Adventures Abound

We're trying new things around here.

First, I had a coupon for Greenling, an organic grocery home delivery service. They offer a lot of local foods, which are hard to find when you start looking.

Turns out, local foods really are better -- it's the freshness. On Saturday, we had my usual "throwpot pasta" (throw whatever you have into a pot and put it over pasta) with half a pound of ground beef from a cow who lived in nearby Bastrop and ate a lot of grass. OH MY GOODNESS. You could smell and taste the difference -- absolutely fresh meat, bright red when it was raw, that tasted superb. Also, meat from locally raised livestock may still involve the death of an animal, but the animal lived in better conditions and the negative environmental impact is drastically lessened by the reduced distance the meat has to travel.

We also got a half-dozen fresh eggs form a local farm in the same drop-off box. Four of them did their part in a key lime pie:

It didn't last long enough for a virgin photo.

I followed the recipe in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and the ingredients roughly include the following:

• 9 Graham crackers
• sugar
• LOADS of butter
• the yolks of four farm-fresh eggs
• a little bit of lime juice
• later,
• the four egg whites
• confectioner's sugar
• a pinch of cream of tartar and salt
• a call to my mother to ask if it really takes that long to beat meringue: "It's faster if you have a mixer." / "Yeah, I don't think we have one."
• a plea to my husband who generously turned his arm to the meringue when mine threatened to fall off, followed by, "You know we have a mixer, don't you?"

Lastly, I finally found the time to unpack my brand...
new...
sewing machine!

Thanks to Kara and Consumer Reports, I settled on a Brother Innovis-40 machine, and this weekend I tried it out on a simple repair job. It ain't pretty, but that's one sports bra that'll have another few years of use left. I've got a skirt pattern and some cotton-hemp fabric waiting for when my courage rises.

By the way, I put money down for all the products mentioned here. Just in case anybody's wondering if Brother decided to send me a free sewing machine. (Say, that's a pretty good idea, now that I mention it...)

FO: Counterpane Clutch

For some brains, it might be possible to do an orderly bloggish roundup of two weeks of huge life events in a coherent, orderly fashion. Not so much with mine. I'm currently unsure which direction is up (I suspect it's not where my socks are), so please enjoy the following handful of discombobulated posts, starting with today.

Wedding Knitting
I managed to hold myself back from knitting every single item of my wedding ensemble. (Though if I'd had the time!...) Instead, I satisfied myself with a single evening purse, the Counterpane Clutch.



pattern: Counterpane Accessories Pouch from Handknit Holidays by Carrie Brenner.
yarn: Elann Undyed Superwash Merino and Silk (silk/merino blend; about two-thirds of one skein). I can't believe more people haven't used this excellent, undyed workhorse of a yarn. It's got a snug ply and just enough sheen to qualify it for fancier projects. Bonus: it's also not that expensive. A quick look to the website shows that it might already be gone, but there's still some merino/Seacell blend.
needles: size 5
made for: the wedding
notes: Like many people, I changed up the shape by making three repeats of two scallops (as opposed to two repeats of three scallops). Makes it more functional.

The two sides knit up quickly and easily. It was when we got to the seaming and sewing that my river of silliness broke free from the dam of common sense. Some sample mistakes: I should have folded the tops over at the second purl row from the top (see it up there?) and then sewed the zipper to the doubled-over knitting, just as the directions say. I noticed this precisely after tying the final knot after a painstaking three days of hand-stitching the zipper to the knitting. Why did I hand-stitch? Because I've also had a recent tour of non-functional sewing machines (but some of them very antique and interesting) belonging to my girlfriends.

And then came the lining. I found the ideal lining, some on-sale silk that just so happens to match the groom's tie perfectly (happy accident: the tie came after, and trust me, he wasn't trying to match the purse). I cut it once before I realized I did it wrong, then had it pinned and ready to cut incorrectly a second time when finally a little logic fly whispered in my ear, "Ask your mother."

Sure enough, my mother came to the rescue, as she has in so many other ways. I shipped it up to her, and she finished it off in time for the wedding. To my mind, a mother-daughter project typically involves me as a little girl staring at the sewing machine in confusion as she works some crafty magic, but this will do, too. (She is also a total ninja when it comes to knitting, btw.)

In the end, it's an attractive, floppy evening purse that will probably never be used again.

You could say the purse functioned much like the wedding: not perfect, but none of the guests saw what went wrong with it. Which is to say, excellent.

I hold the same standards for theatrical productions.



I'd love to have a purse-in-action shot from the day of, but alas, we hired a professional photographer -- not just a wedding photographer, but a pro photographer who owns her own gallery and stuff. She has something like 17 prints and two custom frame jobs or whatnot before she can even start in on our pictures. When we do get them, say in a month or so, I look forward to showing the pictures off to everybody between here and the moon.

This is not a sewing blog.

When one of the knit-bloggers whom I read occasionally posts a picture of a recent sewing project, I'm always a little disappointed. It's yarn I'm after, and that's what I want.

These days I'm practicing monogomy with the not-so-mystery project that's due May 11, however, so here's what I have for you.

For my birthday, I asked for and received a Sewing 101 class at Craft-o-Rama in South Austin. Took me a while to get around to it, but I did yesterday. I enjoyed myself and the close attention I got from the instructor. This bag is the project you make in that class.



I'm absolutely delighted with what is clearly going to be my new knitting bag. Craft-o-Rama specializes in woven fabrics with hip designs; their selection is small but nifty. The sample projects in the store used multiple prints in complimentary colorways for single items. I wasn't quite brave enough to take that on, but I'm pleased with the pale yellow liner I chose to accompany the pink/brown cherry blossom print.



I don't have the funds or the room right now for my own sewing machine, but that isn't stopping me from daydreaming about all the things I could now make. A bridesmaid's dress from a couple years ago is dying to turn tea-length, and I could use a few more casual skirts.

But knitting has my heart and my brain. Onward, not-so-mystery project!