by Kat | May 18, 2022 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
The making this week has been of the “small” variety but I wanted to take a moment to identify the photos for you all from Monday’s post:
- 1. A chive blossom
- 2. an African violet
- 3. Bee balm and
- 4. the Tri-colored
birch beech (thank you, Kym) in my back yard.
Monday the most strenuous thing I did was that blog post, lol. The rest of the day I napped on the sofa and it was early to bed for me as well! However, I woke yesterday free of all effects from my COVID booster and I spent the day catching up on all I did not get done on Monday as well as the usual Tuesday things I do, some of which included some knitting time!
The first clue of Imagined Landscape’s Mystery Gnome came out last Friday and I did cast on over the weekend. Clue Two came out on Monday and I managed to get myself all caught up yesterday. Clue Three drops tomorrow and I am all ready for it! (and no spoilers here… yes, it is inside out!)
I also have been knitting Sam’s sock… I am contemplating an “afterthought heel” but I have never done one of those before. (Or is it a fore-thought heel… I want to do the one with the row of waste yarn…) If any of you have done that heel I’d love your input. My reasoning behind this is that I feel like the striping will be more uniform without the heel flap. Anyways, I look forward to all your knitting insights!
The reading this week… well it is just epic. I finally finished The Books of Jacob, which I deemed to be a 4-star read. I now have a bunch of much, much, much shorter books in my queue and so I think by this time next week I might have 3 books completed, lol.
However, I loved the 2 months I spent with Jacob Frank… it was truly an amazing book!
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am not sure where to begin with this incredible story, there is just so much to digest and all of it fascinating. If I had read this book in my 20’s I would not have liked it, or even finished it. My much younger self was not as comfortable with thinking about things from all opinions… but at 61, this epic work has much that inspired me. First… by how similar all things are (i.e. religions… Christian, Jewish, Muslim)… much more than I think I realized. I loved how this story of Jacob Frank was true but Tokarczuk took that story and wrapped it in a bit of mystical wonder, as only she can do. I really loved the time I spent in Jacob’s world.
But all that said, this book is long and it dragged a bit for me at about the beginning of the last quarter of the book, however, I am not sure how it could be edited to avoid that as there were important bits in that part, however, all at once the dragging feeling stopped and the ending just flowed beautifully. I loved, loved, loved the page numbering… my gosh that was so fun!
The translation to English by Jennifer Croft is excellent and I am profoundly grateful for her work in bring this book to an English speaking audience.
If you are a Tokarczuk fan, you will love this book!
That is all I have for today… and I am eagerly awaiting your thoughts on afterthought heels!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | May 16, 2022 | General, In This Moment
A bit of a random brain dump this morning… sorry about that.
This morning I am a bit “foggy” because I got another COVID booster shot yesterday. I had thought to wait till the fall but COVID numbers have been on a sharp incline here in Allegheny County so I went and got boosted. This morning I am having a lovely little immune response as the vaccine wakes up my t-cells and my plan is to queue up some PBS shows and sit on my new sofa. (yes… the sofa parts were delivered on Thursday! Woot!)
I wore my Tegna all weekend…. and it is too big. The fabric in the sweater is not behaving like the fabric in my swatch. Sigh. I am contemplating what to do. I do NOT want to unravel the entire thing, but maybe half way and shorten it a bit. On my list for this week… knit a couple of swatches that I can seam together and see how that holds up.
I started the Mystery Gnome this weekend… and clue two is out today! (stay tuned for a bigger update on Wednesday!)
I also started Sam’s sock… cuff as swatch told me that my gauge was a bit off so I did some Knitty Maths and cast on again yesterday. I have almost 3″ done (again) and I am using Wise Hilda’s Basic Ribbed sock pattern. (Ravelry Link)
Finally, I have been playing with the (pseudo) macro function on my iPhone.
Indoor lighting…sigh…
The colors in one leaf… I love it!
Freshly “unfurled”
That is all I have for this Monday. See you all back here on Wednesday!
by Kat | May 13, 2022 | General, Museum of Me
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. ― Charles W. Eliot
Greetings, Gentle Readers!
This month is all about reading…specifically Your favorite book as a child/kid/teenager…
Let me get my docent hat on and begin to tell you all about The Reading Life of Kat!
This week there was great debate over what book was my actual favorite… there are oodles. Truly. Oodles. Do I talk about Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House Books? Or maybe Walter Farley’s Black Stallion series? Those were absolutely beloved books of my youth. Deeply beloved. Or maybe I should talk about E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, or Stuart Little, or The Trumpet of the Swan… yep, deeply loved one and all. Or perhaps John Peterson’s The Little’s series… gosh, I loved them as well!
And so the Favorite Book Debate began… and while I loved every book mentioned above, none of those are what I am going to talk to you about today.
This exhibit has one book with some absolutely magnificent characters. It is a story of survival, over-coming loneliness, and so much more.
Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins was a “turning point” book for me as I was growing up and it is a book that has stayed with me all these years later.
I am pretty sure that I had no idea what a Caldecott Medal winning book meant back then, but yes… it is absolutely an award winner. It was published the year I was born in 1960… which I don’t think I realized either when I first read it.
I clearly remember getting this book from the library for a Summer Reading Contest. It was a time when I was living at my grandparents house and I can remember laying in bed reading it late into the night (at least for a 10 year old girl!) Karana was a true heroine… a survivor… smart and capable. And who can forget Rontu, Tainor, Lurai, Mon-a-nee, and Rontu-aru! Karana overcame adversity, made friends with her enemy, and survived for eighteen years…alone…which to 10-year-old-me seemed like an eternity!
I remember having long conversations with my grandparents, describing to them life for Karana on her island. My grandpa was decidedly more interested than my nana was and he and I imagined how we might survive if we were stranded somewhere! But my grandpa’s favorite part was her befriending birds… such a smart choice!
I spent lots of time “being Karana” as a child… I desperately wanted to get a dog I could name Rontu. (I eventually got a dog, who got named Mitzi) And there were plenty of times as a child when I imagined being “left” permanently at my grandparents house (which did finally happen but not until I was a sophomore in high school).
Beyond my 10 year old self, this is a book I have read again too many times to count… and in each reading, it loses nothing, but rather, with each time I have read it I have gained new insights… it is absolutely a book that is a patient teacher!
If you have not read Island of the Blue Dolphins, today I would encourage you to do so! And if you’d like to take home a copy of the book, you will find one in the Museum’s Gift Shop! (Haha, yes that is my Amazon link)
Thank you so much for stopping by today and visiting this Museum of Me exhibit! A big thanks to Kym for all her work on this (and for the gorgeous new image!)
I wish you a great weekend from a house that at long last has a sofa! See you all back here on Monday!
by Kat | May 11, 2022 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Tegna!! She is finished. She just needs a bit of a spa treatment and a quick tumble in the dryer and she will be camera ready!
I spent some time earlier this year contemplating my wardrobe needs… and I have one sweater I really like to wear but the neckline bothers me. It is Carrie Bostick Hoge’s Lucinda, which I knit for myself some years ago… I love the sweater, but the unstructured neckline is not my favorite, nor has it (the neckline) worn well over the years. So when I saw Calamus in a Quince email, I thought that might be the perfect replacement for Lucinda. I had some Holst Tides in my stash and I got gauge… on.the.first.try! In my book this is a sign from the Knitting Gods that you must cast on…immediately…and so I did! I am almost done with the ribbing and I am very much liking this marled fabric!
I also had a bit of a May the Forth incident…an incident of Galactic Battle proportions most certainly… anyway, somehow four perfectly matched sets of yarn fell into my cart and soon after were winging their way to my mailbox. I have plans for two of them… and perhaps some selfish knitting with the other two skeins…we shall see.
Left to right: Laugh it up Fuzzball (aka Chewie), Princess General (aka Leia), The Dark Father (aka Anakin), and Old Ben (as in Obi-Wan Kenobi)
A slow reading week with just one finish. I listened to Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You and as you can see from my review below, it was a book with good parts and some not so good parts, but YMMV.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For parts of this book I felt like I was listening to actual conversations, had by real people. The dialog between characters is witty, relevant, and engaging. I listened and the narrator, Aoife McMahon, was excellent. I liked all the characters… they were wonderful!
So if I liked all of that, why did I not rate the book higher? Honestly, I could not get past the endless email bits… those did not at all feel real…nor did the text messages. Had I been reading the book with my eyes instead of my ears, I would have skipped those parts. I tried to think about how those parts might have worked for me and for the emails… those might have been better as “journal” entries because I don’t know anyone who writes a tome in an email. It just does not happen. And those text bits… gah. They should have been edited out as well, imo.
What about you? Did you have any knitting incidents this week? Do share!!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | May 9, 2022 | General
…is for sharing!
Gentle Readers, do you have a spouse who is an IG Junkie? Steve must send me at least 4 “reels” a day… and most of them are about food… specifically IG Recipes.
Some weeks ago he sent me a recipe for baked feta, and I was so curious as to why he would send it to me… a main ingredient was fresh cherry tomatoes (which he hates!) Now I don’t know about the flavor of cherry tomatoes in February in your area, but in my neck of the woods… they are flavorless things. But I thought the idea of the recipe had some merit, if I could somehow figure out a tomato work around.
Enter a group I am in on Facebook… I know… but while FB by itself has no redeeming qualities, that is not necessarily true of some of the FB Groups! LOL… Anyways, in the Milk Street Community Group someone shared that Mutti Ciliegini Tomatoes were crazy delicious straight from the can. And so I began my search… no grocers near me stock these babies, but Amazon does but they seemed pricey to me. So began The Great Mutti Tomato Price Watch… and when the price fell to what I felt was reasonable, I nabbed a case of them!
And… Oh.My.Gosh. Really, it is summer perfectly preserved in a can. Cherry tomato flavor bombs picked at the peak of ripeness and snuggled in a silky, rich sauce. Now I had everything I needed to make the Baked Feta… and so I did. It is super easy… and I am so happy to share my tweaks that pushed this utterly simple dish to perfection.
I present my take on…
Baked Feta with Tomatoes and Chickpeas:
- 1 can of Mutti Ciliegini Tomatoes
- 1 can of TJ’s Greek Chickpeas, drained but not rinsed (you can do this with a can of regular chickpeas, but you absolute need to drain and rinse the chickpeas and then get those skins off… I rub them between a couple of layers of paper towels, but golly is this tremendously fiddly and time consuming. Thankfully, Steve found the Chickpeas at TJs! They are so good and no zero fiddly-ness)
- 8 ounces of Sheep’s milk feta in brine (the best I have found to date is Trader Joe’s Israeli Feta… it is the least salty and bakes beautifully)
- One (or two?) baguette, sliced and toasted… or Pita Chips… whatever your preference!
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
While the oven is pre-heating, drain and gently pat dry your feta. (If you are using the block of Feta from TJ’s, I recommend cutting it in half.) Place the feta in a baking dish and pour around it the canned tomatoes, including every bit of the sauce, and the drained chickpeas. If you are using regular chickpeas, drizzle about a tablespoon of olive oil over the entire dish. Sprinkle some freshly ground pepper over the feta and bake in the oven for 25 minutes (or until the tomatoes are beginning to pop open and the sauce is bubbling)
Then turn the broiler on high and broil for 5-8 minutes until the cheese begins to brown a bit and the tomatoes start to blister.
Remove from the oven and serve with a crusty bread or pita chips. I baked this Olive Bread this weekend and served it with that… delish!
This is my new favorite for Friday Happy Hour… it is so good! Don’t like chickpeas? I have tried it with olives (Kalamata and Sicilian Olives are both excellent choices) and it is amazing. I even think canned artichoke hearts would be a great addition!
Oh…and if you should happen to have any leftovers… never fear! It reheats beautifully… or even better, toss everything in the food processor and puree it. Yes, any leftover feta, chickpeas, and tomatoes/sauce… oh my gosh. So Good! We had this last night with the rest of that Olive Bread but it would be great with fresh veggies… carrots, peppers, cucumbers, etc.
And there you have my take on a truly delicious Baked Feta!
Happy Monday everyone!
