Kilkenny & Cashel & Kinsale, Oh My!

We’re on the road, having left Dublin after a three-day stay there. In every place we’ve been, we easily could spend a whole vacation seeing the sights and enjoying the local people and customs. But onward we go. It’s impossible to see everything in one vacation, even a relatively long one (16 days total for us).

Kilkenny was our first stop after Dublin. This is a very attractive medieval town with winding narrow streets and a huge castle that dominates the landscape. We took the castle tour, wandered the streets, and had a pint or two in a local pub.

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We only spent one night there, then hit the road in the morning, headed for the Rock of Cashel. Driving in Ireland, on the “wrong” side of the road, is quite entertaining. So far, John hasn’t trusted me to drive, so he drives and I’m the navigator and map-reader. All I can say is thank God for Jill, the GPS lady who came with us on the trip. We’ve finally learned to just listen when she shouts “turn!  turn!”. We took the little winding back roads for this part of the trip, which was a bit hair-raising. The N roads are the wider roads, just wide enough for two cars to pass without taking off the side mirrors. The R roads are a bit narrower, and when you meet another car, you have to make a choice. You either stay where you are and lose the driver’s side mirror, or you pull over and put scratches in the finish on the passenger side.

The non-N, non-R roads are what we drove yesterday. Mostly they are big enough for one car, and you just pray that if you meet someone coming at you that they are not going the posted speed limit of 100 km/hour, and that it’s not on a blind curve. So far we still have mirrors and most of the paint on the car.

The Rock of Cashel is an old fortress/cathedral that is in ruins, and highly worth the trip.

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We didn’t sleep in Cashel, but drove on to Kinsale for two nights, which is where we are now. No photos yet, but you can be certain there will be! This is a lovely little harbor town, with a lot of historical significance, so we’re off for the day to tour the village and see the ruins of the Fort. I also had no clue that the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk right off the coast here, so that was an interesting factoid.

John’s clamoring for his turn with Minnie* so I’m off for the day!

*Minnie Dell, of course. What were you thinking?

More Dublin

We found some other fun things in Dublin besides Guinness. Here I am, checking out the lunch options.

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And then there was dinner:

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In case you think we’ve done nothing but eat and drink, that’s not true. In between those things yesterday, we saw the National Gallery, the National History Museum, and last but not least, the Book of Kells and the Long Room Library at Trinity College. For a bibliophile, the Long Room was fabulous. We also got a nice nap in there somewhere.*

I’m posting from a tiny mini-Dell (named Minnie), with a tiny screen and somewhat sketchy internet access, so answering comments may be a bit limited while we’re here. I also have to share Minnie with John, who seems to think he gets equal computer time. Thanks for all your comments nonetheless!

We leave Dublin today, headed west. Our first stop will be Kilkenny. On to the adventure of driving on the wrong side of the road!

*Not in the Long Room. It was pointed out to me that the way I wrote that sentence made it sound like we took a nap in the Long Room.

And We’re Off Again

This time we’re off on a two-week vacation to Ireland. We leave tomorrow morning, so I’m frantically going through all the knitting bags to get stuff sorted out. Of course I have nothing else packed, but damn, I have the knitting ready. Here’s what I’m taking with me. This will also serve as sort of a mini-Project Update as well. Cool! Two posts in one!

First, here’s the spinning portion of the blog. If you don’t give a hoot about spinning, scroll down. I finished some pretty pretty yarn this week. A few months back, I scored a couple of Abby’s Batts. Here’s one of them all spun up. As usual, click to embiggen.

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The fiber is 69% merino, 30% tussah silk, and 1% firestar (aka sparkle!). This is roughly a light fingering, and there’s about 600 yards of it, enough to make a pretty shawl. That’s not coming to Ireland with me, though. The color name is Green Green Grass.

I’m still working on John’s True Blue sweater, and am partly through the first sleeve. The front and back are both done. This will come with me on the trip. I transferred it from straight needles to circulars, to make stuffing it into a travel bag a little easier.

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And I’m still working on the Peony socks. These will go in checked luggage, because of those wicked sharp Signature double points. I’m not crazy enough to try to get those on a plane.

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Last but not least, some green yarn for another pair of socks, just in case I finish the Peony socks. This is one of my treasured Wollmeise skeins, in the color Lowenzahn.

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And I have a suspicion that I might find some yarn while I’m there. At least I can hope. If not, I’ll drink lots of Guinness to drown my sorrows. We leave in the morning, and will have a mini-computer with us, so there might be an update or two along the way. Otherwise, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks!

 

The Next Big Thing

If I ever finish that True Blue sweater for John, here’s the yarn for the Faery Ring sweater that will be next.

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This is Black Water Abbey yarn, in the color Haw. I think it will be perfect for this cardigan.

And what’s that little green velvet bag in the middle? Why, buttons, of course.

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Those are just the most perfect thing for this pattern. They cost more than the yarn, but I could not resist.  If the sweater wears out, I’ll cut the buttons off and re-use them. The goldsmith who make these is Carolyn Kent, though she doesn’t have her website up and running yet. These are silver, with real garnets in the center.

I’m off to the farmers market for provisions. Don’t forget that it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

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Arrrr!

Playing With Photos

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One of the WordPress features that I’ve discovered is that you can upload a thumbnail of a photo, but when you click on it, it opens a bigger photo in a new browser tab. Go ahead, click on that and see what happens.

Do you recognize that man? That’s my sweet husband, many many years ago when he was in Vietnam. He found an old box of slides from that era, and I convinced him to get them transferred to digital format. I have to say, he took some great photos while he was there. I’m trying to convince him to start a blog of his own, so I won’t post them all here, but here’s one more of my handsome soldier boy.

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Jacoby’s Blankie

It’s finally done:

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Project Details:

Yarn: Knitpicks City Tweed Aran weight, in Snowshoe and Brocade. I used 5 skeins of the former, less than 3 of the latter.

Pattern: Brooklyn Tweed’s Baby Blanket pattern, roughly. I started knitting based on a previous blog post, and then he released the pattern. The original pattern used the DK weight of the same yarn. I just started knitting away, and had finished most of the center before the “real” pattern was available. I just figured out how many pattern repeats would go around the outside and picked up that many stitches.

Needle size: Denise 10 1/2. Though when I got to the I-cord edging, I pitched them and used a large Addi instead. The Denise needle tips kept unscrewing as I was doing the edging, though I have never had them do that before. I suppose there was some twisting action of the I-cord that caused this.

Started: June 1, 2009

Finished: August 29, 2009

For: My first grand-nephew, Jacoby!

What I Learned: Start baby projects early. Seriously. They come faster than you think. Also, I love this yarn to pieces. We’ll see how it holds up. It’s softer than soft, so I’m thinking it might pill, but you could wrap it around a barenaked baby without any qualms. It’s not superwash, so those of you thinking this would make great baby clothes might think about that a bit.

I also learned that I’m not so fond of doing I-cord edging, though it is mighty pretty once it’s done.

Credits: Sweetpea, the stand-in baby model.

Quickie

No, it’s not what you think. I head down the rabbit hole to work tomorrow morning, so I may or may not get a chance to post in my new blog for a week. So here’s a quickie post.

Did I mention that I have a new blog??

Oh, right, I did.

Never mind.

Here are a couple of photos to tide you over. I finished a project, but I’m not going to post details until it’s been mailed off. So you get cooking and spinning. You’ll have to make do.

We made gumbo this weekend. This might not sound all that exciting, but it’s sort of a major project around here. We use Crescent Dragonwagon’s* recipe for gumbo, which involves a whole lot of chopping and cooking, but results in lots of storage containers of gumbo base in the freezer. When we want gumbo, we thaw out a container of the base, then add the last few ingredients.

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And the finished plates:

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Then there’s the spinning. I’ve spun up a whole bunch of Abby’s Batts that I scored a month or so ago. This is a silk/merino/sparkle blend. I’ve finally got the whole bunch of fluff spun, and now I’m plying it. Here you go.

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That’s roughly a light fingering weight, 2 ply. I have about six or seven ounces of this, but this is the first bobbin of plied stuff, so I don’t know the yardage yet. I think this will make a nice shawl. What do you think?

Down the rabbit hole I go. I’ll be back in a week.

*Yes, that’s her name. If you don’t have her cookbooks, you are really missing out. Go, now, and buy them. I highly recommend her Soup & Bread cookbook just for the gumbo and cornbread recipes, and The Passionate Vegetarian is one of my all time favorites.

The Move, For Those of You Thinking About It

I know there is a lot of angst in the knitter-blogger world this weekend, at least if you are a Typepad user. It seems that I’m not the only one that hit that wall going ninety miles an hour yesterday. I don’t make decisions lightly, but once I’ve made up my mind, I tend to head forward full steam without a look back. This was no different. From glimmer of idea to “maybe I should go to the bookstore and get a WordPress For Dummies book”, to registering the name and moving the major part of the posts, it was done within a few hours yesterday.

For those of you thinking of doing the same thing, it’s not as difficult as I thought it might be. Moving is definitely a pain in the ass, but this one is going relatively well. Here are my beginning findings, for those of you dithering about it.

Get your domain name registered, now. If you sign up with a hosting service, it’s often free, but even if you’re not ready to sign up, it’s generally under $10 to do so, and it saves the spot. “knittingdoctor.com” was already taken (it takes you to a Lion Brand page! What’s up with that? They’re not doctors!), but “theknittingdoctor.com” was available. If all else fails, pick something close, perhaps with a number. Though that esthetically makes me itchy, it’s just the domain name, not the name you actually give the blog. Go here to find out if your heart’s desire is still available.

Find yourself a blog host. Before you do this, pick your software. This was a no-brainer for me. I just decided without a lot of consideration that I’d do a self-hosted WordPress blog, meaning you sign up with a host site to have server space to put the whole thing, then install WordPress as the actual blogging software. The WordPress site has several suggestions, and I went with Bluehost. They have way more capabilities than I’ll ever use, but it’s relatively cheap (cheaper than Typepad, people!) and has enough storage space and bandwidth than a sporadic knitter-blogger will ever need.

The actual sign up was easy. You fill out a few boxes, give Bluehost your credit card number, download the WP software and install, and you’re ready to blog. I just used a ready-made template from their website, though I shifted around stuff on the sidebar. Importing old posts from Typepad was a bit interesting. First you go to Typepad and sign in, and in your settings pages there is a page to export everything. It sends it to a separate webpage, which you then import relatively easily from the “Tools” section of WP. The only problem is that it is a big enough file that it won’t import it all at once. It imports a bunch of posts, then gives you a “fatal error” message. Just keep importing the same file over and over till it’s done. WP is smart enough to not import the same post twice, so it just skips the ones you’ve already imported and moves on to the next part.

The links came along with the import, for the most part. So did the photos, though they are still linked to the TP server. As I have no intention of paying TP forever just to store my blog photos, I’ll move them eventually, but it will be easier, since I can go to each individual post and see what the photos are. It should be a simple matter, albeit a tedious one, of saving them to a folder on my desktop one at a time, then uploading them back into the correct post from the Bluehost server.

I still haven’t figured out all the whistles and bells. And I haven’t figured out how to get my second page, “Finished Projects” to look right. If any of you WP users out there know how to import a whack of posts into a second page of a WP blog, let me know. I’d appreciate it. Maybe I do need that WP For Dummies book, after all. However, I’m far from a computer genius, so if I can do this, so can you.

I’m off to look around under the hood some more. Have a good rest-of-the-holiday-weekend!

Two Finished Things

Two nights ago a friend called and said he had a gift for us, and could he stop by. Of course I said yes. Who turns down gifts? A few minutes later he was at our front door, with a huge paper bag full of chanterelle mushrooms that someone had given him. He wanted to know if we wanted them, since he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

A glass of wine later, we had the menu planned, and sent Greg to the market to get pork chops while John and I did a little prep work. Here’s what we came up with.

John cooked the polenta, using Marcella Hazan’s recipe from her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. This is a great cookbook, by the way. Someday I’d like to cook my way through it, in the style of Julie & Julia. I never seem to get past the first few pasta sauce recipes, though, since they are so perfect.

I sadly neglected to get a photo of the fresh chanterelles, but here’s what they look like.

I cooked the pork chops and mushrooms. After cleaning the mushrooms, I sliced them thickly, then sauteed them in a bit of butter and olive oil until they were just starting to get soft, then added a little white wine and simmered briefly. Meanwhile, the pork chops were cooking, first sauteed, then a little shallot added, then white wine. They braised with the lid on for about 5-6 minutes a side, just until done. Don’t overcook pork chops, by the way. We actually prefer them just a tiny bit pink in the middle. If you cook them all the way through, they get tough and chewy.

The pork chops went into the warming oven, the braising liquid went into the waiting mushrooms, which were then cooked down a little until syrupy.

A little chopped Italian parsley went in at the end.

The whole mess went on plates, with some lightly steamed green beans on the side. We also had a salad with fresh heirloom tomato slices, topped with fresh mozzarella and slivered basil, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

And here’s Lewey, pretty sure we might drop something.

Not bad for last minute made-up cooking!

That was the first finished thing. The other thing that’s finished is this.

Yes, it does look like sort of a wonky blocking job. It’s a baby blanket, for pete’s sake. I just mashed it out and pinned it down. More details will follow in a later post.

Miles & Miles of I-Cord

Hey, that could be a country-western song!

I’m nearly done with that endless baby blanket. I have to say that I almost wienied out on doing the I-cord that this pattern suggests. By the time I got to the last pattern row, I had 544 stitches on the needle, and the thought of doing I-cord around all that was enough to make me want to drink bourbon.

Wait, I already drink bourbon. Oh well.

Here it is. I’ve almost finished three sides, so don’t have too much left to go.

I really like this yarn. Since it’s taken me so long to finish this thing, I’ll forgive you if you’ve forgotten what I’m doing here. This is Knitpicks City Tweed, in the heavy worsted weight. It’s very soft and squishy, and I just hope it holds up well. It’s soft enough that I’d worry a bit about pilling and wear, but we’ll see. Baby blankets don’t need to last forever, after all.

I’ll be glad when I get this done and off in the mail before the intended recipient is old enough for college. I need to finish John’s True Blue sweater next, since the Major Knitter and I have just committed to a knit-along starting November 1st. Here’s what we’ll be knitting. We were planning on doing a Rogue knit-along, then saw this, and fell hard. Within about thirty minutes, we’d both changed our minds and ordered the Black Water Abbey yarn for Faery Ring. Mine will be in Haw, which is a lipstick-scarlet red. I believe the Major will be knitting hers in Wine.

Here are the Ravelry links for the pattern. There are two versions, but the only difference is the range of sizes. The pattern is free, which makes up a bit for the fact that I just bought a couple thousand yards of yarn for the danged thing. There’s even a Ravelry group, of course. Anybody want to join us? We’ll see if either the Major or I can hold off on casting on until November 1st!

Grilled Pizza

Here’s how the grilled pizza turned out. First of all, the review. It was definitely something I’d repeat. It sounds fussy, having to make dough, but if you wanted to cheat a bit, you could buy ready-made pizza dough. The recipe makes enough for six individual pizzas, and we made two and froze the rest of the dough in two-pizza servings. Next time all we’ll have to do is top them and grill. The recipe is from Sunset Magazine.

With a bread machine, this is a snap.

Have I told you about my new bread machine? No? The old bread machine worked just fine, that is, until we bought a gas generator and had it set up. The boys had to put in a new circuit breaker panel to get it going, and in the process of testing it, blew out a bunch of crap in the house. Most of it was just small appliances, and fortunately I’d had the sense to unplug the computers, or they’d be toast, too. There was one near-disaster, with a surge protector in the pantry that nearly started on fire and filled the house with burned plastic smell. That was fun. It left black soot all over the desk in the pantry.

But, I digress. Back to the pizza. I got a new Zojirushi bread machine out of the deal, and that’s it, up there.

Here’s the prep work:

After you finish the dough, you pat it out on oiled parchment paper (waxed paper would work as well). Don’t even think of combining the dough and making one big pizza. It would be a little tricky to manage flipping and turning on the grill that way.

Then you grill the first side, without the toppings.

Take it off the grill, turn it cooked side up, then put the toppings on the already grilled side. We used a local farmer’s goat cheese, a bit of tomato sauce out of a jar*, fresh heirloom tomatoes, thinly sliced sweet onions, and added the basil at the very end.

Put it back on the grill, uncooked side down, and finish. Really, this only takes a few minutes for each side.

Poor another glass of wine, and enjoy.

*We used some really good stuff from Trader Joe’s. I normally make spaghetti sauce from scratch, but this stuff is good in a pinch.

Half FO

I actually partly finished something today! Actually, it’s one sock of a pair, but that’s something, right? Everything else has sort of taken a back seat lately to 1)Spinning; 2) Feather and Fan baby stuff; and 3) Finding a new job and getting all the ridiculous paperwork done that is required, even though I’m not changing states or moving to a different hospital. And I haven’t even started with the HR stuff yet.

Anyway. Today was such a nice day, that I got to do a little knitting outside. The heat wave that we’ve had has passed, and I’m not sure it even hit the mid-70’s today, but it was nice and warm out in the sun. We went to the Steilacoom farmers’ market, which is only about ten minutes from our house, and found a lovely spot to have lunch on an outside deck. Knitting in public ensued.

After we got home and put away all the veggie loot, I sat down and finished the first sock. Here I am, trying it on to make sure it’s long enough before I close the toe:

And done.


Pretty, eh? That’s Zoe sock yarn from Shalimar, in the color Peonies. You can get your very own at the same place I did.

And second sock started.


There was more knitting loot that arrived at my house today. I have a set of the Knit Picks Options needles, and a set of the Harmony wood tips. They came out with acrylic Zephyr tips, and I had to have those as well. A lot of people despise plastic needles, but they have their place. They are a lot easier on my hands than metal needles, for one thing. Those lovely Signature sock needles up in that photo are beautiful, but they really make my hands hurt if I work with them for hours on end. They also have lethally pointy tips that I would not try to sneak on an airplane.

Here are the Zephyrs.

I’m off to make pizza. Sunset magazine had an article about making grilled pizza recently, and the dough is all done and ready to go (made in my brand spanking new bread machine). We have all sorts of options for toppings, but I think tonight’s version is going to be white cheese, basil, and perhaps some of those heirloom tomatoes from the market. I’ll take photos!