a common thread

I've been absent from here (again) for longer than I intended and I have not been taking many photos lately either. But I have been cooking and working on my sweater and printing – and there is a common thread in all of what I've been doing lately. It's this – and it's a thing I do often – I tend to stubbornly stick with things, for longer than common sense might dictate, before ultimately deciding that I should start over or do it differently. It's a little different each time, for each project, but it's there.

This past weekend, I baked this lemon tart from Smitten Kitchen. I loved the idea of it – a whole lemon, minus the seeds, whirred in the Cuisinart. But here is what I do, often, when cooking AND knitting – I change it up. When I'm cooking savory things, I pretty much never follow a recipe, if I use one at all. But the lemon tart: I didn't want it to be too sweet and I didn't have powdered sugar on hand anyway, so I put a lot less sugar in, probably half as much (and it wasn't powdered, it was grainy) – and then I thought maybe it needed more lemon, so I added another half of one. The thing is, in this case, it came out super tasty, surprisingly good. The texture was not exactly right because it was, well, not as smooth as powdered sugar might yield. But the whole damn tart got eaten up over a few days and I think I'll make it again soon. And I even went to the store and bought powered sugar for it.


And the knitting ... I'm making this sweater – and it would be fairly straightforward except for the honeycomb pattern on the sleeves and collar ... only I decided to use a different gauge yarn than the pattern calls for because I really wanted this particular ochre color. And did you know that Cascade 220 is so inexpensive – and comes in so many lovely shades – that I am making this whole sweater for less than $35?! The yarn suggested for this would have cost me over $100.


But anyway: first there's been the math, converting the pattern to make it fit with a new gauge. There have been a few mistakes – first with my math for the gauge, then because really I decided I didn't want it as long as the pattern calls for, then because I made another math error. Let's just say that if I'd knit this straight through without taking it out over and over, I'd probably be done. But the good news: I'm on to the sleeves and collar now. It's taking a bit of time to get that honeycomb pattern just right – not the kind of knitting where I can simultaneously watch The Wire which to me is a great thing because I am doing two things at once!!

And the printing. That thread of re-printing, trying to get it even better, it's always there for me. I'm working on the wedding book and I really want it to be just right ... so, yes, there was a small bit that got re-printed. I'll be taking some photos soon enough and you'll see for yourself how it's coming along.