teamkaty

Week of FOs: Of the tent-y, floral variety

  large, floral 
  Originally uploaded by teamkaty

OK, let's see if I can get this up in 17 minutes and still hit Thursday... 

So I have made one maternity top.  This is some Japanese cotton gauze that I couldn't resist at Purl Patchwork this summer, using Simplicity pattern 4022.  Mods: I added a couple of inches to the bottom half and left a longer hem to accommodate the belly, and kind of created my own sleeve option. 

Making this was the weirdest experience, because after 20 years of sewing for myself I have a pretty good eye for what kind of piece is going to fit...but that's the pre-pregnant me.  Basically, I always, always have to heavily adjust the bust--even on small sizes they will be ludicrously too full for me.  For this top, I made the size 12, because that gave a finished bust of 37" and--I had to check this three times before I'd believe it--that's the measurement at my fullest point right now.  As I pieced the upper bodice together, I kept looking at it and thinking, "Crap, no way, that's enormous, that curve is too full, this isn't going to work."  And then I'd try it on, and...whaddya know, it pretty much fit.  Huh.  I mean, granted this is no Octoberfest rack.  We're still talking sub-B.  But at least I'm making a creditable showing, in a style of top I would NEVER wear normally.

The pattern on this fabric has a bit of a direction, almost a border print, and like many Japanese prints it runs perpendicular to the selvage.  So I cut the whole thing against the grain, which always feels wildly transgressive to me.  I also did some semi-fancy cutting to try and get the floral clumps balanced, which was only semi-successful.  But here's the big boner, which I didn't notice until I was seaming these pieces:

Ooops.  Maybe it's like leaving a designer label out on purpose?

Bonus FOs: my contribution to the Thanksgiving dinner--

I threw tradition to the winds this year and made what I thought people might actually like.  Ditched the pumpkin pie, as no one in Alex's family seems to eat it (but what am I supposed to have for breakfast tomorrow???) and just made apple, the perennial favorite.  The chocolate pound cake was a gamble to see if I could please the kids.  Per Jacob K, age 8: "You made a good cake."  Score!

Christmas wrap-up

  IMG_1857 
  Originally uploaded by teamkaty.

I had only one Christmas knitting project, and yet I still managed to bring it down to the wire.  I finished these "New England" socks from Knitting on the Road on Christmas Eve, and then blocked them for a few hours the next morning before setting off to my in-laws for raw meat and gift-giving.  They have one huge, enormous bone-headed mistake in them, caused by knitting under emotional and hormonal distress, but otherwise I'm perfectly happy with them.  As usual, the gauge is off--Nancy says you get 7 diamonds, I have five.  But I was knitting with #1s instead of 0s, so that's probably to be expected.  I had my yo eureka moment while I was in the middle of these, so I kept doing them the wrong way for consistency's sake.  Because I was knitting the wedding shawl at the same time, and doing the yos properly on that, I anticipated some confusion, but I don't think I threw the yo right/wrong on these even once--my brain must have just decided it was a wholly different stitch.  It's funny that way, my brain.

My mother-in-law loved them, but at the end of the night there was tragedy: they went missing.  She and Alex's dad were just frantic, tearing the apartment apart (I learned later that they stayed up after midnight, going through all the garbage--especially yucky as we'd used paper plates!), but I stayed out of it.  The way I figured it, I'd knitted, I'd gifted: my part was done.  It would have been sad, of course, if they had gone into the compactor with the ass-end of the buche de noel, but as it turned out another guest called Boxing Day morning to marvel about the amazing handknit socks she'd picked up by mistake.  Heh.

 

I am always in charge of cookies for the party, but I went low-key and only made two kinds this year: my grandma's gingerbread, which is now mandatory, and some butter pecan cookies I found in an old issue of Everyday Food. I wanted Bourbon Pecan, like the awesome cookies at Joyce, but I must say these were really good and went fast (I doubled the bizarrely tiny recipe--who would bother making 1 dozen cookies?).  Next time I will make each individual cookie smaller--they're so rich, you really only need about three bites.  Also made some granola for the ladies in the family, using the basic recipe in Mark Bittman's cookbook.  I did a batch of cherry-coconut-almond which was ok, and a batch of cranberry-walnut that was less so--I spiced it with Penzey's baking spice and I think the cardamon was a little too...mysterious.

Next year, all my shopping will be done before Thanksgiving.  REALLY.

What can you do with four sticks of butter?

  Thanksgiving pies 
  Originally uploaded by teamkaty.

Make three pies, of course.  My Thanksgiving pies--pumpkin, chocolate-pecan, and apple--came out fine, but I have a few resolutions for next year.  First off, as you'll see from the picture, that is a heck of a lot of brown.  It's the traditional Thanksgiving palette, I know, but I still think it needs some color.  A cranberry tart might be nice, but no one would eat it.  Methinks it has to be cherry.  Then there's the issue of pumpkin--an entry that's not up for debate in my family.  When I was a kid and we all still lived at home, my mom always made four pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving.  We'd go through at least one, usually two at dinner, and then the rest would be eaten for breakfast over the next few days.  But it's not so popular in Alex's family.  I think my mother-in-law--she who likes vegetables for dessert--and I were the only people who ate it.  She was especially pleased that I had used fresh pumpkin this year.  My verdict on that experiment, however, is simple: don't bother.  It's true: scooping, roasting, and pureeing a pumpkin is not a big deal.  But really, the results aren't even worth cleaning your food processor for.  In fact, I think I prefer the canned--c.f. early training.

I've also decided to dump all the innovations with the crust.  I've been making pastry since I was nine; there's no big secret to how it's done.  The expression "easy as pie" exists for a reason, y'all.  But lately I keep reading how I need to chill the crust at multiple stages in the process, how things need to be pre-baked and par-baked and basically massaged to within an inch of their lives.  Well, I have tried these innovations and again I say: don't bother.  Blitz it in the food processor, roll it out, throw it in the oven.  It's PIE, people.  Pie is like toast; as long as you pay a modicum of attention you can't screw it up.

15 dozen is how many, again?

My mom made jam for our wedding.  When I first offered the bid to the Damnjam Co., she said, "oh, sure," and the rest of the process--at least the parts that I was privy to--didn't get much more dramatic.  I suspect that there was some behind-the-scenes agita; I did get a dark email from my dad along the lines of "We put up the 10th batch of jam last night.  You need to thank your mother."  Then again, my father was the designated blackberry grower and picker, so perhaps it was labor trouble.  Damned outside agitators.

I had grand plans of designing and possibly printing my own labels, but that, of course, was just Crazy Bride Talk.  Weddings should be all about outsourcing.  Anyway, the job went to myownlabels.com, they delivered in something like 4 days and we slapped those suckers on the jars in less than a half hour. 

Can you believe we didn't get a single jar to ourselves?  Filthy wedding scavengers.  My grandma could have brained an elk with that handbag.