Christmas & Birthday Report

Maybe it’s ugly of me to brag, or something, but I think I really did well this past year for both my birthday and Christmas. I had one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had, and I got some awesome swag.

S got me some awesome stuff. We’ve got chocolate from his trip to Abu Dhabi–Patchi and Kinder bars:

You know I’m not a big chocolate person but man I do love me some Kinder chocolate. <3

Also, due to an in-joke about how my parents got me this crazy stuff and Falcon managed a visit for that weekend, he got me some frankincense. REAL FRANKINCENSE. What. It looks like candied ginger and smells a little like it too:

I got a really adorable and goofy coin purse which I’m actually using for change:

And, one of my favourite things, is this BITCHIN’ mobile that now hangs in my living room:

Yes, that’s a black sheep. If you don’t like this you are either allergic to wool or not a real yarnie. That’s all I’m saying. Oh man, that thing totally surprised me and I love it.

He’s also directly related to my being able to keep my two new roommates even though I was thinking about not. The first is Joshua:

He’s got adorable white feet and a white belly. He’s large and curious and totally bro. I named him after the werewolf in the North American “Being Human” cause he’s also pretty nervous and spazzy.

His new buddy, who is slightly smaller, is Neville(yes after the Harry Potter character):

Isn’t he cute? Aren’t they both cute? Their large rats, of a species native to England but usually bred in the US for SCIENCE! and stuff. I basically saved these two from lab work–most the other rats at the store were already swept up by snake owners and labs.

They have a swank pad:

Two levels–a hammock, t-tube to crawl in, a house, food, a chew toy, two jingle bell balls. I also have a rolly ball to put them in and harnesses so I can let them out. They seem to be getting on really well so far. So yay!

I pretty much consider them a gift from S since I wasn’t going to keep Joshua originally and was going to take him back (I bought them at separate times).

Then, my dad gave me some peace of mind and the yarn enough to make Vivian :

While my mother gave me peace of mind and these awesome PA headphones/mic:

And, to top it all off, my best friend of 12+ years, Falcon, got to visit me during my birthday weekend. That was pretty awesome, what with us having not hung out in person for over 3 years. That was super great and fun and I was/am very glad I got to see him. We don’t get to hang out nearly enough. And as I’m not one of those picture-takey types, I did the dumb thing and didn’t take a single photo all weekend. Kind of kicking myself now, but it’ll be ok.

And that’s about it. I’ve been knitting on Vivian, need to finish S’s mitts, and have done a little spinning while Falcon was in town and not any since. It wasn’t even spinning on a project that I need to finish! (Anyone remember the alpaca yarns? Yeah) Oh well. I’ll get there.

Pasta Brooke Style

So I got in a real food mood tonight, so thought I’d show off the basics (and an example) of a Brooke Style pasta.

The gist:
pick some veggies
pick a noodle
get your butter out

Friendly kitchen dinosaur to watch the process is totally optional:

I usually use a wine of some sort to blend in, and also a bit more oil when I don’t want to plow through my butter reserves. (Did I say this recipe is low fat? Ops.)

I start by boiling my noodles. If I’m doing a thick noodle, like linguine, I go ahead and dunk it and let it cook about 4-5 minutes before I start the veggies. If I’m doing cappelini (super thin noodles), I just get the water boiling. Those cook in literally the time it takes you to put it in the water.

In a different pan, you’re going to heat up your butter/oil. This should be pretty high temp, you’re basically sauteeing the veggies. Dump them all in and sautee.

Check your noodles while this is going on. If they get to al dente you want to go ahead and turn the heat off so they don’t cook too much farther. Meanwhile, once the veggies are mostly cooked out (onions caramalized if using, mushrooms lost most liquid), add your wine/stock/spices.

(This $5 marsala is surprisingly delicious)

Then, before all the liquid cooks off, toss in your butta.

You now have a kind of liquidy buttery soup with your veggies. Good. Now, before they get too cooked off again, grab the noodles and just dump them in the pan. All of them. (This is not a recipe for more than 2 people without huge pans) The pasta water is gonna help sticky the sauce and everyone is gonna soak in everyone else.

Stir/swish generously, then remove from heat before anyone starts burning. Usually this step takes 1-2 mins tops.

Plate, salt, and pepper:

(that toast is toast covered in homemade ricotta, balsamic vinegar, Himelayan mineral salt, and pepper. oh. em. gee.)

And that, my friends, is how you make Brooke style pasta.

Oh Right I can Post this

So I knit my friend =Mroo of MrooArt; a set of hand warmers. I had meant to knit them ages and ages ago and got sidetracked. (Me? No way)

So then I decided that as I did not have much this year for Yule that I should finish them and make that my Yule gift to her. Pretty happy about that choice. I had them done by the time Thanksgiving was over and we were back to the grind afterwards.

They are pretty, but expect real photos to show up on her site–she’s better at it than me, but she also takes photos of things to sell.

For the curious, the pattern is Snowflake Fingerless Gloves. I changed the colours (the set up was roughed out for me by Mroo a little under a year ago), so there is that. I used Knit Picks Palette, and the colours were as follows: Eggplant, Regal, Black, Sweet Potato, Semolina, Masala, Fairy Tale.

If you want to see my project page for it and you have a Ravelry account hop on by.

Lolita Skirt Design–Part Three

Aka kolmanda osa but I figured that no one else here would get estonian and it isn’t quite as ubiquitous as Part Troi but then I suppose if we get technical that isn’t really correct for French either.

WHATEVER.

What this post is about is the putting together process for the skirt that you’ve been watching me design. This, for me, is both the easiest and the longest part of the whole process. Maybe it’s because I don’t count all the time I spend not actively trying to draw a design down.

This is also where I get to press the most stuff, and I just adore pressing. If you need something pressed and live nearby hit me up and I’ll do it for free or a free lunch or something. You know.

Anyway. When we last left I had shown you (roughly) how to figure out what parts are going to need how much fabric. The really beginning designer friendly thing about lolita is how so much of it is just rectangles and putting those rectangles together. It’s very hard to feel daunted by a skirt–it’s the details that always worry me now.

So, here’s the order I went in–first, I pressed everything. Yes. I had left that fabric laying around for a few weeks and it was rumply. Don’t look at me like that.

No, I did not press the chiffon. It is synthetic chiffon and I didn’t want to break my new ironing board in with melted plastic on it.

Instead, I went ahead and hemmed what would be the lower edge for each of the tiers–I knew the sides and top would be sewn down onto the base panel.

If you have it, make liberal use of fray check or don’t cut your chiffon till literally the last moment. It frays. I went with a baby doll style hem on these.

Which works well enough for my purposes.

With that done, I set the chiffon aside for a few, switched my needle back to a size 11 instead of a size 9.

The next big thing for me was hemming my skirt ahead of time. I prefer to hem each piece seperately if I’m not doing lace or ruffle hems. This is primarily because I’ve yet to do a blindstitch hem by machine <em>or</em> hand that I like and I’m terrible at this whole sewing thing in general. So I marked about an inch up and then did a .25″ baby doll hem on the ‘bottom’ of each of my skirt panels.

(I know you can’t see it well in that photo, but I swear there’s a silver marked line there to demonstrate)

Next step, press and then sew.

I don’t know where I got that stick thinger but it’s the best thing I’ve done for my hands in a while.

Now, you might think you should attach the chiffon now. You really shouldn’t. This is the part where you make the pintucks that are at the bottom of the skirt. This makes it so all your pieces will line up better and everyone is the same length. I guess you could just cut the chiffon panels smaller or some such, but that would be planning and I have no brook with that. (haha get it if you know my real name that should make you laugh. maybe?)

Mark all of your pin tucks on all of your fabric ahead of time. I went with three spaced .5″ apart, but if I did it again I’d either add another 2 pintucks (for a total of 5) or space them 1″ apart. Either way, mark em.

(look you can see my hem)

Mark on the RIGHT SIDE of your fabric. You have no idea how many places I had to look to confirm that. My sewing books all used fabric that is the same on both sides in the photos and didn’t specify. How annoying, right?

Pintucks marked, start doing em. There’s gonna be a lot of this:

Maybe this is the reason why I adore them so much?

NOW that that’s done, put the chiffon on the two panels.

Then trim your edges up a bit if you want:

I clearly did. Then attach–I use french seams for this project.

Does that look nice? Make sure you attach everyone in the right order. You do not want to get to this point and realize you attached a short panel on each side of a chiffon panel. The center panel needs to go in the <em>center</em>. I actually didn’t screw this up.

Next step: finish making the skirt? With all the pieces attached, and seams pressed, have your waistband pieces all lined up and ready:

I swear I had some 3/8″ elastic for the half-elastic waistband. Two pieces, both 12″ long, just like my design plans said. I ended up going with a 3″ wide strip for the waistband, and I’m glad I did. I like wiggle room when I make waistbands.

If you missed it, you can find the half-elastic waistband tutorial I did here on egl. Then just finish pressing, and voila!

Skirt!

The little things

Really it is the little things that being one delight.

Like my immature triumph over some fancy machine beater lady who said not to bother even trying to beat egg whites to stiffness if by hand and you have no copper bowl.

Take that lady. Take THAT.

Rather satisfying and incredibly pretty. (no that wasn’t quite done. I finished getting them stiff after I added the sugar. This was making royal icing for gingerbread cookies)

Lolita Skirt Design–Part 2

So you’ve got the general idea of what it is you’re going to make. In this case, it’s that skirt I drew last time that I settled on to emphasis the pretty print that I have.

I had great big plans for this post but I realized all I had wasn’t super necessary. (Ok, so I lost all the pictures I had taken why do you ask?)

What I like to do is draw (not-to-scale) images of what each piece will be and how many I need. This lets me figure out cloth requirements and the best way to cut my fabric.

Much of this is going to be based on personal style choices and measurements, but here’s some guidelines:

You’re going to need at least two large rectangles–one for front and one for back. You can divide these up however works best for you. The width I usually go with is however wide my fabric I have is (usually around 42 inches due to where I buy my fabric). The length is usually from where I want the skirt to sit (usually waist) to my knee or just above. If I plan on pintucks, I try to add length based off my pintucks. In this case, I picked 28″ since I usually do 25″ skirts so that I’d have wiggle room for my pintucks. If you look at the top row of the picture above, you’ll see those top three are all front-skirt related; the next row has the back panel.

Include any special fabric needs. If you are going to have chiffon strips (as my skirt does), then note that, and note how much each will need. In this case, I noted 7″ (the width of the panel it would go on) by 10″ (to allow for some overlap of the tiers).

Draw a layout of how you’re going to cut. Even if it’s just squares, it gives you an idea of how much space and fabric will take, and let you see if doing it on a fold will work or not. It also allows you plan if you have a weird cut, like my remnant chiffon.

Generally, if you were to have ruffles, quadruple (4x) your width for the skirt and use that for the length of the strip you need. If it doesn’t go all the way around (for example, stops at a front panel), then reduce accordingly. Usually a front panel means you should only triple (3x) and so forth.

A little planning and laying out now will save you a lot of trouble later. It also lets you check if you’ve forgotten what some of the pieces are for what they could be for. Note your measurements for each piece, and try to note how many you’ll need.

Go ahead and plan out your waistband. Figure out what type of closure you’ll use. My preferred ‘closure’ on a skirt is some type of elastic waistband. In this case I went with a half-elastic waistband–you can find the tutorial over at this egl post . For dresses with sleeves I like an invisible zipper in back; JSKs I like both back shirring and zippers under the arm. It’s really a matter of what you like and how you want to incorporate it.

Cut all of your pieces in advance. I like to press my fabric prior to cutting, and then press the pieces afterwards. Try to keep them laid flat so they don’t rewrinkle if you’re not going to get to them for a bit.

Next time, I’ll go through the process of putting the skirt together, but this was the big bit! Designing really just comes down to picking something you like and then figuring out what pieces it needs and how much material they will call for. Skirts are pretty easy since they’re just rectangles put together in new and interesting ways. Part three really is just a tutorial on how I put my skirts together.

Sneak Peak–Heargyle

Remember that skirt design set that I never got past first post on? Well, a lot of that was my computer blowing up and needing a new one, having to recover part 2′s photos, and then my sewing desk getting taken over by the new desktop.

With my birthday coming up this week, I decided that I wanted a birthday skirt for myself. I finally finished off the skirt, and remembered to take some more photos along the way.

I’ll get some better photos of the details (what few there are) for the skirt, but for now have a quick shot:

Expect to see the next post in the design set in a day or two.

Christmas Dinner + Recipes for All

I know I promised this post way ages ago, but I’ve only got around to it. This is going to be a whammy of a post, including all sorts of goodies. This was the first time I’ve ever made a rack of lamb, and I’ve got to say–it’s good. It’s good eats. If you like lamb for the reasons I do (the slightly sweet fat, the tenderness of meat, how juicy it is) you are going to love rack of lamb.

I’ve also included the recipes for what I ate with it, as best I recall them, because everyone likes food.

Have a beauty shot of the lamb though:

(and that’s after it rested for 10 minutes)

That photo came out super yellow, which is a shame, because I didn’t realize it till just now. Should know to take tons more pictures. Alas.

And the whole meal:

No, I can’t wait till green things are in season again. Eating in season is boring on the colour palette, that’s for sure! I really like how I laid the lamb out in this shot though.

Anyway, time for the two recipes you’re here for: one for lamb, one for the distinctly brown onion-mushroom marsala (I assume you know how to make potato sticks fried)

Roast Rack of Lamb

Ingredients:

• 1 rack of lamb
• ground mustard
• majoram
• rosemary
• salt & black pepper
• thyme
• honey

Tools

• 12″ cast iron skillet or similiar oven friendly pan
• foil
• tongs
• oven/stove

Do ahead:

1. Between 1 – 3 days before you are going to be preparing the lamb, rub it down in the majoram, rosemary, mustard, thyme, salt, and pepper. Be generous. Wrap in butcher’s paper or wax paper and store in fridge.

Cooking

1. Make sure the lamb is room temperature. Preheat oven to 450F.
2.  Heat pan over medium with some oil in (I use grape seed). Brown the lamb on both sides (roughly 1 -2 mins a side). Set aside on a cutting board/platter.
3. Wrap the exposed bone in foil.  With bones down, cover the ‘top’ of the lamb in honey. Set in skillet bones down.
4. Put in oven, and roast for 12-18 mins depending on taste. I cook mine to 14 for the slight pink in center.
5. Rest on a platter or rack for 5-10 mins.
6. Cut between the bones and arrange for eating.

 

Super Mushroom & Onion Marsala

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound of mushrooms
• 1/2 large onion or 1 medium onion
• Marsala dessert wine
• 4 Tbsp of butter
• 1/2-1 cup chicken, lamb, or veggie stock

Tools

• Nonstick pan, 12″
• Knife

Cooking

1. Slice the onions and mushrooms thinly. Preheat the pan on medium-high heat.
2. Warm some oil/1 Tbsp of butter in pan. Saute mushrooms and onions till most liquid cooked off.
3. Add 1/4-1/2 cup of marsala wine, and allow to cook down till most liquid gone again.
4. Add stock. Stir and bring to simmer.
5. Add 3Tbps of butter, until melted and mixture creamy. Cook down so it is thicker.
6. Top with salt and eat!

Voila! Hope at least one of these appeals to you and happy eating.

Feedback

As this blog enters it’s fourth year (what, already? Holy crap!) I realize it’s gone a few different ways than just knitting. I know that I’ve got readers who caught the blog thanks to my pics and posts on Lolita, and some who enjoy my recipes/cooking.

I’ve always intended this to be a blog for me. It started as a documentation of my knitting, and now it’s become so much more. Lolita, knitting, spinning, fiber prep, cooking, bicycling. The title seems a bit misleading, don’t you think?

In any case, I thought I would ask my readers for feedback. Do you guys mind this madcap assortment of posts, with no knowledge of if I’ll touch on the reason you started to read? Or does that add some excitement to each post?

I’ll be honest–I don’t know if I could stop posting about it all. But I can certainly try to cycle through them more regularly. Or even try to start other blogs. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my new year, and I think I’m almost definitely going to aim for a post on one of my delights a week. Maybe more. I dislike seeing this place stagnate–even though I know I only have a few dedicated readers, I would like to give them something to view more often than once a month.

So what are your thoughts? Even if you usually don’t comment, I’d appreciate a little response anyway–just because you lurk doesn’t make you any less a reader!

Knitting

I still knit.

How bout you?