Going deep on a couple of subjects...

Let's face it, getting Covid on my trip to Sweden has derailed my travelogue...  I will get back to it... but meanwhile, this is some of what I'm doing; I'll go deep on a few things instead of being comprehensive.

Sourdough

There was something wrong with my starter... I suspected mold so I discarded it and tried to capture wild stuff. It's an interesting process; at first it smelled like dirty socks, then more dirty socks... but after a week it had a nice sour taste and smelled like beer. I assume it goes through phases as it acidifies (lactic acid) then finally settles on a colony of yeast and bacteria that are more pleasing to my nose. 

After 10 days, I'm baking bread... the starter doesn't seem as robust as it could be and I frankly was out of time baking-wise so I had to just slam it in the oven; it hasn't risen as the other batches did.  I've parked the starter in the fridge for the week (too much discard to process into crackers!!) and will revive it and try again next week; if it doesn't work I'll start over in October with the freeze dried starter I just got from the mill. 

V. mentioned that you can ask a nice baker to give you some starter in France... I may talk to Tartine if that doesn't work.

Cowl

I realized I didn't have enough yarn to finish... And I don't want to buy more (it's an indy dyer, so probably couldn't get any to match well enough anyways!) The cowl has an interesting feature where it increases 10 stitches then decreases 10 stitches then joins for the neck part. I asked my knitting buddies and we have no idea why the pattern maker did that; the only thing we can figure is that it might be to make it lay flatter on the back? So I ripped out the section of 10 increases and 10 decreases and joined it. I will have plenty of yarn now to finish. I need to buy a brown top to wear it with...

I think the reason I ended up short on yarn is because I've doubled the icord edge on both sides (knitted the 3 stitches twice), to make it lay flatter. I'm happy with that decision.

Weaving Stuff

Crappy hotel room pic of 
the rag rug

I might have implied I was in Sweden to weave a rug (I was) and so there is a new rug... It has these cute little bow inlays that probably won't survive an vacuum cleaner so it'll be a wall piece. Right now it's laying over an ottoman at the lodge, and I think I'd like to weave a rug to lay over the ottoman...

The rug is about 2'x4'. I was inspired by the water lilles (neckrosen) I saw in the Lund botanical gardens and in the river backwaters in Broby. The challenge I gave myself was to use whatever yarn was left after folks picked their colors and make something attractive... It's based on a VERY similar rug made by Nina <last name> our stand in teacher in <get the books name>. 

I'm currently dyeing fabric according to Marie Rollander's instructions, but using procion dyes.  Looks like the ingredient quantities are the same, but she uses washing soda instead of soda ash; I assumed I needed half as much soda ash as washing soda (I need to verify that). I used WAY too much blue dye and not quite enough green dye, so I have dark blues and lighter greens; I like them though. I dyed sheets I had here, plus some from the Thrift Store in San Carlos; the thrifted ones cost me less than $5 a sheet and one was a fun grey pattern with green animals on it. These will become placemats and a runner for the lodge.

Runners on the loom

I'm also making a couple of runners... One for a hostess gift, the other? Maybe we'll use it or maybe it will go in the potential hostess gift pile. I'll attribute the designer and pattern source in a later post.

Other

I've been trying to recover from the Covid episode... mostly I've just been fatigued. Until late last week, I could do one thing per day and the rest of the time I laid around or napped. To be fair, sometimes the one thing was two hours of chopping down brush and hauling it to the chipper pile, so it's not that bad. But I'm finally able to get back to a normal level of activity, and starting to build fitness back. 

I've been doing a fair amount of cooking as well... the only recipe of note was the peach ice cream recipe from The Perfect Scoop.  The fresh peaches give it a beautiful taste and a wonderful peachy pink color. If I made it again, I'd use half and half instead of heavy cream, but it was a delightful dessert along with a plate of fresh berries and sliced peaches.

Travelogue, Broby part 1

 I took the train from Copenhagen to Hassleholm, Sweden to meet up with the tour. The trains are neat and well kept and relatively ontime. What a pleasure to see Sarah and Simon again! We settled down in Broby to start our explorations the next day...

Broby Gastis

We stayed at the Broby Gästgivaregård, a 17th century building that was probably originally an old farmhouse... During the years that Skania was ruled by Denmark, the Danish King established a chain of stables through the region so he could change out his horses when travelling through the region; this became one of them. The last remodel re-exposed a lot of the old beams and gives the building a lot of character; despite it's age it's a comfortable place to stay. It wasn't clear to me if Sylvia and Frederick own it, or just run it; but it's well run with exceptional food.

The very. next morning, I woke up feeling super-crappy and emailed Sarah asking her to bring me a covid test. I tested positive and crawled back into bed. I had about two days of mild fever and slept a lot; then spent the next few days taking slow walks around town while the rest of the group went to the weaving class. Of course I could not join them.

Usually when we travel, DH and I are quite active and busy seeing everything we can possibly fit it... We don't have the concept of "slow travel" figured out. This forced quiet time for me was actually very enjoyable, just to slow down and look at what was around me. 

An old bridge

There's a history park with some old buildings

View from another bridge... this place is beautiful

Old railway converted to a rail-bike path

I also walked through the grocery store a few times, masked... I found this in the cat food aisle. The brand is pronounced Meow...

On the day we left Broby to transition to Lund, I tested negative, but a couple folks were not comfortable sharing a car with me; they took the tour van and I took the bus and train, which was frankly more enjoyable than a trip in the van!

Travelogue: Copenhagen day 2

Half of the hall of Danish chairs

On my second day in Copenhagen, I walked out to the Design Museum. About a third of the museum was current exhibits, one featuring avant garde fashion, the other, Japanese woodblock prints similar to the ones at the recent SF exhibit. The room full of chairs (I think 120?) was interesting as well a few rooms focusing on specific Danish designers (i.e. Poul Henningson). There's also a lovely textile section.  I enjoyed lunch in the garden at the museum cafe! I had the unpronouncable Smørrebrød.

In the afternoon, I did a walking tour with the Danish Architecture Center; we walked through the Borgen, and looked at a variety of older buildings, when across the river to see more modern buildings. The guide, and architecture student, talked about how the river was a run down collection of old warehouses, and the ways that Copenhagen had revitalized the area. It's now a hip collection of restored old buildings, new buildings incorporating old buildings, and straight out new buildings. It's clean, feels safe, and is a lovely place to be. 

det kongelige Bibliotek

Here's det kongelige Bibliotek (the Danish Royal Library), which is relevant to me as it's a source for book info in LibraryThing. 

Dinner was Fiskfrikadelle which was darn tasty.... I ate at a small restaurant on the square with the fuck you statue.  It was fine but I think there's far better food in Copenhagen...

Fiskfrikadelle

More photos at the same location as Day 1....

Social Protest

Travelogue: Copenhagen day 1

 It’s shameful that I only blog about my trips when DH isn’t with me…

This Bee was as big as the 
end of my thumb

I arrived in Copenhagen on Monday night… The airport baggage claim was overflowing with large wagons of baggage and I couldn’t figure out why… Were they staging it for tours or cruises? Can you book your luggage straight through to a cruise? I’m fascinated. At any rate, everything went well so I have no real complaints.

I’m staying at the Hotel Denmark; it’s around the corner from Tivoli Gardens and next to the National History Museum. It’s a nice hotel but a little too hip for me; also no AC (although I think there’s a fan) and is pretty noisy with the windows open. Restaurant choices in the area are pretty touristy

Viking weaving tablets, weaving sword, etc

Tuesday I visited the National Museum; they have a fantastic antiquities floor full of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman artifacts in great condition. The collection was purchased by one of the Kings on a trip to Europe and previously the collection on an Italian Bishop. There were a number of exhibits on Danish pre-history, Viking era, early church and reformation, and colonial period, including the straight ahead message that Denmark was in fact the 7th largest slave trading country; St.Thomas in fact was Danish for a number of years. 

Awesome name for a haunted
cruise ship

There were a lot of spindle whorls, loom weights, and other weaving artifacts in the museum… Also a few very old wool textiles, and some nice knitted objects (post 1600s) and some older naalbinding. It didn’t say, but I think they must have been found in bogs. The weaving looked to be primarily twill. I also went through the Viking Sorceress Exhibit which presented some mythology and anthropological silliness followed by a large exhibit of Viking artifacts.

I went to check out the armor on this horse and rider, and the horse snorted at me! Scared the heck out of me.  Then it continued to make horse noises… There are a large number of paintings and sculptures featuring dragons, as well. Later I had a cardamon bun at the cafe, really really good.

Loud horse

I spent about 2 and a half hours at the museum then started walking…

I walked through the Christiansborg castle (The Borgen) and thought I’d recognized some spaces from the series… The horsey smelling Royal Stables are there as well as a couple other tourable spaces; I didn’t go in.

My route took me through Nyhavn, which was crowded full of tourists.. really lovely but might be better off season. 

Scenic Nyhavn

I saw the Copenhill, a current obsession, on the other side of the water. It’s a state of the art clean burning trash reclamation site (that’s just steam coming out the top); the slope on the left side is an artificial ski slope, there’s a bar at the top, and other recreation facilities… And it’s supposed to not smell like a dump. I'd like to visit it on my next trip.

Copenhill (why can’t we do this?)

On the way, I passed the Queens’s Winter Palace, a dock with multiple mega yachts anchored, and a star shaped park; I didn’t stop at any of them.  At the end of the walk, within site of 3 or 4 floating skyscraper tour boars, covered in tourists and flanked by tour busses, the little mermaid. It took some tricky maneuvering to get her without tourists…

Ariel! Don’t follow the guy!!!

On the way back to the hotel, I passed by another royal palace that had the crown jewels; the National Gallery and a bunch of train stations. Dinner was at Puk (pronounced pook), a Danish restaurant; I had a beet and cheese salad, and turbot with potoatoes. The thunderstorm that rolled through while I was eating cleared enough for me to get back to the hotel without getting wet… All in all, a good day.

More photos here.

Cooking and Baking and Spinning and Some Thread Graduates from the Studio into the Closet

This will be a longer than usual post because I've been doing things...

Cookbook challenge

June was Alice Waters The Art of Simple Food. It's a lovely book but more of a "you can do this"  book than a recipe book. It's got some great stories and some excellent ideas but I really struggled to figure out what to make.  I made a salad dressing and one other recipe but my heart wasn't really in it.

July is Rick Bayless's Mexican Every Day. I cooked chicken with red chile rice (with black beans!) to use up the chicken breasts in the freezer that I accidentally bought... I substituted a mixture of smoked paprika and cayenne for the ancho chile as I had none then served it with the tomatillo and chipotle salsa and a green salad completely from my garden. I'd like to try it again with ancho chile and chicken thighs. This was excellent with a French Gamay. 

Someone at my bread!

Speaking of the garden... I dumped the contents of the compost tumbler into the garden last year when I had to move the tumbler. The cucumbers are going absolutely crazy! I fear we're having a hard time keeping up.

Today, I cooked Rick's basic pinto beans recipe from the same book, 25 minutes in the pressure cooker; they're very basic but I enjoyed them for lunch with some salsa in them.  I used half of them for his cowboy beans recipe from the same book.  I used 8 cups of water and it's way too much, so I'm boiling some off... maybe 6 next time?

I also baked a loaf of whole wheat bread using packaged yeast and the recipe from the Sunrise Flour Mill. It's 1/5th whole wheat, with the rest being bread flour; it rose nicely and has a good taste and crumb. Sadly, I'm pretty sure the sourdough starter had mold on it so I got rid of it. I'll try again when I am home in two weeks or so.

Fiber

Maybe I should have dressed up
for the photo... 

The red fabric is off the loom! and is now a shirt!  It's graduated from the Studio into the Closet! Here's the critique:

I did sample the yarn at three setts and decided it didn't matter that much, and settled at 30 EPI; I think 33 could have been a better choice and have made the sewing easier.

Having said that, the sett was firm enough where I didn't have to go to extreme measures to stablize the cut edges; I did handle it carefully and there was some fraying, but it was manageable. I used French seams and an applied facing made from cotton t shirt material so all the cut edges are enclosed. 

I didn't want to spend the rest of life threading heddles so I opted to have a center seam. I left about an inch on each side of the lace weave in plain weave but it wasn't consistent so the center seam looked a little wonky; I ended up sewing an extra line down the front to compensate. DH said it looked like a purpose style decision (yay!). Regardless, you have to be looking close to see it and I'm not unhappy with the outcome. I didn't factor in the shrinkage correctly and was a tiny bit short on the fabric but it fits anyways.

Fabric close up with ruler in inches for scale

The fabric has an obvious diagonal stripe so I slanted it in a V down the front and back, by flipping half of the fabric. But the design is made by threads floating over other threads, and they float horizontally on one side and vertically on the other resulting in each side having a slightly different luster. I suspect I may be the only one to notice this.

I'm extremely happy with the fit, the fabric, the overall look and this will be a piece I'll get a lot of use from!

In other fibery adventures, I hosted a spinning meetup for the Guild at my new fav coffee place,  the Village Hub in Woodside. It's a coffee kiosk in an oak grove at a church, with the goal of building community. Between that and the TdF, I finished the blue green merino/bamboo silk I'd started a while ago. I still need to ply that and the blue/black merino tencel.

The sweater I was knitting is on time out; my gauge is way off and it's never going to fit. This is why we swatch! But I never knit the same as my swatches... Meanwhile, I started a cowl that I bought the yarn for earlier this year, using a technique called assigned pooling. It's a color changing yarn and you do something special every time you encounter a special color. It's a perfect project to take on my trip!

Speaking of trip, I'll be travel-bloging here. 

And lastly, I'm taking a drawing class with G. Here are two apples.

 

 

Q2 Finished list (6/12)

 I feel like I didn't take Q2 seriously, but somehow when I write it all down, it feels like a lot got done!!! 

1. 

   New born yarn!

   Finished spinning and plying the fiber from KAFF, about 8 oz fingering to light fingering 2 ply. It's a little under plied and I may run it back through the wheel to correct that. Under-plying seems to be my issue.
2. Wove a double huck sampler and the scarf. I'm super disappointed in the scarf as there are too many errors, but I'll own it. The class was great, it's just not my structure.
3. The goat fiber is now 3 ply yarn.
   
4. Shiny sweater is now in the closet.
5. Wove a green fabric sample (3 different setts) in preparation for doing the red fabric for the top.
6. A small and poorly executed but nevertheless adorable pine needle basket, from a class by Cata Gomes. I've bought some pine needles and synthetic sinew and will be trying this soon. I'll post the photo of the basic soon

What's in process or slated for Q3?

Two trips, a fiber adventure in Sweden and a bicycle trip in France. This, plus the bike training, should limit the things I can get done from this list, but here it is.

1. I found the two towels that just need hemming.
2. I'll be travelling to Sweden and taking a rag rug class, so I'm assuming I'll have a rag rug when I get home.
3. The red fabric for a shirt on the loom and weaving, and close to done.
4. Two runners for hostess gifts are wound and ready to go on the loom
5. The Day Dream sweater
6. I have double weave pillows designed and colors picked out... I need 2 for me and for K.
7. I have a bobbin of merino/tencel singles that need to be plied.
8. Maybe I'll finish spinning the Diver's Cove roving.
9. A basket?
10. The poppy table, to make it a round 10. We desperately need me to redo the table by the pool so I need to start working on a design for that and make room in the studio, so getting the poppy out and in use is important.

And the usual other projects, mosaic, quilt finishing, bread baking, embroidery, printing, sewing, and all that other stuff I keep getting into.

Greek inspired lunch

 I made a Greek inspired lunch for my sister and her friend J; I love my sister and J is always a treat to hang out with. I loved the recipes, too, so will record them here:

Lamb meatballs, baked, not fried. This made 12 meatballs, which for lunch was plenty, but I think I'd double the recipe if I made it again. Fifteen minutes in the oven is plenty

Tzatziki, with cucumbers from my garden and a little mint to complement the lamb

tzatziki Saturday

Greek Fava which is super easy and very tasty... Essentially, it's hummus made with yellow split peas and no tahini. I got it super smooth in the blender.

A simple greek salad, also with my own cucumbers (super prolific plant!)

Homemade sourdough bread... This was my best effort yet but not very crusty and did not rise as high as I think it should. I wonder if I'm getting my starter ready enough. Still, this was a step in the right direction. I'm going to do more reading and maybe stop overthinking it. Or ping M to see if he can guide me from afar.

I also through in some crackers from the sourdough discard I've been saving. DH loves them and they're easy... so... crackers...

The pressure is on to finish this!

And a peach galette. The peaches were super ripe so I only used a little sugar; a little more would have been better. 

For dinner, DH and just had a slice of bread with some fava and salad.... and a glass of Greywacke The Contours Sauv Blanc... I think 2014? It's a wild yeast and I love the slightly funky taste of it. 

On the fiber front, I've got a few things going... I'm frantically trying to finish this red cotton yardage so I can make a shirt out of it to wear on my trip in two weeks. I'm hoping to weave off the last 20 inches or so tomorrow, it's a fast weave and a lot of fun so it's totally doable. 

Tour de Fleece!

We're also watching the TdF, and despite the fact I promised I would not do the Tour de Fleece, I caved when HH's son 3D printed a little case for it that mounts on a tripod. So I'm spinning Frost Yarn's Diver's Cove that I got at the final Stitches event. For scale, the little spinner is about 4x5 inches.

Last (but not least) I'm still knitting on that sweater in the Invito yarn... no photos. 

All other projects are currently stalled.