Maryland My Maryland

Oh life, you are so crazy. Right now, at this very moment in time, I am in New Orleans. Guys, I have never been to NOLA! I am still surprised by that. I have been as far away as Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, India, Peru, Australia. But I have never been to New Orleans. Heck, I spent 5 years in Texas going to school, and somehow I never got to New Orleans. I am taking pictures and banking memories for blogging.

But I have already digressed and we are only one paragraph in. What I WANTED to tell you about is Maryland Sheep and Wool. If you are a knitter or fiberist you may have heard of MDSW. If you haven't....

I am so sorry but we are going to talk fiber. And not the kind that is good for your diet and overall intestinal health. It isn't even fiber that is good for your budget. It is so NOT good for your budget. So, so, so not good.

So, almost a year ago, my friend Michelle for Crafty Flutterby Creations, who is also a KnitSib of long standing, asked if I wanted to help in her booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I thought about it for all of 5 seconds and said YES! I put that date right on the old calendar and periodically looked at it and contemplated fiber. I started saving a bit here and there so that I actually had a "fiber budget" to spend when I got a break. More on the fiber budget later. The first weekend in May found me in the car and on the way to the Howard Co. Fairgrounds in West Friendship, MD. Set up was Friday afternoon and it was hot, and windy and, well, it is on a fairgrounds where there is a lot of dust and straw and more dust and my allergies were all like, "Oh we are SO going to make you pay for this." They did make me pay for about a week after MDSW but I don't really care. All was set up and we had a fun time on Friday night with other knitters and then it was Saturday and back to the dusty, but thankfully cooler fairgrounds were I vended the heck out of myself. Sunday was pretty much the same thing with some rain thrown in. Lets just go to the pictures shall we.

There are two sorts of things that you are going to see at MDSW, other than the food, and that is yarn/fiber/crafting accoutrements....and sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. Barns and pens full of sheep of every description and color. 

This is Easter, so named because....she was born on Easter. Clever that. She is a Valais Blacknose sheep and I swear she knew how to pose for pictures. She was working the barn like Kim Kardashian. And her fleece! So soft and cuddly. If I thought it possible I might have tried to sneak her into my suitcase. 

And I also got to meet several women who I have known for a very long time but only on the Internetz. Cuz that is where ALL of the deep friendships reside right? But in reality Lola and Tina have been friends for a long time and I cannot tell you how excited I was to meet them in person. Please excuse my over abundant chinage. My wattle is genetic and must be born with grace and dignity. Who am I kidding, there are times when I look like a turkey right before Thanksgiving.

Also, I might have found my ornament for the annual Ornament Exchange. I was helping to set up the booth and looked down the row a bit to a booth that was two stalls down. And there it was. It is the only one that the woman made so it is one of a kind, because that is what "the only one the woman made" means. I am not showing it here but guys it is so stinkin' cute I just can't stand it. And now that I have actually put this up here I cannot then keep the ornament for myself. Sigh.

How did they know?? I needed another mug at Chez Knit like I needed a hole in my cranium. And yet, this came home with me because.....it called to me with it's siren song of pottery and I could not resist.

This is evidently a baby coffee plant. Someone walked by with it and said that she had bought it over in the plant area. She also told me that in about 5 years, if the plant lives, it should give her enough beans......for a cup of coffee. Somehow, the ROI on that doesn't seem all that appealing to me. I think I will stick with ordering my coffee from here.

Best. Yarn. Colorway. Ever. Dawn from Fairy Tale Knits is a genius. And she gifted me the skein so that is extra special. Now to think about what it wants to be. It has gone to live with the stash for a bit. Sometimes yarn needs to age, like a fine wine or Limburger cheese, in order to be all that it can be.

But let's be honest. Have you ever smelled, let alone tasted, Limburger cheese. There are not enough centuries left on this earth that will ever make that cheese palatable.

And do you remember, way up at the top of this long and rambling post, that I talked about my yarn budget that I had carefully planned for MDSW?

I blew that budget wide open in the first hour that I shopped. Yes, those bags of yarn represent ONE hour of shopping. One. Hour. And I went back the next day for a bit more shopping. Oh my stars and garters. Oh my aching pocketbook. Oh my smoking credit card.

I am not telling you how much I spent on this wool haul but just know that I brought back TWO sweater quantities of yarn plus various other skeins. When I started back to knitting almost 12 years ago I would have scoffed at the thought that I would pay $45 for ONE skein of yarn. I am not saying which of these skeins was $45 dollars but one of them might have had that price tag. My lips are sealed.

What is spent at Maryland Sheep and Wool STAYS at Maryland Sheep and Wool. It is just like Vegas, only it smells like a sheep.

Sorry. Not Sorry

Gather up the heart medications folks because I am blogging.

So, it would seem that I took 6 months off from blogging. It wasn't really a conscious decision on my part. It was just that life. Oh life you crazy person. Is anyone even here anymore? Perhaps we will just take this as a reboot. StopHerKnitting 2.0 as it were. Yes, I think that is what we will do. That way I can tell you what has been going on around Chez Knit and it will be like we are old friends who haven't seen each other for an age. And I will attempt not to drop off the face of the earth.....again.

Really, I have thought about all of you (all 10 of you I would now guess) ALL the time in the past 6 months. I have thought, "Oh! I have to tell them about that." and then it never happened. Bad Deb. BadBadBad. The excuse that I am going with is that the fact that I currently have 4 jobs, three of which I can tell you about at the moment and one that I will tell you about later on, keep me pretty busy. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it. I continue to work part time for HHBL. Good thing that we like each other because we spend 5 out of 7 days in each other's company. There is a blog post in there somewhere about the work/life balance when you work for your husband. 

Then there might still be the whole wedding coordinator thing going on. 

Currently there are 6 weddings on the books for 2018 so the next few months will be busy. I always end up adding more as the time goes on. I do love weddings.

And now.........

We have added.........

A.........

GRANDBABY!!!

I will tell you all about that in just a hot second. OK, I will tell you now. Really, we knew about her "existence" when last I was here but there has been a total and complete media blackout on the whole thing. And I will not be sharing a boat load of pictures here because, well TMO and TSiL have asked me not to and I can completely respect that. But......

I am sharing just ONE picture because, oh guys, she is the cutest thing in the world. Cuter than bugs ears as Grandpa Pringle would say if he were here. It also begs the question as to whether bugs actually have ears. I will be off to the Googles later to check that out. Is there ANYTHING better than new baby smell.

Of course, within 12 hours of meeting her Pops she loaded the old diaper while sitting in his lap. Get a load (HAHAHAHAHA!) of that look of holy concentration on her face. She is DEFINITELY going to fit right in with the family.

That was two pictures. Sorry.....not sorry.

The other big news is that we have added another Son-in-law. Yes, Cartoon Girl and That New York Guy (TNYG) tied the knot last weekend in NYC. A good time was had by all, or at least by me. The setting was fabulous, The Museum of the Moving Image, which TOTALLY suits CG and TNYG. 

Doesn't everyone Facetime the baby when getting ready? Does that count as another baby picture? Sorry....not sorry.

The DRESS!!! Oh the dress. CG has a very vintage style and that meant a vintage dress. I would give a good skein of Pagewood Farms yarn (ask a knitter, they will understand) to know the story of this dress. It was made, we believe, in the 1930's and originally had a train, which was removed to make the dress more her style. The turban was made from the train fabric. The owner of the vintage shop that she loves pulled the dress, all wrinkled and unloved, out of a plastic bin in the back. There was no going back after that.

Sorry....not sorry. It isn't a Quigg wedding without a Star Wars reference.

"Her mother....and I"

HHBL has his line down pat after this. But now we don't have any more daughters to marry off. Oh well.

TNYG started to cry when doing his vows. And then CG was crying. And the Elisha (the fabulously marvelous friend/officiant) was crying. And then we all were crying.

Weddings are for crying right?

And then it was all done and we went on to party the night away.

This is Elisha, the friend/officiant. She is mine now. I love her and I am keeping her. Please excuse my overly generous armage. I am a grandma now and that is a required thing. Also, wearing pearls is a grandma thing too. Perhaps I should also start smelling like talcum powder. Or am I taking this too far?

OK, this has gone on longer than I expected. It is Saturday and I have things to do, like finish another baby blanket, but not for The First Grand baby. We seem to have a bunch of family babies making an appearance in the next few months. SO fecund we are. Look it up. I also have a bit of lace knitting to finish because, guys........

I am going to MARYLAND SHEEP AND WOOL FESTIVAL in May (ask a knitter, they will explain it to you). I used all caps there so you can hear me shouting my excitement. It helps to have friends who are knit designers because Michelle of Crafty Flutterby Creations has asked me to go and help in her booth. This has been on the calendar for almost a year. I am so excited. I promise there will be pictures after the fact.

This blog post has taken me FOREVER. But there are just a lot of words that want to come out. I will be back.....I promise.

Analog is Me

We live in a digital age. I know this, believe me. I shoot with not one but two big digital cameras. I edit all photos on a big computer with powerful software. I work for a software company that deals every day and all day with public data. 

We all know that I love Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.

Don't try to take my iPhone away from me because I might have to cut you. 

And my iPad. Oh my iPad. Bringer of documentaries on Netflix and "Grantchester" on Amazon Prime. 

Dropbox, Evernote, Pepperplate, Ravelry. Digital, my life is digital.

But not completely. Not totally. There are still a few wild and woolly analog outposts in my life. There is the whole reading physical books. Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of digital books. I read a lot of books period. But I also read a lot of analog (for lack of a better term) books as well. I walked past a woman in CostCo yesterday and she was telling her teenager, who was holding up a book for her to see and possibly buy, "You can just put that book down. It is like, I don't know, 700 pages and you know that is about 659 pages more than I am ever going to read." 

It broke my little bookworm's heart to hear that. I can't imagine reading anything and everything that I can get my hands on. I have been known to read the ingredients on the can of bathroom spray if I can't find anything better to read while having my...golden moment.

TMI? You can't be surprise. Surely you can't.

I know that when the grandchildren arrive and are old enough....they get books. Of course, they also get candy for breakfast, but that is another story.

So, there is a place I am going with this whole analog thing. I swear there is. There is a corner of my life that I have deliberately switched back to analog from digital and I couldn't be happier.

Crazy as it sounds (and my brother, who is all things digital would say it is crazy), I have never been happier with my choice to go analog with my Bullet Journal and research information.

I have always been a person who enjoys writing things down in a physical way. I have loved lists all my life. I was that odd person in college who took notes in class and then re-wrote the notes as a way of studying and retaining things. Those notes were a thing of beauty and allowed me to achieve an "A" in my Med-Surg nursing course.

Of course the fact that I allowed the Neurosurgeon I was shadowing to convince me, a nursing student although admittedly an overly competitive nursing student, to scrub in and assist in surgery (and by assist I mean that he handed the little instrument to me and allowed me to remove brain tissue) might also have helped in achieving an outstanding grade. I wasn't sure how things would turn out when I realized the instructor was looking in and seeing what I was doing. But that is another story for another time.

I can say with some certainty that at this point I don't see myself going back to keeping lists and to do things and planning pages and all the minutiae of my day to day existence in any digital form.

ANALOG FOREVER! is my rallying cry.

At least until I want to check my Instagram feed....of which I have two by the way.

The Mystery Box

We all know that I knit socks.

This year I am participating in something called the "Box O Sox 2017 KAL"

What is a KAL you might ask yourself. Don't you hate it when someone smugly uses an acronym that you don't understand? If you are like me, you sit there and try to work it out in your head cuz you just don't want to ask.

Knit
A
Long

There, that wasn't so bad. Now if we were talking about a SPAKAL then all bets are off right? (Spin A Long, Knit A Long). Oh we knitters and our incomprehensible speech. Thank goodness you don't sit in on knit night with the KnitSibs. You might need a knitting dictionary as we throw around terms and phrases like:

"I am loving this brioche knitting!"

"Is that an SSK or a K2Tog?"

"The charted pattern took me a bit to figure out but once I got the color dominance down I was on my way."

Where was I?

Socks. Yes, thank you. The Box O Sox 2017 KAL I think.

What IS the Box O Sox 2017 KAL you ask yourself. Well, it means that as I go along in the year 2017 and I knit socks, after those socks are finished, washed, blocked, photographed and put up on Ravelry I put them away in a box and I don't wear them.

I know. It is hard to believe. Let me say that again.

I do not wear them. I do not put them into podiatric rotation.

There is a specific reason for this. It is sort of like a gift to myself. I knit 12 pair of socks, one for each month, put them in the box and then on New Years day 2018 I open the box up and there are 12 pair of socks that have never been worn. Welcome to 2018!

Since I think I am going to do this every year I actually went to Hobby Lobby and got a special box and decorated it. Who doesn't want a box that has Sock Monkey paper and Llama/Alpaca washi tape.

And we won't even talk about my current obsession with washi tape. We won't talk about it at all. Not a bit. Not even about the 3mm washi tape that I buy. Nope.

I see the box every day when I go into my closet. And I think about the socks. And I can hardly wait for New Years Day. Of course, it has been a really warm summer so I haven't worn any wool socks for 3 months. But I still dream about them.

New Years Day is going to be so good.

It had better be because NYD 2017 saw me laid out on the couch trying to cough up a lung with the pneumonia.

2018 you had better be nicer.

It's ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

Yes, folks.

The sourdough starter is alive. Let's talk about it shall we.

When last we spoke, I had finally been "starter shamed" into getting my carefully prepared, and at one time tenderly nurtured, home developed sourdough starter out of the basement refrigerator where it had been languishing, unloved and starving for............18 months. I had only a glimmer of hope that it might be resurrected. Yes, after I had done "starter surgery" and fed it, there were bubbles and hope raised it's feeble head. But, bubbles do not a sourdough loaf make.

And can I just say that basement refrigerators, while extremely useful in so many ways, are the place where things go to die. Just saying. I finally cleaned out several jars of pickling experiment that I had carted over from OCK, 4 years ago, and hadn't eaten (I am the only one here at Chez Knit who eats pickles). They had languished in the basement frig as sort of a pickling science experiment and they weren't getting any better. So I tossed them.

Where was I? Oh yes, the starter.

Well, last Saturday, after several days of feeding, I thought I might give the starter a try. I had found a recipe that seemed easy (my first mistake with sourdough!) and so I embarked. What better thing to do on a Saturday.

It was not a success. And when I say it was not a success I mean you could use it as some sort of weapon to bash someone's head in OR perhaps as a hockey puck, even perhaps a weight during your workout. Whatever your choice I would not have suggested that you eat it. HHBL was like, "NO, don't throw that away!!" But I love him too much to do that to him.

And I am a perfectionist. We were not going to eat that. But, I was also not going to be defeated by a jar full of little living organisms swimming in water and flour. I have opposable thumbs thankyouverymuch. So, I fed them several more days and looked at more videos on YouTube and looked at Pinterest (I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest that I will explore some other time) and waited. And I realized something. The thing that I really didn't take into account when making that first boulder loaf is that sourdough takes a LOOOOOONG time. Not long in the making of the dough, that I can now accomplish in about an hour. Nope, the proofing takes 12+ hours and THAT my friends is where I had totally screwed up on the first loaf. I am a long standing baker of bread with packaged yeast. I fear it not. But, yeast bread made with those little packages, or in my case measured out from a jar, rises fast and sure. With sourdough you just have to make the dough, trust that it "feels" right and then let all those organisms get busy in the frig overnight, at least 12 hours or more.

So Wednesday evening, after dinner and before the Indians game, I got to work making my next batch. I did my measuring (measure with a scale people!!) and mixing, and autolyse phase, and adding salt, and slap and knead, and stretch and fold. Then I floured a surgical towel (another story for another time but just let it me known that I have enough of these to outfit an entire surgical suite) and put it and the loaf in a colander and stuck it in the basement frig for 14 hours. I pulled it out on Thursday, followed the baking instructions and hoped for the best......

Folks, I have made sourdough bread. And can I just say that it is amazing. I was so excited about it that I made another batch yesterday afternoon and put it in the frig and then really quickly got it baked before leaving to drop Coco off at the dealership (Takata airbag recall) and then scooting to the office.......

The sky is the limit from here my friends.

And we are SO having BLTs this week.

I May Have Killed It...Or Not

I go through these phases. I think, "Oh I need to learn to do that!" Then I do it. Then I move on. Sometimes things "stick" and sometimes they don't. Knitting seems to have stuck. Scrap booking did not. Does anyone need any scrap booking materials. I have them.

A while ago I decided that I needed a home developed sourdough starter. I KNOW that I told you about it but for the life of me I cannot find the blog post that covered that. If I could just get my bahookie in gear and finish my spread sheet with all of my blogs over the past nine years I might have had better success than the whole floundering around and looking at years and trying to figure out which catchy title actually had the sourdough blogpost in it.

Where was I?

OH yes, sourdough. 

I went to all the trouble of growing my own sourdough starter (it isn't that hard) and using it for a while but then....then.... I have no idea why I decided that it would be a good idea to store the starter down in the basement refrigerator. I know for sure that I would never have thought to throw it out. It had use and as we ALL know I suffer occasionally from a severe case of BIMNISD (again, there is a blog post on this. There perhaps might be more than one. I cannot find them. Moving on.)

For whatever reason, at some point I stored my starter in the basement frig. My upstairs frig is very small and space is at a premium so that is most likely the reason why the starter ended up downstairs. But the result of the reason is that the starter went down into the basement and then just sort of stayed down there like a college student who has come home without a job, languishing in the basement. You know it is down there. You know you should do something about it but you figure, "I will take care of that tomorrow." And tomorrow never comes.

Every time I had to put something into the basement frig or get something out of the basement frig, I would see that container. It would sigh and suggest I use it. It would squeal with delight when I opened the door and then groan with depression when I passed over it.

Do I anthropomorphize things too much? Maybe.

This is probably the time to give you just a bit of sourdough starter knowledge. As the starter sits for any period of time and isn't regularly used a black looking liquid will form on the top. That is called "hooch" and it is exactly what you think. It is alcohol which is really the waste product of the yeast in the starter. It is also telling you that the starter is hungry and hasn't been fed. You can just pour the liquid off and then feed the starter.

Yeah, my starter had a black liquid on it for at least a year. So very appealing and, lets be honest, just a bit scary. After a certain point in time I just preferred to act like that container wasn't even there. I see nothing and move on. We all have that lingering science experiment somewhere in the depths of our refrigerators. Don't tell me that you don't! OK, maybe Heather K doesn't. I have seen her refrigerator and it is spotless and organized. But don't the rest of you tell me that there isn't something lurking. I will KNOW that you are lying.

What happened next is really all the fault of YouTube. I started watching videos produced by Simple Life Homestead (blog). Here is their YouTube channel. Why do I care? Well because Michelle of SLH was Cartoon Girl's BFF all through school. Two more different people there cannot be on the planet and yet. Bonded for life. I have been obsessively watching their videos and got to the series on Sourdough starter and I remembered.....

Yesterday was not a day at the office and I was in the midst of one of my "make all the things" jags so I gingerly brought the container upstairs to the light of day. And I opened the container. And it was so disgusting that....I didn't even take a picture of it. That is how funky it was in there. 

But I would not be deterred. Who cared if there was actually some fuzzy mold growing on the sides of the container? Not me. Mold is good for you. Just think Penicillin! Who cared if there was a whole boatload of hooch just floating sullenly on the top of the starter. That hooch is not the boss of me! I laugh in the face of unknown mold.

First thing to do was to drain off the hooch. That was just a pleasant job. Not quite Sam Tarly serving soup and cleaning poop gross (sorry all you non-Game of Thrones people) but it was still yuck! Then it was a matter of what to do with the sort of funchy growth on the sides of the container and the top of the starter. The starter itself was fairly solid, which I expected since it had been sitting for a long time. It wasn't dried out but was sort of the consistency of whipped cream cheese. It was also giving off a very "alcoholy" smell, also to be expected. I decided that the better part of valor was to just scrape off the top of the starter and then extract from the middle, avoiding the sides.

This is what it looked like once I had removed all that I thought was viable. Take a look at all the yummy stuff on the sides. All the rest of this was scraped out and discarded. Thank goodness!!

Then, because I am a nerd, I measured out what I had been able to safely extract and it came to about 1 cup worth of starter. I didn't want to use all of that in one jar so I actually then split it into two separate starters. Then, because I am REALLY nerdy sometimes, I weighed out each of the starters to see what was what. I came up with about 66 grams per starter. Then, because it is always better to weigh out your ingredients rather than just using a measuring cup (nerd alert again), I actually weighed out 66 grams of flour and 66 grams of warm water (times 2) and add it to each of the starters, stirred it around and covered them up. They did not smell all that promising. 

The initial process was completed around 11a. I kept an eye on them all through the day but not much happened. I fed them each again at 8p, covered them with a towel and went to bed. And this morning........

It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!

Bubbles, it has nice bubbles. That is good. And it smelled less alcoholic and a bit more sourdough startery. We might have lift off people. I discarded half of each of the starters, fed each of them with another 66g of flour and 66g of warm water before I left for work and I put them in a place that is warm and draft free. If they are in the least happy I may, just may, try and bake with one of them tomorrow. If not tomorrow then it will more likely be on Tuesday. 

This must be how Dr. Frankenstein felt........ before the monster tried to kill him that is.

I will keep you posted on the progress but I am optimistically excited about this.

But now I have two starters and I really only need one.

Why Couldn't They Just Update It?

We all know that I love my technology. Well, all except for my actual to do list, where I have gone back to being an analog loving Luddite. And very happy I am with my modified Bullet Journal. But the rest of my apps that live on my phone and my iPad are part of my daily life. They all have a purpose. I don't like apps that I use once every three months or longer. That just means that the rest of the time they are sucking up space on my phone and I already have problems with using up the space on my phone.

But there is a problem with technology. It isn't static. It gets updated. They can't just leave things alone! Rude! The worst thing is.....when a developer stops updating an app that you DEPEND on and then Apple starts sending you little urgent messages saying things like,

"This app hasn't been updated in awhile and might slow down your iPhone!"

Yup, got it. I don't care if it slows the phone down just so long as it is doing what I want it to. But then comes this message. And then all bets are off.

"Contact the developer because this thing isn't going to work after the next iOS update!"

NOOOOOOO! Dang it times 20. Now, I am going to let you into a little something about me. Try not to be too surprised by this. 

I like my world to be neat and orderly. I KNOW! Quel suprise! HHBL looked at me the other day and said, "You really just need to clean something out every day don't you."

Ummm, YES! I like order. I like organization. When I am stressed I organize something. It makes me feel all warm and comfy and like I have control over my life. Heck, I was stressed a bit last week and organized and cleaned out my already well curated closet and then put a rug on the floor in there. Then all I wanted to do for the rest of the week was sit in the closet and be happy. Everybody does this right?

One of my favorite apps is the one that I use for my grocery shopping list. I have this thing, you see, about wanting to know EXACTLY how much I am going to spend at the store. My resources are finite in this regard and I need to have some control. So for the last 4 years or so I have been using an app that I actually PAID FOR and that I love. My list is very detailed, depending on store (Giant Eagle, CostCo, Heinens), it is well curated and it has taken a long time to get where it is. And this morning........

I got the dreaded "Call the developer and make him update your app because it is soon to be toast" message. Huh, WHAT? It hasn't been updated in a while? Like how long? Well, it turns out it hasn't been updated for three years. That is like I am driving the Edsel of grocery apps in the age of Tesla cars. Crap. Just what I want to do on a Saturday morning is try to find another grocery app that suits me. My brain just about exploded when I pulled up all of the possibilities.

But I have found something I think will work. It gets great reviews. And currently it seems like it is updated with regularity. I actually PAID for the upgraded app. I hate to pay for apps but it seemed like it was going to be necessary. But now, now I have to actually redo my ENTIRE list. Oh the pain and agony of this. Before I even started on that little monumental project I had to weed through all of the items that they "conveniently" had already input into the app because SURELY I would need to buy Utskho Suneli (what the heck IS that?) or perhaps some Belgian Pralines (don't think so). Or perhaps I wanted to choose between Tampons and Internal Tampons. Hmmmmm, definitely a list that was made by a man. Tampons, by their very nature, are internal. I have never seen a tampon worth a damn that was "external. An external tampon just means that you sneezed really hard. Nor was I ever going to chose the option of "Beef liver" of "Calf liver". Not even if I was starving.

So what am I doing on this lovely Saturday morning in between hanging out loads of laundry on the line? I am getting my new grocery/shopping list up to snuff.

The struggle is real. And this is stressful enough that I am looking for something to clean out this afternoon. Anyone have a closet handy because all of mine are neat as a pin.