...and she cooks, too!

This is my boss Lori who is the owner of Great Capers Cooking. I started working for her about 2 months ago. Three days a week I get to do something like what I am showing you today.

I bake fresh bread. I used to knead it all by hand, and I loved that. Then Lori got a new mixer, and it makes life just a tad easier.

The sandwich fillings are made from complete scratch:

Cooked white beans, mashed with salt, pepper, parsley, and a touch of olive oil.

Broccoli rabe sauteed in olive oil and garlic.

Sundried tomato spread (soak the tomatoes, puree them with - of course! - garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, smidge salt)

Ready to assemble:

You can find these on most Wednesdays and Fridays at the Honest Weight food co-op in Albany, in their deli case. Sometimes I make pita breads filled with roasted tofu, mashed avocado, cucumber slices, and a soy ginger vinaigrette topped with sprouts.

Guten Appetit!

winners

April and Pat W. both guessed right: there is Amy from Spunky Eclectic in a throng of people; Jonathan Bosworth of Journey Wheel demonstrating a charka; and Tsock Tsarina sock kits.
(I bought the Imbus and the Octoberfest kits. They looked the easiest. I am not sure I am up for any of the other ones yet, maybe in the next decade... Got them at the lovely Holiday Yarns booth.)

What nobody guessed is that a real life knitty designer and model of her own Convertible stopped right at our booth: Rebecca Hatcher. You couldn't meet a nicer person.

So if April and Pat W. would please send me their addresses, and a general idea as to what color they like...I will get your sock yarn out to you on Thursday. What'll it be? Purple? Green? Pastel? (Yes I do need to get pictures up...my bad.)

karinmaagtanchakATnycapDOTrrDOTcom

Massachussetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair 2009

It was a glorious weekend.
I'll let the pictures do the talking.

See if you can spot three celebrities of the fiber world. And I mean people, not animals. A fourth one is represented by her product. If you get at least two right AND one bonus, I will send you a skein of my handdyed sock yarn.

Happy sleuthing!

warm welcome

This basket of my handdyed sock yarn will be on display and for sale at the MayFest this Saturday in Bennington, VT. Melanie of Dye-namics Yarn is there with her yarn and graciously took a basket of mine with her today. Thanks Melanie!! She is also hard at work getting her website re-vamped, so our yarns will both be for sale online!

This lovely lady is Liz Cassidy, the owner of The Spinning Room in Altamont, NY.

She recently began stocking my handdyed sock yarn. Prior to this armful, she had already sold 12 skeins within 5 days, and more orders were being placed by customers.

Today I went back because she needed more!

This is the new pile --- of you are in the area, go check it out.

I am glad my yarn has found yet another nice home. Thanks to all my and Liz's faithful customers!!

On Saturday I will be at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair in Cummington, at the Sliver Moon booth. I do hope you will stop by and say hello!

Pretty soon, those of you who live further away from me, also can order up some Roasted Eggplant, Spilled Wine, Stawberries and Cream, and a bouquet of Hydrangeas or Fresh Lavender...(Yes, I've been having fun with color names.)

comings and goings

Sometimes life happens faster than one can blog about it. I'll catch you up on some recent comings and goings around here.

Last week on Monday, I went to see a wee little newborn. I only got to hold him for an hour and a half before grandma intervened. :)


On the way, I stopped to talk to my friend Melanie. She is offering me space on her website (thank you!!) to help me sell my handdyed yarn online. Here she is with some of her charges on her farm.



The Saturday before Mother's Day, Crafty Girl and I went to the 61st Annual Tulip Festival right here in Albany, where we saw some of the 209,000 tulips the city had planted.

Meanwhile, Dear Husband retrieved Tall Son from college, since his freshman year was over already. Time. Flies.

He came home all scraggly looking because evidently there are no hairdressers where he goes to school. Not that I cared what he looked like!

He even brought chocolate.

The backyard is having a bloomfest.

Goings:

This little earflap hat is going to a friend's little guy.

Since his dad is a pilot, I landed a wee little plane button on top of the hat. The pattern is from knitting pure & simple, #253 It is available at your local yarn shop.

Thes two blankets went to afghans for Afghans. The squares had been arriving during the last two weeks, from knitters from all over the country. I then sat and assembled them. Thank you so much to the Thursday Knit Night Knitters who helped me crochet around each block. (This first blanket still looks a little wobbly and unblocked, because it is.)

These were made and donated in memory of Peter, Kay Gardiner's husband.

In other news, I sent the book proposal out on Monday. It is now in the agent's hands for review. The wait is on.

I am also waiting for the result of a RAST screening. I'd been having breathing trouble and finally needed to figure out what I am allergic to. I have a strong suspicion that I've developed an allergy to peanuts, but I have never wanted to be wrong about something this badly. I hope there was something in those 9 vials of blood for the lab to go by...meanwhile, I carry an epipen and take antihistamines daily.

And I think that's all the news that's fit to print for now! More soon.

the little tree that could

The weeping cherry is front and center this week. I have never seen it bloom like this. It rained yesterday when I took these pictures, but today it's drier and the bees are all over it.

We also have two wisteria and they are in fierce blooming competition with the cherry in the front yard!

This one's right by my neighbors' fence-

This one's next to our house.

I wish you could stand next to them - the scent would make you delirious.

rare spring

There is something happening in my front yard that I just have to share with you!
We have a weeping cherry tree that is getting ready to simply explode with bazillions of flowers. This morning when I left the house, it looked like this:




Just try to count how many flower buds there are in this picture:

Then try to imagine how many there are on the whole little tree!

I'll take more pictures in the coming days as the flowers open. Also it is a rare spring that the flowers below it bloom at the same time!

The wisteria on the side of the house is ready to open, too, so if you are in my neighborhood, come by and take a peek. Our house is very humble, but the flowers and trees are something to behold.

those two pictures

...in the last post were :

- yes: the crab apple tree from the back yard blooming like crazy. Tall Son, you are so observant!

- not "Phlox of Sheep" like Alison tried to point out, though that made me laugh and chuckle.

- two picures of the same thing.

We were talking about doing swatches, remember? To translate that into my pictures, when I do take them, I don't just take one. I take several of the same object. Then I upload them and look at them on my screen, to see which ones I'm going to keep, and which ones I'm going to delete.


When you bake cookies, make a cake, or try out a new recipe, you taste it and make sure that it's good enough to serve.

When you buy a new car, you testdrive it.

When you...oh, I think you get the picture.

When you buy yarn to make a sweater, SWATCH! To see what needle size is best to use with it, to see what kind of stitch pattern shows the yarn to its best advantage. Etc.

The end.

that swatching business

Remember the other day, how Donna Druchunas and I were talking about swatching and designing? Melanie had more questions about it, and I think they warrant a whole post. I didn't want to wait until Monday - I'm going to a trade show in Sturbridge, MA, and won't have time to write.

Melanie sent me an email with her own set of interview questions.

Melanie: I was never taught to swatch. Granted, I did not have nearly the early childhood exposure to knitting that you did - did they teach that in school?

Karin: I don't remember! I don't think so. We made potholders. :) We learned how to crochet by crocheting an edging around the potholder, which was half garter stitch, and half stockinette stitch.

I did not discover it until I "rediscovered" knitting as an adult. One or two of them taught me that I basically knit to gauge, although I lean slightly toward tight. I like my clothes to fit loosely, so I usually opt to make a large size in any knitted garment, and the two work themselves out. But I have also learned that swatching lies (as confirmed by the Harlot) so does it really serve the purpose it was intended? What do you think?


I hear you, and I know what you are saying. However a lot of people often get GAUGE mixed up with FIT and SIZE. They think that they can just sub for a different size if their swatch is off. I am glad that this works out for you, but oftentimes it does not.
I agree that swatches often are not reliable, as they are not a substitute for the whole garment and how it hangs and wears and stretches over time. Too often my sweaters became too big with wearing even though my gauge was right on. I now pick a size smaller than I used to - but also my fit preference has changed over the last couple of years....but swatching is still crucial to me. I won't know if the yarn I chose for a particular project (and I substitute yarns a lot, meaning I will use a different yarn from what the pattern says) is the right one until I swatch it.
Which of course is a little tricky if you're standing in a yarn shop and you're about to drop a lot of money on yarn for a new garment....hopefully there's knowledgeable staff on hand to help you out if you're substituting yarn, or buying for a pattern that simply says, " use worsted weight".

Now, when designing, does the swatch serve another purpose, such as revealing the texture or flexibility of a chosen yarn? Has a swatch ever caused you to change your design?

Yes, and yes. When I am about to write a pattern for a new design, I spend more time than usual on the swatching process. Even then, sometimes I will knit half a sleeve to see how the yarn behaves or a particular stitch pattern develops, or how the color of the yarn works with the stitch pattern, or, if it's a handdyed yarn, how the colors fall. If any of those don't look the way I want them to, I'll rip it out and start over. Swatching allows me to figure out what I want in a design, because some of it is a matter of personal preference! When design a sweater, for example, I know how I want it to fall on a person (fit), I know how I want the stitch pattern to highlight a certain line, and I want the yarn to balance it all out. As I am writing this, I realize I am quite demanding of my yarn...I need there to be a balance between fit, wearability, and aesthetics.

I wonder if swatching gets more emphasis today because of the much wider variety of fibers available (vs. when we were young) They never had bamboo, buffalo, hemp, rayon or all those exotic fibers when I first learned knitting...or if it is just a disclaimer so that pattern designers can't be held accountable for sketchy directions - after all, they do warn you to swatch for gauge!

I don't know how to answer that, but you may be right. It certainly is a good idea to swatch with the new yarns. When I made the Berthe Collars for the book "No Sheep for you", they sent me two different yarns: one was bamboo, and the other was a nubby rayon bead. They knitted up vastly different from each other! (And I don't want to get into the 'sketchy directions' discussion. I know what you mean. Definitely.)

As a store owner, what did you tell patrons who asked about swatching? Do you think most people bothered to do it, or not? I find that it squashes the excitement of new projects and creativity if I have to slow down to knit a boring little square. And then again, how helpful is swatching if you want to knit art? (like my sheep, and your covering for MassMoCa?)

I always told my patrons that they have to swatch. A lot of people were reluctant to do it. Sometimes they came back and had me measure, which I love to do, and most of them were OK doing several swatches. Others wanted me to say that a bad swatch was OK, or wave my magic wand to make it all better. I still think to this day that it pays off to spend half an hour making a boring little square, rather than end up with a sweater that doesn't fit you. And wouldn't you want that afghan to hold together for more than a week? How about your socks? I don't LIKE doing the swatching too much either, but I always pay the price when I don't...

I do however wish I had known a little more about fit. As you know, I am not a fashion follower for the most part...I like classic designs better. There sometimes were issues with ease, meaning how loose or tight a garment fits on a person. Now I know better, I think. So much of it is a matter of personal preference, and it's worth spending time on figuring out how a certain garment will look on a particular knitter.

As far as knitting as art, I would say it's a toss up and again depends on the project, because even if I want to knit a whole house cozy, I still need it to fit that house...or you can go in the complete other direction and go freeform. As far as your knitted sheep, well, how big or small do you want it to be, and how proportionate?

Anyway, I always check your blog, even if I don't always comment, and I enjoy the photography and the politics as well as the knitting. So keep it up! Hope I get to see you soon-

melanie

Thank you Melanie for talking with me!! We should do this more often. :)

PS: why do you think I put those two pictures up there? Anyone?

PPS: If the above interview appears all smooshed together, I am sorry. I tried my darndest to separate them, but that stupid blogger program won't let me do it.

spring

This week, we had some uncommonly high temperatures around here. Tuesday we went all the way into the upper eighties! All my flowers suddenly started blooming at the same time.
Some of these tulips are usually more staggered, but they just had to come out and see what was going on.

I looked back at last year's pictures, and these Virginia Bluebells and my Bleeding Hearts are one month early.

Thank you to everyone who inquired, but I am feeling much better today. Whatever was bothering me must have finished blooming. I do wish we would get some decent rain though.

Have a good weekend! I am trying to finalize my book proposal, so you may or may not hear from me for a couple of days.