A few days after I wrote that that thing I wrote about being vegetarian, I was thinking about how a lot of meat-eaters don't have a good sense of what vegetarian options are available. So I had this idea where I'd take a picture of every meal for a week and include recipes or whatever.

Best laid plans of mice and all that.

But I still like the basic idea of occasional foodblogging, so I will.



The main thing I learned after taking lots of food pictures over a couple of days? It's hard to take good pictures of food. You'll just have to take my word that this was really beautiful.

I started planning this meal about an hour before I made it, at the East Side farmer's market. There was this huge, super fresh basil you could smell it at 10 paces. I bought it, some patty pan squash, and some red peppers. There's a place a block from the market that sells fresh pasta, so I went there and bought some garlic-flavored linguini.

I was thinking about pesto, but the basil was too nice to get all tarted up, so I just pureed it with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and some parsley I'd frozen (this is my main kitchen trick--I like fresh herbs but can't eat them for a week straight to use them up, so I wash, chop as needed, and throw them in a baggie in the freezer. Thawed, they're not pretty enough to be the focus of a dish but the flavor is preserved better than with dried herbs. I do the same thing with onions, which means I only need to cry once every month or so).

I sauteed the veggies on a pretty hot pan so the squash got a little color without totally falling to pieces.

The dish came together well; it was pretty, the basil was the star, and the squash kept about as much texture as squash can when heated up.
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J took this picture because he was so impressed with how neatly the samosas came out--all perfectly tanned little half-moons. I made them for a potluck at work last week, and they just might be the perfect food in that situation. Not too heavy (we needed to go back to work after), not too sloppy to carry on the bus, tasty at a variety of temperatures, easy to grab one without a plate, no on-site prep required. And I learned that it gives people a chance to play "Identify The Filling".

I based what I was doing on the samosa recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook, and when poking around online I found that this version made nearly identical changes to the spices (for the veggies, I used wax potatoes, no sweet potatoes, and no peas 'cause J doesn't like them). I added some tumeric so the filling would be pretty, however after baking it looked like the tumeric had gone through the thin spots in the dough and made parts of the outside yellow too. They still looked nice though, and evaporated within about 5 minutes at the party. Assembly took a long time, but they weren't hard to make.

If any local people are interested, the capoeira angola group I play with is going to have a roda at Library Mall on Friday from 5ish to 7ish. The person putting it together said he'd be inviting some people from other groups too, so it'll be a chance to see a couple of different styles at once. I'm thinking of bringing my camera and taking some short videos. I've found a fair number of videos online that show the regionale style, but none of angola.

J mentioned that we played outside last night. It was kind of strange, we did a semi-official performance for a thing that was going on in our usual practice space, then went to the top of State Street and played there for an hour and a half, since we didn't have our space. The official "performance", even though it was in a parking lot, felt much more informal and relaxed than on State St., partly because the folks walking by on State were A: more plentiful and B: not necessarily friendly to people jumping around and singing in a foreign language.

I sort of wanted to stop certain people to let them know we're not panhandling, and we're not scenery you should stand in front of to get your picture taken. We didn't even have our whites on or anything--we just got kicked out of our usual classroom. Sort of a "Just because we're performing doesn't mean we're performing for you," if that makes any sense.

Now that I'm finally starting to feel like I can just play a regular game and not look like a total newbie, I'm trying to branch out by getting different styles of game going, and doing everything smoothly. I did a fairly slow dancey game with J, which worked because it was the first game, and also because the last time we played our teacher said "you're married! Play like people that like each other!" It's funny, but I think it's easier to play hard with J because he can't hate me afterwards if I accidentally step on his hand or something. Also, I can go take care of him if I did.

Presented with no commentary save childish giggling: Bohners Lake, Wisconsin.

Lost somewhere in all the wheel-buying hubbub, I bought a bunch of fiber from Halcyon Yarn. I'd wanted to try a bunch of fibers for a while now, just to see what I like before I buy a few pounds for a sweater. Most places don't sell less than 4 ounces of regular fiber. I can understand that once you know what you like, 4 ounces is a reasonable, small amount-- a bit more than a skein of Cascade 220, enough for a hat, or some socks, or mittens and a hairband. But four ounces takes a long time to get through on a spindle--I have four ounces of the roving I'm using to make that cranberry laceweight, I'm only about 2/3s done with it, and I've been working on it for FOREVER. And I didn't want to spend more time and money on something I might know right away I didn't like. So I started looking for sellers of small amounts and "samplers".

There *are* a few sampler-sellers out there, but they generally fall into the luxury fiber category, or they sell all the colors of a single fiber brand. Not really what I was looking for.

Finally, I found that Halcyon sells most of its fiber in one-ounce increments and is pretty reasonably priced. There were a few things I wanted to try that they don't have, but there was plenty for me to play with. And when an ounce of fiber only costs 1-2 dollars, disliking it doesn't hurt, so I had no problem buying a bunch.

I've done a bit of sampling, and am taking notes on the different fibers. I've gotten a bit sidetracked with the wheel, but it's fun to sit on the floor with 10 sandwich bags full of fluff and see how different they all are.

The winners so far have been Jacob and Shetland. Jacob's not a soft wool, but it's not harsh, if that makes sense; it feels very wooly and "real", not prickly like the Border Leicester or Finn I have. The Jacob sheep are naturally multicolored so the wool has a nice heathery look to it. I'm thinking of using it for some felted projects I have in mind.

The Shetland is much finer, but it still has that nice wooly feel. It should be good for hats and things. It's probably what I'll buy lots of at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival for a sweater, as I remember there were a lot of Shetland sheep and shepherds there.

The big loser so far has been the bamboo. I was really excited to play with this--bamboo fiber! So neat! But it squeaks against itself, like styrofoam containers, which is about my least favorite sensation in the world. I can hardly pick up the bag it's in without getting the jeebies. Surely this is what they'll give me to spin in Hell. Eughh.

Things that have been said recently:

"You'll want to take the exit for Dempster Street, and turn right."
"*Dempster*?"
"Yeah. I think a Dempster is that place where you throw out your gerbage."

**

Gushy TV announcer, showing a model wearing some very ruffly stuff: "The Marie Antoinette look is going to be very very hot this fall."
Me: "Headless? Or covered in cake?"
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J and I went to Chicago this weekend, and one place that has become a regular stop for us is the Oriental Intistute at the University of Chicago. It's one of my favorite museums--inexpensive, a nice location, very informative info cards, interesting things I haven't seen elsewhere. Art with a capital A doesn't really do much for me, I much prefer seeing the types of things used by actual people.

The Oriental Institute has a pretty large collection of stone seals designed for clay, set up next to pieces of clay they've been pressed into. These are amazing little pieces; over 4000 years old, only an inch or two high, less than an inch in diameter, with a hole through them for storage or to smoothly make an impression. For tiny things they're incredibly detailed. Look at the writing in the black-and-white image in the link above, the detail of the dress, the hair on the lion. These seals served as signatures of officials, similar to the ring-pressed-into-a-wax-seal thing that's often shown in period movies. And along with some of the most detailed examples are more humble seals made of clay, only meant to be used occasionally (to agree to a land purchase, for example). The most basic seals consisted of the person tapping their fingernails or pressing the fringe of their cloak into the soft clay.

One of the seals looks like little bare feet running the length of the clay. It's made me smile both times I've seen it.


(they allow nonprofessional photography, too. Isn't that fabulous?)

On the left is a spindle that's about 3000 years old. Its dimensions are similar to my smallest spindle, about 7 inches long, 1.5 inches across the whorl. The boat-shaped thing is a shuttle for weaving. That lump on the right is a small skein of linen--singles, I think, and a bit thicker than thick sewing thread.

The card mentioned that archaeologists can determine the source of woven fabric by looking at the twist of the singles--Egyptians spun S, while all its trading partners spun Z. I've read in a few places that one can spin most fibers in any direction but that flax is preferably spun S, because of a slight twist in the individual plant fibers. Since the Egyptians were near-exclusively spinning linen, and the finest examples of linen cloth ever made are Egyptian, I wonder if they were on to something with their preference.

And here's an example of that gorgeous weaving. This is a child's tunic, made very simply by taking a long rectangle of fabric, folding it over, and seaming the sides up from the bottom until the remaining hole fit an arm. A small hole cut in the middle for the head was the only wasted fabric.

It's stained, but it deserves to be for its age. The fabric is beautifully fine, and it's amazing to think of such delicacy being entirely made by hand, with very simple tools.
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When we were at the hotel in Chicago, we watched a few minutes of a documentary about the earliest humans that left their native climate, how the language and technology may have developed over time. The reason I didn't watch more carefully was because most of the narration was layered over this video of actors and actresses acting like cavemen--slouched over, thwacking a big bone on a tensioned skin and jumping with excitement over the musical noise it made, talking in "ooo oo ah ah" language. And this annoyed me heartily. There's no reason to assume that a human from 30,000 or 50,000 years ago couldn't be beamed to today, washed and put in jeans and a t-shirt, and look fairly normal eating a piece of fruit in the park. At that point we were able to dextrously form useful tools from found objects, construct garments, living quarters, and fires to keep warm, hunt, fish, gather tasty plants while separating out the poisonous ones. They traveled to almost all the places in the world we currently consider habitable.

For cripes' sake, they lived in *Siberia* during an *Ice Age*.

Can you do any of that?



I knit some socks.

Astute sock knitters will notice that the heel flap is on the wrong way around--that's because I wanted to try a heel flap on a toe-up sock. It seems to have worked pretty well, I like the way these socks fit a lot better than the ones with short-rowed heels.

Further notes can be seen here in the LJ knitting community.

And if you're wondering why I sometimes write stuff over there instead of here--there's stuff I write that is interesting to people who choose to be interested in me, and there's stuff I write that I think will be interesting to people who don't know or care about how my personality fits into it. The latter category I put in the community. Not like I don't get technical over here--that *is* part of my personality, after all--but when something is bordering on being an article, it doesn't feel right in this space.

I seem to be in a sock mood right now, which is rare. I've cast on for the "Birch Leaves Socks" from A Gathering of Lace. They're top-down socks with a nice little leafy lace panel running down them. I'm using a few more stitches than directed in the pattern, because I just can't be happy with the loose gauge listed. The lace insert is always flanked by some edge stitches or a bunch of stockinette, so I'm just going to hide the stitches in there. I'm also probably going to knit the bottom of the foot in reverse stockinette, so the lace can show without me having to walk on purl bumps all day.

Further knitting updates: I've swatched for J's sweater, but I've got to run it through the washing machine before I really start number crunching (it's cotton, so it'll get washed normally). And the vest I've been working on is pretty close to completion, it's all sewn up and I need to put in some ribbing at the neck and armholes.

I'm also trying to decide if I'm going to try to publish the vest pattern. I could just post it here in the size I knit it, but the math to up/downsize would be pretty easy, and I think it would look nice on a variety of sizes and has a good mix of interesting and easy for knitters.

Of course, I have like 3 other patterns I've been planning to write up and send somewhere, so maybe I shouldn't stress myself out about it. We'll see.

When am I going to finally get around to talking about the wheel already?


Now.

It showed up on Friday, one beautifully self-contained little package. (it looks like this when folded, very compact.) I was able to set it up pretty quickly, even poking at everything as I am wont to do. I pedalled for a couple of minutes to get the hang of that, then I took a bobbin that already had a bit spun onto it and just let it run through, messing with the tension, figuring out which way I needed to pedal to put in S and Z twist (I put stickers labeled "s" and "z" on either side so I can remember), changing the ratios.

Then I needed to write a spazzy email to a spinning friend of mine, chiding her for not forcing me to try this sooner.

And then I brought it out on the porch and spun!

I love it. I was surprised at how natural it felt, and how in control I felt. I hadn't realized that it would be very easy to pull yarn back out of the orifice to ply it back on itself or to see if it's underspun (which is most of the time right now), and that I wouldn't feel like everything was moving so fast I could just barely keep up.

The wheel is also more hypnotizing than the spindle. With the spindle you're not doing any one thing for more than about 30 seconds; you spin an arm's length of yarn, check the twist, pull it off the hook, wind it on, start over again. There is a rhythm to it, but it's more of a dance. The wheel is more of a chant; even when I'm checking twist I'm pedaling, going at roughly heartbeat speed. I'm finding myself wanting to pedal even without fiber in my hands, it just feels so nice.

So yeah, I'm happy with the purchase.


This is the first yarn from the wheel. The EBay seller sent a good chunk (a little more than an ounce, I think) of some Romney roving in a sort of oatmealy heathered color. I used it all up in the first night. And I wasn't going for any kind of consistent grist or twist or fuzziness, but it came out all right anyways. It's got some thick and thin spots and is just a smidge overspun (because I had so many underspun bits in the singles), but I like it. I'll probably use it in a felting project I'm planning.

On a spinning-related mailing list I'm on, someone linked to this little article about scientists working on improving wool quality by looking at the genetics of "ugly sheep". Their comment was " I thought it was interesting what scientists come up with too(sic) keep themselves busy."

To keep themselves.... #@^&, to keep ourselves busy? Cripes, what do people think, we're sitting around twiddling our thumbs because everything in science has already been answered? That the NSF funds projects based on whichever ones make for punny headlines? That the world's largest exporter of wool would only be interested in having quality sheep because they're cute? I mean, trying to improve the quality of livestock by examining their genetics, so we have the least wasteful possible society makes perfect sense to me. So why are people so dismissive of science? (it wasn't only this person, the responses so far have been along the lines of "oh, those wacky scientists!")

Grr.

My office is very close to the football stadium on campus. At the moment there is some sort of marching band competition happening, which means that on every side of the building there's a different group practicing. Loudly. Just another reason I'm glad I don't live here.

Oh, my god, today I'm cleaning my desk more thoroughly than it has been since... well, since before it was my desk, because I removed a shelf-full of computer manuals for programs the last person at my desk used, who left 4.5 years ago. Yeesh.

I just keep going next door to some of my lab mates, saying "look at this! I looked for this 2 years ago and thought I threw it away!" or "3-D glasses? Why do I have 3-D glasses?"

I found a big pile of papers I still have to read, and another big pile of papers I have already read but need to put into my Endnote library, but that's okay. I kind of need to have something at work that is productive without being dependent upon some %@&*@ cells doing what they're supposed to JUST ONCE. Cleaning and sorting and reading fits the bill.

Also, I forgot to mention that I recently wrote a thing on the livejournal knitting community about working with handspun yarn, which applies to most any "I have one skein of this thing I love, what can I do with it?" type of question. There's some good stuff in the discussion.

Update: things are back to normal on this side but I still need to upload those images. So things will be pictureless for a little bit, probably until tomorrow. If you want to look at pictures, my Flickr account has most of the recent ones, and some things I haven't posted yet.

What happened was, a few weeks ago J lost our credit card, and we cancelled it and got a new one. But then I forgot to update the credit information, so I got on here yesterday and saw that my host had set us back to the free plan, which has way less space than what we pay for. The user agreement pretty much says "if you're over the limit we can delete anything and everything", so I started by deleting things I already had saved elsewhere, which was just enough to scrape by.

I'm kind of annoyed they didn't send out a warning email, you know, "we tried to charge your credit card and it didn't work, you have 48 hours to get it sorted", but everything worked out all right in the end.

My wheel is getting shipped now. It should be here Friday. How many times will I check the UPS tracking number? I'll probably lose count by the end of the day today.

I went out for lunch yesterday with some coworkers and some friends of coworkers that I've seen around but don't know well. I ordered a veggie burger, and the familiar non-coworker leaned over and said "are you really a vegetarian or is that just what you want to eat today?"

"No, I'm vegetarian."

"Huh, I didn't know that. How long?"

It took me a minute to calculate, and then I realized: ten years, almost exactly. The summer before my senior year I read The Jungle and Diet For A Small Planet back-to-back. The Jungle has a terrible hackneyed plot but temporarily turned me off of meat, while Diet For A Small Planet gave me some really compelling arguments for reducing my environmental footprint by going to a vegetarian diet. My parents had both been off-and-on vegetarians throughout my childhood, so the dietary/ "what will I eat without flesh?" problems were never really in the equation. That summer, I was at the University of Connecticut for a high school summer program, and tried not eating meat to see how it would go, and by the end of the summer (right around this time), I actually started calling myself vegetarian.

In that time, I haven't had a meat meal, though there have been a few accidental bites of things, and I'm not exceptionally careful with issues of meat stock or fat that may have commingled with my food. With stock and such, it's never made with prime cuts of meat, just bones and leftover bits that would otherwise go to waste, and I would be causing a greater negative effect by throwing that food away.

In the case of possible cross-contamination (like at a barbecue), I feel like sharing food is one of those wordless, cross-culturally human things that makes us feel like family. One way that stratified societies maintain stratification is by saying that a group of lower status is unclean, which, among other things, means you can't share a meal with them. Kosher laws are thought to stem from a desire to stay separated from the pig keeping society surrounding them, the Indian caste system has incredibly strict rules about food preparation, etc., etc. One aspect of my own vegetarianism is that I want to provide other people with the most positive possible view of a meat-free diet in the hope that they'll consider reducing or eliminating meat from their own diets. If I were to keep myself absolutely sequestered from a communal food situation, I would be sending negative messages of superiority to other people's hindbrains. And that's not an effect I want to have on the friends I share my meals with.

So yeah, ten years. It seems like huge deal and a really minor one at the same time.



What are those?
Family recipe.
They look like turds.
They should--they're called plop-plops.
And you put those things in your mouth?
Whenever possible.
Dare I ask...?
Well, like most of my family recipies, they're screamingly sweet, and they sate a need for cookies when it's too hot to bake. And because they are the Food Of My People. Want the recipe?
Well, no, not really.
Tough.

Plop Plops

Ingredients:
1 stick of butter
2 cups of sugar
half c. milk
half c. cocoa
2 c. regular oatmeal
a splash of vanilla
a dot of salt

Get out a pan and melt the butter. When it's melted, add in the sugar and milk. It doesn't look like the sugar will possibly dissolve in that small amount of liquid, but it will.

Over medium-low heat, and STIRRING ALL THE TIME OR ELSE THE FIERY DEATH OF THE BURNING SUGAR AND THE NASTY MILK heat the mixture until it's boiling pretty well, then boil for 5 minutes more.

At an in-between moment put down wax paper or a Silpat or something on your counter.

Take off the heat, add the other stuff, and mix well. If it's hot outside, let the mixture cool for a few minutes before putting it on the wax paper, otherwise, start putting spoonfuls down on the wax paper right away. Small cookie-sized is good.

They should be cooled off enough to put onto a plate in an hour or so, depending on the ambient temperature. In the meantime you can burn the roof of your mouth off eating Plop Plop "dough", which I always do.

I finished the fish blanket.


Don't have much to say about it that I haven't said already. The pattern for the fish is here, although it's only technically an improvement on another pattern, but that goes to a dead link. My only modification was on the second row that reads "Slip, SSK, K1, Kfb, SSK, K2tog, Kfb, K1, K2tog, K1"--I suspect the poster was cutting and pasting and forgot to do that the last time, because it's pretty obvious when you get there that you don't have enough stitches to do this twice, and it doesn't go with what you've been doing up until that time. I just didn't do the k1's, which left the stitch count where it should be.

I really enjoyed knitting the individual fish, I definitely felt like I was making more rapid progress than I would have if I'd been working on a rectangle of the same size. I might use the pattern as something for when I want to knit but hate all my current projects--stowing a few fish away here and there would be good for future babies.

I left really long tails on the cast-on and cast-off edge to use for seaming. When I seam things with many small pieces like this, I tend to make up some rules as I go to keep things as consistent as possible. Here, my main rule was to always sew seams with the blue yarn unless I'd run out, which I only did on one little corner. Also, I sort of made the blanket reversible. The fish all have a right and wrong side, so I set it up so all the colorful fish's right sides were facing up on one side, and all the blue fish's right sides were facing the other side.

Sewing the bits together and weaving in the ends didn't take too long, just an evening or two. The huge pile of woven-in ends was very satisfying. I don't mind finishing, though, so it might not be a good project for someone that loves seamless designs.

I'm pleased with how it came out. I hope the recipient and his mom enjoy it.