Screenshot: A Weblog

I am very excited, because tomorrow I'm taking part in my first Sock Wars! It's a single-elimination tournament where you assassinate your target by knitting and sending them a pair of socks before your assassin sends a pair to you. The sock pattern and target dossiers are being sent out tomorrow. I'm not the fastest knitter in the world and with it coming into finals, I'll be pretty happy if I make it into the second round on my first time out. I went out and got my yarn and checked my gauge yesterday. I'm using this Sockotta yarn from Plymouth. I like knitting in the cotton/wool blend and I went with color pattern 6670 (one of the fair isle effect color patterns), which I think will knit up into pretty, bright spring socks. I'll probably come back and post on my progress in the comments....

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There are a ton of memes like this, but I'm thinking of keeping my weblogging juices flowing by taking part in these Weekend Assignment weblogging prompts. It is contrived, but looking back the questions seem pretty good.

This week we are asked:

Weekend Assignment #201: To promote a new cooking show, a TV station is going to pay you $500 to eat the same basic meal every day for a week, prepared with only minor variations by their on-screen host. What's on the menu?
Extra credit: Do you tend to eat the same thing all the time anyway?

For me, the answer to the extra credit pretty much answers the first question. I definitely get in food ruts where I eat the same thing for a week or two straight. I made a huge batch of Susie's Green-Curry Shrimp last week and have been eating it basically every night since then, making up fresh rice in my microwave rice cooker as needed. I do that with stew and chili a lot also - I can eat either every night for a week easily, especially if it is within the "rules" (or, my own inclination to bake or go to the store) to have fresh bread or biscuits with it.

So, really, this doesn't sound like a challenge at all so long as it is something I like okay. But, I've never understood people who didn't like leftovers. There is a show on the Food Network right now that seems to be all about how to get three different meals out of the same ingredients and preparation processes - it just seems easier and no less appealing to make three times as much of the first dish and be done with it.

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Today was a long day, so tonight I relaxed and made a couple of loaves of Rudbeckia's Buttermilk-Lavender Bread. It is sooooo good! I never bother to bake with buttermilk, even though my dad swears that it makes better pancakes than regular milk, but I tried using it here and it was really worth it. The recipe assumes you are a bread-baking person and will recognize when the "dough holds together like it should". I found that that took about four cups of flour for me, maybe a little more, but I'm also happy with my bread dough being a bit sticky. The bread turns out only lightly herby - this is not an overwhelmingly flavored bread - but is nice and rich from the butter and buttermilk. Definitely worth trying if you like to bake.

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You can buy these adorable Tetris Magnets, but they also look pretty trivial to make for yourself if you've even done plastic canvas work. I also think this Tie Top Tank looks incredibly cute and simple. I just need to finish off the one or two projects I already have underway before I can justify starting anything new.....

I'm also tempted to pull out one of the smaller patterns I've worked up on my own and submit it to the Knit Pattern of the Day or Crochet Pattern of the Day calendar. But it is interesting to note that they don't pay for the patterns. The primary incentive (besides a free calendar and being entered in a prize raffle) is that you can include a URL on your calendar page if your pattern is accepted. So, really, these calendars are advertisement vehicles - something I'd never really thought of when I've seen them in the stores.

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A friend pointed out to me that if you are at all interested in knitting or crocheting you should wander by the Knit and Crochet Festival. I've never been, but looking at the schedule it looks like there's going to be not only vendors but a bunch of classes and also some open hang-out-and-knit/crochet spaces. I'm probably going to spend tonight curled up in my comfy chair with my piles of patterns around me planning out if there are any pending projects that I'd be interested in browsing for supplies for and then heading out there some time this weekend.

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WIth a major project done, the temptation hits to pick up too many new things to fill the fake void in one's schedule. I'm working on finishing off a variation of the Cheesy Love sweater with a more argyle style pattern across the front in pastel cotton. But I also spent the afternoon browsing through my latest issue of Craft and somehow only just realized that like the sister publication Make, Craft has a weblog with great links to projects and patterns. I've been trawling through the archives and the following were the standouts, some of them particularly geeky....

• Knit an iPod case out of cassette tape - wonderful and cute!
• Knit Atari Breakout and Apple Logo socks - sadly labelled "TechGuy Socks"
• Knit a donut
• Star Wars fairisle patterns for sweaters, or whatever else you like
• Make the Enterprise out of an old 3.5 inch floppy
• Knit mittens with pockets for RFID cards, designed for subway passes
• Repurpose cool tshirts into cute panties
• sew the Dana wrap skirt from the neat Fitz Patterns which provides free downloadable sewing patterns

Not everything they link is a crafty pattern. I found this guide to using a spreadsheet and Gantt chart to plan a large dinner there.

In unrelated news, D asks me to share Poke the Penguin in honor of Penguin Awareness Day...

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In class tomorrow we are going to talk about 5 variable Karnaugh maps, having just done 2-4 variable Karnaugh maps. I'm partial to the 5-variable versions pictured at that link with the diagonal lines to indicate the top versus bottom of the map. Working through some examples for my lecture notes today, I noticed that they look an awful lot like quilt patterns, like these traditional Nine-patch Blocks. I am now determined to design a quilt based around a five-variable boolean expression - I envision blue fabrics for true, white for false, and maybe yellow for don't cares. I just need to chose a good boolean expression, now. I'm thinking of looking for a good quote with an interesting logical structure that I can translate into an expression and go from there....

Posted by Amanda at 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh yeah - the little clutch purses whose instructions are given here
are soooo cute and also look like the perfect way to use up a moderate amount of a pretty fabric, though the designer comes at it from more from an interest in using the cool handles you can find in craft stores. The pattern seems very scalable - make a little change purse or a full sized bag - or a set of both. I've got some awesome purple plaid silk that I'm going to made a box-pleat summer dress out of, and I'm thinking the scraps would make a really cute accessory, though I'll have to think about how the plaid will line up in that pattern...

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It's that magical time when I geek out about the latest Knitty, this time the Winter 2006 issue. There are a few socks, which is great (Monkey is a cute pattern, and the model is wearing totally cute shoes), and the felted brown bag is awesome. But, the prize has to be Binary, which I will definitely make, and in which the pattern of 1s and 0s will definitely not be random....

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In the past week, some very different do-it-yourself projects have come across the MAKE: Blog:

Building a crystal radio out of household items,

Mak e a resistor man! (sooooo cute!),

make an LED Popsicle stick picture frame,

and a bit late from the holidays, Make a Pecan pie based Icosahdron, aka the pie-cosahedron.

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I usually prefer a bland-looking plate of chocolate chip cookies to most crafty no-bake treats, but these Halloween "crawly cakes" over at Not Martha, based on snack cakes and pocky, are really adorable. You could clearly do this with homemade cupcakes, but I think the snack-cake look is a big part of their charm.

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New Knitty! New Knitty! Curl up with a cup of coffee and plan your projects for the next couple of months! (That's what I'm doing!)

Ivy is a gorgeous wrap sweater with amazing cable details at the waist and cuffs. On the sock front, Red Herring have a nice herringbone pattern and is the pattern from this collection I'm most likely to actually make. Little slip of a thing is a great-looking felted bag that - very cool - only uses one strand of yarn throughout but supposedly still has fairly robust structure. Intolerable cruelty is also drawing my attention, even though it probably shouldn't....

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It just came to my attention that the summer issue of Knitty is out; they're calling it "the extremities issue", as it is focusing on gloves and socks and the like. This is very sensible for a summer issue - small projects are way more tolerable in this weather than big sweaters and afghans that lay across your lap. (I, of couse, am quite intelligently spending my summer making a beaded mohair shawl....)

Looking at their new pattern offerings, there's a pretty toe-up sock design, Widdershins that I might try, or maybe the longer, lacy Baudelaire pair. The Sock Monkey Hat is adorable. While I am not a legwarmer fan, the Manresa pattern makes some that look really comfy and non-80s-flashback - I could imagine pulling these on for a commute over tights, if one's shoes didn't accomodate bulky wool socks.

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The latest issue of Knitty featured an adorable pattern for stuffed nautiloids, and I couldn't resist. It's a suitable pattern for using up scrap yarn, and it is very easy. I liked that you stuff the shell as you go along, because it leaves very little finishing to do at the end. You can even get away with just shoving your loose ends inside after you knot them off. I had a bit of a struggle deciding on the placement for the tentacles, but in the end I'm pleased with how this little guy turned out.

For this particular nautiloid, I used Red Heart worsted weight acrylic leftovers, with a dark green head and alternating rows of red and orange for the body. I wasn't sure how the alternated color rows would look - they're sort of hard to see even in the pattern images, but it really adds to the spiral effect. The biggest tip I have for making the pattern is to make sure you knit fairly tight as you go along, so that the stuffing doesn't show through, and then to stuff firmly, so the spiral shape really holds up.

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I've been meaning to look into how the image search engine Pixsy actually works, as it's been getting a lot of attention. I poked around on their site and couldn't find any explanation of their methods, but from trying out some searches, it doesn't appear that they are doing any actual image processing, just doing text processing for text and tags in proiximity to images they are indexing.

This theory is supported by my discovery that the top 5 out of 12 image results on the query term "ufo" are pictures of quilts. Which absolutely cracks me up in how right, and yet wrong, they are.

Interestingly, the first 500 images returned in Google's image search contain many weird things, but no craft-project pictures. I am undecided about whether this makes me like Google search more or less.

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Feeding America is a collection of historic American cookbooks, a section of the Michigan State University's wider collection of historic cookbooks. Their website includes images of the page scans as well as text versions and downloadable pdf reproductions of the cookbooks. While the collection is of cookbooks, the content of these books is more than just recipes. There is also content about the knowledge of that time about how to prevent or treat illnesses, and on homemaking topics in general. For an example, check out The Frugal Housewife published in 1830. Also interesting is Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers' Guide, which is described as the "second major Black-authored culinary work in America". I'd highly recommend even just browsing the introductions written to accompany each text, highlighting its historical significance, or watch their video tour of the collection.

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I was IMing with a friend last night and we decided that I am the anti-Sandra Lee.

Sandra Lee is the frightening person behind the Semi-Homemade trademark, and host of the self-titled Food Network show in which she illustrates how to live the Semi-Homemade life. Every meal in Semi-Homemade world is garnished just so, served at a color-coordinated "tablescape" that usually seems to involve using one's extensive collection of cake plates as pedestals for the dinner plates, and is accompanied by an also color-coordinated cocktail (but don't worry - Sandra always shows how to serve out virgin portions for the kids before finishing them up). Underneath this veneer of gracious homemaking is a collection of short-cut recipes heavy with prepared foods which are then cleverly doctored up to hide the fact that no real ingredients went into the making of the meal.

My identity as the anti-Sandra Lee become apparant to me when describing my version of a quick homemade meal out of stuff in my cupboard - tuna spinach casserole - and noting to my friend that while it looks like a mess, it only takes 15 minutes and the key is to use fresh spinach and whatever homemade vinaigrette you of course have on hand in your fridge. My recommended tablescape - books and newspapers covering less than 50% of the table.

Sandra can't even put together a risotto recipe without turning to Uncle Ben's garlic and butter flavored rice and a can of cream of mushroom soup. And that is part of the insanity - every recipe requires some specific packaged food one must make sure to have on hand. Contrast with this simple mushroom risotto recipe that requires: mushrooms, rice, olive oil, butter, a stock cube, and grated cheese. Except for the mushrooms, these are all fairly basic items. Don't have a stock cube? Maybe you have a can of stock in the cupboard, or could substitute some herbs to make up for the loss of flavor. Have an onion or fresh garlic on hand - chop it up and cook it with the mushrooms. Don't look now - you made a homemade recipe, in a comparable amount of time, using higher quality ingredients you likely already had on hand, often at a lower cost, and with clearer options for substitutions.

Sandra is clearly tapping into some women's guilt over not having the time to be "perfect" homemakers, but instead of suggesting ways to efficiently get healthy meals on the table (which, while I've got my issues with Rachel Ray always washing her produce in advance, she at least uses real ingredients and is honest about sometimes substituting money for time without compromising quality), Sandra suggests that so long as you maintain the illusion that everything is "fun and fabulous", you can sacrifice the substance. So that, in the end, Sandra Lee is no friend to those women at all.

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In my opinion, the internet is all about patterns forknited digestive systems. Don't miss the close up of the cute little green gall bladder.

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I think I am going to try out this Baked Egg Roll recipe this weekend; I am sure it is not authentic, but I like the lack of frying and the large quantity of cabbage, and it will hopefully make yummy, portable lunches for next week for me.

I will not be making All American Eggrolls, even if it is going to be Constitution Day. Polish sausage slathered with mustard, mayonnaise, and cream cheese fried in a wrapper is not an eggroll, and I'm rather disturbed that anyone thinks such a concoction is "all American". Some Americans actually like vegetables!

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Friday, March fourth, a CNN article opens with the line "Wearing blue jeans and a knitted poncho, U.S. domestic icon Martha Stewart smiled and waved early Friday as she boarded a private plane following her release from federal prison." and the photo we've all seen of her boarding the plane.

Thursday, March tenth, I get a special announcement in my inbox for Martha's Poncho Pack, allowing you to create your own copy of the "free-flowing poncho" that was "featured when Martha Stewart left prison". On sale now!

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From Knitty.com, a special mini-issue to support breast cancer awareness, published under a Creative Commons license and packed with wonderful patterns. If you're into knitting, the rest of the site is worth a browse as well. [via not martha]

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I like to cook. By some definitions, I'm an engineer. So no surprise I enjoyed browsing Cooking For Engineers. Some recipes, some kitchen experiments - plus a yummy looking Chocolate Pecan Pie. I love the chart-based recipe formats; I haven't seen them before and they seem to be a nice shorthand for what to do in simple or familiar recipes. [via not martha]

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Everything you could want in a news story -- old world crafts, commercial innovation, and sex -- is wrapped together in this article about traditional Polish lace makers selling handmade lace G-strings instead of the more usual but poorer-selling alter clothes and doilies. If you follow the link in the article to the town's website, you can see their gorgeous "stringis" (warning: photos of underwear ... of course). The quality of the lace making seems, from the photos, to be phenomenal.

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How can you not love a Darth Vader Hot Sauce Bottle Cover crochet pattern? I really hope that she follows through with her plan to design an R2-D2 version as well.

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I've found a new favorite comfort food, in line with my recent obsession with curry - although this is an entirely American dish with just some curry powder thrown in to save it from blandness: Baked Shrimp and Crab Curry. It's tuna noodle casserole hidden under "exotic" spicing and slightly better seafood - one suspects it's the white trash version of foreign food. But it's yummy. I've made it with just shrimp, and you can cut down on the amount of butter so long as you leave enough for a decent roux base.

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I've made some variation on this recipe for Curried Mushroom Soup a few times in the past month, and it's absolutely wonderful. It's good with any kind of mushrooms so long as you end up with at least three cups worth total (I use as much as four cups, or cut the milk to make it have a density closer to stew). It thickens up nicely, particularly overnight as leftovers. Definitely eat this with a crusty bread to sop up the broth.

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As I did the past two years, I've collected together all of the images that I put in my weblog during 2003 into one album of photos. Almost half of them are from my participation in Photo Friday last year, and it's pretty easy to locate the point in time where my camera broke. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my collection. Last week's Photo Friday asked for one's favorite image from the past year. I just selected from the ones I took specifically for that project and chose my entry for Multiples.

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In my ongoing quest this year to convert my yarn stash to finished projects, I finished off a couple of new items this past month. I've been working on this flowery crocheted afghan for a few months and am very glad to have it done before the warm summer months: Grand Gardenias Afghan. This past week I knocked off this fun little summer sweater for myself, and now I'm just waiting for summer to finally come along so that I can wear it: Braided-Rib Crop Top. Follow the links for larger images and more details about the making of the projects.

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Years ago, Duct Tape Creations was selling duct tape wallets in a couple of styles and one variety of purse, but they have expanded into a wide range of accessories, including really cute multicolor checkbook covers, and a fullsize duct tape backpack made out of three rolls of duct tape! The Hanna, with "pinking shear detail" is awfully cute too. [via #!/usr/bin/girl]

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I took some pictures for Photo Friday of "spring" yesterday, but I hadn't gotten around to uploading them yet when I got a chance to take a whole different set of spring photos today, visiting the same locations. Here's a before-and-after shot of one of my runner-up photos.

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Many of the journals and weblogs I read have been sharing their pictures of spring, celebrating the warmth and flowers and green, and I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. There was a particuarly lovely view off my deck this morning, I think. We'd only accumulated three to four inches by this time, but don't worry, it didn't actually stop snowing until early evening.

The sad thing is, I honestly did still think it was really pretty.

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On the one hand, I hate the idea of perfectly good books being destroyed, but on the other hand, I can't help oogling the old books rebound as blank journals being sold at Ex Libris Anonymous. I love the one from The Secret of Skeleton Island, and the bizarre Hair Styling cover featuring a woman aiming a gun.[via not martha]

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Mantaining my sanity lately has involved a lot of knitting, and I've fallen in love with J&P Coats LusterSheen. It's an acrylic sport-weight yarn, but it looks and acts like crochet thread (and is usually stocked in stores with the crochet thread, next to the Speed-Cro-Sheen and Knit-Cro-Sheen). It's soft and comes in pretty colors and knits up into a beautiful fabric that shows off fancy stiches really nicely. I've been looking for a light-weight yarn that I could substitute for the expensive stuff in all of the knitting magazines, and was almost going to break down and try out Lion Brand's Microspun (this stuff is beautiful and only slightly pricey) but Lustersheen is available everywhere and relatively affordable (Herrschners sells their 1.75 oz/100 yd ball for $1.79 and you can get many of their colors in a 8 oz/680 yd cone for $8.99).

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I hid from last weeks parting blast from winter by watching Buffy re-runs and knitting this vest, dubbed the Zipper "See My" Vest due to the spontaneous outbursts from the Simpson's soundtrack that this project seemed to enduce in onlookers. My full project writeup includes a link to the source pattern, which I found online. It's a great basic pattern that I'd encourage any knitter to check out.

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I am slowly building a collection of old home economics and household management guides, and I would love to find a copy of this 1800's book just added to Project Gutenburg: The American Woman's Home, or Principles of Domestic Science, by Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. And, yes, it is the same Harriet Beecher Stowe. Take a skim over the topics covered in the introduction, as described in the table of contents:

The chief cause of woman's disabilities and sufferings, that women are not trained, as men are, for their peculiar duties--Aim of this volume to elevate the honor and remuneration of domestic employment--Woman's duties, and her utter lack of training for them--Qualifications of the writers of this volume to teach the matters proposed--Experience and study of woman's work--Conviction of the dignity and importance of it--The great social and moral power in her keeping--The principles and teachings of Jesus Christ the true basis of woman's rights and duties.

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I've been tempted by The Friday Five as a device to inspire entries, but in practice the questions tend to be more personally revealing than I want to answer on a regular basis. Photo Friday, on the other hand, is the same idea but with photographs. This is definitely something I want to do. I'm not thrilled with my submission for this week's theme "Stop Sign" (see right-hand column), but my goal is to at least try to produce something each week. [via Medley]

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I've been on a knitting and crocheting tear lately, but I discovered a whole new dimension to being the crafty type - making your own tools! Not that I've tried it yet, but this guide to making home-made knitting needles is calling to me. It's so obvious that they're only pointy dowels, and yet I never would have thought of this myself. [via not martha]

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I'm way overdue in finally photographing the quilt I made over the holidays, so to make up for it, I've put together a fairly extensive write-up about this bargello style Christmas quilt, including scans of the graphs I used in designing it.

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Last year, I made a resolution to reduce my unread book pile, which was only a moderate success (how I managed to read over 50 books last year and still have a stack of 90 still staring at me is beyond me). This year, I'm turning my attention to my absurdly large yarn stash, which is spread across too many rooms to even show you a picture. I will not buy any yarn this year unless it is to make a present for someone, and even then I will consult the stash first. As a first step on this project, I'm thinking of making up this zip-up vest with some fuscia wool I picked up on sale with no particular project in mind.

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This page's sidebar images were taken near my house during the long cold snap we had during the end of January; I've put together a larger (in number and size) collection of my favorite images from my visit to Cascadilla Creek.

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Awwww - I want a Sock Dog too! Clearly cutest with neat patterned socks. [via not martha]

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More than just an extensive origami site, Oriland follows through on it's promise of "Origami Galore", but even if you aren't a paper folder you (or your kids!) might enjoy exploring Oriland Kingdoms (requires Flash). It's a beautiful interactive animated world based on origami models. Just look around, or click on the "Origami Quest" tab at the bottom of the page to learn about the puzzles you can solve while exploring the kingdom. Not challenging, but very pretty. And if you are a paper folder, there are some nice free patterns on the site. I think the snail is particularly cute. And I'm almost the type of person to memorize the pattern for the heart bookmark to be able to make them on the spot for people.

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I haven't finished my 2002 book list yet, but I just put together the Screenshot 2002 Photo Album of all of the images from the past year's entries. I'm pleased with the collection as a whole. (If you're interested, there is also a 2001 Photo Album.

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Weather Photography is worth checking out for the images alone, but there's also a really nice, and expanding, collection of articles about techniques for photographing weather and nature. There's some good technical weather information as well, on selected topics (the photographer is a atmospheric physics grad student). I love his ice photos, but was most impressed by the lighting photos - reading the technical information behind taking them was very enlightening.

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Lots of real world holiday fun and little time on-line leads to a lack of updates. Watch this space for upcoming quilt pictures, though. I am having a ball with my second bargello pattern (self designed - woo!) but I'm using a borrowed Husqvarna Viking rather than my familiar and beloved Brother and I do not like it's personality quirks, even though it is supposed to be a wonderful machine. The bobbin hates me - it will neither wind nor feed happily.

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To borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, I am insufferably proud of my latest craft achievment. I've been on a bit of a knitting kick after discovering Elizabeth Zimmerman's books and falling in love with them, and I just finished my first sweater. It's the "Ski Sweater in Color Patterns" from Zimmerman's book Knitting Without Tears, which I would recommend to anyone looking to get beyond scarves and learn some intuition for garment design (the third word in the title lays the stress on the "e" rather than the "a", in case you're a smart alec like my brother and were going to ask...). I made the sweater with Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Ranch Red and Black; I think it took five skeins of red and four of black. I love working with Wool