when life gives you lemons...

...a whole whack of them (technical unit of measure), organic, for $3...



make lemon tart!

I used Dorie Greenspan's recipe in Baking: from my home to yours, which is virtually indistinguishable from the one posted by smitten kitchen here. The differences are these: Dorie calls for two egg yolks, not one, and substitutes 1/2 c heavy cream for 1/4 c of the butter. That quarter cup more liquid may have been responsible for the overflow I experienced; I had to siphon off some of the filling to use just as lemon curd (oh, the tragedy).

My father's sister has a dedication to lemons that encompasses more than their bright taste and cheering scent. She has a lemon-printed jacket and lemon-themed tote bags, lemon soap dishes and – somewhat impractically – lemon-shaped soap. Last summer I made lemon-blueberry pound cake when we visited her. And always, every time we traipse up North or she flits down South, we make Loukie Werle's lemon pasta. She generally squeezes on a bit more lemon.

separation anxiety

Will somebody tell me that this is madness? Exhibit one:

(L-R: Two skeins of Colinette Jitterbug, Dream in Color Smooshy, two skeins of Malabrigo Sock, and some handspun superwash BFL lurking at the bottom)

That is enough sock yarn for six pairs of socks, only two of which are intended to be plain old-plain old – and of those two, one pair is slated to be weirdly constructed and requiring of squinting at computer screens. I am absolutely not capable of knitting six pairs of socks in four months, people, and yet I am sorely tempted to cram all of that into my suitcase. Yes, in addition to a pair of socks in progress, two pairs of fingerless gloves in progress, a sweater that has been in progress twice so far (stupid gauge), two pairs of fingerless gloves-to-be, and a spinning project. I have classes! And more sock yarn already at school! Alack, alas, how can I choose?

(Lest you think that is the extent of my madness, allow me to assure you that my sock yarn stash is rather larger than that – remember, sock yarn doesn't count. The photo represents only that yarn which I felt most compelled to pack, least rationally.)

I radiate innocence

Or, A Portrait of Persuasion:



Did I mention?




















(Schacht Hi-Lo, 1.1 oz. I teach low-whorl because that's how my teacher started me, and what was good enough for half a dozen 10 year olds once upon a time is good enough for any collegiate whippersnapper.)

Fruits of labour

Or, ill-gotten gains:

Twelve pints of quince jam, plus about two pints in a container in the fridge for want of jars.

Quinces are related to apples and pears, about apple-sized, but more bulbous. I hear tell that in warmer climes the fruits ripen to edible softness, but here in the frozen tundra of the Mid-Atlantic they stay hard as the dickens despite turning from mango-green to banana-yellow. Post-harvest, the Pocket Linguist and I conned some friends into coming over to help with the peeling and coring and worm-slaughtering part of the work. Yes, worms-- the quinces we used were not grown for sale, so we had to wrest a fair number of them away from previous claimants. I tried to drown out the worms a couple of days before using the fruit, but that only worked on three or four worms. (Not worth it, I've decided. I just lose the use of my sink and get the heebie-jeebies from seeing worms hanging half out of the quince.) (Bleargh.)

Quince flesh starts out white, turning a dark orange-pink during cooking. Aside from the appeal of having pretty food, though, quince is an excellent jam fruit because the natural pectin content is so high that no additional pectin is necessary-- all you need is fruit and water.

Oh-- and sugar. Lots of sugar. More sugar, in fact, than I had left after assorted baking projects and the Pocket Linguist's batches of sorbet (spicy chocolate) and ice cream (vanilla buttermilk, mmmm). This year's jam is, perhaps, a wee bit on the sour side. Maybe just a little. Still, I can assure you that it is very tasty with ice cream, in yoghurt, and on slices of brown soda bread, and I fully expect it to be delicious as a filling for sandwich cookies. Hmmm... quince macarons, anyone?

4 oz is more than you think

With this project I decided to tell myself that I'm not spinning for evenness, I'm spinning for fun. The finished skein is fingering-to-sport-ish weight (unwashed), and I'm spinning the rest with something similar in mind. The prep is commercial, hand-dyed combed top, spun semi-worsted-- I want to maintain some of the colour variation in the fiber, but I don't want the yarn to be as dense as short forward draw would make it. Variably semi-worsted is probably a better characterization, since sometimes I draft the fibers out mostly parallel, and at other times my drafting more mimics spinning from the fold, drafting more from one side of the supply to the other instead of from the bottom to the top.


4 oz Superwash Merino/Alpaca, 70/30 from Squoosh in colorway "Missing You" spun on what I believe to be a Greensleeves Barebones top-whorl of indeterminate weight.

as it turns out...

...you can do the hustle to the intervals song.

thought you should know

Don't take this as an invitation to join me in it or anything, but I have a ridiculously awesome bed. I've just returned from two months of sub-optimal sleeping environments-- all I'll say is that peasants apparently don't go in for luxury-- and I am frankly astonished by how comfortable, how welcoming, how completely excellent is my (newish) mattress. I just tried to take a nap, but was unable to go to sleep because I was thinking too giddily of how wonderful my bed is.

That's all.