First things first

I’ve participated in a number of knitting-related swaps in the past. They’ve exposed me to people and blogs I otherwise probably would have missed. I’m happy to be in touch still with nearly all of my swap partners. We keep up with each others’ blogs and swap e-mail from time to time. And I’m very glad about that, because I do these swaps in order to connect with people—I think that people who are in it just for the loot should save themselves and everyone else a lot of trouble and just buy what they want for themselves.

One of the biggest swaps out there is the Secret Pal series. It’s huge—to the tune of several hundred people, scattered around the world and organized by eight or ten or so volunteers. I first signed up to SP8, in the spring of 2006, and kept signing up through SP11. For the most part, my experiences with these swaps were great. I met some interesting and kind people, and I’m delighted to count them among my friends.

Last fall, as SP11 wound to a close, there was a big blowup on Ravelry about it. In short: the SP exchange rules specifically state that participants can not “bad mouth” their partners, the hosts, or the swap on their blogs. Some participants had less-than-happy experiences with SP11 (e.g., swap partners who didn’t fulfill expectation, swap partners who completely disappeared, hosts who did not respond to queries or concerns). Since they weren’t allowed to write about these things on their own blogs, they took the discussion to the Ravelry forums. And there, things got nasty.

They got so nasty, in fact, that the SP hosts decided to take a break from hosting the swap. Usually one round follows another, with just a few weeks between the end of one and signups for the next. But this time the break lasted several months.

When SP12 was announced in May, I took at a look at the blog set up for it. When I read the rules, I knew then and there that I wasn’t going to participate.

The rules are pretty much the same as they’ve been for the last several rounds, with one notable exception:

“Along with the changes previously announced for this round, we are also initiating a $2.50 participant fee to go toward ‘angel’ contributions for the participants whose pals drop out from the exchange. . . . If we end up not needing all of the funds, we plan to donate them to a charity to be determined later.”

I have two problems with this new rule:

1. I understand that partners do sometimes flake out and disappear. But I don’t like the idea of requiring participants to contribute to a fund to pay for gifts in those situations. Asking for up-front contributions assumes that people will be bad swap partners. Me, I like to have a bit more faith in people. The whole swap experience is predicated on trust: when I send a box o’ goodies to someone, I trust that someone will send a box o’ goodies to me. This sort of thing confirms my belief that people are essentially good. I don’t want to participate in something that starts with the belief that some people will definitely be bad.

2. I’m not keen on the fact that individual participants don’t get to choose where the excess funds go. Me, I’m very choosy about where my charitable donations go. What if the swap hosts decide to donate the money to, say, the NRA? Or to a white supremacist group? Or to McCain’s election fund? Or to another cause that isn’t aligned with my own values? It’s bad enough that my taxes (about which I have no choice) are helping fund American military aggression overseas; I’m unwilling to let money that I voluntarily contribute go to causes I don’t support.

Here’s this week’s CSA haul. More cucumbers, more zucchini, some yellow beans, red onions (this are the first ones of the season), smaller onions, bell peppers, hot peppers (another first of the season), small onions, an eggplant, and about a gazillion tomatoes.

I’m going to save the pickles until next week, when I hope to get enough new ones to make up another batch of pickles. (The recipe I’m using calls for a gallon of thin slices, which came out to about five decent-sized cukes last time.) For the other veggies, I’m going to turn to The Vegetarian Bistro, by Marlena Spieler, for inspiration. Many of the recipes call for eggplant, tomatoes, or zucchini—or even all three—so I’m bound to find something good in there.

And here are this week’s “bonus” items. The CSA boxes are kept in a small, air-conditioned trailer, and there are usually boxes or small refrigerators with extras available for purchase. Portabello mushrooms, for example, did not appear in this week’s share but could be bought for $1.50/bag. Local meat is also available at various prices.

This week, there was a box de-greened beets, with a sign encouraging people to help themselves to what they wanted. Another sign also told people to take one of the melons outside (there was a pile of them under a garden umbrella next to the trailer). I bought a dozen chicken eggs (laid yesterday morning) for $2.50.

I may have mentioned before that my CSA is at a nearby dairy farm that, for the past fifteen years or so, has operated an ice creamery. I recently learned from Tim, the farmer who runs the CSA, that only about two percent of the farm’s daily milk production goes to ice cream; the rest of the milk is sold to a regional distributor.

He sent an e-mail out to the CSA members last week announcing that they had just invested in pasteurization equipment and would be offering fresh pasteurized milk for sale once the licensing process was complete. Happy news indeed! We, however, are a raw milk-drinking family, so when I saw Tim yesterday (when picking up my box) I asked if he’d ever have raw milk available. He said, “I can’t sell it to you, but I can give it to you,” then went off to fill a half-gallon jug for me.

As it turns out, to get a license for pasteurized milk, the farm must first get a license for raw milk. Once all that is done (within the next week, Tim hopes), they’ll be able to sell both kinds of milk. He’ll have prefilled jugs of milk available for people to buy on CSA pickup days, but since I am (so far) the only person who’s inquired about raw milk, he won’t have those ready-made but will prep them to order. I’m pretty happy about this, because currently the only place I can get raw milk around here is at a natural-foods store about fifteen minutes away—it’s not too far from us, but the travel time (and gas!) really adds up when you’re going there about three times every two weeks. (Raw milk is fresh for only seven days, so buying in one trip more than we can drink in that time isn’t an option.)

When I first started knitting, I did what pretty much everyone else does: I made garter-stitch scarves. After three of ‘em, I decided to branch out. So I made a garter-stitch blanket for Sylvia.

And then I got the brilliant (ahem) idea of knitting a ruana for my mother-in-law. I had recently acquired Sally Melville’s very excellent The Knit Stitch and was feeling inspired to do something that wasn’t a scarf. But I was still a bit intimidated by increases and decreases and any sort of shaping. So I chose the one-size-fits-all Three-Scarf Ruana, figuring it would make an excellent Christmas gift for my mother-in-law. When I started it, I completely failed to realize that it is basically a scarf. A freakin’ huge scarf.

Melville annotates this pattern with “Lots of knitting”—and boy, she’s not kidding. It’s a lot of garter stitch. As I neared the end (after two Christmases had passed), I wasn’t really happy with how this thing looked. But because I was near the end, I doggedly continued. Some part of my brain thought, “If I can just finish this thing, then some miracle will happen, and it will actually look good.”

No such luck. I finished everything but weaving in the ends, then put the ruana in a basket on top of my armoire. It sat there for three years, a failed knitting project in every sense of the word. Finally, I decided to frog it and use the yarn for something else. But the thought of wrestling with a big tangle of yarn (and I knew I would be unable to frog this and get it into balls or skeins without creating some ginormous mess) made me pause.

Then I learned about the niddy noddy, a tool used to wind yarn into skeins. Then I found an excellent online tutorial for making my own—out of inexpensive PVC pipe. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I set up a little workshop on the front porch.
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Look! I HAS MAD SKILZ! See how a few deft cuts with a hacksaw (followed by a bit of sanding on the edges—don’t want to snag the yarn!)…
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…yields a niddy noddy that becomes flat for storage and cost about $2 to make!
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I was so pleased with myself (and had plenty of leftover PVC, since the store sold it only in ten-foot lengths) that I made another one for a friend. (There was even three feet of PVC left after this. It has been turned into a pole for Sylvia’s pirate flag.)

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The ruana is now frogged and all the yarn tidily wound into very curly skeins that make me think of poodles whenever I look at them. But all I need to do now is soak the yarn to get it all wet then hang it up to dry (with a can of soup acting as a weight at the bottom to stretch out the kinks). And then I’ll have ten skeins of Nature Spun worsted (in the Grape Harvest color) at my disposal. Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with it…

Here’s this week’s CSA box. We haven’t sampled the strawberry preserves yet, but they look very yummy.

This week’s haul brought our oh-my-dog-we-can’t-keep-up-with-the-deluge cucumber count to seven. There’s no way we can eat all of those before they start to go bad. It doesn’t help that we have a three-year-old who not only hates cucumbers but refuses to eat any green food except peas and broccoli right now. (I swear, she has green-food radar. If a pea-sized morsel of lettuce, green pepper, or zucchini winds up on her plate—even if it’s buried under other food she likes—she knows it’s there.)

So I decided to make pickles yesterday. I happen to be militantly opposed to pickles, but Jan and Sylvia like them. And besides, what else are we going to do with all those cukes?

Jan called his mom for her mother’s famous pickle recipe (doesn’t pretty much every family have a “famous X recipe”?), and yesterday I got out the mandoline (I love my mandoline) and had a slice-o-rama.

As the veggies sat in their pickling sauce, every time I leaned over the pot, I kept thinking there were Baltimore-style steamed crabs nearby. Maybe it was the giant enamel pot I used (my family used a similar one for crabs), or maybe the pickling spices and vinegar in this recipe are not unlike those used in Old Bay seasoning.

Five cucumbers (the other two were used in dinner) yielded one gallon of slices—enough to fill five quart jars and one pint jar. We decided not to boil the jars for long-term preservation, since we want to see how these pickles taste before going to that much trouble. If this batch is a success, then I suspect there will be a lot more pickling in our future.

Well, maybe not rich, but the prize money could buy a lot of yarn.

The people responsible for Knitter’s magazine, XRX books, and the Stitches events are having a sock-design contest called Think Outside the Sox. The grand prize is $6,000, and the contest runs until 1 January 2009.

I wonder if knitting an oversized washcloth, folding it around my foot, then stapling it into place would qualify as a sock design. That’s pretty much all I could manage in the sock department, I think…

It’s been a busy weekend here.

On Friday, we celebrated our nation’s birthday by taking a trip to our nation’s first zoo. The Philadelphia Zoo doesn’t hold a candle to the zoo I grew up going to—both in terms of animal habitats and entrance fees (the St. Louis Zoo is free, whereas the Philly one is a whopping $18 for adults and $15 for kids 2-11)—but it’s what we’ve got. And Sylvia loves it, so there you go.

Yesterday morning my brother arrived for a two-day visit. He lives in Greenwich Village and almost always brings us a dozen fresh bagels that he picks up at the shop around the corner from him on his way to Penn Station. We’re so grateful for this gift, because even though it’s possible to get decent bagels where we live, nothing compares to New York bagels. (Seriously. They’re standing on the summit of Mount Everest, with all other bagels in the world stuck in the Mariana Trench. They’re that good. The other bagels aren’t jealous, though, because they’re in so much awe of New York bagels that they can’t help but admire them.)

This time, in addition to bagels, he brought a special treat that I’d asked him to find: vegan marshmallows. (Real marshmallows contain gelatin, which is made from animal bones and pig and cow skin.)* A few days earlier, I’d told him that Whole Foods stores in NYC carry them (but not any stores in my area), and because they need to be refrigerated it’s very expensive to get them by mail-order during the summer. “Don’t go to any trouble, but if you can find some, that would be great,” I told him. He took it as his personal mission to find these for us, and after visiting a few stores, scored two boxes of them (each holding about a dozen marshmallows for $7, if you can believe it). Thanks to her uncle’s efforts, Sylvia got to enjoy her first backyard s’mores yesterday evening. Which she loved, of course!

Once Sylvia was in bed for the evening, a few friends came over for some serious geeking out. Nine of us played a board game until 2 a.m. Yeah, I’d say we had a good time.

I also managed to get a lot of knitting done. Last night I finished knitting one new piece, and this morning I seamed it; it just needs a few more embellishments. Right now, I’m blocking Sylvia’s new sweater and hope to finish it up (finally!) this evening. A more detailed knitting update—with pictures—will be forthcoming later this week (I hope!).

I hope all of you, too, had a great weekend!

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*A few years ago, the excrement hit the fan in the vegetarian world when it was revealed the Emes Kosher Jel, which had marketed itself as a vegetarian gelatin substitute, actually contained animal gelatin. (CNBC did a story about this: part 1, part 2.) The few companies that made vegetarian marshmallows using Emes products went out of business, and since then only a handful of companies in the world have figured out how to make vegan marshmallows.

Here are the results of my second attempt to lengthen Sylvia’s sweater.

The first time, I followed the advice of a friend with loads more knitting experience than I have. They suggested I pick up all the stitches around the bottom, then do a K2P2 ribbing while decreasing on every tenth stitch on the first round and no further decreases the rest of the way. I could tell after six or seven rounds that the ribbing was going to be a lot “gappier” than I’d like. (I suspect this is because I’m using size 6 needles for yarn that usually takes a size 3.)

I showed it to my friend, who agreed that the ribbing wasn’t working and suggested I try again, using the same ten-percent decrease on the first round and just going with straight stockinette the whole way. I like how the stockinette looks, but I’m not keen on how the sweater pulls in at the bottom.

So I’m going to rip it again and try picking up all the stitches, doing no decreases, and knitting stockinette. (Fortunately, this is a little sweater, so reknitting this part won’t be a big deal. And the yarn—Baby Cashermino—is just lovely to work.)

Third time’s the charm, right? Stay tuned…

This guy quit his job several years ago and set off traveling around the world. And then:

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said “Hey, why don’t you stand over there and do that dance. I’ll record it.” He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It’s actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

Here he is, dancing in forty-two different countries. I couldn’t stop smiling while watching this. Do watch the whole thing—it’s well worth it.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
(Via Boing Boing.)

A new Joss Whedon project? Check.

Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, and Neil Patrick Harris? Check.

And they’re all singing? Double-check.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

The broiled eggplant we had for dinner last night was…well…meh. My taste buds weren’t thrilled by hot mayonnaise, but the mayo and Parmesan did do a pretty good job of dominating the eggplant flavor.

A few people commented in the last post that they love eggplant, and a few recipes were mentioened. If you have a favorite you’d like to share, please do! Remember, I’m expecting to get a lot of eggplant this summer…

In the meantime, here’s last night’s recipe, in case anyone wants to try it.

Broiled Eggplant with Crunchy Parmesan Crust

Ingredients:
—oil for greasing a baking sheet
—mayonnaise
—eggplant, cut into 1/4″ slices
—freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/2 cup)

Directions:
1. Preheat broiler. Lightly oil a baking sheet.
2. Spread mayonnaise sparingly on both sides of each eggplant slice, then dip the slices in the grated Parmesan cheese, thoroughly coating sides.
3. Arrange the slices in a single layer on the baking sheet.
4. Place under the broiler until golden brown—about 3 minutes.
5. Flip the slices and broil until golden grown and crunchy on top—about 3 minutes more. (The eggplant will become soft, with a crunchy outside.)