Sweater Project

Okay, I said more coming “tomorrow”. By which I meant, um, several days later.

So, between bouts of jousting, I wandered around the grounds of Scarborough Faire with my field knitting bag, working on my one-row scarf. Let me tell you, for all those of you who KIP to get attention - even those of you who KIP to get attention while wearing a kilt - renaissance faires are a tough damn crowd. When there are half-naked muscled barbarians with battleaxes and svelte nymphs wearing wings and lace trotting around, a guy in a kilt with a pair of needles gets scarcely a glance.

I did attract the attention of one woman working in a leather shop though. She perked up as I walked by and asked what I was working on. As I described it to her, I saw her knitting basket next to her - she was working on the Toirneach kilt hose from Knitty.com! The same set that I’ve got in progress right now! Turns out her husband is partial to the unbifurcated lifestyle and we immediately bonded over our shared love of kilts and knitting and all that entails.

However, KIPping while walking is not without its hazards. At some point on Sunday while I was walking around and taking things in and out of my bag, I lost one of my precious, silver-trimmed rosewood needles. I was almost heartbroken until the little voice in my head said “It’s just stuff. And it’s not like you don’t have a gazillion #8 needles at home.” So after checking with lost and found and asking around several times, I bound off the scarf with the stake from Steak on a Stake and proudly wore the scarf (because it was freaking chilly on Sunday).

One of the people I asked about my missing needle was the kind purveyor of coffee and pastries, because I remember having had my work in my hands when I bought a coffee from her that morning. I showed her my remaining needle and she said “I haven’t seen it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone found it and used it as a hair pin, because that’s just gorgeous!” I agreed and continued in my skulky way, scanning the ground for my lost needle.

I checked back with lost & found periodically, but the missing needle never turned up. And I went back to the jousting range for each of their shows to take my mind off my awful misfortune.

It rained on Saturday night, so the jousting list was a mud puddle most of the day. Because of this, it wasn’t safe for the horses, so the knights sucked it up and put on a slightly more humorous show than normal.

The cantered out on foot, reminiscent of Monty Python’s Holy Grail. They followed the same general format - first show was feats of skill, second was jousting (this time on foot), and the third was a fight to the death. But since the audience was robbed of the chance of seeing the knights fight on horseback, they went completely over the top and had a beautiful fight in the last show.

The black knight again challenged the hero in a most audacious manner. The hero slew him in just a few minutes, and then turned to the king and queen to claim his victory on the field of honor. But in mid-claim, the black knight sat up, spit out a mouthful of (stage) blood, and yelled “OW!!! You cut me! That really hurt!” And the hero was obliged to kill him again.

And again.

And again.

In all, the black knight was cut through the midsection, had his throat slit, hit in the eye with a thrown dagger, shot in the shoulder with a crossbow, impaled with a spear and finally un-manned while lying on a bale of hay. He eventually had the good graces to expire and his lifeless form was carried off the field on a stretcher.

But oh my, did he put up a fight.

I don’t know what they feed black knights, but this guy had staying power.

After the last show, I went back to lost & found one more time to see if my missing needle had turned up. No such luck. So I was in the unenviable position of having one really nice silver-trimmed rosewood needle. Which is about as useful to a knitter as a bucket of warm yak spit. So I found the nice purveyor of coffee and pastries and told her that since I no longer had any use for the needle, I wanted her to have it as a hair pin. She graciously accepted, and so I was able to turn my loss into a gift.

And, my scarf was long enough to keep my neck warm in the freakishly cool weather. So I’m counting last weekend as a win.

My friend Lisa at work is engaged to a knight. No, not an Order of the Garter knight, but a really nice guy named Bryan who runs a jousting company called Noble Cause Productions. They travel between regional Renaissance Fairs and similar events and put on jousting demonstrations. Since this job keeps Bryan on the road most of the summer, Lisa likes to travel to see him when he’s close enough. Since they’re in Scarborough Fair right now, just a few hours up the road from here, she went up this weekend. I like that fair so I asked to tag along and split the gas.

We got there late at night on Friday and I set up my cot in “the clubhouse”, a big wooden shed where I slept with three other guys.

Wait, that came out wrong. Well, you get the idea - it was a little cramped, but a step up from primitive camping in a tent. The clubhouse had a small wall AC unit that made both nights quite nice. It was in one corner of the yard behind a big castle facade that marks the back of the jousting field. Kind of like sleeping backstage at a big production of Macbeth, except the ground was grass and mud, and there were horses and dogs hanging around as well as the actors.

Saturday morning, I staggered out and wandered around the pre-show fair grounds and found a vendor who opens early to serve coffee and pastries to the folks who work the fair. I should have gotten the name of the lady who ran that stand - she was very nice, and figures into this story later.

Fortified by coffee (sweet, life-giving caffeine!) I went back to the knight’s area and put together my camera. Over the course of the day, I knit a foot or so on the one-row scarf that I’ve been working on (featured in previous post) and snapped a few pictures of the funky fair-goers. I ran into Coby, one of my co-workers, and his girlfriend and we watched the Hey Nunnie Nunnie show, which always makes me guffaw. I also saw all three jousting shows. I’d never seen one of their shows before and it was really, really cool - the three shows are a progression where they start off doing jousting tricks, like lancing a ring held up by a squire, then lancing rings thrown into the air:

During the morning show, a spat develops between the good guys and the bad guys (they’re not all good knights, you know.) That develops into a mounted joust during the second show, and finally, a brutal fight to the death in front of the king and queen in the last show. They use blood squibs and everything in the final show of the day, and their stage combat skills are really good.

That night we had a feast of hot dogs and home-brewed beer and mead. It was right festive and I went to bed (or to cot, rather) exhausted, even though I hadn’t fallen off a horse that day.

The full photoset from the first day is here.

More pictures and knitting tragedy (!!!) tomorrow.

Bleargh - I’m coming down with a cold again. I swear I have got the weakest constitution of anyone I’ve ever known. If anyone so much as says “virus” at me, I get sick.

So I’m taking modest amounts of orange juice, checking my blood sugar and cleaning up around the house. I finally erased most of the evidence of the other night’s explosion, so this afternoon I’m going to put the kitchen to a less potentially destructive use: making another batch of chocolate chip cookies.

It turns out the recipe they print on the Toll House ™ brand of chocolate chips really kicks ass. I like to add chopped pecans as the nuts. I’ve made this recipe several times now to take into the office, and there’s never any left over at the end of the day.

And once the house is smelling of fresh-baked cookies, I’m going to sit here and turn a heel. I’ve been neglecting all my “serious” knitting for the One-Row scarf lately:

Update:

Cookies accomplished. Have a cookie.

Sometimes experiments go very wrong.

Now this - this is just embarrassing. I had finished sauteeing a steak and was deglazing the pan with a little red wine. When you deglaze a pan, you pour in some liquid and scrape up all the cooked-on bits from the pan, then reduce the liquid to make a nice sauce.

That is, if you add enough liquid. If you don’t, the hot fat in the pan will over power the the liquid you just added and create a bunch of popping - or, in this case, a small explosion that coated everything within several feet of the pan. Hence my shirt.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to scrub my kitchen ceiling.

This weekend I rode my bicycle down to the Sunday afternoon stitch ‘n bitch that one of the groups in San Antonio has each week. It was a sparse showing this time - just me and Courtney, the violist who lends a little bit of high-brow cred to our little group. We talked at length about podcasts and the various places we’ve traveled in the country, which got us to talking about Portland. Which, of course, led to me buying some brisket after the knitting.

Let me back up a second.

I went to Reed College in Portland from 1990-1992 and I absolutely loved the city. Unfortunately, when I was there I was still in the phase of my life where I was not very comfortable in cities, so I spent most of my time in Portland in the southeast section of the city (which Courtney accurately described as a hippy enclave). I did get into the downtown section a few times, but not nearly as much as I now wished I had. So a few months ago when Lilith invited me up there for a wedding, we explored downtown as much as we could.

One of the places we found was Kenny & Zuke’s, home of the most orgasmically delicious pastrami sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. Since then I have seen their sandwiches in my dreams. They haunt me, teasing my palate with memories of warm, tender corned beef . . . drool.

Ahem. Excuse me.

A recent issue of Bon Appetite had a recipe for making homemade corned beef, and our conversation got me thinking about the wonderful food from Kenny & Zuke’s, so I bought the ingredients at my local Central Market and went to work.

There’s not really much to do in the beginning - mix water, beer, salt, brown sugar, and pickling spices, then submerge the brisket and let it sit, refrigerated, for four days.

Immersed brisket:

In four days I’ll turn it and let it sit another four days. Then comes the boiling with vegetables, and then I plan to try smoking it to see if I can replicate the wonderful crust that was on the meat I got in Portland. I’ll post pictures of the finished product when it’s done. I didn’t use any special salts to preserve the pinkness of the meat, so what I end up with will probably be on the grey side, but I’m hoping for deliciousness.

When I was in Stowe with my brother and my girlfriend a few weeks back, I took the opportunity to enhance my stash. I also got a little knitting done.

First up, stash enhancement. I got some home-grown, home-spun grey wool at The Wool Shed. I intend to make some heavy-duty kilt hose out of this stuff.

I also got some gorgeous, very Autumnal Magallanes from Northeast Fiber Arts Center near Burlington. I’m making a scarf using the Yarn Harlot’s One-Row Scarf pattern.

I also picked up some Northern Lights from Green Mountain Spinnery. I think i’m going to make some Fetchings with it.

While we were in Stowe I finished the first sock for my friend Dawn, using the Firefly yarn from Amanda.

And I started up some more kilt hose. Hopefully the garter on this pair will be snug enough to keep them up without using anything tied around my knees - I have to do that with both pairs of kilt hose I’ve got right now, and it cuts into my circulation.

Tomorrow I’m treating myself to a long bike ride, after which I intend to sit down with one of my three WIPs and make some progress.

For your viewing pleasure: Interview with Barbara, proprietress of The Wool Shed

Apologies for the sound quality.

Part 1

Part 2

So, vacation is over. Oh man, what a fun week.

I flew to Connecticut and spent the weekend with my sweetie. Bad part of long distance relationships - you very rarely get to hold your lover in your arms. Great part about long distance relationships - seeing your lover in the airport and hugging them so hard the stuffing starts coming out at the seams.

There was white stuff everywhere! It was snowing when I landed (which made for some interesting wardrobe issues - I wore a kilt on the plane and it was 70° in Texas when I took off). Since we spent most of the week in Stowe, I gradually became accustomed to the weird crunchy cold stuff beneath my boots.

Lilith took me to a Stitch ‘n Bitch near her home on Saturday morning and I got to meet a couple of her fellow craftspeople. We talked about knitting, Linux, nunchuck mittens, Anime and generally geeked out hardcore. It was lovely.

Sunday, we headed out for Vermont and commenced our tri-state yarn crawl. I finally got to visit Webs, which was just fantastic. I bought way more stuff than I really needed, ranging from nick-knacks for some of my knitting peeps here in San Antonio to yarn to some absolutely orgasmic rosewood needles (pictures of all of this stuff coming up soon, I promise). I’ll have to check my receipts to remember the names of all the yarn shops that we visited.

But wait, there’s drama . . .
Upon arriving in Stowe, we stopped at a grocery store where I bought dinner for the two of us and then found the condominium that my brother Matt had rented for the week. Nice place at the foot of the mountain - one of the ski lifts was literally in the back yard of the condo. The front desk gave us the keys to the condo and a map to the unit we were staying in, along with specific instructions not to park in any other condo’s parking spot. There are year-round residents there who get very testy when visitors take up the spaces.

Unfortunately, in the dark and snow it was impossible to make out the signs indicating which parking spot belonged to which unit, and we did indeed park in the wrong spot. The next morning we were awakened by the sound of a neighbor banging on the door. My sister in-law answered the door and we heard her getting chewed out by the neighbor who was very, very unhappy with our parking technique. Lilith got up and moved the car, and I proceeded to make us a breakfast of french toast and bacon.

Mmmmm, bacon.

On one of our subsequent trips to the grocery store, I bought some chocolate chip cookie fixings and baked a couple dozen cookies. I took a bag of them over to the neighbor, who turned out to be very pleasant when she hadn’t just woken up to find a foreign car blocking her driveway. When she saw us walking down the lane a few days later she thanked us for the cookies and we had a downright amicable chat.

See? Cookies fix everything.

We didn’t actually do any skiing on this ski trip. We did do some snowshoeing and some sledding. Lilith was resplendent in her prescription goggles, newly-knit tassel hat and snowsuit.

She did however find the snowshoeing a little exhausting. I blame the elevation.

Besides playing in the snow, we continued the yarn crawl. One of the most memorable places we visited was the Wool Shed (3 Hancock Brook Road in Worcester, VT). It’s run by Barbara and her husband Ken and their two dogs, Java and Sassafras. They have several animals including llamas, alpacas, sheep, rabbits, and goats. The animals all live in a barn behind the house/store which their son built for them. I was so impressed with the store and with Barbara’s enthusiams (she’s like Stephanie Pearl-McPhee on crack, seriously) that we went back a few days later and did an impromptu interview with her. I’ve got some video files at home that I’ll upload to YouTube tonight - the sound is a little dodgy, but it was a lot of fun.

Here’s Barbara showing us the barn, guarded closely by Java. I wanted to dognap Java but Lilith insisted I’d never get him on the plane back to Texas.

Are you looking at my butt?

Lilith loves the llamas, and llamas love Lilith.

Hi, I’m a goat and I approve this message.

Fuzzy heads in the barn.