Lorette

Jet Lag

Oh boy. This re-entry has been a bit of a bitch, and it took me by surprise. Usually I get the jet lag flying west to east, but I had no real problems when we got to the UK. Coming home has been a different story, and the past three days have been mostly a lost cause. I am finally starting to feel human again, which is a good thing, since I have to go to work tomorrow. I guess as problems go, jet lag isn’t the worst thing to have, though!

Our trip to Scotland was lovely. We saw several different parts of the country while we were there, and I could easily have spent a whole vacation (or “baycation” as one of John’s grandsons calls it!) in any one of them. Here’s the outline of where we were:

Manchester, England, for two days, visiting good friends that we met on a cruise several years ago.

Edinburgh, for two nights and one full day.

Nairn, on the Moray Firth, for three nights.

Skye, for two nights.

Onich, near Fort William, for two nights.

Glasgow for two nights.

It would be impossible for me to pick a favorite. I enjoyed the more rural places that we visited very much, but also enjoyed Edinburgh, and Glasgow was a complete surprise. It’s perhaps not the prettiest of cities, but has a ton of cultural things to do, and good museums as well as some terrific restaurants. I am still sorting through photos, so I’ll just show photos for now of what I know you are interested in: the wool!

Yes, there were sheep! This fellow was grazing near one of the two yarn “shops” we found. We were driving down this road:

And saw this little building:

I don’t have any photos of inside the shop, they were on John’s camera, and he hasn’t downloaded them yet (long story involving a dead hard drive on his Mac when we got home). It was a tiny shop, the lady inside raises sheep and has all sorts of wooly things for sale. She also had a lovely compost toilet out back that I desperately needed at that point, having had an ale for lunch. So I had to buy some yarn, right?

She raises Gotland sheep for their wool, and that’s what this is. It’s not very photogenic, but it’s the prettiest natural grey wool, light fingering or heavy lace weight, take your pick, and about 500 grams worth. It will make a huge shawl.

Next stop on the wool trail was here:

This is the view from the second shop, Shilasdair. Sorry about the crappy photo, it was a fairly moody and murky day. Here’s the shop and some photos of inside.

Those are some lovely handknit sweaters on the wall. I really like the one on the upper right (click to embiggen).

That one is from a tiny “museum” behind the shop. The owner dyes all the yarn with natural dyes. She wasn’t in that day, so I didn’t get to see the dye shop.

And here’s what I bought.

Beautiful, eh? The red on the right is a fingering weight, the rest is worsted weight. John picked the green for a hat/mittens, the others are mine mine mine.

OK, that’s enough for now. I need to get organized for work tomorrow. I’ll post more photos as I get to sorting them. And I might even have some knitting and spinning to show next time!

One more photo. This was part of the coastline of Skye:

Still In Scotland

We’re still in lovely Scotland, but finally have a reliable enough internet connection to attempt a blog post. We’ve been having a fabulous time, and I thought I’d give a little update.

Where to even start with the photos? We have hundreds of photos already between our two cameras, and I haven’t even started sorting through mine. First, where have we been, and more importantly, has there been any wool?

We started the trip by flying into London. Heathrow is a madhouse, not helped by the fact that they had high winds and had cut the number of planes that could land by almost half the usual number. It was a bit of a rocky start, but we finally made it to our first destination, Manchester. We have friends there that we met on a cruise a number of years ago. They have been to see us a couple of times, but this was our first visit to their home. They were quite gracious, as we expected, and showed us around Manchester city one day, and around the countryside our second day.

Here’s one Manchester photo that I culled out of the herd of photos.

After our brief stay there, we took the train to Edinburgh, giving me a little down time to knit. I have finally finished that Electric Blue Baby Thing, though I still have some ends to weave in, so I guess technically it’s not finished. I won’t show a photo until it gets home to its final destination, but I’m glad it’s done done done. Now I can knit something else for a change!

Anyway, back to Edinburgh. Here’s a photo from our first evening there.

That gives you a little bit of an idea of what we liked best about Edinburgh. It’s undoubtedly a lovely city, but we decided to spend only 2 nights and 1 full day there, so didn’t have time to see anything but the most touristy sites. After all, how can you go to Edinburgh without seeing the Castle, Holyroodhouse Palace, or walking the Royal Mile? The latter was mostly a long string of what I fondly call rubber-tomahawk shops, and at the Castle, they wouldn’t even let me try on the Scottish Crown. Oh well.

Given that we were far more interested in the vast Scottish countryside than its biggest cities, we rented a car and headed north to Nairn, on the coast of the Moray Firth east of Inverness. This is a lovely little seaside resort, and we stayed at a wonderful small guesthouse right in town. There was a yarn shop in town, though I didn’t get there since it opens quite late in the morning and we headed out early to be tourists before that. Here are a few photos.

That’s Cawdor Castle, still a private residence for the Dowager Countess Cawdor, though she kindly clears out in the summer so tourists can see the place.

The castle grounds has a wool shop, with some wooly things for sale, but no yarn. I struck up a conversation with the woman behind the desk, who is a life long knitter, though she had just purchased her first sock yarn to try socks. One thing led to another, I gave her a link to my blog since she needed a sock pattern, and John surreptitiously snapped a photo.

You meet the nicest knitters while traveling!

Last but not least, I’ll leave you with a sunset photo that John snapped on the beach at Nairn.

Pretty, eh? I’d show more photos, but this is a very slow internet connection. I’ll get to the rest of the shots at some point, and John will put them all together in one big photo show when we get home.

We’re now on the Isle of Skye, and we’re here for one more night, then head to the Glencoe area, then Glasgow, then home. I finally found wool yesterday and today, I’ll show photos of that next time! I’m off to drink whisky!

Summer Visitors

I promised one last post before we hit the road. Our special visitors last week were none other than Francesca of Slow Knits (formerly Fluffbuff), and her sweetie, Ben. They were doing a tour up the Pacific coast and stayed here for a couple of nights. We ate, drank, and showed them the local sights. Here are a few photos:

We took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island, for lunch and a little foray to Churchmouse Yarns. Yes, it’s summer here. In their defense, it was only in the 60’s, and windy on the ferry deck.

That’s Francesca and I knitting on the ferry crossing.

We went to the World Spice Market in Seattle. We almost had to drag Francesca out of this place.

The required photo by one of the Market pigs.

We foraged for dinner at Pike’s Market.

Ahhh. Relaxing after dinner! It was way too short of a visit, but they had more stuff to see on the way back down the coast. It’s always fun to meet someone in real life that I’ve “known” for years through the blog!

We’re off tomorrow for Scotland. We mostly have the itinerary nailed down, just a few details to plan as we go along. We’re flying in to visit friends in Manchester, England for a few days, then take the train to Edinburgh. We’re taking Ernie (the Mac Air) along with us, and we should have wi-fi here and there along the way, so expect updates. I’ve already scouted out places where I might find wool along the way!

Summer Wrap-Up

Or, A Very Big Post

Now that summer is officially over, let’s get back to the monthly wrap-up posts, shall we? This summer was a bit of a bust as far as knitting goes. I got lots of other non-fibery projects done though, and enjoyed a lovely summer with family and friends, so I count it as a success all the way around! Here’s the summary:

I did no knitting at all on the True Blood Faery sweater. The current status is that I have the main body done and blocked, and I’ve started on a sleeve.

I knit about an inch on the current sock in progress. It just seemed to want to stay in hibernation.

I am nearly done with that Electric Blue High School Graduation Baby Mystery Project. I’m on the edging, about 6 rows to go, but those rows currently are at 592 stitches, and getting bigger every time around.

I spun up several skeins of yarn.

I started doing natural dyeing. Here’s the latest:

These were dyed with chopped dried madder root. The top yarn is handspun Romney, from a sheep named Rainbow, that was a gift from Dorothy* last year. I spun it up into a two ply right after she gave it to me, and it went into the stash. I was looking for something else to toss into the dye pot and found this, it was spun undyed. The roving is BFL, about 4 ounces. The color is pretty accurate, at least on my monitor.

After I pulled those out of the dye pot, I decided that there might be some color left, so tossed in the skein of rhubarb-mordanted Perendale wool that was in the August CSA box, along with 4 ounces of a BFL-Silk blend. Here’s how it came out.

That’s also pretty accurate, it’s a pale peach color. I haven’t quite decided if I like it or not, but I can always over-dye it next time I have the right color dye pot going.

Project Details:

Fiber: Two skeins of Romney wool, handspun by yours truly, 4 ounces of BFL roving, one skein of local California wool, and 4 ounces of BFL-silk roving

Mordant: The peach wool was mordanted by Birdsong from the CSA with rhubarb. I did the rest with an alum/cream of tartar mordant. I used about a 10% alum mordant solution

Dye: Chopped madder root. There was about 230 grams of the madder, I would definitely use more if you wanted to dye this much fiber and have it all come out red.

What I Learned: As the dye pot exhausts, the color changes. Duh. Madder is treated a little differently than the fennel. For one thing, it doesn’t stink like the fennel, I did this in the house without any problems. From what I read, if you cook the madder too hot or too rapidly, it will turn more orangey than red.

Here’s another summer thing. I bought a new spindle! This is sort of an early birthday present for myself. I’ve been looking at Golding spindles for a long time, and finally saw one that had my name stamped all over it.

Do you want a close up of the top? Of course you do!

Pretty, eh? The Scottish thistle is in honor of our next big adventure. We leave for Scotland** next week for a couple of weeks. I can’t wait! When I saw this up for sale on the Golding website, I knew it had to be for me.

OK, a quick list of September fiber goals and I’m out of here, or I’ll be late for church. I’m not getting very ambitious since I’ll be gone much of the time.

Finish the baby thing.

Finish those red socks.

Read books.

Enjoy the vacation.

That’s it. I’ll try to do one more post before we go, since we had a very special visitor last week that I’d like to tell you about!

*The wool was the gift, not the sheep.

**As usual, for you stalkers thinking you can steal my yarn while we’re gone, we have a house-sitter. She brings her llamas to guard the wool, so don’t even think about it.

Public Service Announcement

Kim at filleverywindow is doing her annual Knitters’ Hunk contest. It’s only into day 2, but the competition is fierce. There are some prizes involved, but mostly lots of eye candy. There was a little dust up over an uncooperative blog platform involving a do-over, so the contest is just getting started over. There’s plenty of time left to ogle vote!

In fibery news, here’s what that Army Blanket Green Polwarth is spinning up to be. It’s really a nice soft sage color. I’m not quite half done spinning the fiber, it will be a two ply when it grows up.

And here’s what’s in the dye pot today.

That’s the first round, and there’s four ounces of Lincoln wool 2 ply handspun that I did awhile back, and four ounces of unspun BFL roving. Once that’s out of the dye pot, I have a hank of rhubarb-mordanted yarn that Birdsong sent in the first CSA shipment, and four ounces of BFL-silk roving to toss in. It will be interesting to see the difference in the two batches, if any.

Once again, it’s impossible to capture reds with a camera, at least with my mediocre photography skills. That’s close, but it’s a little bit less orange and more garnet in real life. The dye plant is madder root (but not from my CSA box).

Last but not least, a cat photo for your enjoyment. I heard some rustling around on my desk yesterday, and here’s what I found.

I guess Will likes a messy desk as much as I do.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

And, A Finished Project!

Earlier this spring, I signed up for a novel CSA* project. It’s from Birdsong at Nature’s Cauldron, and it’s a natural dye plant CSA share. The first shipment arrived last week, and contained a big skein of yarn, and several different paper sacks, all loaded with a variety of dried plants useful for dyeing fiber. This shipment contained comfrey root, fennel, some lodgepole pine bark, and a lichen. I could hardly wait until I had a day off so I could play. Here’s the photo evidence of my first effort.

I decided to try dyeing unspun roving first. This is 4 ounces of undyed Polwarth, soaking in the sink pre-mordanting.

That’s the pot, ready to go. I spent the last few weeks before the first shipment came collecting tools. Fortunately we have a second tiny kitchen in our basement, so I can keep the dye equipment and supplies out of our food prep kitchen.

Fennel chopped up and ready to go. We just happened to have a bunch of fresh fennel in our food CSA box this week as well, so the tops and stems went in as well as the dried stuff.

Here’s the fiber in the mordant pot. With most natural dyes, you have to pre-treat, or mordant the fiber with one of a variety of chemicals to make the dye stick and help with the colorfastness. This is an iron mordant, which also changes the color of the finished fiber. With iron, this is called “saddening” the color since it dulls it and makes it more of an earthy color instead of a bright clear color.

The mordanted fiber:

That’s the fennel cooking. This smells nothing like the bulb of the fennel plant. After this had cooked for awhile, I got online and ordered a hotplate so that in the future I can do this outside. It just plain stinks.

I simmered this for about 90 minutes, then turned it off and let it sit overnight, then repeated the cooking the next morning, after opening all the doors and windows. Here’s the strained dyepot, ready to go.

That’s the fiber, out of the pot, on my improvised hammock drying rack. And here’s the finished fiber:

That’s pretty close to the real color. If you’ve ever seen an old army blanket, this is the exact same color, so it’s officially Army Blanket Green. I think this will make a swell hat or a scarf.

Project Details:

Fiber: Polwarth, 115 grams.

Mordant: Ferrous Sulfate, purchased from Griffin Dyeworks. I used 11 grams of the iron, or 10% of the fiber weight. I heated the iron in water to dissolve it, then simmered the fiber in it for 90 minutes, and rinsed.

Dye: Fennel tops and stalks, both dried and fresh. I had 577 grams of fennel total. The dye pot was prepared by boiling the fennel in water for 90 minutes, turning off overnight, then repeating in the morning. I soaked the fiber in water, then added it to the dye pot, brought to a simmer for 90 minutes, cooled, then rinsed and dried.

What I Learned: This was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It’s really much like running a chemistry experiment, with the added bonus that you get yarn to play with at the end. This really appeals to the weirdo mad scientist in me that never got to have a chemistry kit as a kid.

Next up?** The skein of yarn that was included in this shipment was pre-mordanted with rhubarb, so it’s ready to dye. I also have another skein of my handspun that is undyed, and lots more plain roving, so tomorrow’s experiment is going to be with madder root (not in the shipment, but I had ordered some to play with). I’ll report back with the results of the experiment when it’s done!

*CSA=Community supported agriculture

**Yes, I’m still working on that baby blanket.

Ack!

We’ll get to the “ack!” later. The sister visit was great. Unfortunately all the good photos are on John’s computer, and I’m too lazy to go down and get them. We drank a lot, ate a lot, saw a few of the local sites, and for a change, had a bit of sunshine around here. Very little knitting got done, though I did get some spinning done. Here are a few photos.

I showed this before, but I finally got it washed and recorded the details. Again, this is Targhee wool, about 12 ounces of fiber, spun on the wheel. It turned out to be a heavy worsted weight, about 10 WPI, and around 1040 yards. This is going to make some nice warm mittens and hats. John gets the first set, and anything left will be mittens and perhaps a hat for me.

The next stuff is the fiber that I showed you in progress last time.

This is a BFL-silk blend from Wolf Creek Wools. I spun this on the wheel as well, and it is about 20 WPI, about a light sport weight by the time I got it plied. I had 4 oz of fiber to start with, it ended up being about 280 yards. I think this will be a lovely cowl, or perhaps some nice mitts or hand warmers. Or I might just keep it on my desk and pet it.

The next is the “ack!” part. I’m still working on that mystery electric baby blue thing. I’m at the point where I need to pick up a gazillion stitches around the edges. I sat down to do this while the sisters were here, and ripped out the picked up stitches about 4 times before I decided it needed a time out. The pattern as I’m adjusting it calls for picking up 128 stitches on each edge, I just couldn’t get this done without ending up with more or less than I was supposed to have. I suppose there could have been vodka involved, but still. This really isn’t a difficult task. I picked it up again today, and realized that instead of just wading in and picking up stitches willy-nilly, I should divide the edge in quarters with markers, it makes it easier to see when I’ve gotten off track. I got one side done at the salon today, and it should get done a little more easily from here. Here’s a teaser photo.

They just don’t make Cotton Ease in those great blinding colors any more.

I’m off to get a few chores done. We have tickets to a concert tonight at the Seattle Zoo, so I need to get it in gear. Later!

Sometimes The Spammers Are Right

I sometimes glance through the comments that get tossed in the “spam” folder, just to see what the latest is. The current batch was largely in Russian, so who knows. Here was one that got my attention:

Well made blog great at expressing yourself.. Now all you gotta do is update update update!

Well, no kidding. I guess I better do just that.

Let’s hit the weather first and get that over with. We had about 2 days of summer this past week, and it’s in the high 60’s today, though it looks suspiciously like it’s trying to rain. Crap crap crappity crap. So far the pattern is that if I’m working, the weather is great, if I’m off, it generally sucks. I have a boatload of relatives coming this next weekend, so hopefully we’ll impress them with some nice weather. My sisters and their spouses are coming Saturday and staying a week, so there will lots of laughs, shopping, drinking and eating going on. And perhaps a rousing Mexican train tournament if it rains and we have to stay inside.

Next up, spinning. Let’s just say I haven’t done much this week. I do have some photos of a couple of things, one done, one in progress. Here’s the done stuff.

The spun yarn will be knit into something for John. He laid claim to this when he saw it spun up. It’s one of the monthly fiber shipments from Spunky Eclectic, and it’s Targhee wool, the color is named Flannel. It is nice and squishy soft, and not scratchy at all. I haven’t gotten around to weighing this and figuring out the yardage, but it’s probably a heavy worsted weight. I’m thinking mittens and a hat, there might be enough left for mittens for me as well, there was 8 ounces of the fiber to start with.

Here’s what is on Seamus, the wheel.

Pretty, isn’t it? The fiber is from Wolf Creek Wools, which sort of cracks me up. The shop, Sweetgrass Wool, is outside Helena, Montana, about 3 miles from the house I lived in there. Of course it wasn’t a fiber or yarn shop then. And I was neither a knitter or spinner then, so it wouldn’t probably have made any difference to me at the time. The fiber is 75% Blue Face Leicester and 25% tussah silk, color is Wild Berry. This is spinning up beautifully. I have about 4 ounces of it, so it will be a little scarf or neck warmer or something girly.

On the knitting front, no photos. You guessed it, still the Electric Blue Imaginary Baby Thing. Poor little Jace will be unwrapping this at his grade school graduation at the rate I’m going with it. Maybe it can be converted into a backpack or something. And I’m not knitting anything else much at all, so nothing to see here. Move along.

I almost forgot, we went to a Mariners baseball game on Friday. It was part of a late birthday present from last year for John & I from his kids. I did take the sock to knit, and impressed a kid that looked about 6 or 7, and got a “cool!” out of him when I showed him it would be a sock. Unfortunately John was in charge of taking the sock-at-the-ballpark photo, and for some reason that escapes me, deleted it from his camera. The home team lost dismally, but it was a glorious evening, and we had good seats in the front row down the third base line, and it was all good. John’s son and daughter put together a terrific picnic lunch that was far better than the usual ball park food. Here are a couple of photos.

It looks like a good time was had by all.

That’s all folks, I’m off to work on the Imaginary Electric Blue Baby Grade School Gift.

Umm, Yeah, About The Blog

Oops, I forgot to blog again. Not only that, I almost forgot to knit, and spin. There have been lots of summery distractions going on here, and I still haven’t finished the mystery Electric Blue Baby project, for that baby that was born a few weeks ago now.

Here’s the same photo, to remind you.

Sheesh, electric blue cotton/acrylic garter stitch. Could anything be more exciting? And I feel too guilty not working on it to knit anything else in the line up. And I can’t even show photos on the blog. Sheesh.

So what else have I been up to, besides not knitting and not spinning? The weather here has just plain sucked. I guess we shouldn’t complain, since we don’t have the triple digit temperatures that lots of places have been stuck with, but it got all the way to the 60’s today. And it rained, again. One of the local weather people calculated that we’ve had exactly 78 minutes of summer so far this year, meaning we’ve only had 78 MINUTES so far where the temperature was over 80. That’s less than two hours of summer so far, people.

I did shop a little bit. My friend and fellow blogger, Dorothy, has her own Etsy shop. Recently she made a couple of bags and put them up for sale. Here’s what I bought.

Knitting project removed, of course, since I can’t show it on the blog. Aren’t those cute? And how could I not buy a Corgi bag?

I’m off to find a wool sweater to stay warm. Later!

More Progress…

But I can’t show it to you!

Good grief. Another baby has done gone and snuck up on me. Another one of my nieces is apparently having a baby next week. Yes, I knew about this a long time ago. Yes, I actually did start a project for said baby. No, I’m not even close to finishing it. Does this sound familiar to anybody?

This of course means I have nothing to show you in the way of knitting. I have been working on it, and I will say that I’m more than half way done with the thing. Oh OK, I’ll show you a teaser.

Can you guess the sex of the baby?? 😉

Let’s just call this Electric Baby Blue for now. It’s more yarn out of my vintage Cotton Ease stash, which is slowly dwindling. For someone who really sort of hates knitting with cotton and/or acrylic yarn, this stuff just makes me happy, especially the old colors. The newest colors they have come out with are sort of promising, but we’ll see. They’re still nowhere near as bright as the vintage stuff.

We actually got something close to summer this weekend. It officially hit over 70 degrees here, though it’s supposed to get down into the low 50’s again tonight. I guess I shouldn’t complain. We don’t have 105 degree temps, no tornadoes, and no floods. And I’ve been really able to get my money’s worth out of my woolies this year!

I’m off to start dinner, since it’s 7PM and nobody else seems to be doing so. Have a great week!

True Blood, Progress!

Well I finally finished that whole honking body section. Here it is:

Those shoulders crack me up a bit. After some wrestling around, I finally got the whole thing washed and out on the blocking board.

On to the sleeves!

And just because I can, in honor of Father’s Day, here’s a photo of my sweetie taken the other night while we were out on the town.

We have family here for the Father’s Day weekend, so I’m off to play!

Full Disclosure

Or,

May Wrap-Up

Well, there you go again, I disappeared for a bit. We’ve actually had a few days that make me think summer might get here at some point, so I’ve been busy. At least that’s my latest lame excuse.

Here were the May goals:

I really want to finish the body section of the True Blood Faery section.

I want to finish the Targhee spinning.

Blog more.

So how did I do? That’s where the full disclosure comes in. I didn’t get the body of True Blood done. I’m about 15 rows short of finishing the back section, which will do it.

I didn’t finish the Targhee spinning, though I only have about an ounce left to spin, I started with a pound of this stuff.

Blogging? Four posts. That’s it.

In my defense, I’d like to point out that I read a bunch of books, I cooked a bunch of really swell meals, and I worked. And here are some photos of the knitting.

Aren’t those cables pretty? That photo is close to the real color, but not quite.

That’s awfully pretty, too. It’s very hard to look on either of those things as a “failure”, even if I didn’t quite hit the goal. I’m also knitting a stealth* project, so I did get some things done.

So how about June goals? I’m declaring a month of amnesty. For June, I’m just going to knit whatever I damn well please. Except for that stealth project, of course. Babies have a way of showing up even if you’re not done with the knitting.

*Another family baby is about to appear. I think this might be the last of them for awhile!

Oh, The Suspense!

Or,

Will She Finish The Main Body Section By The End Of The Month Like She Said She Would?

Who knows. I have six days left in the month, plus part of today, and I only work two of those, so it could happen. Here’s where I am:

Sorry for the weird color. It’s not really tomato colored, that’s just my phone camera, and I didn’t have time to fix it, I’m on a tight knitting schedule here. My plan for May was to finish the body section, and then I’ll “just” have the sleeves and the hood to go. I have the left front done, and am about a dozen rows from finishing the right front, then the back section from the armholes up to the neck. We’ll see, we’ll see.

Here’s what Riley thinks.

I’m not sure, Mom. This is my “dubious” look.

I’m off to keep knitting.

Recipe of the Week

Or month, year, whatever. I have no illusions that this will become a regular feature here at Chez Knitting Doctor. It’s just that we have made chicken pot pie a couple of times in the last few weeks, and the last time we made it, I uploaded a photo to Facebook, and got a couple of “I want that recipe” comments. Recipe? We don’t use no stinking recipes around here, it’s mostly made up on the spot. I sat down this morning and tried to reconstruct how we made this, and here it is. Read it all the way to the end before you start cooking, since it’s a bit of a stream-of-consciousness kind of recipe.

Lorette’s Chicken Pot Pie

This is done in a deep casserole dish, with a pastry crust on top, so amounts can be approximate. I start with however much leftover chicken I have, and adjust the other ingredient amounts to match. We typically get a roast chicken from Costco, heat it and have it as is for one dinner, then use the leftovers in a pie. This recipe sounds like it has a lot of fidgety parts, but it you have two people in the kitchen working, it doesn’t take that much time to get this ready and in the oven. This will feed at least four hungry people. We had it with a salad and a nice rhonish red wine. Crusty french bread would be terrific with this. You don’t really need another vegetable with this since it’s chock full of veggies by itself.

Cooked chicken, cut up in biggish bite size pieces, about 2-3 cups.
Some kind of onions. I like the frozen pearl onions, but you can use chopped yellow or red onions, or leeks. About a heaping cup of pearl onions is good.
Potatoes, 2-3 medium ones, peeled and cut up into big chunks
Carrots, 2-3 large ones, peeled and cut into chunks
Green peas, about a cup. I use frozen peas and just run them under hot water in a strainer for a minute to thaw them out.
Any other veggies you have around. Leftover cooked green beans, broccoli, etc. This is a good way to use up those slightly marginal veggies you have that aren’t bad enough to toss yet.
Mushrooms are good, sliced or broken up roughly, you can add sliced celery if you wish.
Garlic if you wish, or green garlic in the spring.

I use a large pottery casserole dish for this, and adjust the amounts of the ingredients so it doesn’t quite fill the dish once the sauce is added, you want a little space so it doesn’t bubble over in the oven. If you have less stuff, just make a smaller casserole.

Sauce:

3 tablespoons butter
3 heaping tablespoons flour (I measure all this pretty much by eye, it doesn’t have to be exact)
3-4 cups liquid, depending on how thick you want it. I usually use about half milk, half chicken stock (canned is fine), and a little white wine.
Bay leaf
Herbs: I use herbs de Provence, or mixed thyme, marjoram, whatever I have handy. You can use fresh herbs as well, just chop them up first. About two teaspoons of dried is fine, more if you use fresh.
Parsley, the italian kind, chopped
Salt
Pepper

Store bought pie crust, or you can make your own if you are really ambitious. I just use a top crust, since a bottom crust gets REALLY soggy in this and is way too much trouble.

1 egg

Start by cutting up your chicken, and prepping the veggies, clean and cut them into the right size pieces. The veggies won’t cook much in the pie, so you need to pre-cook most of them. I do them separately so I don’t end up with a bunch of mush, but I do them sequentially in one pot so I don’t have to wash a bunch of kettles at the end. Put the taters in water with a little salt, simmer till they are just done. Drain, set aside, do the same with the carrots. I don’t pre-cook the peas. If you are using other fresh veggies, use your judgement, I’d probably at least lightly steam or simmer most of them.

Cook your onions, put some olive oil in a pan, then the pearl onions, cook until they are nice and golden, shake them around while they are cooking. If you are using regular onions or leeks, just saute them until golden. If you want to add sliced mushrooms or celery, I’d cook them with the onions, or at least in the same saute pan. If you are using garlic, now would be the time to add it to the saute pan.

Toss all of this in the casserole, the chicken, pre-cooked veggies, and the onion mixture. Toss it around gently and set aside.

Make your sauce:

This is basically a white sauce. Put your butter in a saucepan, melt, add the flour and stir with a whisk or wooden spatula. Cook this on medium heat while stirring constantly. It will start really clumpy and gradually smooth out a bit, you want to cook it for just a few minutes and don’t let it get brown. You just want to cook it long enough to get the raw flour taste out of it.

At this point I take it off the heat to add the liquid. Add a little bit of the liquid at a time, whisking briskly to get it mixed in before it makes big lumps. Keep doing this until you’ve got all the liquid mixed in. I usually add most of the liquid, maybe saving some back to adjust the thickness of the sauce as it cooks. Put it back on the heat, turn the heat down to simmer. Add the bay leaf and your herbs, along with a little salt and pepper. Stir mostly constantly while it is thickening up, this will take a few minutes after it comes to a simmer. If it’s too thick, add a little more liquid. If it’s too thin, cook it a little more. If you’ve really screwed up and it’s way too thin, you can add a little cornstarch mixed in water to thicken, but remember that the starch in the potatoes will help thicken things at least a little in the finished pie. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning. You could add a dash of Worcestershire sauce or a pinch of cayenne pepper to kick it up a bit if desired.

Now dump your sauce over the chicken and veggies, you may not need all of it, use your judgement. If you don’t have enough sauce, you can add a little chicken stock right to the casserole and stir. Don’t stir too much or your potatoes will all fall apart.

Take your pie crust out of the package and put on top of the chicken mixture, crimp up the edges so it looks fancy and pie-like. Cut a couple of slits here and there so the steam can escape.

Break the egg in a little dish, whisk it around with a fork a bit, then brush the top of the pie crust with it.

Stick this in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for about 25-35 minutes. I start checking it at about 25, you want it nice and golden brown on top. This doesn’t cut up into wedges like pie, we just serve it using a big spoon, trying to get a nice mix of crust and chicken stuff on each plate. Try not to eat the whole thing at one sitting.

You could make this all ahead and get it in the casserole ready to go. I’d just add the crust at the last minute if I did that so it doesn’t get soggy while it’s waiting.

If you are really lazy, you could use prepackaged mixed frozen veggies, but I generally think they are marginal at best. You should try this at least once with fresh veggies that you’ve prepared yourself, you’ll see that it’s much better. If you don’t want to make a sauce, I suppose you could use some kind of cream of whatever soup, but that stuff is dangerous, lots of salt and fat. This recipe would be easily adaptable to other kinds of leftover meat, if I used beef I’d probably have to experiment a little to get a brown sauce instead of a white sauce. I might work on that one. Hmmm, brown sauce, red wine, basically a beef stew with a pastry lid on it. Now I’m hungry again.

And here’s a photo of the finished pie.

Now, go make your own!

Road Trip! Yarn For Sale!

Last week I had a few days off in a row, so we took off exploring. We’ve lived in Washington for over a decade, and we’ve actually seen embarrassingly little of it. We booked a bed & breakfast over in Walla Walla, and took off driving. We saw some great scenery along the way, finding out that our adopted state has a multitude of ecosystems, from northwest rainforest to high Cascade mountains, to desert, and then wine country. Ah, yes, the wine country.

We took a bazillion photos, ate a lot of great food, and drank some really terrific wine. We also came home with a bunch of cases of wine in the back of the car to stock up the wine cellar. Instead of posting the photos here, I’m including a link to a Picasa photo slide show that John put together. Please go check it out, there are even some knitting photos in there!

And now for the “yarn for sale” part. I’ve gone through my stash and weeded out some stuff that even I will admit I am never going to get around to knitting up into anything. It’s all good stuff, and you don’t need to worry, there’s still plenty of it around here. There is a pretty wide variety, including some sweater-lots of yarn. I dithered around about how to sell it, and finally decided to put it all on Ravelry. Go here to my stash page to check it out, and send me a message on Ravelry or by email if you’re interested. If you want the whole mess, I might be convinced to make a special deal.

That’s it for today. I’m off to do a little knitting before I have to go back to work tomorrow!