… and don’t you ever forget it!

We were driving by Castalia Marsh at high tide, the other day, and were astonished to see that it was completely flooded.  It’s winter, high tides tend to be at their highest, and we did just have a wicked storm system come through, that did significant damage in Port Elgin, NB.  But, still — this was a couple of days later, and we’d never seen the Marsh as anything other than, well, a marsh, with small tufted islands and channels of water.

Instead (click for slightly bigger) — in the image below, you can see the picnic area almost overrun, and the remains of a couple of duck blinds poking out of the water in the distance.

And, as you can see below — the causeway/breaker wall between the Bay of Fundy and the Marsh was completely overrun.  The 3 pictures below show progress along the causeway, on what used to be the access road.  It’s now strewn with football-sized rocks, tossed up by the surf at some point.  (While we were there, someone came by in their F-1Million pickup truck and tried to pick his way along — he gave up and retreated).

It always impresses me what the simple forces of nature can wreak on our carefully engineered, man-made interventions (like, say, roads).

A slightly different perspective — looking back at the exit from the picnic area parking:  the road just stops:

The water was still somewhat stormy that day — lovely winter colours.

I dug through my old photos to try to find some useful comparisons.  It seems that the things that were photogenic in the wintry, flooded, stormy state were not the same as the things I thought to snap when it was in its seasonal prime!  But, a few comparative pictures of the surrounding shorelines, below (click for bigger pics).

Before	January 2010

Many buildings in Amsterdam are old.  And they have a “native population”, that survives transfer of ownership.  To help deal with this, it is not unusual for restaurants to employ “peace keepers” of the four-legged sort.

I recently met Mavis:

Mavis was not above supplementing her rodent-chasing diet with handouts from the restaurant’s kitchen:

While I’m not naming the restaurant above, it should be noted that I have actually seen mice running across the floor in a (different) restaurant in Amsterdam, and Mavis was not the first resto-cat I’d encountered in that city.  Sometime back in 2003, I met this “greeter”:

Double-duty mouser & maitre d’? ;-)

Best wishes, from Grand Manan.

And, by request — socks in the window:

Those are, in fact, new socks (old feet).  There’ve been a few end-of-year Finished Objects here at KnitBot central, and they are duly posted up on in the KnitBot Yarn Gallery.

And, for fun — here is the year in review (all objects finished in 2009 — some were certainly started earlier).

Knitbot’s 2009 FOs

In that, you can see that there were 7 travel projects (i.e., projects that could be worked on while in transit and/or in meetings).  That’s not too surprising, given the type of year it was…  It’s a little surprising to me that I managed to finish 4 non-travel projects in the year — the sweaters/top.  Three of them were pretty easy knits — the diamond modular top, the diagonal (Petra) sweater, and the black jacket.  The Triple L Tweed sweater was the really big project for the year — in December 2008, I was swatching with the yarn to get some ideas.  The rest of the year was about working out a plan for the whole sweater, and then constructing the various bits of it.  I might go as far as to say I think it’s my most successful sweater design yet (not that there have been many…). 

And, it’s a new year.  Not that I’m formulating any formal resolutions here, but let’s just say it would be good to see as many projects, fewer of them travel projects, this time next year.

When looking at grey November vistas, stunning in their simple beauty…

there’s only one question:  guess who’s coming…

… to dinner?

And a fine dinner they were, too.

Didn’t stop me from playing with the “Duck
a la Something or Other” recipe — browning the cabbage and onion
before adding it to the duck in the slow cooker to braise for the last
hour.

And this year’s sauce was orange and raspberry:

Wanting to play with something completely different, I came across a
recipe for smoked
cheddar, spinach and sundried tomato ravioli.  But, I thought
it would be dull to use the wonton wrappers called for — made some
fresh pasta, instead.  And, I didn’t have a ravioli form — went
with a mini-muffin tin, instead:

Which made yummy, if oversized, ravioli!

And, there was pasta leftover.  I cut the leftover pasta into
fettucini.  Now I know why there are those nifty holes in the
backs of chairs:

And, in more discoveries… The measuring cup lurking on the stovetop
in the duck adventure?  Well, gelatinous.  And, suspiciously
like “graisse
de canard“.

Haven’t quite found the gumption to try a slice of this on bread…
might just sort it into duck soup (still have the bones) and keep the
fat for confit.  Who can say what the next culinary adventure will
be?  If you could, it wouldn’t be play…

So, what would make you, the day after a 12 hour flight home from Japan, turn this:

Into this?:

I’d like to say something clever, like “reverse jetlag”,  or “desperately delayed burst of house pride”, but that’s hardly the case.  Rather, it took a wolf’s influence… the arrival of the Schacht Baby Wolf I’d ordered in the middle of the night from a hotel room in London, on the last day of September…

It’s a folding loom, with 26″weaving width. 

Being the sort of person I am, I blew straight past the 4-shaft phase, and straight to an 8 shaft (10 treadle) loom.  My expectation is that this will be not only my first, but my only loom.  Not everyone in the house is quite so sanguine, as our basement slowly gets devoured by my fibre-consuming toys…

Of course, having 8 shafts, it also came with 800 heddles to install on those glaringly empty shafts.  It occurred to me that playing with 800 fiddly, loose metal bits was not something to attempt while jetlagged and/or tired.  From experience, I can say that was the right expectation.    Sigh.  They pick up easily.

I still don’t have the final pieces in place, not even the cords to attach the treadles to the shafts — but here’s a quick view of what it looks like with one shaft raised (which will form a shed through which one shoots the shuttle with a bobbin, once it’s all warped up and set to go).  You can see — the shaft is pushed up by the “jacks” underneath.

Well, lots more to learn and fiddle with.  It’ll be fun.  And take a while.

And, why, yes, that is a complete Atari 1040st system in boxes in the background above.  Complete with black and white AND colour monitors!  And a 30Mbyte hard drive.  Any takers? :-)

Every now and then, the question comes up on knitting message boards — “can I take my knitting project on the plane?”.  There is no uniform answer across the globe.  Generally speaking, knitting needles are allowed through airport security in Canada and the US, but not allowed in a number of European airports.  And, there are plenty of stories of sad knitters who have had to throw out their expensive Addi Turbos at the security checkpoint, leaving their knitting project in a tenuous state of unattached stitches.  I’ve even heard of some airports requiring people to cut the cable on their circular needle, for fear it would be used as a garrote:  safer for the knitting project than abandoning the needle, but end of useful life of the circular needle.

For myself, I really like the Denise plastic modular needle set:  the modularity is convenient.  The plastic pieces are innocuous, and may not even show up on security scans.  Sure, they are not Addi Turbos, but they are still pretty usable needles. 

Apart from that — I keep a small project (like, a sock project on 5″ wooden needles, such as Grafton Fibers’ Darn Pretty Needles, which are sturdy and sharp) just for travel.

When traveling to or through Europe, I don’t bring knitting projects on the plane — but I have a travel crochet project I bring just for the plane rides.  The theory is simple — it’s a crochet hook, not a needle.  And, if they ever give me grief and cause me to surrender the hook at security, at least I’ve just got the one loop to secure, and the project will not unravel until I have a new hook.   Yeah, I like knitting much more than crochet, but I like crochet considerably more than being BORED MINDLESS on a plane, watching movies I never wanted to see, on half-failed entertainment system (should I change airlines? :-) ).   Knock on wood — it’s worked so far.

Of course, if you have travel knitting (or crochet, as here) — you should take it out and show it a good time, while traveling:

This crochet stole is now finished — I’ll provide more details, gallerize it and declare it an FO when I’ve gotten it home and properly blocked (along with another lace project, finished up last month).  It’s no particular pattern — just a stitch pattern I thought looked pretty, that I did for four feet of stole, and threw an edge around :-)

See — the knitting (and crochet) continue, even if I don’t blog about it every five minutes!

One more shot of the stole — where you can see some of the detail in the patterning.

I do mean fog…

It’s like somebody turned off the CGI rendering of the background (cove, boats, rest of island…).

Or, here’s a different perspective of Flaggs Cove, Grand Manan, not in fog:

The fog can also play tricks — fading here, and thickening there.  Here, you see a glimpse of Castalia.

But, here it’s all equally fuzzy:

Here’s a fine example of something that should be seen, and not heard:

These pheasants make a noise that sounds something like a car starter being turned after the car is already running.

This guy & his missus have taken over our property, strutting about in full ownership mode.

They might be even better tasted than seen, but that’s not a direction I’m planning to pursue.

988 miles, blue carrier, pink blankie…

Window!

No, really — quite happy:

I’m sensitive to the mutterings I’ve been hearing lately — that for “knitbot”, there sure isn’t much knitting content on this blog.  Well, this post is not going to change that situation! 

If you happen to find yourself considering making Bon Appetit’s Devil’s Food Layer Cake with Pepperming Frosting, there are a couple of things you should know.

First, if you have a stand mixer with a paddle blade, get yourself one of these silicone self-wiping paddle attachments:

This is a SideSwipe.  It seriously removes the need to be constantly scraping down the mixing bowl as you work — which more or less improves the effectiveness by (subjectively) 50%.  I fell in love with my KitchenAid all over again…

Second, when they say 2 nine-inch cake pans, 2″ deep.  They mean minimum 2″ deep.  Otherwise:

Not only is that a “switch oven to self clean mode, do not pass Go, do not collect $200″ situation, it is not possible to salvage the cakes in the pans, even if cooked — because they are too delicate to extract from the pan:

Well, those cakes wound up in the freezer, no doubt to reappear for some future dessert (chocolate cake trifle, anyone?).

And, the third thing you should know is that the resulting cake (once you’ve given in and recognized you don’t have 9″x2″ cake tins, and bake the cake batter in 3 9″x1.25″ tins) is really, really tall:

(Yes, I can count.  The middle cake is split in two, to make 2 layers of four).

Personally, I thought that height was out of control.  Moreover, I could not fathom how I would cut and serve it without making a toppled mess.  So, I quickly did a re-distribution:

Worked out okay — though, not surprisingly, there wasn’t quite enough frosting to cover the top of the second cake:

And, you should consider making the cake — because it is very very tasty.  Decadently rich, of course, but certainly worth the effort of making the cakes from scratch (yes, much better than box cakes, even if you have to make them twice :-(  ), the bittersweet chocolate ganache, the white chocolate filling, and the peppermint boiled icing…

When is a (meeting) table not a table?

When it is a Rube Goldberg implementation of a table:

Yes, those are vise grips and hinges you see under there.

And it all looked so innocent with the table clothes!

For Christmas, I received one of these:

It’s an Emile
Henry Flame Top Tagine.  Tagine is a North
African pot for producing slow-cooked delicacies, such as one might
experience in Morocco.  “Flame top” is Emile Henry’s special
material — a clay vessel that works on the cooktop, in the oven, in
the fridge etc.  Deeee-lightful.

Oh, and it is perfect tableware, too — bring this to the table!

“This” is the salmon
tagine I made tonight.  It was perfectly cooked, and very
flavourful.  I regretted I could not get preserved lemons in time
– I have resolved to preserve some myself for a future effort.

We share an office here, so the rule is that someone who has a
teleconference has to wander off to some other part of the house to
have it.  It’s not all bad — the views are pleasant, and watching
the waves (“~~~~~”) is fun:

Sometimes, there are added distractions — the teleconferencee is not
necessarily the only one getting harried:

In particular, in this case, there’s a bald eagle being pursued by
crows (ravens?):

(Photo by CMS)

I perhaps didn’t catch all the
detail on that particular teleconf…

It started innocently enough, with the duck
thing, and slid right along with the roast turkey
challenge.

Then there was the choux done
proper-like:

to accompany the rock cornish hens (stand ins for perdrix this year):

(There is cabbage in there, between the hen-halves & the toast
points:  trust me!).
 
Finally, for good measure, some coq
au vin to round things out.  This was done a
la Alton Brown (Good Eats).  I had to hold it over a day, so I
brought the components out of the fridge:

and mixed them together, to heat:

Mmm!  Purple chicken!  Doesn’t get much better than that ;-)
.  Really, the chicken is cooked in that picture; the 2 bottles of
Pinot Noir (Trapiche) had something to say about the colour, though.

Heated up and served, it was perhaps more appealing:

And, that’s that! 

What?  What other thing?  Oh, that.

A little spot of  Doris Greenspan’s “Dressy
Chocolate Loaf Cake” never went amiss.

Best wishes, from Grand Manan.

(Stanley Beach; -12C (-23C with windchill)).

… but, thankfully, no fire in the sky.

This is -10C air over salt water.

Merry merry!  Best wishes of the season.

 It’s certainly been merry here.

An important point about message fragmentation.  Here are 2 very
different messages, each starting with the same first chunk:

1. We found the roasting pan we thought we’d given away.
2. We found the roasting pan we thought we’d given away, but it’s
   not in fit condition to use for food preparation, you’d best bring
   yours again.

Guess which version of the communication I had, right up to the point
when I was hotting up the oven and ready to pop in the turkey I’d
volunteered to prepare  chez
les beaux parents this year?  :-) 

The roasting pan was lurking under the shelves in the basement
workshop, a WWII-generation looking thing that had been gathering dust
for more years than I’ve been cooking. And the worst-looking kind of
dust (and rust).   There weren’t great alternatives, so I
consented to see what DH could do to clean it up — convincing him to
use cooking oil to scrub it with, not inedible WD40…  And when
successive wipes with a paper towel were still coming away with bits of
rust, I wiped it down with canola oil and threw it into the already hot
oven to seal it.   Apart from having to position a standing
fan by the oven to direct the inevitable smoke towards the windows
(away from the alarm-company wired-in smoke detector), that did the
trick rather nicely.

I’ve decided it has the character of a cast iron pan — a little oil
and TLC, and it comes through like a champ.

Note the rounded bottom — no nasty corners to catch and hide cooking
food.

I think I know the perfect home for this old champ.

A propos of nothing in
particular,   Christmas sunset over Waterloo Lake:

Perhaps — just perhaps — I
am learning.

I have previously
observed, on more
than one occasion, that I really should swatch for colours and
pattern realities before I embark on a project.

I’m now playing with some ideas for a multicolour, textured sweater in
Rowan Cocoon (chunky merino/kid mohair).  I bought the yarn with
an eye to colours that played nicely together, but realized I should
get some sense of what the best combinations are (for hue as well as
value) before I
get too far along in the design process.

This was just playing around — I haven’t really thought about what
motifs I want to use (for colour or texture), but it’s quite clear that
the maroon and dark brown are pretty “subtle” together.  “Subtle”
would be a code word for “bad idea” :-)  But, the maroon would go
well with the base colour, and might even play off the teal
nicely.  We’ll see what happens…

Last week, I did my Christmas (cookie) marathon, constructing and
baking 4 different batches of cookies through the week, and another 4
on Saturday.  It’s not like there’s  a lack of other things
going on this month — I just broke them up into stages and wove the
different stages (dough, shaping, resting, baking, decorating) in and
around other things.

Usually, the star performer in my Christmas cookie plate is Alton
Brown’s Chocolate
Peppermint Pinwheel.  I’ve been known to (have to) make more
than one batch of them in a season.

This year, it was a good cookie gone very, very bad…

Note how the chocolate layer is broken/breaking off.

I’m still not really sure what happened, though I have a
suspicion.  The cookies are made by making one batch of butter
cookie dough, splitting it in half, adding peppermint flavouring to
half of it and chocolate to the rest.  I.e., the base cookie dough
is the same in the whole cookie.

When I went to roll the doughs out, the chocolate dough was hard.  It actually clattered
when it hit the counter.  This was straight out of the fridge, so
I waited to see if it would behave any better when warmed.  My
suspicion is that I didn’t split the dough evenly enough, and that
threw off the ratio of melted chocolate to dough in the chocolate
segment.  So, it was hard chocolate hitting the counter.  I
wound up having to heat the dough in the microwave (for 30 seconds) to
be able to roll it out — but it never behaved like a cohesive whole,
as is witnessed by the broken bits above.

Oh, well.  Still tasty.  But I don’t think I can put them in
Christmas cookie gifts!

The beauty of doing 8 batches is that, for every failure such as the
above, there are successes… The raspberry
jam-filled, chocolate dipped ones seem to have come out okay.

And, the ginger bread condescended to let me roll it out and cut it
this year.

Now this is obscure:  the 1904 date system in Excel.

I was working with a spreadsheet in which I was trying to create a
projection of a larger spreadsheet.  I.e., I want to be able to
share just a portion of the larger spreadsheet — so I copied the
relevant cells from the larger workbook and pasted them into the
shareable workbook as links.  Which was fine — except the dates
were all wrong.  Right day/month, wrong year.

After a few judicious Google searches, I stumbled across the fact that
the Mac-created Excel spreadsheet was using the 1904 date system as
a default; unselecting that (in preferences) restored my copied dates
to the right year.  Victory!

But, here’s the larger picture:  I need to share the projected
worksheet with staff located at remote offices.  A communications
network that lets me send data point-to-point is all I need for
that.  However, point-to-point (connection-oriented) is not appropriate to develop the sort
of widespread information network that is the World Wide Web on the
Internet. I would not know who to turn to for resolution to this
annoying glitch. (The link above is to a Microsoft site; the one that I
actually hit at the time was some random user help group). 

To state the hopefully-obvious:  we’re all thoroughly invested in
this global information service supported by the Internet, and anything
that gets in the way of J. Random Helper posting solutions that S.
Frantic User can stumble across is a significant step backwards.