soap-boxing

Climate change for deniers

by M-R1 Comment on Climate change for deniers

I suppose I shouldn’t grump that this video comes from Facebook: most people who use Facebook do so because it doesn’t involve pecuniary outlay (but it isn’t actually ‘free’ at all).

But this Greenpeace video is good. Whether or not it has the slightest effect on the wilfully deaf and blind pollies is another thing.

I remember fulminating wildly against Tony Abbott and his bloody collection of morons when I was first blogging: Scott Morrison and his band of beasts are actually worse, inasmuch as they are as clever as a wagonload of monkeys. Shrewd as sewer rats.

How in the name of all the gods we ever managed to vote these fuckers in is beyond me. Except that it’s not, really: it was sheer greed. GREED.

https://wp.me/p6zYMn-4wq

Still feel the same way.

knitting

One word only: HALLELUJAH !!!

by M-R10 Comments on One word only: HALLELUJAH !!!

And here is a video of it, which I insert largely on account of the loud shout I give mid-way through. You soon observe why.   :D

The colours are too well-bred, I have decided. In fact, I decided that some years back (What ? – I haven’t been knitting this for years ? Well, I’ll be blowed !) by which time it was Too Late. Alas.

I’m not going to be able to enter it into the Geelong craft comp next year: it’s not nearly good enough. The  last bit of brioche was marked, for me, by the virtual impossibility of getting that every-second-row decrease tight enough; and nearly every one is far too loose. Lesson for me: never make patterns that have a regular decrease at the end of rows.

As well, I don’t do Nan Bray’s White Gum Wool any favours by all the frogging and re-knitting: no fine 100% wool likes that, and WGW certainly doesn’t. It’s meant to be worked in pristine condition !

So several errors in this project, and all to be learned from.

Only thing is, I have NO IDEA what to do with it. Sighh … Anyone want a well-bred, mistake-free but not absolutely top-class in terms of even stitches light shawl ?

:}

knitting

I think I might be mad already !

by M-R10 Comments on I think I might be mad already !

I first wrote as the header “I think I might be going mad”. Wrong.   :(

It’s The Shawl. (I’m not going to post a photo, as that will happen when – IF ! – I finish the bloody thing.) I am so close to the end that I can scarcely believe the errors I’m making at this late stage.

The Shawl starts with a large V-shaped section of 2-colour brioche, and it ends with an upside-down ditto. So I’m decreasing at one end every 2nd row (what you might think to be 4th but it isn’t because 2-colour brioche takes two passes to make one row – don’t ask me NOW !) and it appears to be something like four inches from casting off 5 stitches as closing.

I have had to frog rows and pick up earlier ones something like 12 times since yesterday evening.

Today I screamed in rage and threw it all on the floor. Boodie was alarmed. (So was I.)

I’m about to pick it up, untwist the frogged yarns and re-wrap them onto their balls, frog several rows yet again then sit back and CALMLY finish this last little bit.

I think the problem is that I’m so thrilled at the prospect of finishing this endless straight brioche and starting on another project that my attention – poor at the best of times – is lousy.

Also, the shawl is enormous; and I’ve never had such a large… THING hanging off my needles before. Turning it to and fro has become a major headache; and discovering this difficulty has made me re-think my intentions of doing something really nice next time. Like –

this pattern by the woman whose Craftsy (now BluPrint) course enabled me to actually do 2-colour brioche, Lesley Anne Robinson.

Because if my brain can implode with straight brioche, and even though I did finish that brown & gold scarf, I might have a major melt-down with something so nice.

Anyway. I’ll be posting a photo of The Shawl if, as I say, I actually do get to finish it.

 

soap-boxing

A bit of mischief

by M-R4 Comments on A bit of mischief

Well, here we have it !

First sighting of an actually identifiable hand in this whole long, miserable time.

And now it can be seen for what it is, all that stuff about his hands: it’s the fingers !

They’re out of proportion, see ? – far too short for the size of the palm.

So now we know.

[grin]

soap-boxing

Quote of the day

by M-R5 Comments on Quote of the day

“Be yourself: everyone else is already taken.”   – Oscar Wilde, attrib.

I laughed like anything !   :)

I saw this quote on the NEW BLOG of my very dear blogging friend Simon Johnson – a man who is quite unable to  stop widening his cerebral horizons. I admire him enormously.

knitting

Problems with colour pairing

by M-R8 Comments on Problems with colour pairing

Two-colour brioche: why is it so bloody hard to pick two colours that work together ?

It seems so easy when you start off with your great pattern and your two colours of whatever yarn you’ve chosen … They look so good together in your knitting basket – can’t fail to be terrific.

But they do.

The reverse side is just – wrong.

Why on the front does the green vertical row sit proud and the violet row provide merely background; and on the reverse the green is competing with the foreground violet ?

Or why does the front look just as you hoped but the reverse looks simply muddy ?

Here the front gold stands out as vertical rib; but it also stands out on the reverse, in almost the same way !

Beautiful. But only the front. On the reverse the pattern is close – crowded, even. This effect is commonly seen, where the back of the pattern appears to be somehow more tightly knitted !

Rather puzzingly, that effect is not seen here: this is good ! I attribute the difference between this screen-grab and the previous one to the fact that this one’s colours could scarcely be more opposed; whereas the one above uses two shades of the same colour.

I am now on a mission to find some kind of equation that will result in a pairing of any two colours that will work perfectly together to result in brioche that doesn’t fight against what it’s meant to look like.

As I understand it, that is. As far as I have learned, two-colour brioche knitting should be reversible but for the colours being swapped.

:\

(None of these is mine: I screen-grabbed them all from the Web in my wish to at least partly indicate what is so frustrating me.)

 

 

recipes

Big success with a new recipe !   :)

by M-R10 Comments on Big success with a new recipe !   :)

I realise this recipe comprises ingredients to be found elsewhere (e.g., it’s quite like eggplant parmigiana), but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my sister and I consumed it last night with delight and regret: delight in its yumminess – regret in the eggplant’s not being a larger one.

What the scoring and baking of the eggplant did was to add a different dimension to the taste. We were able to eat all that garlic with absolute impunity, as well as the entirety of the eggplant’s skin. It was simply – wunderbar !

You might think it tiresome to have to bake and then re-bake, but you shouldn’t: have a glass of something you like, and talk of other things !

Baked eggplant with tomato & feta

Ingredients

  • 1 eggplant sliced in half lengthwise and scored criss-cross (like you do a mango)
  • feta to taste

Tomato sauce

  • 50ml olive oil
  • 5 cloves of garlic sliced
  • 4 ripe tomatoes chopped smallish (I did 16ths)
  • ½ 170g can tomato paste
  • fresh basil
  • seasoning
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • ½ tbsp balsamic vinegar

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 200C.
  • Brush the eggplant with plenty of olive oil, sprinkle with a bit of salt and then bake face-down in a baking dish for about 35 minutes or until the flesh is soft. (This will depend largely upon your … erhmm … ‘scorings’ in the eggplant: the closer the quicker cooked. Is that logic or what ?!   :D) You need to check how it’s going at half an hour.
  • Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce: heat the olive oil on medium heat in a pan with a large surface area, then add the garlic. Cook for a couple of minutes (don’t brown the garlic !) then add the chopped tomatoes, basil, tomato paste, ½–¾ cup water and season. Let simmer for about 15 minutes, then add the sugar and balsamic vinegar and stir in.
  • Pour the tomato sauce over the egplant halves and crumble over the feta, as thickly as you like.
    Bake for about another 10 minutes or until the tomato sauce is bubbling.

It will be my preference, next time I make this dee-lishus meal, to use thickly-sliced bocconcini rather than feta; but my sister is an LCHF eater and LOVES feta, so that was it.

Serve with a salad: you don’t need cooked vegies with this.

And I reckon I deserve a pat on the back for having found meals to suit P’s LCHF intake and my vegetarianism at the same time.

[grin]