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?

Learning A New Language

I’m getting a headstart on my new year’s goal of learning Estonian. There’s a couple different resources I’m using, and I thought to share them here, for anyone else who might be curious as to how one goes about learning a language (be it Estonian or another). *

1. Set yourself reasonable goals. 30 minutes of study a day is a lot better than an hour every few days–and you also get the bonus of finding out 365 (366, as next is a leap year!) is 182 hours of studying. If I can’t absorb something in all that continual practice, then surely it’s not meant to be.
2. I’m using LiveMocha for my basic learning. I’m pretty pleased with it so far, though I wish there were a few more exercises for really really beginners. That’s ok, though, because actually getting feedback on my written and verbal assignments is incredible.
3. Have a textbook like thing for reference. Something that spells out the grammar is incredibly handy when you just aren’t getting something through context. (This is especially true in Estonian, with a somewhat daunting 14 cases). I had quite the lucky find to get both the book and audio cds to Teach Yourself Estonian for $7 at my local used bookstore. I wasn’t aware that this was such an expensive item, and mine is in great condition!
4. Find a couple of news sites that air broadcasts online, or will put up videos of the big stories. It’s good to hear the language being natively spoken, and it’s a delight to recognize a word occasionally.  For the fellow Estonian learner, I highly recommend ETV1 and 2 and Raadioteater . No, I don’t understand hardly anything, but I did pick up the word Tiger, and Raadioteater has Snow White in the archives. One day I’ll be able to understand!
5. Start a practice blog, where you can write samples. Try to update it whenever you learn new vocabulary, and do some writing exercises. (Live Mocha gets grammar feedback, but it’s nice to have a blog in the wild blue). I did this when I was learning Russian, and it was perhaps one of my favourite things. I was not a fluent or very good Russian writer, but by golly, it let me practice, and I had fun with it! I’ve just started a blog for my Estonian practice, and if you want, you can read it. I’d love if anyone who knows Estonian drops by! It’s called Kudimise Keel. (It supposedly means Knitting Language)
6. Have fun! Don’t be too hard on yourself. Learning a new language IS hard. You’ve been learning and perfecting your native language for how many years now? Of course picking up a new one will be a bit of a challenge, but with some work and not hating on yourself, you’ll get there.

I suppose the big question is probably why Estonian. I think the language is pretty, mostly, but also because my favourite style of lace knitting and much pretty colourwork were derived in the country. One day, I’d like to visit Haapsalu and be able to speak to the knitters there without a translator. Maybe I will never make it, but I will certainly be prepared! Some of it is to give myself some encouragement–I’ve been feeling a bit down lately, and have been lacking faith in myself. Learning a new language, and well, is something that will probably help give me back some of the verve and make it so I can’t really get down on a lack of direction.

Are any of my readers thinking of big learning things for the new year?

 

(Don’t worry, there will be some knitting resolutions to come )

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*I didn’t pull these tips out of thin air. I’ve studied Chinese, Russian, German, and Japanese; one of those I’m actually kind of ok at. (Not good. Just passable. I wouldn’t drown in the country. Much) I love language, and I love trying to learn them. I figure it’s time I finally got around to it, even if I’ve picked one with only about a million native speakers.

Tortellini!!

I got on a wild pasta kick thanks to rereading Heat by Bill Buford again. Thanks to the fact my eggs are local–and very very good eggs–I decided to wing a pasta based off of the ratios that are described from his stint with the nice Italian lady in her kitchen.

As it has made one of the better sheets of pasta, I’m going to share it with you:

1 etto flour (roughly 7/8 cups)

1 good egg

I cannot overstate how important that good egg is–it should be orange, nearly red, in the yolk and not runny at all. If you have a local farmer who lets his chickens free roam, they will probably have exactly the type of egg you are looking for.

You make a well in the flour, and then you beat the egg with a fork in the center, and slowly incorporate the flour until you get a dough like thing. Then you get to knead for a while, until it’s nice and smooth and elastic.

Anyway, then comes the rolling–I roll mine out by hand with my fabulous rolling pin I’ve blogged about previously. It’s how I get my upper body exercise

Roll and roll and roll until it’s as thin as you can make it–I can see the light through mine and worry constantly about it tearing. That’s a good thing. The nice thing about this ‘recipe’ is that it doesn’t actually need more flour or water when you’re rolling it out. I did mine on a mostly unfloured counter, and it didn’t stick at all.

Pasta rollers can work too.

Then make your little circles!

Aren’t they pretty? I know a lot look more like pacman than circles, but they took up the stuffing just as well.

I made a filling with goat cheese, shredded young gouda from Frisian farms, balsamic vinegar (to bind the ingredients), hungarian paprika, cilantro, majoram, and red pepper flakes.

Then you start filling up your circles. You put some in the center, fold in half (I did not need to use water to get mine closed). Fold again along the flat edge (a valley fold for you origami people), so the circle part stretches out. Press them.

Voila! Belly button!

Do this until all of your circles are done:

Lots of belly buttons! Whee!! Store in plastic until ready to cook. Boil them in water. I’ll be boiling these for dinner tonight, with leftovers for lunch.

RL is a pain

Quick update–the skirt design tutorial is on temporary hiatus until I can retake the photos. My laptop had the only copies and it died yesterday. That was a super fun day, let me tell you.

Bread!

I think I posted my recipe for bread ages ago, but having just made it again, I wanted to share. Like most breads, it’s affected by humidity and heat and all that good stuff, so tweak it if you need to. This version of my bread is less sweet than the other, but still delightfully dense and chewy with a nice crust.

Brooke’s Bread (Not Sweet)

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour, +some to sprinkle counter
• 1 cup warm water
• 1 packet (2Tbsp) active dry yeast
• 5 Tbsp white sugar
• 1 Tbsp oil
• salt

Makes 1 loaf of bread.

Instructions:

1. Mix sugar into the warm water. Add yeast. Proof for 5 minutes (recommended)
2. Slowly add the flour in until you have a doughy consistency. Drizzle the oil in around cup 2, and then add more flour till more solid and less liquid again. I usually get about 2.5 cups of flour in total. Flop onto counter and incorporate the last of your flour, or until the dough is doughy.
3. Knead until soft and springy, and use flour sparingly to keep off counter–don’t try and incorperate anymore unless it’s a really wet day and the dough just won’t behave. This takes roughly 10 minutes.
4. Put into ball and place in well oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit until doubled (roughly 30 minutes in a warm room, more in colder). Preheat the oven to 350F.
5. Roll onto counter and gently press air out. Shape into a loaf. Place in pan. Let rise for 30 minutes or until 1″ above pan. (Honestly, mine usually just rises for 30 and I don’t bother waiting for the 1″ thing. I thing that’s a remnant from the recipe I base mine off of)
6. Pop in oven for 30 minutes. Take out of pan and let cool. Try not to eat in one sitting, or double the recipe and eat one now and one later!

Some neat things:

If you slash the top of the dough before the second rise, you get those cute slash marks you see on baguettes and the crust tends not to pop open on one side of the dough since it’s not as stressed.

Gluten flour is the best thing since sliced bread (which I don’t actually use or buy anymore haha!). It basically helps make your all purpose white flour into a bread flour, and more gluten is good for breads. I use it for anything that needs a little more help in the rising–bread, brioche buns, ect. (You really should look into pastry dough, which has LESS gluten, for your croissants though). You mix it in according to the directions your box has to your flour prior to putting it in. It’s an extra minute of prep that I never regret.

Gluten flour is not good for those who go gluten-free, whether by choice or diet. Just saying.

In fact, most of my pastries are terrible for my gf friends. Sorry guys.

On stranded knitting

So I just finished a pair of socks in four days. Can anyone remember the last time I did that? I certainly can’t. Pretty exciting.

I actually did these socks because I wanted to have something two colour to work on instead of just plain socks, and then decided to use them as a sampler to compare the differences in which colour is held in which hand. (I don’t know if this would apply were I knitting with them both in one hand.)

These are the Sweden socks from Knitted Socks around the World (I love that book. So much colourwork, so much style. Excellent excellent book, if you like elegant and classic stranded knitting.) One sock was knit with the purple in left hand, one with the purple in right. I’m usually a right handed knitter.

Can you tell?

See, if you look at that photo, you should notice the sock on the left has less definition and looks overall a little more stringy than the one on the right. This is because it’s pretty important that your background colour be carried in your more dominant hand; your dominant hand is more familiar with knitting and tension, and so will usually have a tighter tension than the non-dominant one. The foreground/design colour should be in that hand instead, so that it fills up and allows the lines to look less pixelated.

Even just looking at them on my feet kind of bugs me, but I’m not going to forget which one is meant to go in which hand anymore.

See, I needed a refresher before I started to knit on the Phoenix cardigan again (!!!), what with not wanting the same mistake again. And it’s served me well–the tiny bit of a design I can see is looking much smoother even prior to blocking.

Also, these have the cutest little picot edge. The way the sock is made (provisional cast on, toe after everything else, picot sewn down) meant that I had absolutely nothing besides blocking to do when I finished a sock. Everything had already been secured while I was working on it, or by the steps that I had to do. I love a sock that is actually done when I’m done.

The short row heels (now that I finally figured out that woman’s version) are actually really nice, and I probably will also do short rows the way she shows them in the book.

All in all, lovely socks and a lovely reminder of the importance of what colour is in which hand.

Also, to explain why I needed yet more edge yarn, and thus why I made that video:

I’m on row 13 now. (I haven’t marked row 12, it was a purlback, and I didn’t have enough yarn or the chart nearby when I finished it to go onto row 13). Row 13 of the top chart. There’s another 16 rows for the bottom chart.

I spun up 50 yards of white fluffy yarn, thinking surely that would be enough to edge my shawl.

WELP. Back to the spinning wheel. That’s the butterfly I start all hand wound balls with–maybe a yard. I’ve finished the bobbin I was on in the video, and hopefully will get the second done today. I really want this shawl

A Sample of Long draw

I’m still working on the next post of the skirt design series–I’ve got all the photos taken, I just haven’t quite had the time to get them up. Instead, needing a bit more yarn for my shawl I’ve nearly finished, I made a little video.

Like I say in the video, I made it because I wanted to show off how the bobbin stops when winding on with a scotch tension wheel. I don’t think that bit really went too well–which is funny, because just before and after the video it did it fine and clearly!

The second half is basically showing off how long draw works and doing joins. Maybe I’ll do a few proper tutorial videos on spinning at some point.