Knitting on Impulse

Quiet Days... and Chocolate

Now that the boy and I are mostly better... the girl and the husband have come down with the same miserable thing.  It's inevitable at this time of year - everyone's tired, and school was rampant with germ factories.  (We're not the only ones - playdates and birthday parties are falling off the social calendar daily.) I think it's better now than later - everyone should be sufficiently recovered to enjoy the actual day by the time it comes around.  All things considered, we had a nice quiet day: playing Monopoly, baking cookies, knitting, Christmas music, tea.

 

 

 

The cookies are Chocolate-Black pepper with a dash of coffee - you can find the recipe here.

I was generous with both the pepper and the finely ground coffee beans (which I substituted for espresso powder) and the final result was wonderfully spicy (though consequently less of a hit with the kids.) Which reminds me, I've got a hankering to watch Chocolat again.....

PS: there was an update Friday... details here. If you are thinking about gift certificates, you might want to check out the limited time offer.

Random Sunday Evening

1. It's amazing how tiring it can be to stand in one spot and smile for a day.  I do love the Market, though - particularly the very early morning, when I walk down to the site (while Rob drives, because we can't fit our gear and the kids AND me in the truck) in the crisp fragrant air, and the mountain is still and fresh and green, and the only folks out and about this early are workies setting up the day's activities.  There is an air of excitement and being-a-part-of-things - tents going up, vehicles jostling for space in the pedestrian walkway, husband-and-wife vendors bickering good naturedly ("The display is ALWAYS 2 feet to the right of the planter - HOW long have we been doing this?").

2. I had the lovely experience of meeting Felicia of SweetGeorgia today, whom I was chatting with like any other visitor to our tent when she disclosed that she was a dyer and began to describe her business, at which point it dawned on me who she was.  And then I felt all sheepish and I'm-not-worthy for having gone on about the love of dyeing when really I am such a seat-of-the-pants amateur by comparison.

3. An eleventh hour project from yesterday:

(After sleeping on it, I pulled orchid out of time-out.  This is the first iolite I've found that I really like - it has always struck me as an unappealingly sludgy stone compared to amethyst, but this strand is a lovely smokey purple - complex and mysterious.)

4. Supper was concocted from the first meltingly ripe field tomatoes (I think the Pemberton valley season is a little later than the Lower Mainland), accompanied by baby bocconcini and the obligatory olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Also fresh field greens and a smidge of crumbled Stilton:

Our meal finished up with handfuls of the juiciest, sweetest cherries imaginable.

Really, what more could one ask of life?

Would Anybody Mind

If I just posted about whatever creative project I'm working on, even if it doesn't happen to be knitting per se?  Because lately (ie. this summer) my "making stuff" time is dictated by the farm market and therefore, many days I find myself casting about for blog fodder other than "progress-on-the-thing-I-showed-you-yesterday," all the while there is a small heap of cool metal objects that are the reason I don't have more knitting to show at that moment.  I tried for a while to write separate blogs, but that is turning out to be totally impractical, at least for the time being - this summer has been much busier than I thought it would be (for both good and less-good reasons).  In my mind, the key issue is that I wouldn't want any readers to be offended, thinking that I was turning this into a "buy my stuff" blog, if I regularly blogged a bit of jewellery along with everything else.  Thoughts?

Meanwhile, here's another summer recipe:

This is something we developed to use up the various goodies we bring home from the local farm market, and it has become a favorite over the years.  I suppose it could be loosely described as a West Coast version of the Nicoise salad.

1. Boil up a mess of new baby potatoes and let them cool a bit.  Cut the larger ones after cooking so they are all around 1 inch in diameter.  (This is a good stage at which to set aside a few for the fussy eaters in the family.)  Mix together mayonnaise (real mayonnaise) and crushed garlic (preferably the spectacular organic stuff from the farm up the road) in whatever amounts suit your taste buds and arteries; stir in the potatoes.
2. Arrange on a plate with tomato wedges, thin sliced lox (cold smoked salmon), thinly sliced red onion, and any other fresh veggies you like (snap peas are particularly nice, as are baby summer squash thinly sliced and lightly browned in a wee bit of butter.) Sometimes I add wedges of hard boiled eggs, if I feel it needs to be a bit more substantial.
3. Garnish with capers and freshly ground pepper.  The tomatoes do well with a wee sprinkling of coarse salt.
4. Best enjoyed on a sunny patio with your favorite white wine.

Have a good one!

Good Stuff

Time to focus on good stuff.  The worst part of this whole conflict business is the tendency for the resulting vigilance to usurp the joy and curiosity and open hearted connectedness that make creativity successful in the first place.  It would be far too easy to become the very things I presently find so irksome.  (Irksome is such a mature-sounding way to describe waking up at 3 AM having just thought of a really dire possibility, isn't it?)

Much knitting / crochet got done today, but it was too late to fire up the dye pot, so it all looks pretty much like last night's photo.  Tomorrow.  Really.

I couldn't go another whole day without a wee bit of colour, though - here's the raw materials:

And the result:

The recipe is dead easy: Chop the tomatoes (best if warm from a sunny field), cucumber, and feta cheese into large-ish chunks of some sort.  (Slices will do if you like.)  The red onion should be a little finer - thin sliced is nice.  Sprinkle liberally with dried basil, and add some Calamata olives.  Serve and drizzle alternately with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.   We had this every day on Crete - many different arrangements (tossed, composed, thick slabs, etc.), but the actual ingredients never varied. 

Calamari with Tomatoes, Caper Berries and Basil

Though we dearly love to cook, I have (until now) restrained myself from turning this into a "what we had for dinner" blog.  But this was just SO good:

Hubby gutted these little slippery little fellows:

And turned them into a glorious Mediterranean stew:

 

Which we enjoyed in fine style on the patio:

(From this month's Martha Stewart Living.)

Tomorrow: a quick update on the Wool Project Which I Feel Totally Vindicated In Continuing Since The Forecast For Tomorrow Is Cold And Pouring Rain.  (Or TFFTICAPR for short.  It has happened every week since the Market began, so I might as well have an acronym for it - every Saturday we look at the hitherto glorious forecast and find: TFFTICAPR.)  There's something about shivering uncontrollably in July that just seems..... wrong.