HALIBUT FOR TWO, AND RED LACY SCARF
Back to knitting.
Here you see the Estonian Lace Scarf by Nancy Bush I started back over Thanksgiving. I ripped it out began again, using a US #6 for the Malabrigio Baby Merino Laceweight instead of the #4 recommended for the laceweight named in the pattern. The look and drape are both MUCH better. Although red photographs poorly, and my own lousy camera skills don’t help, in real life you can see the small nupp style bobbles, which now look like soft cranberries dotting the surface. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make this the recommended length and still have enough left over to do the specified edging. If not, it can live unedged, or with something less yarn-voracious of my own devising. Stay tuned to see how this challenge will be met.
But in the mean time I made the mistake of showing my kids the Fish Hat from the latest edition of Knitty. They’re totally smitten. Especially because they know I’ve got a pile of lurid orange and yellow acrylic sitting around, just waiting to become a pair of randomly striped ultra silly goldfish.
I may have to do up a couple of these over the holiday, just to keep the peace. Oh. And to enable a local rendition of the classic Fish Slapping Dance.
Finally, happy holidays to all from us here a slightly snowy Casa Magnifica, somewhere in Eastern Massachusetts.
HOLIDAYS APPROACH BEARING FUDGE AND LATKES
A small holiday this year. Long time readers may remember that I usually bake at least 10 kinds of cookies for the Hanukkah/Christmas season. This year work expanded to eat most of my prime baking weeks, so my cookie plans were diminished. This year’s set is all tried and true family favorites, with no experiments or departures into the unknown. I’ve managed to make only these:
- Chocolate chip
- Rum Balls
- Mexican Wedding Cakes
- Peanut Butter
- Chocolate crinkles (aka Earthquakes)
Plus panforte (two cakes as gifts); and the usual super easy condensed milk/bittersweet chocolate/butter fudge. I will say that I did something new on the fudge. I roasted some whole almonds leftover from the panforte then mixed up the fudge as usual. But instead of ladling it all into a square baking pan to harden, instead I hauled out some bendy silicon oval baking forms:
and tossed some nuts in each cuplet, then filled each with the fudge mixture. When all had hardened in the fridge, I popped out these:
All in all, a much nicer presentation than the squashed looking, inexpertly cut squares that usually result when I try to slice the cake- pan-produced fudge block.
In other news, the camo valence curtains have been finished. Pix await the teenager’s room being tidy enough to photograph. Another pair of gift socks has been completed, and the rest of the holiday preparations have been made.
Since tonight is Latke Night, in the spirit of the holidays I share (again) my family’s latke recipe. I first posted this 1995 as a gift to the old pre-Yahoo KnitList. It’s been collected in a knitters’ recipe collection since.
MINNIE LEIBOWITZ’S LATKES
Latke rules:
1. Every family does it differently.
2. Every family’s latkes are the best.
Latkes (sans sour cream) were a common accompaniment for meat leftovers that might not otherwise be enough to go around. Latkes (with sour cream) were the center of a traditional dairy meal.
Latkes work best when the potatoes are old because old spuds are more watery and brown better than new ones, probably because their sugar has begun converting to starch. Grandma’s general rule of thumb was
eaters-1 = number of potatoes, and
potatoes-1=number of eggs.
You can’t make this for one eater.
Ingredients for five eaters as a major side dish:
- 4 well-washed large raw baking potatoes (about man-fist size), ones that are starting to show their age are better. I’ve also used Yukon Golds. They work nicely, but have to be watched carefully during frying because they brown more quickly. No need to peel them
- 3 extra large eggs
- 2 heaping tablespoons of all purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- Water
- Lots of plain old vegetable oil for frying. (Olive oil and corn oil won’t work.)
- Additional salt for sprinkling on the just-fried, hot latkes
Equipment:
- Pyramid-style grater – the tin or stainless kind with the different size holes on each side.
- Frying or saute pan(s)
- Band-Aids
Serve with:
- Sour cream or applesauce
Directions:
Grate the potatoes on the side of the grater that produces mush. You don’t want potato shreds, you want potato slurry. I’ve not found any modern kitchen appliance (including the Cuisinart) that can produce the correct consistency. Also, I’ve never made these without skinning at least one knuckle. This is where the Band-Aids come in. 🙂
My grandmother peeled the potatoes first. I don’t. She was horrified by my oversight, but I notice no difference in the finished product between the with- and without-peels versions. The potato mush will turn ugly gray-brown- even if you’ve bothered to peel. Don’t worry, this also has no effect on the finished product.
Mix in the eggs and salt thoroughly. Add some of the flour and about a third of a cup of water. Wait about 10 minutes for the sludge to absorb the water and flour.
Now comes the hard part. The mush should be very thin and watery – far more watery than pancake batter. Since potatoes aren’t uniform in starch/moisture content, the exact amounts of water and flour to add to get to this consistency can’t be predetermined.
Heat oil (about 1/4 inch deep of oil) in the frying pan or pans – I use two small saute pans on separate burners because my stove won’t heat a big pan evenly.
Spoon a dollop (about 2 measuring Tbs worth) of the potato mush into the hot oil. If the batter is thin enough and the oil hot enough, the latke should spread out and have thin, lacy edges. Adjust the mush, adding more water or flour to achieve these results. If the latkes are too watery and the oil too hot, you’ll just get potato splatters, not things you can pick up and eat. If the batter is too thick or the oil is too cool, the latke will keep the shape you spooned and be heavy, greasy, and patty-like.
Fry latkes in batches of two or three until they are golden brown on the first side, then flip them over. I use a fork to stab and flip rather than a spatula because if the latke is too soft to spear, it isn’t ready to turn.
Replenish the oil as needed. The ideal Leibowitz latke is very thin with a wide crispy edge. When hot, it should be too crunchy to fold in half.
Grandma drained the finished latkes on paper towels or brown paper. I find they get less soggy if they are drained on a wire rack. Salt them if desired when they are hot and right out of the oil.
Serve immediately with cold sour cream or applesauce. When my grandmother made these we kids would sit around the kitchen table like baby birds with mouths open wide, waiting for each pan full to be done.
Variations:
In accordance with Latke Rule #1, some families grate a small bit of raw onion into the mix. Others serve the latkes and sour cream with a very generous sprinkle of chives on top. Other families go for the sweet and spike the applesauce with a healthy amount of cinnamon. A friend’s family serves latkes with an apples stewed in honey-water dish I’ve never seen anywhere else. Other families belong to the “potato shreds held together with potato starch or flour and egg” school. These are good too, but they are not *the best* (see Latke Rule #2).
If you’re very good, I’ll post the family blintz recipe, too.
SYMMETRICAL SNAKE
Working through some quick holiday presents, over the past week (and in spite of deadlines) I managed to do up a Kureopatora’s Snake scarf. I used some Southwest Trading Company Karaoke, a 50% soy silk. 50% wool thin/thick single, with equivocal results.
To start with, I bought the Karaoke with this scarf in mind. I picked up just two skeins of it on a lark, in a now defunct yarn shop I visited during a business trip to Savannah, Georgia. I was rushed and didn’t have much time to play. My magpie self was attracted to the jewel like colors and the promise of exceptionally long repeats. I selected two skeins of the same color number and dyelot that looked to have the same colors on the outside, with the hope that they would be more or less symmetrical in their color progression. By the label, two skeins together were about 220 yards – short yardage for this project as written, but I decided that if I made a narrow Snake over 22 instead of 30 stitches, I’d have enough.
The yarn in the first skein was quite thick, with very few thin sections. The twist was uneven, with some heavily twisted thick bits, and some parts that were almost like untwisted roving. There were clot like “fluffs” of extraneous fiber stuck to the main strand that I picked off as I was working. Skein #1 began and ended with dark blue. I knit away, starting from the center of the skein. Repeats were exceptionally long. The entire skein seemed to encompass only one (the two yellow areas are markedly different). Starting at the photo’s left, I got to the scarf’s dark blue center section before I ran out of yarn.
Because I had two highly similar skeins and the repeat was so long I decided to try to play with color placement. I began using the second skein – also showing blue on its exterior – starting from the outside in. This yarn being 50% wool spit splices nicely, so I melded my trailing blue end onto the same color blue from the outside of the second skein and kept going.
Now is when the equivocal part kicks in. While the color matched nicely, the second skein was unlike the first in thickness, with extremely overtwisted thin sections making up the bulk of the thing, studded with lots of those fluffy fiber clots. The difference between the two balls is noticeable when knit, although I didn’t notice it in the skein. If you compare the left leg in the photo (knit with the thicker yarn) and the right leg (knit with the thinner second skein) you can see the difference in achieved width. The drape is quite different, too, with the left side being thick and plush, and the right side being skimpy by comparison.
Finally, while it didn’t matter much for this project, the total yardage for the two skeins was wildly different. I knit every inch of skein #1. I had about a quarter of skein #2 left over when I reached the comparable color point on my second leg and decided to end off.
So I now have a pretty and color-balanced rainbow Snake Scarf, that looks much better than it drapes. Plus a caution for anyone buying this yarn who expects to make something larger than a hat or pair of mitts from it. Printed yardage and gauge are both VERY unreliable. Buy one extra skein for every three you estimate that you need, just in case you end up with short yardage (though full weight) fat-yarn skeins. And if you want to use this for small projects, be advised that depending on the thickness in your skeins, you could be working this at anything from DK to bulky weight gauge. Also be advised that although soft, this yarn catches easily on everything, even dry skin, and on the highly saturated #298 colors will run when washed (based on the blue shedding when handled with damp hands). Final verdict – I wouldn’t use it again without specific reason, and if I had reason, would only buy this in person, and only after close inspection for uniformity.
Oh. How to make a wider or narrower Snake? Easy. Start the project as written. Continue the initial increase section until you have achieved an even number of stitches and your piece is the width you want. Work the trumpet like sections in the same method as written. Work the final section like the others until you have HALF of the stitches on each needle. On the next right side row (the one that commences at the left edge where you increased on previous rows) begin with a SSK instead of the increase. Continue until you have three stitches remaining on your needle. On the last row, SSSk all three of those stitches together.
READY TO PILLAGE
In counterpoint to the last post – here’s Smaller Daughter, armed with round shield, spear, sword and helm of her own manufacture.
In fact, yesterday her class, armed with similar tin-foil weapons, pillaged the fourth grade and selected offices in her elementary school. She got extra credit for trying to capture the principal.
To explain – her fifth grade class is finishing up a world history unit on the viking era of exploration and conquest. They’ve done famous leaders, history, migrations and settlement, culture, literature, technology and crafts. They played with spinning, sprang, kennings, navigation, sagas, and allthings; and finished up by staging their own raid on the rest of the school. They didn’t really burn or steal anything, instead they mostly ran around shaking their weapons and shouting, held some stuffed animals hostage, seized some pre-arranged “treasure”, tossed some papers around and had general kid-amok fun. No actual fourth-graders were harmed.
I was impressed that the unit mentioned sprang, but it turns out that Smaller Daughter’s teacher is a knitter. I should have known.
PLUCKED BUT NOT YET READY TO PILLAGE
The proud new dad to whom I gave the Chicken Viking Hat has rewarded me with this mug shot of the recipient modeling it:
It’s on backward, and none the less silly for wearing it that way. Here’s to the little guy! May he grow gracefully into the thing.
MORE SOCKS – LIKE POTATO CHIPS, BUT FUZZY
I’m back from a horrific spate of deadlines prior to a trip to see family in Florida for the holiday, and about to launch into another round of equally horrific deadlines. (I need to embroider a sampler that says “Another Day, Another Deadline.”)
But in the mean time, I can present the mindless knitting I did on the plane. I finished the pair of Noro Kureyon Sock slouch socks, and have almost finished another totally boring and featureless sock, this one of Regia 4-Ply, in their Design Line color grouping endorsed by Kaffee Fassett (Color 04455). Interesting play of colors, but like all stripers with no texture, miles of plain old stockinette.
Why knit these boring socks? Because I’m not a good traveler. The motion of the plane coupled with the gentle aroma of blended jet fuel exhaust and unwashed traveler, compounded by the coffin like minimalist seating squash makes me green. I can only work on things I don’t have to watch closely. Knitting from written or charted directions is a special challenge to both my personal equilibrium, and ability to contort to hold all in view without elbowing my seatmates. So for the trip, it’s plain old socks or some similar non-challenging bit of work.
On the ground in Florida I started a lace scarf. Again, separated from my reference library I relied on a simple printed pattern. In this case, the Estonian Lace Scarf by Nancy Bush, offered up on Knitting Daily for a limited time (it’s a reprint from Interweave Knits back in the Fall of 2001, if you still have access to that issue).
I’m using some Malabrigio Baby Merino Laceweight in a garnet-strawberry blend. It is not an optimal yarn for this project. First of all, it’s heavier than what I would consider to be a true laceweight, and would look better on a larger size needle than recommended in the pattern (the only one I packed for the trip). It’s a highly twisted single, more similar to a 3-ply in bulk. Second, the color variegation is fighting with the lace patterning. In particular the highly-annoying-to-work p7tog nupps (aka mini-bobbles) totally disappear. If I put in that finger twisting effort, I want the result to be seen. And finally, the pattern specifies 504 yards of yarn to complete. One skein of the Malabrigio is 470 or so yards. To save yarn, I planned on shortening the scarf by one repeat and improvising an edging instead of working the one shown. Even so, I am not pleased with the result:
I’m now thinking of carefully ripping it all out and starting over, either working this same pattern on a larger needle, or (now that I’m home) drafting out a different lace pattern that would be better suited to the color combo and available yardage. So it goes.
LIFE KNITTING AND BOOTIES
Google Images now contains Life Magazine’s vast photo archive. If you’re old enough to remember the heyday of home delivered magazines, you will most certainly remember that glossy, oversized, highly visual catalog of each week’s events. It was spectacular.
Buried in that archive are a nice set of knitting-related images, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. Most of them are from three issues, a 1939 one on knitting for the British army, a 1941 how-to-knit issue, and a 1952 home/baby knitting article. The accompanying articles aren’t in this archive, but the how-to and finished object pictures that formed the core are. There is also a smattering of celebrities at rest/with family pictures, some travelogue/news shots of women knitting abroad, and a couple of college girls knitting from the late ’40s/ early ’50s – the last time there was an on-campus knitting fad.
The 1941 how-to series pix are interesting because they show the pencil grip throwing style (even though some of the series pix are missing_. There are also at least one 1952 vintage how-to, showing Continental method:
- Long tail cast on
- K2tog decrease
- Binding off technique #1
- Binding off technique #2
- Binding off technique #3
- Purling #1
- Purling #4
- K2,P2 Ribbing
- Picking up along an edge #1
- Picking up along an edge #2
- Knit stitch (Continental , from 1952 article)
And some finished objects
- Knitted faceless Balaclava or hood
- Hat/scarf combo (open end of tube scarf forms hat)
- Another shot of the hat/scarf
- Soaker
Here are some of the other shots:
- Celebrity knitter Eleanor Roosevelt knitting on a plane? train?, 1937
- British showgirls knitting, 1937
- Cover picture from the 1941 how to knit issue
- British store clerk knitting (1939)
- Celebrity knitter Prisca Bunau-Varilla (French Ambassador’s daughter) 1960
- Cute woman gas station attendant knitting
- British waiter doing troop knitting (note method of holding yarn)
- Celebrity knitter Eve Arden, 1959
- Hotel page boys knitting, 1939
- Height of the campus argyle knitting craze, 1948
- Wounded Finnish soldier and nurse knitting, (note that he’s using Continental method, she’s throwing. I bet he learned as a kid at home.) 1940
- Lose weight while knitting? 1940
- Celebrity knitter Jane Froman, 1936
- Chinese girls knitting on long bamboo(?) DPNs, 1946
- Gangsters’ wives knit, too. 1949
- Celebrity knitter JoAnne Woodward. Perhaps Paul is getting socks, 1958
- British toddler playing with knitting 1939
- Celebrity knitter Barbara Bel Geddes 1959
- Striking women auto workers knitting (France), 1937
- British ambulance driver knitting, 1937
- Knitting in public, 1944
- Troop knitting 1939
- Celebrity knitting Byron Nelson and wife (wife knitting), 1945
But to me, the most interesting picture is that of this little bootie, from 1952. Although I prefer not to repost the pix of others, I think fair use here applies so you can see these side by side:
The “Janes Booties” (at right) I often knit are one of those much loved, scribbled-on-an-envelope patterns passed hand to hand. The version I use was posted to the KnitList by Ann Kreckel in 1995. I did a step by step how-to for Ann’s pattern in 2005. Extremely similar patterns have appeared in a letter to Threads Magazine, and in the 1999 Knitters Socks Socks Socks competition book. The Threads letter was printed in the 1991s, and was penned by an elderly lady who said she’d been knitting them since her girlhood. My guess is that the ur-source for this pattern might have been a magazine article or leaflet appearing sometime between 1900 and 1920.
I’m always on the lookout for earlier manifestations of Janes Booties so this shot grabbed my attention. The Life magazine bootie looks a bit squashed and shallow compared to my green bootie, but I can see that it shares basic construction with the pattern I use. First, the bottom looks to be a rectangle of garter stitch. The sides of the bootie look like more garter stitch picked up around the edge of the sole plate strip, then knit in the round. The top of the toe looks like it was worked flat, back and forth, culminating with the tube-knit ankle part, worked in the round on the ankle stitches plus those from the top of the foot. Eyelets form the holes for the tie string.
While the Life bootie is much less plump, with a shallow toe area and overall less boxy appearance (no garter stitch welts to form the sides), and ended off in a plain garter anklet rather than a rolled stockinette top, it was made the same way. I’d consider it a first cousin to Ann Kreckel’s pattern. If anyone spots earlier incarnations of similarly constructed booties in historical sources, please let me know!
ADVENTURES IN THE UNSEEN
I was wrong and I freely admit it. Remember the post in which I described a method for estimating the depth of stripes that would be produced by a skein of space dyed or multicolor patch yarn? I applied that method to my skein of Noro Kureyon Sock, and it flat out missed the mark.
Based on skein size and color strand counting, I estimated that each solid color stripe would last 4-6 rows or so before shading into the next. I still stand by that for the yarn on the outside of the skein, but I didn’t factor into my estimation how seemingly random Noro yarns can be. Here’s the skein:
I see lots of turquoise and magenta, with side trips to royal blue and deep green. The color segments of the yarn on the outside of the skein appear to last for the lengths I indicated.
But here’s the resulting slouch sock (a sock with a deliberately wide ankle part), knit from the center of the ball out. It’s brother is just a tiny turquoise cast-on speck right now:
Huh? where did that huge lump of royal blue above the heel come from? And the green/orange mix directly above that? And why is the pink/purple section so unexpectedly wide? Counting the strands on the inner layer visible on the un-dissected skein, pink/purple should be equal in width to green. What gives?
I might have been less surprised had there been more than one skein of this color number available on the day I bought the yarn. Looking at several, each starting at a different spot in the color progression might have revealed larger (or different) color segments than I anticipated. In any case, the color repeat has gone through about one and a half cycles in this sock, hitting the toe’s hue blend about halfway between orange stripe and densest part of the magenta, although factoring in the wider circumference of the ankle part than the foot, the second appearance of the pink/purple is longer than that combo’s debut.
So there’s my caveat. I still say my estimation method works. Mostly. Except for Noro, where all bets are off.
Pattern footnote:
How to do a slouch sock? Easy. US #00s. Standard figure-8 cast on toe, worked on a set of five DPNs. Increase to 17 stitches per needle until just before the heel (68 st total). Increase one stitch per needle to 18 (72 st total), work a standard short row heel across two needles (36 stitches), instead of decreasing away the two sneaky stitches used to minimize any top-of-heel-decrease gaps, keep them, and increase one stitch each on the two non-heel needles for a total of 19 stitches per needle (76 st total). Work leg part equal in length to foot (folded along the heel’s natural equator), then work about 20 rows of K2, P2 ribbing and end off.
Why do a slouch sock? Between the wild colors, thick/thin spin, and overtwist, any lacy or texture pattern would be lost in this stuff. Also this yarn isn’t a good candidate for stranding or striping with another (although two different but closely related skeins in a simple stranding pattern might be interesting). I’ve had some breakage, and I’m not inclined to use this stuff for a nice, snug sock that takes a lot of stretching to put on. The roomy top will diminish that strain.
NOT-SO-ANTIQUE SAMPLER
I was rooting around in some boxes last weekend as I searched for left-over batting to stuff the chicken hat. I ran across a truly ancient one, full of dawn of time artifacts. Among them was this.
This sad little sampler is the second thing I ever embroidered. It’s a pattern stamped on linen, stitched in whatever leftovers were in my grandmother’s thread basket. I must have been around 5 when I did it because I remember bringing it finished into my first grade class show and tell during the first week of school.
I also remember picking it out. My grandmother and I went to a small, dark shop somewhere in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. It was a hot summer day, and even though the sun was out, the street was heavily shadowed by an elevated subway track. The store specialized in needlework supplies. I remember there being a tabletop display of sorts, one of those elevated shallow wooden bins, slopping over with small squares of this type. Thinking back, most were probably iron-ons that the shop applied to their own yardage, but there were also pre-printed strips for applique onto other items, plus toaster cozies and pillowcases. I remember Sunbonnet Sues and lots of flowers, but not that many with mottoes, and none with alphabets. That last point sticks with me because I wanted to stitch an alphabet sampler. And I remember taking the subway back home, anxious to sit down with my grandmother and start sewing.
The stitches are oddly leggy and none too precise. The inopportune colors have faded (the pale pink now was a very dark carnation when new). Thread coverage is spindly, – a haphazard mix of Perle cotton and stranded floss. The French knots are knobby growths, and the tension on the detached chains makes them look like squinty little eyes. The back is a horror.
But I can see the spots that I did last are neater, and by the end of the project I had learned to make all my top legs lie in the same direction. But most of all – I finished the thing.
It may be an ugly little artifact, but I’m proud of it.
OP ART DONE!
My Knitty Op Art blanket is done:
It’s about 47 inches across the center. I used about six skeins of green and five of yellow Austermann Record 210. I had begun another round of yellow but I didn’t have enough yarn to complete the next progression, so I ripped it back, opting instead to use up all available green for the outer, larger framing section. Obviously, I haven’t attempted blocking yet. Cotton yarn as a rule does not deform as well under blocking as does wool, and this dense cotton in particular has a mind of its own. I suspect I’ll have to pin this to within an inch of its life, then steam block it rather than just damp blocking. But that’s an exercise for another day. Even if I don’t get around to it, the odd shape (although unorthodox) isn’t unappealing.
In other knitting news, I continue to slog away at the spiderweb section of my growing olive green tablecloth, but pix of the standard indistinct and blurry snood shape object won’t reveal much beyond the fact that it still exists. Also I was tempted too long by the skein of Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn that’s been sitting atop my monitor since I posted about its acquisition back in July. I had thought about doing something unusual with it rather than just socks, but the lure of those colors proved too strong.
At that time I bought it I posited that each color area would last about three or four rows in a sock. My instinct was more or less correct, but the yarn has more transitions and in-between gradations than I expected. Knit up, the color sections look like they last much longer, but if you examine closely “pure” colors do last for about five or six rows before they begin transforming into the long “tweener” blend areas:
For the record, I’m using 00s, and am working at the relatively large gauge (for me) of 8 stitches per inch. Although I usually prefer my socks knit tighter, this yarn is a bit heavy compared to the sock yarns I usually use. It’s also a single, with a fair bit of unevenness – some parts are thinner than others – and a fair bit of overtwist. The overtwist can be a pain because the yarn will kink up on itself if a long section is drawn from the skein. I’ve also noticed that other knitters have complained about Kureyon Sock’s feel, thinking it a bit on the coarse side. It is hard on the fingers as it is being knit, but the resulting sock at my gauge is nice and cushy and feels much softer than palpitating the skein promises.
This pair won’t be finished any time soon. Now that the first sock has been kicked off, I’ve relegated it to “briefcase project” status. That’s the small, portable project I keep on hand to knit at doctors’ appointments, while waiting on line at the post office, and other stolen oddments of time. My socks will be done. Eventually.
String-Or-Nothing 
