Friday already - where does the time go?  Heheh....

Okay, I sat down with the Paradiso yesterday and my favorite size 6 circular to figure out what I need to do for this potential T I’ve been thinking about.  I had decided on the Razor shell lace pattern except without the lace part :) No really, it’s not as weird as it sounds.  Here’s the pattern:

Multiple of 10+1

Row 1: K1, *YO, K3, SSSK, K3, YO, K1; repeat from * to end.
Row 2: Purl

Repeat rows 1 and 2 for pattern.

Nice and simple, right?  The YOs and the SSSKs (just like an SSK only you’re slipping three stitches instead of 2) create lovely diagonal lines which are perfect for the variegated yarn.  But because I don’t really want a lace T, I’d work an M1 instead of a YO.  I decided that I also wanted a bit of garter stitch between repeats of the razor shell, say, three stitches worth.  Figuring that into the pattern I then calculated the number of stitches I’d need for a decent swatch.  Then I cast on.

Then I ripped, recalculated and cast on again.

Oh alright! - one more time…

Aha, gotcha :)

I like the way this looks very much.  This pattern works out like this:

Multiple of 12+3

Row 1: K3, *M1, K3, SSSK, K3, M1, K3; repeat from * to end.
Row 2: K3, *P9, K3; repeat from * to end.

I keep wondering if a couple more stitches in the garter stripes would look better, you know, just to make them slightly wider?  And, much as I like this, I also wonder if doing the bands in stockinette (rather than garter would make for a better overall appearance - except for the curling propensities of stocking stitch.  With the garter, things lie nice and flat.  Eh, there’s no reason not to try a swatch and see what happens :)

We have chickadees!  They’re very common in this area but, for some reason, they’ve only just shown up at the feeder.  However, once one showed up, they all showed up.  Such pretty little things - and I had forgotten how little they are - not even as big as a sparrow.

You’ll have to take my word that there was a chickadee on the bowl when I aimed the camera - only by the time I hit the button, he was gone.  When we had this up previously the birds totally ignored it.  This year, they treat it like an old friend going between it and the feeder which is a foot or so to the right.

There may not be a post on Monday but if that turns out to be the case, I’ll post on Tuesday as I did last week.  Have a great weekend, all!

Yesterday dad and I went up to the Cliff House for lunch.  This is a beautiful resort hotel in southern Maine that sits atop a rocky cliff.  All the rooms and the dining room look right out over the cliffs to the sea.  They are open from March to December, but they only serve lunch in July and August.  We try to get up once every year.

Their clam chowder is beyond magnificent but oddly, the Cobb salad was disappointing.  This version was made with mixed baby greens (mesclun, or I’ve also heard it referred to less formally as “yuppie chow"), and, in addition to the bleu cheese, bacon and hard-boiled eggs, lots of Kalamata olives.  Though avocado was listed in the menu as an ingredient, there was none in the salad and the whole was so salty it was only barely edible.  The original version which includes chicken, and in which avocado is present and not just advertised (and which omits the olives) is made with a combination of iceberg and romaine lettuces and is much more to my liking.  But, the Cliff House dining room qualifies as a “fancy” restaurant and chefs that work in such places are pressured to create “house” versions of things that are immediately identifiable with the establishment.  I’ll know better next time.

The view, of course, was glorious :)

I was going to start practicing making decorative knots last night and towards that end had made a length of I-cord, which is what I expect to use for the buttons and frog closures on the kimono coat.  Unfortunately, I didn’t make it long enough having seriously underestimated how much would be needed to make such a knot.  Oh well… I checked in a kitchen drawer this morning and there’s a considerable length of clothesline rope that I may appropriate to practice with later on.

I’ve also reached the point (in my head anyway) where I think I’m about ready to start swatching for a sort of T out of the Patons Paradiso (scroll down a bit).  This will be an extremely simple garment, but a fun one, I hope :)

See this?

This is a tiny fan that plugs into a USB port.  On really hot, sticky days, it can be a nice accessory to have!  It’s just a couple of soft, vinyl blades on a flexible stem with a USB connection on the other end.  Just plug it in, arrange the flexible stem so the air hits wherever you want it to and Bob’s your uncle :)





I don’t use this very often, but I got it out a couple of days ago when things were really warm and humid.  At one point during the early evening, this one:





...decided to jump up on the arm of my chair in order to persuade me to get rid of the lap-top and pay some attention to her.  And she ran smack into the fan blades.  Of course there was no damage done because the blades aren’t rigid but there is a bit of a “sting” if you hold your fingers against them.  I watched her rear back and reached out immediately to pet her, you know, assurance that everything was okay.  I guess I thought it had frightened her; I just assumed that would be a normal reaction by an animal to such a thing.

She dodged the petting and went straight for the fan, teeth at the ready.  She came at it from all angles, trying to get a bite in.  Myria and I watched this for a minute, surprised that she hadn’t turned tail and vamoosed the minute the blade hit her little black nose and then we just cracked up.  Nope, she’s a fighter, this one.  I finally chased her away because I really didn’t want her putting holes in my fan blades, should she actually manage to capture one :)

I wonder if she thought it was a big bug?

Random bits today.

Batman Begins is certainly a better film than the last two of the previous franchise but it suffers oddly on a couple of counts.  There is no camp here - very little humor of any kind for that matter.  It is, as an old friend would put it, serious as a heart attack and subtle as an exit wound.  Bales is an acceptable dark knight but not an extraordinary one.  The most compelling character is Liam Neeson’s Henri Ducard.  It should be Batman/Bruce Wayne, but Bales hasn’t Neeson’s charisma or depth.  Michael Caine was delightful but then, he always is.

For what it’s worth, I seem to have found an effective way to deal with my annoying summer allergies.  I found it at Wal-Mart and its sole active ingredient is an antihistamine - diphenhydramine.  It contains no analgesic (aspirin, acetominiphen or ibuprophen) and no decongestant.  For me, it seems to work very well.  I take it according to directions and twenty minutes later am feeling quite a lot better - pressure relieved and pain gone.  And if the pain weren’t gone, I could then take a couple of aspirin if I needed to.  But that hasn’t happened so far (crossing fingers).

Of course this is not a recommendation - simply the conveyance of my satisfaction with a particular product.  It will now probably be taken off the market :)

I found a mitten pattern yesterday that I like a lot.  Mittens for Children and Adults covers all sizes without resorting to the expedient of just going up a needle size for a larger mitten.  It does something I haven’t see before (though I’m sure more experienced mitten-makers will have run into it) in that it borders the thumb gusset with purl stitches - one at either side.  This both eliminates the need for markers (since the gusset area is clearly delineated by the purl stitches) and looks nice to boot.

Ahem...unfortunately, due to the tweediness of the yarn, the purls are difficult to see, but trust me, the are there.  And they look good :)

The mittens will go with the hat…

..of course!

Note: Most of this is PC related.  If you’re driving a Mac, I’m sorry, but you may want to skip this :).

We did a lot of computer maintenance over the weekend.  Both the laptops had accumulated lot of useless crud and the desktop had developed a couple of problems that needed seeing too - no image on the monitor (just a blank, pastel colored screen) when Windows kicked in during the boot sequence and a tendency to simply reboot itself - for no apparent reason - at random times.

The problem with computer maintenance is that it’s a pain in the butt.  Even when there’s nothing really wrong.  It ties you up and ties the computer up and so you just keep putting it off and putting it off until one day you want to install a new program and your previously mild-mannered laptop asks you if you’d like it to stick the program in your ear because it doesn’t have any more room.  Ack!

We keep a lot of anti-virus, anti-spyware, crud cleaner and watch-dog types of software on all the systems.  It is one of Myria’s biggest (though well-justified) complaints that you pay big money for a fast, sophisticated system with tons of horsepower and you wind up tying up 20% of that same sophistication and horsepower in programs to keep spammers, infections, advertising and assholes from getting in and messing things up.  It really is extremely annoying, but if you spend any time roaming around the internet (and that includes sending and receiving e-mail), your computer has got to have that protection or some morning you’re going to try to boot up and instead of the normal sequence, you’ll see a message on your monitor that says:

And then the CPU blows up.

So first, you go through your list of programs:

Ccleaner
Microsoft AntiSpyware
Spybot Search and Destroy
Avast Antivirus

...and check for updates, upgrades and new versions.  You want to have the most current version of the software running because that will find and help you solve the most problems.  The only exception is the Avast antivirus which runs all the time in the background and takes care of its own updates when you’re on line.

And then you run them and do what they suggest.  I was able to reclaim almost 4 gigs of space on my C: drive.  Then you should probably run a Scandisk to see if you have any bad sectors on your hard drive and a Defrag to consolidate that lovely new reclaimed space so that your programs run a little faster and easier and your future installs go a little more smoothly.

Myria did get the desktop system running normally again, thank goodness.  We use it as storage and as a sort-of server and it’s certainly nice to have it available again!

While it was somewhat annoying to go through all this, it is very pleasant to have a nice, clean machine to play with again :).  Myria is much better at doing maintenance on a regular basis than I am.  I tend to let things go until there’s an obvious problem and by then there’s a ton of crap that needs to be taken care of.  So that’s what I did this weekend.  I didn’t even pick up my needles until about 10:00 PM last night to work another repeat on the lace scarf - just so the weekend wouldn’t be a total knitting loss :)

Goldie and I hope that you managed more knitting over the weekend than we did, but that if you didn’t, that whatever you did do was satisfying :)

Those beautiful eggplant that we got at the farm stand last week? 

They got used last night.  I made an eggplant parmesan for the first time and it was just awesome :) I had looked up various recipes and adopted the ingredients and techniques that appealed to me.  An incredible dinner was the result.  I’m afraid I don’t have the usual photographic accompaniments; I didn’t think of it because I had never made this before.

Anyway, this is how it went:

Eggplant Parmesan

2 med/large eggplant
3/4 c milk
2 c breadcrumbs
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1 lb mozzarella cheese
1/2 c grated parmesan cheese
1 (1lb, 10 oz.) jar spaghetti or pizza sauce

Preheat oven to 375º F.  Butter (or use cooking spray) 2 cookie sheets and a 13 x 9 baking dish.

Slice the mozzarella.

Place milk in one bowl and mix the breadcrumbs, basil and oregano in another.  Peel the eggplants and slice into 1/4” slices.  Dunk into the milk, then into the breadcrumbs and place on cookie sheet in a single layer.  Place cookie sheets into the oven for 20 - 30 minutes or until eggplant is fork tender.  Remove from oven, but leave the oven on at the same temperature.

Put a good spoonful of sauce in the bottom of the baking dish and smear it around.  Cover bottom of dish with a layer of eggplant.  Place a layer of mozzarella over that.  Repeat layering sauce, eggplant and cheese until you run out of eggplant or the baking dish is full.  Save enough sauce so that it’s the last layer and then scatter the grated parmesan over all.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and everything is bubbly :)

Serve and feast!

Notes

I used the eggplant I had on hand, but it was only barely enough.  They were definitely medium and I would absolutely look for large next time.

You don’t really need 2 whole cups of breadcrumbs - I wound up throwing about half of it away.  As breadcrumbs are cheap, this isn’t really a big deal but I hate throwing away good food.

I used Ragu tomato, basil and Italian cheese spaghetti sauce because it’s what I had available.

I looked at the cheap, store-brand, grated mozzarella because it would have been easy to use.  Then I looked at what I know to be a good brand of cheese (Dragone) and it was only 10 cents more per pound.  So I got that and sliced it myself.  Really - go with the good stuff if you can because the flavor is so worth it!

And here it is in all its striped glory - Tychus!

This is made with light worsted weight wool on size 6 (US) needles.  I only did four repeats of the wedge section because it looked right for a child’s head after four and I didn’t want it to be too big.  I didn’t like the raw garter stitch edge though, so I picked up the stitches around the bottom and did an applied I-cord.





I went up to size 8 (US) needles for the I-cord because it doesn’t have a lot of lengthwise stretch and I do want the eventual wearer to actually be able to get the hat onto their head :)

Then I added a tassel just for fun.

The tassel is done somewhat like you were fringing a scarf or a poncho.  With your yarn and an appropriately sized hook, Ch 3.  Hdc into furthest chain from hook at least 9 times (more if you like), sl st to ch3.  End off.  Cut yarn into fringes twice as long as you want your tassel to be.  Use 4 pieces to create fringe in each stitch of your crocheted round.  Then thread a tapestry needle with your yarn and make a continuous running stitch all around the edge of the round (just inside the tasseled edge) and then pull tight to gather.  Tie off carefully and presto - tassel!

Anyway, I’m happy with the finished product, but it’s just about as much garter stitch as I can stand to do in one go.  Any more than that and I’d start to itch…

And here are the prototype squares for the kimono.

There are other things I could do, like mitered squares and such and I may give them a try.  I only have, however, enough yarn to finish the coat - not enough to play around much with ideas so I’ll have to be careful.  As it happens, the “playing around” part is the most fun, so I’ll find some way to work things out.

We’re expecting the remnants of Hurricane Cindy to hit sometime this afternoon and are currently under a flood watch so today and tomorrow are going to be...damp?  But the temperatures are only going to be in the mid-sixties so I’ll deal with the rain.

Hope you all have a splendid weekend!

Addendum: Have you seen the numbers for the Dulaan project?  Ryan has posted them.  That’s just phenomenal!  I’ve been cheering and tearing for two days :) The following quote seemed, somehow, appropriate…

Well, I started knitting Tychus yesterday and got through three of the five sections.  I’ll post a picture when it’s done which should be some time today.  The construction is interesting and the effect is nice but I don’t like the garter stitch edge.  I’ll have to see what I can do about that :)

I did something yesterday that I have never done before - I listened to an audio book, well, part of one anyway.  As a compulsive reader a lot of the experience has centered around the book itself - size, shape, design, typeface and if it’s older, its condition, even its smell.  There is something about the feel of a book that’s part of the whole experience of reading.

An audio book is something else entirely and I found it a little disconcerting at first.  I tried to tell myself that it was like listening to a radio drama - but it clearly wasn’t that; it wasn’t being acted out like a play - it was being read.  Okay, scratch that.  For quite a long time though, I kept looking up from my knitting as though there were something on television of which I could catch a glimpse.  Of course that wasn’t the case, the TV wasn’t even on.  But I am so conditioned to knitting through TV shows and movies that I kept looking up anyway.

Audio adds a dimension to the mind’s acquisition of the story.  This was a book I had already read a few times, so I knew the plot and the characters and had already constructed pictures in my head to compliment the story.  The audio aspect of things didn’t change the pictures, but did help flesh them out a bit as did, perhaps, the fact that I didn’t have to stop (however momentarily) every so often to turn the page.

A great deal depends on the reader though.  This one wasn’t bad, fairly adept at accomodating a large and varied bunch of characters - but another that I listened to briefly was quite lackluster.  And I found myself wondering about the idea of rejecting a book, not because you didn’t like the story, but because the reader didn’t enage you.

For me, addicted to the tactile aspect of reading as I am, audio books will never entirely or seriously replace bound paper.  Still, it’s quite the thing - an interesting experience and a nice option to have.