Be-Bop-A-Re-Bop

Isn't this a good time for a nice piece of pie?

Summer is always a good time for a nice piece of pie - especially when the rhubarb is in season! So even though we've hit the days when it's hot even at night, I baked a rhubarb-strawberry pie.


I had my first taste of rhubarb pie when we visited friends of my mother's in Peoria, and have been on the quest for the perfect rhubarb recipe ever since. I developed this one, which doesn't at all remember that Platonic Pie I had so long ago, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Quantities of everything are pretty vague, depending on how big your pie pan is, and how much rhubarb you can get. But here's what I did last night:

Rhubarb (1#, for this pie)
Strawberries (also 1#)
Sugar (1/4 cup, and I like to use Sugar in the Raw)

Eggs (3)
Cream (1 pint)
Sugar (just a little)
Saffron (a pinch)

A pie or tart shell, unbaked or blind-baked, depending on your pastry choice

Cut up the rhubarb and the strawberries (I like to cut the rhubarb VERY fine, and the strawberries a little bigger), mix with sugar to taste, and let sit for a few hours on the counter, or overnight in the refrigerator.

Using a fork, fill the pie shell with the rhubarb/strawberry mixture. The idea here is to leave the juice behind. Save the juice and use it for a lovely summer cocktail!

Grind the saffron with a pinch of sugar. Whisk together the cream, eggs, saffron, and as much sugar as you think you need. Gently pour it over the fruit in the pie shell. You want it to ooze around and fill up the shell - but not overflow!

Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes, until a knife stuck in the center comes out clean.

You don't have to be picky with anything on this recipe. Shift the strawberry/rhubarb balance as you like. You want the shell to be full of the egg/liquid mix, but I've made it with 2 eggs instead of 3 before. If you haven't made enough of the egg mix, you can just pour more whipping cream into the pie shell to fill it - everything will percolate together as it bakes. And keep a light hand with the saffron - I've found out the hard way that there is such a thing as too much saffron!

So while I'm working all day, I know I have something yummy to come home to. It's summer in Indiana, and the farmers' markets are full of all sorts of goodies.

Presumptive Nominee

I've had something in my refrigerator since Super Tuesday.

It's time to take it out now.

We just drank a small bottle of Champagne to celebrate that Barack Obama has clinched the 2,118 delegates needed to become the Democratic party's nominee for President of the United States.

Even though I should be working on Amanda's socks, I brought the "Audacity" socks out to celebrate on this night. Now I have a deadline for finishing - I need to be able to wear them on November 4!


(Let me add, because I'm just so proud of her, that Blackbunny, the yarn dyer, has a new book out through Interweave Press!)

We're all curled up in front of the TV - even the dogs got a couple drops of Champagne, so they could share in the celebration. (And they seemed to really like it. This is kind of frightening.)

Tomorrow I'll get back to work on Amanda's socks. But now I'm too teary-eyed to do colorwork.

Favorite (and not!) Patterns

Robyn, my Secret Pal 10 hostess, likes to post blog projects for her group. This time around we're supposed to post pictures of our favorite and most-hated patterns.

Both are hard. I haven't knit a lot of things for other people, and I doubt I'd finish something I really hated for myself. But I've also been pretty happy with most of the things I've knit, so it's hard to pick a favorite.

If I had to pick one, it would be Nautie. I've knitted two of these guys now, but I don't have one for myself yet. This one was a gift for my SP8 Pal, while the other was a Christmas present for my younger adorable niece. Every girl needs a stuffed sea monster, right? Which means I have to get busy and knit one for myself.


And while I wouldn't say I hate them, these Fiber Trends Felted Boot Slippers are probably my least favorite project, and the one I'd be most likely to call a waste of time.

Making them wasn't a very pleasant process. The knitting was easy enough, but the felting was a bear. I don't have a washing machine, so I did the felting by hand - and had to stop midway through because I'd rubbed my fingertips raw. And I suspect the blue yarn is indigo-dyed, judging from the lovely smell I got when the slippers hit the hot water.

The really bad part is that I never wear slippers. I don't even like wearing shoes. So I don't know what I was thinking. Three skeins of Manos Del Uruguay and all that trouble for something I never wear.

I could - and perhaps should, as a public service - add that I've never had good luck with any of Nancy Bush's patterns. "Uinta Cabin" doesn't seem to be designed for real feet, since she modifies the shape of the sock to fit the colorwork rather than the other way around. The socks are tight at the top, then get baggier as they go down to your ankle. "Trust the designer" is not a good rule to follow here. This is really weird because for "Conwy", in the same book, she includes all sorts of finicky shaping when it doesn't seem necessary. But that pattern, with all the calf shaping, has a star toe, so the socks spiral off my feet when I wear them. I still wear them, though, so they don't get a spot as my least-liked pattern.

My real reservations about Nancy Bush's work are more creative. Knitting on the Road doesn't really make an effort to offer patterns that are easy to do when traveling, nor are the socks authentic examples of what a traveler might find. They're just vaguely inspired by places she's been. The same is true of Folk Socks and Knitting Vintage Socks - you don't learn anything about the traditional sock patterns; you just get to knit a vaguely related modern sock. She didn't even do the Mamluke Socks as a toe-up design, when that's a pretty distinctive feature of eastern knitting, and not any harder to do. Some of the socks may be perfectly lovely patterns (in spite of my troubles noted above), but none of them are really what the book titles might suggest.

The real problem with knitting is that it doesn't make a very satisfying sound when you throw it against a wall. So I it's good that I haven't had any projects I really hated.

Not Much

knitting content today. I spent the weekend in Indianapolis, getting precious little done but enjoying a chance to visit. I caught up with old friends, ate chocolate fondue (doctor's orders for one of the friends!), and got to see my adorable nieces, who get progressively more adorable every day. The older one begins every sentence with "Well," so she sounds like a small blonde Ronald Reagan, and the younger one is walking quite impressively, unfazed by licks from larger-than-her little bad dogs.

So now I'm back home, and working on my Mosaic Garter socks. It's possible I'll finish one tonight, which will be good progress toward addressing the rest of the to-do list. Elizabeth's socks are next, of course, and then I'm not sure who will step forward. It's time to start choosing which socks, and which projects, will go to Germany with me. I suspect I'll have more options after this weekend's fleece fair - my first ever!

I've just been shopping for my Secret Pal, and I bought more than I planned - for her and for me. I wonder why we do these exchanges? It seems to be only women who participate, which left my mother doubly puzzled - how do we find the time?

My father is the Christmas Grinch. Not the reformed, happy, roast-beast-carving Grinch, but the original model. He hates Christmas, and he especially hates Christmas gifts. "Why don't you just give everyone a $1000 check for Christmas?" he asks. "Then they can each give you one, and you can say you got $20,000 for Christmas."

The thing is, I like shopping for other people. There was the year my siblings and I all gave each other gifts from the Nature Company, so gift certificates may have saved a lot of wrapping, but in general it's fun to look for surprises. And I have to admit that I like presents - when I was a kid, I'd wrap up my own toys, just so I could have the fun of opening them.

And so I guess it's fun even when surprising a stranger. I'm going to have a hard time keeping close to the spending limit for my pal - there's just so much I want to share with her. And someone out there, someone who doesn't know me, has already spoiled me with all sorts of goodies that I never would have bought for myself. Someone else spoiled me in Secret Pal 8, and I'm still enjoying all those goodies.

But why only women? It's a competition, I suppose, like the hunter-gatherers in Jean Auel's books, trying to show who has the most foraging skill. Perhaps women are just more inclined to bond with strangers, to reach out and try to make friends. Or maybe it's because women always buy soap and candles, and it's hard to come up with generic gifts for men. Not that I'd mind beer and duct tape from my pal, but soap and candles are definitely easier to ship. Perhaps I'd better find out if my spoilee likes beer.....

What If I Changed My Party And Nobody Came?

The first thing you have to know, for this to make any sense at all, is that I've always been a die-hard Republican. My parents are Republicans. My family votes Republican - except my grandmother, but we eventually taught her how. My brother married a Republican. My other brother looks a bit like George W. Bush. My best friend is a Republican, although her mother won't admit it, even when bragging about her political work. I've handed out Republican literature at the polls since I was old enough to enjoy skipping school. I worked for the Republican caucus of the Indiana General Assembly, and some of my friends think I collect elephants.

But tomorrow, I'm hosting a campaign kick-off party for Barack Obama. Obama, it turns out, is a Democrat. I do have to acknowledge that he leans a bit towards the liberal side, but it's still shocking that the people who want to prevent government intervention in citizens' lives are the Democrats. And I guess that means that, come 2008, I'm likely to vote for a Democrat. Maybe more than one. But this one seems pretty likely.

This might be kind of nice. In Jewish Studies, people tend to assume I'm Jewish. There's always that awkward moment of conversation when I have to say "well, actually...." And when the conversation turns political, the Democrats are always "we." Then there's another "well, actually..." moment. At least now I'll know I can say "we," and be talking about the right guy.

So I'm trying to get ready for this party. In Indiana, the Republicans were always the fun politicians...the Democrats had a tendency to be kind of stuffy and position-conscious. One Republican legislator threw a hot-tub party each winter, and had this great party game where you'd strap on a plastic elephant nose and try to pick up plastic rings. I don't know what the Democrats did for fun...if they had fun.

And now it's my job to provide the fun...Democrat fun. I've invited a whole bunch of total strangers to my home. A home which, incidentally, is a complete mess. I've hardly had friends over since I moved. The only people who've visited are the really good friends who will tell me if my house smells too doggy, since I haven't been able to smell anything for a month. But those friends aren't coming tomorrow.

Nope, it's just strangers. And I don't know if I'm hoping they'll show up, or hoping they won't. I do know that the main purpose of this posting is to put off cleaning just a little bit longer - even when "cleaning" is going to mean "shoving everything into the bedrooms and bolting the door."

Above all, I'd really like to claim that I haven't finished my party preparations because I've been sick. Or because I've been reading. Or something. But the fact is, I finished one of my entrelac socks today. And it's red, not blue. Oops.

Studying - and Knitting - Abroad

Tonight I dragged my self out of my sickbed - or off my sick La-Z-Boy - to attend a reunion of last year's Spring Break group. This was the Best Group Ever for a Study Abroad trip. It's obviously a good bunch if they're still getting together a year later - one guy even drove up from Indianapolis for dinner. This time last year, we'd just returned from a week in Munich and Greece, studying history and having a lot of fun. It was cold the entire time we were there, it snowed and rained most of the time, we drank too much, slept too little, I had to have my bathroom door knocked down by a soldier (this is how I learned to avoid the lots-of-Ny-Quil cure for colds), and we had a wonderful time.

Here's a picture of the group in Distomo, Greece, where we were warmly welcomed by the Mayor, who taught us about the town's tragic WWII history.






I really don't know what it was that made this group so good. Too often, groups splinter into cliques, but that didn't happen here. There was only one other knitter in the bunch, so I can't credit knitting - although two students very patiently accompanied me on my first trip to the yarn store. I went back again later when I wouldn't have to worry about boring anyone!

I wore these to the reunion tonight - they're my German toe socks. I bought the yarn from the Ludwig Beck store in Munich. I started the left sock when I was visiting Aaron in October, and finished it on the flight home. The socks are Lang Jawoll yarn, with the instructions taken from the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook. I've always wanted to own a pair of toe socks, and now I finally do!



I call them my "Wilhelmshaven" socks, mostly because I did a lot of work on them on the train to Wilhelmshaven. I like to think it's for the color, but there wasn't nearly that much blue or green when we were there - it was pretty uniformly grey. It's a lovely city, with lots of sea-themed tourist attractions, but cold days in October aren't the best time for visiting the North Sea.

And this is what I returned home to tonight. It's Oscar 2, Plungers 0 in the battle to keep the toilet unclogged. I'm sorry to lose this plunger...it was a good one, and had just done a fine job of clearing the bathtub drain. My EvenWorseDog has a strange fascination with water - and, it seems, with plumbing.

Bow Down Low

Bow down low
Get on your kneeses

You are now on the aisle

Of the living sneezes

This means you - Achoo! - You too.

Remember the Living Sneezes from the "Puff, the Magic Dragon" cartoon? I am their queen. I have had this cold since March 2 - exactly 48 hours after Aaron returned - and while he's gone, it isn't. I'm sitting here at work feeling the cold get worse by the minute....and even dinner is too far away, much less the end of the day. The student hospital reassures me that I'm not contagious, but somehow I don't believe that. Since I'm now alone with the dogs, I can't even resort to the lots-of-Ny-Quil cure.

So of course the thing to do is to work on some seriously tricky knitting. I'm just about to start the heel on my entrelac sock. My first entrelac, and now my first short-row heel. There's nothing like trying to learn a new skill with a head full of mucus.
Either entrelac goes faster than regular knitting, or I'm completely addicted. 5 days and it's time for the heel. There's something about the little rectangles that feels like progress.

I, on the other hand, feel like Mucus Tick.

Socks that Barack?

It's hard to relate this to knitting, but I'm still excited about it. I've just signed up to host a Kickoff Party for Barack Obama's campaign on March 31.


I didn't vote for Clinton, so this is the first time I've really been excited about a candidate who has a chance of success (Ross Perot was one of my childhood heroes, so it was a real disappointment when his campaign flopped). I didn't think Obama would run, but here he is - so I thought I'd better step up to the plate and do something.


I don't agree with him on every issue, but he comes across like a man who can be trusted, a man of good character, and after this administration I think that's important. He seems to have real ideas for specific things to do, and that will help even if he doesn't win. And it doesn't hurt that he's articulate and looks good on TV....another nice change!


I'll even be slipping away early from sock club to host my party. Now that's dedicated! But that doesn't mean that I won't be knitting socks during the party! Maybe I'll break out the red-white-and-blue "Nation Color" yarn from Germany.

Spring Break

Since we're supposed to update this regularly for Secret Pal 10, I'll post even though I don't have new knitting content.

This week is Purdue's spring break, but I'm already done with all the vacation I'll get. Tomorrow is back to work at the library....3 long days of very little to do. The good news is 1) I just bought a new iPod Shuffle to help keep me entertained, and 2) we're getting a new printing system. This is good news, because it will stop people who take advantage of our public computers to print stuff without paying for it - removing one of the major headaches of my job.

I bought the Shuffle so I could listen to language recordings, but I'm already in love. I want to listen to music all the time now...even though my very generous playlist doesn't begin to fill it. I feel like I'm 19.

Today was the most amazingly beautiful spring day. I've gone from feeling a desperate need to make more warm wool socks to wanting more lightweight socks. The nice days won't last, but maybe it's still time to start thinking cotton.