Because it is Not Hot Enough Here ...

This guy had the right idea. Lovely Grizzly Bear. Well, as 106 degrees F was apparently not hot enough for us in Austin, Texas, we traveled about 75 miles south to San Antonio. Where it was 107 degrees F. Yup. I have no idea what the heat index was. Just really hot. You would think that being from Texas, and not really going out much at home would prevent me from spending 4 hours in the heat somewhere else. Nope; that part of my brain was apparently off. That and Badger got carsick 3 times. Poor guy, he doesn't travel well in the morning. He didn't feel well until MUCH later.

We saw a lovely jaguar. He was mostly still until a keeper caught his eye. Or a little child, not sure which.

Badger compared his hands to the bear's paw. No - not that big yet.


Rose enjoyed being pulled in the wagon. She is wearing a harness because she would jump out and run. We do not generally leash our kids, but felt that the bear and jaguar could refrain this once from eating her.

We spent the longest time inside the Africa Live! building, watching crocodiles, hippos, and fish having a much cooler time than we were. Actually, this was the coolest exhibit - 70 degrees inside and very shady.
Eventually we became too hot, took a quick ride on the zoo train and finally found ourselves at a place I found searching Google on a whim. The Little Aussie Bakery & Cafe is 100% gluten free! Located just a few blocks from the zoo, I can't believe we lucked out finding this place. Mostly also dairy free, I could eat almost everything. Slow food, gluten & soy free and mine had no dairy! The breads and cookies were lovely, and the converted house was so comfy and welcoming. These people really know what they are doing and could not be more lovely.


I had pizza with chicken, tomatoes, and cilantro pesto. I ate most of it before I even thought to take a picture.

Rose's pizza - chicken, bacon, and tomato sauce. We finished it for her.

Badger had a butter and plum butter sandwich. The plum butter was delicious.

Matt scarfed down his sandwich and let me help with his salad. This was incredibly tasty and fresh. Badger and I also shared a slice of coconut cake. It was so good that I never even took a picture. Most of the time, when there is food at a restaurant that I can eat, there is no desert. I could eat all of the cakes except for the carrot cake - I am allergic to carrots! We also had beautiful limeades, the kiddos had lemon in theirs and I had a sour cherry one. So GOOD! Please visit their website; and if you are in San Antonio, Texas - GO! They also ship baked goods and their GF flour mix. I am going back for my birthday with my family.

Lest you believe that my blog has become fiber-free - behold! I present to you a lovely braid of hand-dyed roving: 8 ounces of 70% merino wool, 30% seacell (seaweed based Lyocell). And it was made locally! The last stop of the day was Yarnivore. Tammy, the owner, was lovely and let me fondle part of a whole giant trash bag FULL of qiviut that her dad hunted for her. FOR HER! The roving I got was made in New Braunfels, Texas (right between here and San Antonio.) I will be making a shawl from it, and will let you know more about it later.

Just a reminder that if you see Malabrigo in a nice color that your LYSs don't carry, just get it. I ended up calling the next day and Tammy was nice enough to mail me one. Malabrigo merino worsted in Sunset - 1 skein. I think I will start making Malabrigo my souvenir of choice. There was also a nifty watery green color named Water Green, also not carried by any of the local yarn shops, but one souvenir was enough, n'est pas?

Gluten Free French Bread and Vegan Pesto

French Bread Mix

3 1/2 cups brown rice flour
14 oz. (one box) tapioca starch (about 2 1/2 cups)
2 TBSP. xanthan gum
2 packets gelatin
2 (heaping) TBSP Egg Replacer (I use Ener-G brand)
1/4 cup organic sugar or Sucanat (browns better than regular white sugar)

Makes 6 cups mix.



French Bread - makes 2 large loaves

DRY INGREDIENTS
3 1/2 cups mix
8 TBSP pea protein powder
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. baking powder
2 scant TBSP yeast

WET INGREDIENTS
3 large egg whites
1 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar
3 TBSP olive oil
1 1/2 - 2 cups warm water

DIRECTIONS
Fold parchment in half the long way, and line french loaf (split for 2 loaves) pan.
In the bowl of the mixer, combine dry ingredients and gently mix them.
Add in wet ingredients and mix. The amount of water will vary, start with the smaller amount and add more a little at a time as needed.
Scrape bowl, and mix for 4 minutes. Batter should be the consistency of smooth spackling paste. Thick, but easy spreadable.
Put half of batter in each side of the pan. Form them with your spatula into 12-14" loaves that are fairly flat on top - don't smooth them too much.
Let rise 35 minutes. (After 25 minutes start pre-heating oven to 425 degrees.)
Cover bread loosely in parchment paper.
Bake for 15 minutes, then uncover bread and bake for another 10 minutes.

Take out of oven and let cool for 30 minutes.




Pecan Pesto

4 cups loosely packed basil leaves
3/4 cup raw pecans
2 cloves of raw garlic
juice of 1/2 large lemon
salt to taste - start with 1/2 tsp. (should be a little saltier than you'd like if you were to eat it straight.)
a large dash (6 grinds fresh) of black pepper
olive oil - enough to make a runny paste

DIRECTIONS
Whir garlic first in a food processor.
Put in basil, pecans, salt, black pepper, lemon juice in that order in the processor.
Put 1/4 cup of olive oil in processor.
Pulse the machine until all ingredients are chopped. At this point you may have to put in more olive oil.
Turn processor on and let it chop until everything becomes a fairly uniform paste. Do not chop too long - you are not making soup.

Happy 100th Birthday, Mrs. Zimmermann!

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Zimmermann. I, for one, want to thank her immensely for her incredible contribution to knitting and to knitters. For those of you who want to to know more about her, check the Wiki. For her ongoing contributions, please check the website of the company she founded (and her daughter Meg Swansen still runs) Schoolhouse Press.

Thank you for giving us all confidence to make our own patterns, experiment at will, and laugh at ourselves. Thank you for your tremendous sense of humor. Thank you for showing the larger world what we, as knitters, already knew: knitting is a joy, knitting is a puzzle to turn about and wonder at, knitting has great utility, knitting can be a passion - and rightly so.

I wish we had lived in Shorewood, WI at the same time. I would hope we would have gotten along famously. I did live in Wisconsin during some of the time you were alive, and really regret not knowing about you then. But I am fortunate that you live on through your words, incredible patterns, and in the joy you still give to me and other knitters around the world. I promise that my children and grand-children will always be presented with at least one copy of your books.

Love,
Ana.

Why I will never rule the world.

I will never rule the world because I put WAY too many things on my to-do list and then fret about getting them all done in the time frame that I have allotted myself. That, and because I think that wool food is funny. Not just amusing, but knees-collapsing falling on the floor funny. Why? I am clueless as to why, but I will note that perhaps I am just very easily amused. Here is the corn that escaped having it's picture taken.

Here is the bag that all of those lovely wool veg got to wear.

Here is the pile of pattern pieces and cut fabric and interfacing for my son's present. NINETEEN pattern pieces for this bad boy, some of which had to be cut out 8 times. All of which were cut at least twice. This is why it took 3 mornings to cut all of them out. Another whole morning was spent just ironing on the interfacing or fusible fleece. I'm unsure whether or not I like the fusible fleece; it gives a nice layer of batting to quilt but it also makes the texture of the fabric that it was fused to a bit rough.


Here's what I did yesterday. The body took a whole bag of poly-fill to stuff it. The wings are almost done, and not attached yet. There is an awful lot of hand-finishing that this pattern requires, but that is the part I enjoy.

The head of the dragon, missing needle sculpting, eyes, tongue, and horns.

Matt was helping my dad pick something up from a church yard sale and found an interesting pile of craft things. These are the two embroidery hoops he found. Yes, that is a 12" ruler on the smaller one.

Three little girl sewing patterns - in sizes to fit Rose.

A huge box of acrylic (mostly) yarn and a few crocheted items.

A 13 gallon trash bag full of plastic canvas yarn - very crunchy stuff.

Did you know that Amoco made yarn? Me neither. (Amoco is a gas/petrochem company here in the U.S. for those who didn't know.)

I've got two. Lucky me. I guess I will crochet funkiness from all of this stuff. Mind you, there was a nifty baby cardigan kit from 1971, complete with a finished back and one of the fronts. There were even British size 10 metal needles still in it. Crunchy blue acrylic yarn, but still a nifty find. Also some ultra funky Nottingham lace panels for applique. Had never seen these before either.

There you have it. I will never rule the world because I give myself lots more to do than I think, I am too easily amused, and I am clearly not omniscient - see Amoco yarn comment.

The Value of Our Handmade Stuff

Here are most of the crocheted and knitted veggies for my daughter's 2nd birthday present. For some reason, the corn didn't make the shot. So we have (total) 11 veggies: corn, tomato, squash, lettuce, asparagus, garlic, beet, radish, carrot, and 2 mushrooms. I made 2 mushrooms because one just seemed lonely somehow.

As I have been making all of the veg for my daughter's present, I have been thinking of how we value handmade stuff. If you are reading this blog, you probably dig handmade already, but how much do you value it?

Do you buy local handmade in support of local artisans? Do you pale at the prices charged for it? I know we can all get a pair of nifty cabled gloves at discount stores for under $20, so paying $60 or better for what could be seen as the same thing seems exorbitant. Consider that the raw materials at retail prices can cost $20 by themselves. Consider that it can take 20 hours or so to knit a pair of gloves with a complex cable pattern. If we paid ourselves fairly for our time, those gloves would cost $220. Now that $60 doesn't seem so bad, does it? Besides which, the workmanship and materials used in the handmade pair mean that those gloves will last you longer than a month or so of fairly constant use. With care, you could pass them down to your kids. Over their lifetime, handmade goods cost far less than the mass-produced equivalent due to their better workmanship. You could pay $60 for one pair of gloves every 5 years (with hard wear) or $10 twice a year or more for store-bought - so $100 for 2 pairs of $10 gloves a year for 5 years.

Do we as makers value our goods as much as we should? Do we consider that when we do our best work, we should charge accordingly? We pay retail prices for our materials (most of us.) We spend HOURS making each individual item. Why do we then devalue our work when we gift it? We say "well, I made this, so if you don't like it, I understand" or some such nonsense (of which I am guilty as well.) Why are we hesitant to charge a fair price when we sell it? Are we really trying to compete with discount store pricing?

I spent HOURS on my daughter's present. I am spending HOURS on the market bag to hold her present. I will be spending HOURS on my son's birthday present - the fabric cutting alone is in it's third day. The materials mostly came from my stash, but I paid retail for all of them. Why do I feel a little guilty for giving them only handmade for their birthdays? No idea. Even though this was a planned thing, I feel like I need to do more. Do more than 50 hours of work for each one? Spend more than I already have, even if lots of stuff came from stash? Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Even as a dedicated handmade consumer and maker, I tend to devalue my own work. How silly. I put love into every stitch, love into every cut of fabric and moment at the sewing machine, love into choosing the materials and patterns.

If you make stuff, value your time, effort, care, and work. It is more than good enough.

On Handwork

I saw this short video over on the Mason-Dixon blog site. The importance of it struck so deeply that I felt the absolute need to share it here as well.

Wool Veg Continued

Well, I've been hard at the veggie-makin'. In addition to the lettuce, we have this large knit garlic from Amigurumi Knits by Hansi Singh. She has some really brilliant shaping techniques in this little item. She has some really brilliant techniques in general. Her patterns are less toy instructions than fiber sculpture instructions. I love this little garlic and may have to make every single thing in her book.
The pattern for this lovely beet was found on Ravelry. It comes out more like an heirloom variety - just perfect for what I am doing. The leaf structure was interesting to do.
The latest one that I have completed is a crocheted carrot from the book Tasty Crochet by Rose Langlitz. There are some interestingly placed decreases that make for a slightly irregular - and more realistic carrot. The carrot tops were also crocheted, but were an improvisation based on the knitted tops from the carrot in Amigurumi Knits. I only made 2, as Rose is going to be 2, and 2 demands slightly more simplified veg.

Next up, a Tomato.