Kill your darlings: the end of the Endpaper Mitts

On the Tuesday after a long weekend during which I watched the entire first season of Game of Thrones (oh to be the person with the contract to supply the fake blood for that show!) it feels incredibly appropriate to open the week by killing my darlings. Kill your darlings, I have recently discovered, is a term used to describe a particular strategy for writing prose which is based on the premise that if you really really like bits of your writing then you can't be objective about them and, if you can't objectively judge them, you can never be sure if they are any good therefore they must die (is it just me or does the language seem a little overly dramatic for a series of letters on a page? It's just writing, really.) The Thesis Whisperer even detailed ways to apply this technique to a thesis.

Now I think that deleting something just because you like it is actually a pretty stupid strategy but I understand the basic idea behind the concept. It can take a bit of courage to face that just because you really like a piece of writing - even a piece of writing that contains a truly excellent pun or alliterative phrase - doesn't necessarily mean it's any good. And, to stretch the metaphor a bit further, just because you've working on a knitting project for a while and you become attached to it, even if the knitted fabric is really really nice, doesn't mean it's going to work.

So this morning, I took a long hard look at a project that I have been suspecting for a while was not going to work...

..faced up to the fact it was coming out much much bigger than it should have been...

..and murdered my darlings.

Looks like my sister is going to have to wait a little bit longer for her nice warm pair of mitts.

Jamie's 15-minute meals: Almost-Lucky squid 'n' prawns with spicy vegetable noodle north.

Today I received a shiny new present - a new food processor and blender! I naturally wanted to use it straightaway so I turned to the kitchen gadget king Jamie Oliver to help me christen my new appliance. I felt like cooking something with lots of veggies so I picked 'Lucky squid 'n' prawn spicy vegetable noodle broth', subbing in tofu for the seafood because that's what I had in the fridge. Just like last time, Sam did the cooking while I was in charge of reading from the cookbook.

The first step is to put 1.5L of boiled water from the kettle into a saucepan with two stock cubes. Sam also placed a frypan on a hotplate set as high as it would go (Jamie uses a griddle pan but I went with a normal frypan because of the tofu).

The next step is to place all of the ingredients for the paste (listed below) into my new lovely processor and, as Jamie says, wazz it up!

One tablespoon of this paste was placed into a bowl then the rest of it was added into the boiling water. Sam added a bit of extra water from the kettle at this stage because I was afraid that too much of the water had boiled away because it felt like the recipe was taking a lot longer to cook than predicted. The tofu was then cut into small pieces and tossed into the reserved tablespoon of paste.

Then next step was to change the blade of the food processor to the slicing attachment and feed through the vegies. I used carrot, broccoli, bok choy and some red and green capsicum and my lovely new processor sliced them up super quick fast. The sliced vegies were then added to the broth with four cakes of egg noodles and the lid was placed on for two minutes. The tofu was also popped into the hot frypan with some more oil.

After about four minutes the noodles and vegies were done. Lime juice, fresh coriander and soy sauce were added to the broth, which was then divided into the bowls and then topped with the browned tofu and some more fresh coriander leaves.

The verdict

Just like the last Jamie meal I did, this was really really delicious. The spicy broth was incredibly yummy and using the food processor to slice the veggies to the exact same thickness meant they all cooked a the same rate very quickly. It is also a really healthy dish, with lots of veggies and, with the tofu or the seafood, a nice lean source of protein and the servings are massive for a relatively measly 446 calories. However it took 26 minutes to make - almost double the recommended 15 minutes. I actually think it's a pretty good dish to complete in under half an hour but I can't see any way this could be completed near advertised time span. Fortunately since my kitchen has no actual real time constraints, I will happily make this again - but allot a full half-hour.

Paste ingredients
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
2 cloves of garlic
2 sticks of lemongradd
6 kaffir lime leaves
1 fresh red chili (I used a home-dried chili that I'd picked from my garden)
The stems of one bunch of coriander (the leaves are added to the broth at the same time as the lime and soy)
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp soy sauce (Jamie specifies low-salt, I just used normal)
1 Tbsp sesame oil

Rescuing a dog: my good deed of the day

On Thursday last week I went swimming. It was a wet, cold and miserable day and on the way home I drove like a 92-year-old grandmother with sight problems (ie very slowly and carefully while constantly peering over my steering wheel) because the road was slippery and other drivers were driving much too fast given the conditions (Hooligans! You stay of off my lawn *shakes fists*). In the distance, I noticed a very wet dog running back and forth across the street. There was no human anywhere with a leash so I figured the poor thing was lost but I didn't know what to do about it - I'm a cat person! I didn't have a leash or anything that I could use to tie the dog up and prevent it from running on the road and getting hit by a car but if I knew that if I drove off and left it there I would spend the whole day worrying about it ... So I pulled over, opened my car door and whistled.

It worked! He jumped in, shook himself to get rid off the excess water (and, I discovered later, the mud - there are mud spatters all over my car including the ceiling!) and installed himself in the front seat in front of the heaters. I called the council, who sent a lovely, friendly woman to come and pick him up. He was microchipped so they were able to call his family and I'm sure he was safely installed at home very shortly (hopefully a better secured home than the one he was able to escape from!). 

Good deed of the day done I drove home (slowly and carefully, of course) and walked inside very pleased by myself. Lucy smelt me, determined that I had been spending time not only with an animal who wasn't her but a dog (!!!!) and peed on my swimming towel while I was in the shower. Stupid, adorable little cat :) 

Strange but good: chocolate porridge

It a great irony that one of winter's worst features - the horrible cold - directly leads to one of winter's best things - waking up in a warm doona cocoon while the air outside your bed is disgustingly chilly. This morning's bedtime experience was particularly delightful because it involved a purring cat (the best type of cat) so I was incredibly cross to have to get up and do grown-up things like meet deadlines and earn a living.  Because apparently I have the reasoning skills of a toddler, I decided that if I was going to get up and do things I needed a treat. I wanted chocolate for breakfast and chocolate for breakfast I was going to have!

However, despite my lack of impulse control I am still an adult so I decided to make a healthy(ish) chocolate breakfast treat: Chocolate Mudslide Oatmeal from the weird and strange food blog Chocolate-Covered Katie.

Yes, I know that is a terrible photo! I'm not a food photographer but, even if I was I don't think it's possible to make a pile of cocoa-flavoured oats look in any way appealing. I also think that based on her blog Chocolate-Covered Katie has a severely disordered relationship with food and some of the stuff on that website is crazy! (like this, these and this ... um no. Never). Disclaimers aside, this turned out to be a bizarrely yummy way to start the day that kept me full for hours while making me just that little bit less resentful for being out of bed on a cold winter's day. I put it in my strange but good file and I recommend it for the next time that your inner toddler really really wants to stay in bed.

Recipe for Chocolate-Covered Katie's Chocolate Mudslide Oatmeal

Ingredients
1/4 cup traditional oats
1/4 cup milk
1/4 water
Pinch salt
1 Tbsp dutch-processed cocoa
2 Tbsp raw sugar (this is a lot of sugar for me to add to my cereal but it's only 24 grams, which is less than the sugar in a bowl of All Bran. Processed cereal is really really bad for you.)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method
1. Cook porridge as per package directions (I cooked the oats with the salt, milk and water on a medium heat for about eight minutes). I'd never cooked oats with salt before and I think it does improve the flavour.
2. Take oats off heat. Add cocoa, sugar and vanilla essence and stir well.
3. Put in bowl, top with milk and eat. Enjoy the surprising and weird deliciousness.

Swim like a smug person, knit like a crazy one. Or is it the other way round?

I like to start my week off by going for a swim. My favourite weekend activities are eating, drinking, watching movies and the football and knitting, so I spend a lot of time sitting on my arse. A Monday swim gets the blood pumping and, because I use a hydrotherapy pool (sorry, a 'wellness' pool) where the water is kept at constant (lovely!) temperature of 34 degrees, when I leave the pool I feel both energised and relaxed. It's a wonderful cure for the Monday blues (also good, wine. I like to use both methods.)

My resolve was tested yesterday though. There was a moment where I was sitting in my car in the pool car park and this was the view from my window and I thought, "What crazy person goes swimming when it is twelve degrees and raining outside? Go home, you insane person!"

But I went and admittedly did feel better for it and (this is important!) both smugly virtuous and mentally prepared to start my week. Mainly smugly virtuous :) I suspect I was a bit insufferable to spend time with yesterday afternoon...

You've got to love Melbourne, though. After yesterday's miserable weather, today was lovely, sunny, clear and bright. A beautiful day for going to the pool. ARGH!

Oh well. I took advantage of the sunlight to take a photo of one of my lingering WIPS - the Endpaper Mitts for my sister.  I am really struggling with finishing them. They're the third pair I've made so the pattern is familiar and boring. The cast on is too tight so as soon as I finish with the stranded knitting I need to frog the cuffs on both gloves and reknit them. I'm doing at least one row a day but at that rate it'll take me another month to get them done. In the meantime, want to knit on anything and everything that is not these mitts! Blah blah whine whine complain complain. I really need to stop whinging and taking photos of them and just sit down for a few hours with a DVD and get them over and done with. As my friend Cara would say, suck it up, princess, and get the job done! 

We'll see how well that plan goes.

Knitting as art (2013 FO #9)

A while ago, I finished my Moderne Log Cabin Baby Blanket from Mason Dixon Knitting, one of my favourite knitting books.

The blanket was gorgeous but, lacking any appropriate babies to give it to, I didn't know what to do with it. 

One day, I was looking at the bare walls in my living room (as you do, of course) and inspiration struck. I think my knitting is beautiful. It's modern (or at least moderne) and stylish...the perfect type of art for my house that really represents me. So, why not use a piece of knitting as an artwork?

For this to work, I had to figure out a way to frame the blanket. I decided to mount the blanket on a blank canvas. The first step was to attach the blanket to the frame. To do this, I placed nails along one side...

..at even intervals...

..then used the world's smallest hammer to bash them in to place.

The blanket fit the canvas lengthwise but I had an overhang on either edge of about 7 centimetres, so I folded it over the edge, trying to 'envelope' the excess fabric like you do when wrapping a present.

This is what it looked like from the back. The beauty of hanging the blanket means I don't have to weave in the ends! 

The final step was to hang it...

TaDa!!! 

Very modestly, I think it looks great. 

I now have incontrovertible proof that knitting is art and can be stylish, modern and look really fantastic. I am super chuffed with my knitted piece of art :)

PS: I have been reviewing up a storm over at my book-review blog so pop over and have a look if you're interested in my opinions of bookish things. There have been some very interesting books released recently that I have thoughts on.

Honey Cowl and Amanda Hat (2013 FOs #7 and #8)

Happy weekend, everyone! I hope you had a good one. At my mother's request, we spent Mother's Day at a vodka bar where I got embarrassingly drunk after one cranberry martini - those drinks are strong! Fortunately, as can be expected of any good vodka bar, there was also a selection of excellent Russian food, all of which seemed to be deep-fried, made of potatoes and/or covered in sour cream, so I soon sobered up.

I also finally managed to drag Sam outside to take photos of a project I finished a while ago - my Honey Cowl and Amanda Hat.

I swear, I can't even recognise myself in these photos. In my head I do not look like that...is my forehead usually so pointy?

But anyway, the Honey Cowl is one of those patterns that has been knitted one million times. It is easy (just a simple four-row repeat) and is great mindless knitting. It can be worn as above, hanging unlooped...

..or looped once, for extra warmth.

My favourite way to wear it is double-looped (because I do love to be warm) but I love the cowl's versatility. It's an excellent pattern and deserves its popularity.

Now the hat, on the other hand...

Not so much. I am really lazy with hats - I never swatch or measure, just start knitting. With this hat, I did that and it was coming out huge - like, could have been worn as a jumper huge.

So I frogged it, went down three needles sizes to get stitch gauge, and started again. Only then I couldn't get row gauge, so I had to add extra rows and the hat just doesn't fit me. It sits like a pillbox on my head - tres sexy, no?

Ah, no. I am certain the hat didn't work out due to user error rather than any problem with the pattern but still - not a great finished object.

A one for two success rate is okay but, since I love the scarf so much, I'm designating the whole thing a massive success. Plus I am so very warm right now! A total win :)