Staying focused

 Why can't I stay focused on one project at a time?  I'm enjoying the projects I'm working on.  I am working on more than one project as it is ... sweater for my nephew, socks, mittens ... so why do I still want to cast on for something else?  That is really a rhetorical question obviously.

I have several partially finished projects round that I have vowed to finish before I start something else.  Or, more accurately, I have vowed not to abandon those projects when I do start something else.  As long as all of the projects are getting a little bit of attention, I can feel focused.  Giving all of the projects a little bit of attention means that I have to limit the number on the go at any moment.

The problem is, the last couple of days, I'm hearing the call of the stash.  I have also been bouncing around on Ravelry and have found a couple of projects I really want to make and I want to make them now.  The first is Fetching, the fingerless gloves that are on the most popular patterns list.  Another are some ridiculous, yet strangely appealing, cork people for the Christmas tree.  They have little hats and scarves and dots for eyes.  Very cute.

The cork people are not completely from left field.  I've been keeping my eyes open for cork projects for a while.  I was using wine corks for trivets and asked a friend with a wine cellar whether he had any he didn't want.  He showed up with a garbage bag full.  While the cork people won't make much of a dent, they gave me an idea on what I could give him as a gift.  But since it has been a while since he gave me the corks a few more months before I make him a couple will not make a difference.

Anyway, I will continue to keep my attention focused and see how long it lasts.

We went to a Leaf game last night and started out the evening with dinner at Jump.  It was delicious.  I had a beef tenderloin with beef shortribs on top all sitting on a mushroom ragout.  Yummy, yummy, yummy.  Beef isn't my fist choice most of the time but it just sounded so good and I wasn't disappointed.  The amuse bouche, a cauliflower soup with roasted capers was also excellent.  I make a good cauliflower soup so will have to remember to add the roasted capers on top for the next time.

Dinner Helpers

I love to cook but lately I've been working too much and get home later than I'd like to.  The other half will get things started if I'm organized in the morning and leave clear instructions but I am generally not organized in the morning.  So cooking during the week has become a bit of a chore - eating at 8 and going to bed at 9:30 just doesn't work for me.  Or I would get home and we'd order pizza or Thai which is ok once in a while but dangerous to the waistline if done too often.  So I have managed to find a couple of dinner helpers that have made a difference.

A few months ago, my friend Pam turned me on to Supperworks, a meal preparation company that basically does all of the chopping and recipe creation for you.  It felt like an odd concept to me at first until I tried it.  Essentially, I get 12 meals for an hour's work.  Yes, I could do the same things at home, but it would take me several hours on the weekend.  The food is pretty good too.  Most things don't take long to cook and I actually find that I spend more time doing something interesting with vegetables because I don't have to pay attention to the protein part of the meal.

The other find this week was a stir-fry kit from Longos.  We tried a beef stir fry with lime.  It came with noodles and quite a few veggies and was pretty tasty.

On the crafty front, things have been fairly quiet.  I have been working on my sock-of-the-two-months project (like the Yarn Harlot's sock of the month club but Kristen, Natalie and I decided we would do it over two months) and it is a very time consuming but lovely cabled sock.  I get about 2 rounds done per half hour.  I really like it though.

I have included the completely-unrelated-to-the-post quilt pictures to liven things up a bit.  I stayed up too late last night and am not feeling very inspired in the writing department so the pictures are an attempt to make up for that.  The top one was my own pattern and the bottom was Atkinson Designs Yellow Brick Road.  I have done two Atkinson patterns now and find them very well written.  While I guess I can't exactly call myself a novice quilter anymore, I'm still a bit clueless when following sewing directions so need things really well spelled out for me.  Atkinson does that.

I guess I should get the day started.  I'm off to Supperworks for more of those dinner helpers.

Don't try to tell me it isn't a sport

I've curled for more years than I'm going to admit to.  It's a great game requiring skill, concentration and a love of alcohol.  Actually, that last bit is optional but it represents the after-game social aspect which is an integral part of the experience.  Anyway, during every Olympics, I sit by and listen to my friends and colleagues saying "gee, that curling is good to watch but it isn't a sport".   And I just nod and smile and think to myself that it isn't worth the argument.  Well not anymore!

I haven't been in many bonspiels (tournaments for those not up on the curling lingo) in recent years but was in one this weekend.  We played 3-10 end games (actually 2-11 enders and 1-9 ender).  Between the last two games our team had a break of about 20 minutes.  We didn't expect to be in the final.  After 4 ends in the 1st of these last 2 we were down 7 to 1 but came back to win in the 11th end. We played this game as hard as we could to cut down some of the other team's lead so we could go home feeling good about our play.  Well, surprise, surprise, we're in the B final.  This was exciting.  Except we now had about 20 minutes to refuel and get back on the ice.  We lost the last game, primarily because we were exhausted.  The other team had more than an hour to rest and it showed.  The fact that they are frequently in bonspiels meant that their endurance level is likely better.  Our team was a hastily thrown together mix of people who thought it would be fun to play in this one.

While I've always known it, I have fully confirmed for myself that curling is a sport.  At the end of sweeping desperately to get a rock in place, I felt muscle fatigue in my arms - a sport.  My heart was pumping - a sport.  I was breathing hard - a sport.  I had to find my energy reserves - a sport.  When I went to bed I fell asleep instantly because I was total body exhausted - a sport.

The "not a sport" proponents say it isn't a sport because you don't have to be in shape to play it - you don't have to be in shape to play tennis either.  At the recreational level, anyone can play.  That's the beauty of these games.  They say that it doesn't look very hard - a lot of sports look easy when someone good is playing them.

So for those who think it isn't a sport, play back to back for 20 ends (approx. 6 hours) and get back to me.  It is a sport and if you tell me otherwise, I'll disagree.  But try it, it is really fun.

And one year later ...

... I finally finish my Olympic sweater!  I made the rookie mistake of picking a busy pattern instead of something simple.  There was no way, even if the pattern hadn't made my hands ache when I did more than 10 rows at a time, that I could finish in 2 weeks. Add to that, it wasn't even an interesting knit.  It looks nice but was a bit boring.  On the positive side, picking it for the Olympics got the project started and that was a definite benefit.  Once things are on the needles, I generally get them done eventually.

I am happy with the way it turned out.  I haven't tried it on post-blocking yet but it looked good before the block so think I'll like it.

I bought the yarn on a trip to England a few years ago.  Since I mentioned Stonehenge in my last post, it seemed appropriate to include a picture of it too.

Back to the sweater ... I really like the yarn for this one, Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran.  It has a nice feel.  One drawback that I forgot about small balls of yarn ... weaving in the ends would have been a challenging, yet achievable, Olympic project!  I'll know for next time!

More Peru

I posted about crafty Peru a couple of months ago with the intention of doing another post shortly thereafter about the places we saw in general.  Well that didn't happen as quickly as I'd planned, but here, finally, is Peru Part II.

I'll concentrate on Machu Picchu in this post since this is the reason we wanted to go to Peru.  I will say that as I researched the country and travelled to a few other areas, there are a lot of other reasons to go to Peru and it is still on my wish list for a return visit at some point. There is still more to see.

Despite seeing thousands of pictures of Machu Picchu, including the one shown here that is everywhere, nothing prepared me for the sheer awesomeness of the place.  Our travelling companions did not want to hike the Inca Trail so we took the train to Machu Picchu Peublo instead.  Since we had a limited time budget, this method of travel provided us with an opportunity to spend more time seeing other things besides Machu Picchu - Lima, extra time in Cuzco and the Sacred Valley.

When we arrived at Machu Picchu, it was fairly early in the morning and the clouds still hung over the mountains.  There was a feeling of peace, calm and quiet hanging over the place despite the many tourists and the cheers from the Inca Trail walkers coming into the site from above.  As we rounded the corner of this pathway onto the site, I was hit with a combination of wonder at the site itself and the feeling of "I can't believe I'm actually here".  There is an aura there that I have felt at other ancient places; Stonehenge is an example.  I can imagine that the people who were there all of those years ago still inhabit the place somehow.

We had an excellent tour guide (we used Gap Adventures and had guides limited to the four of us for 95% of the organized part of the trip) who told us a lot about the known history and the theories of how the site came to be.

These ancient sites were very well built.  This is earthquake country and the sites were built to withstand the tremors.  In Cuzco, the gateway city to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley, there are Spanish buildings on top of Inca ruins.  When earthquakes hit, the Spanish buildings were destroyed but the Inca foundations were still standing.

The Inca people built these terraces for growing crops.  Different crops were on different levels of the terraces depending on the altitude they could best grow at.  The terraces were carefully placed during building to ensure the correct amount of sunlight for growing and had irrigation systems built in.

 As an aside, Peru has hundreds of kinds of potatoes and many kinds of corn.  Compare that to the grocery store here where you can get about 4 or 5 different kinds of potatoes on a good day.

The roofs were added to these buildings to approximate what they would have looked like in Inca times.  The quality of construction of the buildings depended on the intended use of the building.  The stones of temples and royal houses were very carefully assembled and the stones are smooth and very evenly joined.  Other buildings of less importance were roughly finished.

There is so much more to say about Machu Picchu than my 30 second tour in this post.  I would recommend a visit here to anyone.  Peru, in general, is beautiful.  The people that we met were extremely friendly and the weather was fantastic.  If it's on your travel wish list, make sure you go.  If it isn't on your list, consider adding it.  At the very least, it's worth checking out your local library for a book on the Inca people to learn some of their fascinating history.

Cookbooks!

I am addicted to cookbooks.  I have many.  I refuse to count them because I don't want to know what the exact number is.  I did hear Nigella Lawson quote the number of cookbooks she has the other day and, while I don't remember the exact number, know it is more than me so feel better that there are levels of obsession greater than mine.  The fact that she is in the business might giver her a more valid excuse but I'm not going to think about it that way.

The few in the picture are ones I've been using lately or are ones I want to pull some recipes out of soon.

The top one, "Bite me", is a fun cookbook with funny little recipe intros, goofy pictures and tasty recipes.  My favourite so far is the rack of lamb.  On my "how much does it make me want to lick the plate scale" - 5 out of 5

"In the Sweet Kitchen" has the best chocolate chip cookies going.  Since I'm a wee bit of a cookie snob, I feel like I have some credibility as a chocolate chip cookie judge.  I should explain that I like soft chocolate chip cookies so am judging them with that frame of reference.  They are loaded with chips and are enormously addictive.  And the double chocolate chip cookies are probably my favourite cookies ever.  I like having a cookie (or two) with my lunch and prefer to make them myself.  The only problem, I can't stop eating these.  I've tried freezing them and discovered they taste good frozen too.  Actually, I have always known that frozen cookies were good, I just counted on myself to be too lazy to trip downstairs to get them out of the freezer after dinner.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  As a result, I don't make them as often as I would like to and, when I want a cookie at lunch, go buy a substandard one for more than it is worth and start thinking about baking them again, eating too many, stop baking them and then go through the whole circle again.

On a healthier front, "Fast, Fresh and Green" is a new discovery for me and is providing me with some new ideas to make veggies more exciting.  I made roasted broccoli on Friday (the secret seems to be a very hot oven) with a yummy garlic butter.  The only thing about making fancier veggies - the things that make them taste better aren't as good for you as plain steamed veggies but they sure make things more interesting.

My newest book is "Quinoa 365".  I've eaten Quinoa off and on for a while now but became much more enamoured with it when we went to Peru.  So far I've only tried one recipe from the book, a pilaf-style which was very good.  I'm looking forward to more.  I bought a huge container of Quinoa at the Organic Garage and need to work my way through it.

Bonnie Stern is one of my favourite cookbook authors.  This one, "Friday Night Dinners", needs deeper exploration beyond the few recipes that I've tried.  The best so far are the fabulous Chicken Tagine and the Humous (the best I've ever tried).  The book is set up in menus which I always find fun.  This might be why I haven't dug into it because I keep wanting to try a whole menu.  This obviously needs a decent chunk of time and I always feel like I should be inviting people over which we've been hopeless at lately.  There is absolutely no reason why I need to make a whole menu but it makes me think in that direction when I dive into it.

"All About Braising" was a book I heard about on the podcast "Spilled Milk" about 2 days after I bought a new braising pot.  I felt the cooking gods must be telling me something so I ordered from Indigo and have been loving it from the first cook.

Finally, "Baking from my Home to Yours" has about 10 brownie recipes and the ones I've tried to far have been great.  I've also made some excellent chocolate and hazelnut cookies two Christmases in a row now and I think they will be on my Christmas "must haves" going forward.

So I have just finished proof reading this post and I think I'm going to have to go make some of those double chocolate cookies!

And the winner is ...

... the table runner.  It seemed like a good afternoon project and I love the fabric.  Perfect for a table runner and I have enough left to make the oven mitts I was thinking about when I picked up the fabric in the first place.

As I was being crafty on the weekend, I was listening to the Splendid Table podcast and Sally Schneider, who is often on the program, talked about this easy, delicious little treat.  Take 2 chocolate wafers (the kind that chocolate companies sell for lazy people like me who hate chopping chocolate for baking) and in between sandwich some crunchy peanut butter.  For my test drive, I used organic crunchy, my personal favourite, but it would probably be good with any kind.  Use as little or as much as makes you happy.

And in "let this be a lesson" news, I really have to start following the advice to change the batteries in the smoke detector on the spring forward/fall back days.  So then at 3AM on a Monday morning, I won't be awakened by ... beep ... beep .... beep .... etc.  Since it is the machine in the basement, I thought maybe I could ignore it but soon discovered that was not going to happen, got up and changed the batteries.  The only problem I couldn't get back to sleep.   I'm so tired, as soon as I publish this post, I'm going to sleep.

A finished quilt top and more Sunday bread baking

Finished another quilt top in between responding to emails from my boss.  I love these Erin McMorris fabrics and like the way the finished quilt looks.  The pattern is from Happy Hour by Atkinson Designs and is easy and fun to make.  After cutting the 15" blocks, there are pieces left over that can either be used in a table runner or another quilt.  I think I'll make the other quilt.  The one in the book has white strips in between strips of the scraps from these blocks.  This, and the fact that I need backing and binding fabric for this quilt  means I will have to go shopping in order to finish!  I don't have any Erin McMorris left and, since it is an older line, imagine I will have to buy something different for the binding.  I think a nice solid orange, pink or green should do it.

Looking at the pictures I took after finishing, I notice things that I don't see when at the quilt itself.  The orange and the leafy pattern really stand out and seem to be more concentrated towards the centre.  This is partially because I didn't get all of it in the picture.  There are some of these fabrics on the edges so it likely balances things out.  I also more easily see those spots where 2 blocks containing the same fabrics are quite close to each other.  These don't stand out as much in the "live" version, which is good, since the "live" version is really all that matters at the end of the day.

I also made more bread.  I really like baking bread and it tastes so much better than the generic store bought kind.  Today's was 100% whole wheat and smells wonderful.

Next up on the quilt front will either be something with a big pile of flannels I'm looking at right now or maybe a table runner from some olive and fig fabrics I bought ages ago or I'm at the collar of my Olympic sweater so could get a spurt of energy going in that direction too.  So many choices, so little time.

Recurring Yarn Store Dreams

I would love to own a yarn store.  The yarn, the knitting, the fellow knitters, owning my own business, being my own boss.  What always brings me to a screeching halt is the part where I have to take a leap off of a cliff, quit my job, be ready to earn no money for 1 year (optimistically) or more (most likely).  I even have a great location for the store picked out.  I came very close to making this happen 2 years ago but chickened out after a lot of work on the business case.  It hasn't actually popped up in my head as much lately but is starting to again.  Maybe someday I'll make it happen.

In the meantime ... must finish my projects.

I was looking through some photos this morning and came across this one.   It's a quilt that I made for my niece a couple of Christmases ago - this is the same niece who expects a sweater for Christmas.  It is actually the project that got my quilting revitalized (or increased the obsession, not sure which).  It was very easy to make and we had just come back from Africa when I saw the fabric so knew it was a sign.  I loved it so much, I almost kept it for myself!