively plugged into the world of technology and social media.  As for me, I didn't even know how to set up a gmail account or how to take an IPad photo until my daughter took me in hand.  This reminds me of the pain of high school.  This reminds me of Renee.  She was blond, thin, cool.  She had an army of followers and seemed to be everything that I was not.  Blogging is actually a lot harder than I thought it would be.  First there is the search for things to say.  Then, the self editing.  Then, the struggle to say it in some interesting way.  It's like high school all over again.

Knitting remains my solace.  I had the strange fear - would there be a day when knitting would no longer matter to me?  What would I do without the compulsion?
Right now, in a frenzy, I am in the midst of four projects.  The one that I desperately want to finish is Lena by Carrie Bostick Hoge because I am making it with Twig by Shibui Knits.  Painful knitting because of the texture of linen/recycled silk/wool but the yarn label says:  "Only the shoots of new leaves, budding flowers, and rays of light."  How perfect is that?

-Chee Mee

Weekend in Northampton

Amanda is taking a two day class at WEBS in Northampton on spinning.  Now that she's mastered dying, weaving, knitting, she is taking it one step further, learning have to take fleece (or is it roving?) and converting the fluffy mass into usable strands of yarn.  I decided to go along for the ride and as an excuse to spend the whole day in one of the largest and best organized yarn stores in the U.S.  We were just here a few months ago.  At that trip I was lost in the famous "back room" for hours and emerged with multiple additions to my stash.  So this time, I exercised restraint.  Spent hours trolling the shelves but emerged with only one stash add -  a meltingly light and very soft pure alpaca.  Yes, I know that the advice is not to knit with 100% alpaca but I figured, why not?

Anyway, that is not the point of this entry.  As I spend more and more time in Northampton, I am more and more convinced that I've landed in some alien territory.  You have to understand, I grew up in New York City.  In NY, like it or not, everything is driven by, influenced by or nuanced by money.  Where you live (McMansions are de rigeur), how you dress (Bruno Cucinelli or knockoffs), what schools you went to (only ivy leagues), what vacations you take, how you spend your Sundays (the Hamptons of course)  are all markers in NY.   Even ranting against the tyranny of success and money is an integral part of the NY life.  But here in Northampton I am impressed that everyone doesn't seem to care.  Here perfection and one-upsmanship is not the Holy Grail.  This is a place where people dress as they please and more often than not bodies are lumpy and comfortable.  Does the average body seem more plump here?   Here I see a lot of yoga mats slung over shoulders but somehow they seem more authentic than the yoga mats slung over shoulders of twenty year olds in New York who are perfectly slim, toned and clad in pricy "outfits" more expensive than my former work clothes.  Here everyone seems more relaxed in their skins.  I also see more older folks.  In NY, anyone over 40 is beyond comprehension and banished from public eyes.  NY is a city of the young and ferocious.  Maybe this parallel universe is because five colleges are clustered here and business and commerce is dwarfed by academia.  Don't get me wrong, academia is also a bizarre microcosm with its own rites and hidden hand signals, but that is another topic for another time.

I spent an hour in the local bookstore obviously struggling to survive in the face of Amazon and Internet competition.  A store filled with funny and informative handwritten cursive notes from the staff and a small shrine to Bernie Sanders (of course,  this area is a hippie holdout).  This is a locus of writers, artists, craftspeople.  There's even an avenue called "Crafts Avenue" for goodness sake.  And city hall is built in the shape of a fort/castle.  The town is dominated by tattoo parlors,  palm readers and psychics and coffee/tea places.

Where am I?

- Chee Mee

Not quite a peach pie

One of my all time favorite dessert recipes from Smitten Kitchen (adapted from Bon Appettit magazine) is the plum-almond torte... mainly because it includes a tasty frangipane filling that never disappoints. Also the pate brisee (sucree?) crust is super easy to make in the food processor.  I like that you can start rolling it right out the processor instead of the usual "refrigerate in a flattened ball before handling for at least an hour" method that so many fussy dough recipes call for these days. Whenever I can cut out a time consuming step I will and with no remorse. Ain't no one got time for multiple refrigerations/ freezes.

I like to adapt this recipe to fit the type of fruit that's in season, or more honestly, the type of fruit that was on sale or that I already have in the fridge that's about to go bad. This time I had a bunch of disappointingly mealy peaches that I wanted to get rid of since we couldn't eat them fresh.  So I made a few mods:

• I used pecans instead of almonds since I had them in the pantry.  Generally I like the almond taste better (it seems more classic) but in a pinch pecans or walnuts work fine
• I reduced the amount of butter in the filling by about 1-2 tablespoons since I ran out of butter (I also had to use salted instead of unsalted, whoops)
• I used peaches instead of plums and added a wee bit of sugar to the cut slices and let them macerate for a bit
• I used bourbon instead of framboise (honestly who has framboise lying around?)
• I didn't add the jelly glaze at the end because I didn't feel like it

As you can see I made a butt-load of mods to this recipe and it still came out great.  Proof that this torte is a keeper.  Try it out and let me know how it goes!

-Amanda

California Thoughts

Adding my thoughts to the many, many upon the passing of Bill Cunningham.  I can't seem to shake the feeling that I have lost a beacon, someone whose very existence made my life better...

It's been a few days since we returned from our week in Sacramento.  I am still adjusting.  It is amazing how physical surroundings, perceptions of time and the lack of life "markers" can both disorient and sensitize.  We did a lot last week, including driving to San Francisco and Napa Valley.  We visited an olive farm with row after row of glorious olive trees, bee hives and the busiest fig tree ever, a converted pottery factory now serving as studios and living spaces for artists, a converted gallery space and the newly reopened San Francisco Museum of Modern Art where I was surprised by an early Frida Kahlo painting of Diego and herself.  The painting is surprisingly tender and hopeful and she presents herself with incredibly tiny feet as though she were a child and Diego was her protector.  Do all women go through that phase or affectation?  We ate high end (Gary Danko's) and low end (In n Out burgers).  Needless to say, we ate a lot.

But the highlight of the trip for me were three local yarn shops in Sacramento, Fair Oaks and Chico where I reveled in the colors, gauges, textures, blends.  Living in New York, you would think that there are unending choices in yarn sources.  Perhaps if I were amenable to traveling to Brooklyn I could count a good number of local yarn stores.  But in reality the number of yarn shops per capita have actually diminished over time and their offerings are often limited.  So you can imagine my thrill at discovering Rumpulstiltskin, Babetta's and Heartstrings Yarns.  My stash has swollen as a result including my first purchase of Swan's Island which I am dying to knit once it gets a little cooler.  I am knitting another stash addition - Juniper Moon's Zooey (a blend of cotton and linen in a great bluish grey which is perfect for the summer) - the pattern is Nouri by Carol Feller from Pom Pom quarterly.  My gauge was all off in my first and second try so I had to undo hours of work but after going down one size and changing needles it seems to be fine.  I am fascinated with the unique potential in summer weight yarns especially in the textures and feel of linens.

Maybe wallowing in mountains of yarn is my defense to life.

- Chee Mee