Really glad I wasn't assigned the turkey...

Not that a lot of knitting went into Thanksgiving, but still.  Of all the times of year when you find yourself staring at the embarrassment of riches known as way the crap too many leftovers, Thanksgiving definitely ranks among the top offenders.  And all I had to deal with was dessert.

I admit, I come from a long tradition of too-much-fooders.  My ancestors would've seen a spread that didn't dwarf everybody seated at the table as a disgrace.  And as for the friend whose family I spent the holiday with, well, to quote "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" on this one, she could pluck me like a chicken.  There was turkey, juicy and done to perfection; stuffing drowned in turkey au jus; mashed potatoes with bacon and Gorgonzola; brussel sprouts with bacon; enough cranberry sauce to eat up with spoons.  I'm probably forgetting something, but you get the idea.  And then there was pie.

Now, I've only done sweet potato pie once before in my life, and that was completely off the cuff and without a recipe and came out a bit heavy on the sweet potato.  So I was perfectly willing to try the version suggested to me, which comes from Smitten Kitchen.  Add a sprinkling of ADHD and a lack of buttermilk (let's mix Greek yogurt and 1% milk and see what happens!), and voila new go-to pie recipe.  I even did the homemade flaky crust...sort of.

Trouble is, as a "dinner for one" sort of person, normally, I know what fits into a standard 9-inch pie crust.  2 medium sweet potatoes, 3 eggs, and 3/4 of a cup of buttermilk...won't.  Even after I ate the evidence that I'd come out with way more than 1-1/4 cup of sweet potato mash.  The pie turned out lovely:

Unfortunately I still had a bowl full of (quite yummy) leftover pie filling.

And that was when it hit me: thanks to the whole egg (including whipped egg whites), I had mixed together all the ingredients necessary for a souffle, mousse, or pot de creme.  Honestly I wish I'd come to that realization Thursday afternoon when the oven was still hot and the filling still completely fresh.  Still, no harm done.  This morning, out came the ramekins and the hot water bath, pre-heat oven to 300 degrees, fill the ramekins, place in pan of hot water, and pop these babies in for 40 minutes.  It comes out about the consistency of (slightly chunky thanks to the damn sweet potato) creme brulee, so really you should resist the urge to gobble up immediately and instead break out the sugar and blowtorch.  Just sayin'.

Yeah, really glad I didn't have to deal with the turkey....

99 Reasons

Hello and welcome to my 100th post.  How about that?  I finally got this blog to register properly on my Ravelry page.  Appropriate, no?  This calls for a celebration.

Actually this blog is about a neglected project from the days of yore.  It centers around a picture, and the picture is this one:

This is a story of Cecilia sweater, and a story of piecing things together from the remaining fragments of this year.  It seems only fitting that the items shown here are my trusty experiment yarn, large needles, mechanical pencil, graph paper, headphones, and...Pablo Neruda?

So, first, Cecilia.  Cecilia began as a concept project for 4 largeish skeins of green wool laceweight from a specialty shop in New York.  I knew said yarn had to be a sweater-dress-tunic thingy of some sort, but couldn't come up with a good reason for using laceweight until, on a whim, I rented "Atonement" on Amazon instant video sometime after my first boyfriend and I broke up (well we hardly would've watched it together...), before I left St. Louis, and fell in love with the ethereal, floaty lines of 1930s fashion.  Unfortunately, at the time I was an almost complete novice at lace, and every pattern I looked up and/or tried to adapt to my requirements fell short.  Badly.  My last attempt was a pair of bell sleeves using the Aeolian shawl from Knitty as a base, but the sleeves turned out enormous and this was my South Carolina country doctor phase and I had other things to do like figure out how to change career paths and move someplace a bit less...restrictive?  So Cecilia ended up in my unfinished projects stash during the big move to the Big Apple, never again to see the light of day until I had the time, energy, and inspiration to frog her and start back at the drafting board.

What I hadn't counted on in moving to New York was that it would be both exactly and nothing like what I expected.  I fell in love with my new job (though I still complain about it being my abusive husband, but that's the workaholic way) and with the frenetic tough romantic undefinable energy of my new home.  And somehow, in the middle of that crazy hot ridiculous summer, I found myself in a relationship that never should have happened.  It began inauspiciously, it ended with a whimper, and in the middle there were passion and friendship and laughter and adventure that make it hard to regret even in hindsight.  And then it was done, and because I couldn't torture myself with how my replacement is actually a better match (steadier, more studious and discreet, has her life together even though she's younger than me), I frogged Cecilia instead and set out to make her better.  Well, how else does one get through the bleak November?  More wine?

A green tunic sweater knit under such circumstances must necessarily evoke a little bit of rebirth, aka plants.  So the center of the lace panel pattern is based on rose leaves:

And the edges are based on flowering vines:

In the green laceweight, these will become the lace panels of the skirt, moving into a slightly fitted sleeveless bodice with V neck and back, and topped with short lace cap sleeves of the same pattern.  If I have leftover yarn (which is rather ambitious), I'll make a ribbon tie for the waist, trimmed with the leaf lace at both ends.

This, friends, and the trusty poetry that I love will be the fragments I shore up against my ruins.  Because if there are second chances to be found anywhere, I'll probably find them here in this goddamn crazy city in the absolute last place I look (egads, not Coffee Meets Bagel, please!).  It is the knitter's way.  And, as it turns out, the only proper way for me to celebrate the 100th.