A very wooly smoke school.

I got my mitts done in time - barely! I bound off the last stitch just before midnight the day before I needed them - and with a scarily small amount of yarn left. They worked out pretty well - they didn't keep my fingers any warmer than usual (duh), but the parts of my hands actually covered by the mitts were toasty.

Instead of knitting a sock (I'd found out that it's a little difficult to knit while wearing the mitts) while I was there, I brought my spindle, and learned quite a bit.

1) Most of the folks there - men, even! - recognized what I was doing. This kind of threw me for a loop, especially when the trend continued to the auto repair shop later in the afternoon.

2) I really can spindle while walking!

3) If you don't worry about how much you're making, the bump of fiber will disappear that much faster.

I was working on the second batch of singles for a lightweight two-ply - I think it came out a little lighter than fingering, but I'll have to check WPI after I wash it - to use up the last of the undyed Romney I bought a couple years ago. I ended up with 80 grams, ~215 yards, spun with a short-draw technique but the fiber was closer to a roving than a top so the yarn is kind of fuzzy. I'm going to dye it with sumac...gotta use up that bag, and I did like the color I got. It'll probably be a lace scarf, given the yardage.

After finishing that, I went back to WIP's - I've almost got my last fish hat done, and then I'll pick up Hubby's scarf again.

Is cooking a craft?

I dunno, but I'm blogging about it anyways. :)

I started following Jennifer L. Aikman-Smith's (yes, the Dragon Dreams cross stitch designer) blog Inhaling Creativity, in which she is exploring and stimulating her creative process and recording the results, with exercises for those of us following along at home. A few of the "homework assignments" have involved playing with your food a bit, going out of your culinary comfort zone.

One weekend, it was suggested that you work with food that stimulated the senses - she mentioned going through your spice rack and smelling things...and the best-smelling things in my spice rack, all taken together, suggested an Indian dish. I stumbled upon Nigella Lawson's recipe for Mughlai Chicken, a dish from central India that aimed more for complexity of flavor than heat (actually there's no heat at all...), and while I'm normally a little skeptical of Indian food as presented by a Brit, the reviewers raved about it, including one person who claimed Indian descent, so I went for it. The recipe was time-consuming but easy, and came out absolutely delicious - Nigella says it's one of those dishes that tastes better the next day, but there weren't any leftovers. (The one complaint: Daughter didn't like the raisins. I ate them for her. :) )

For another cooking "assignment" - she'd mentioned a few dishes she'd cooked from Jamie Oliver's cookbooks, and I remembered a dish from his Food Network show that amounted to "peppers stuffed with peppers with more peppers on the side". Hubby had started drooling over that, but the recipe wasn't on Food Network's website, so I got the "Jamie At Home" cookbook from the library. I didn't end up making the stuffed peppers (yet!), but I did find a recipe that seems to hit all four of Hubby's food groups: Steak, Guinness, and Cheese in Puff Pastry. How can you go wrong with a meal that combines meat, beer, cheese, and pie? I managed, kind of: since the stew is braised in the oven (or a slow-cooker would probably do it, but I would use less water), it has to cook an awfully long time, so I had to cook the stew one day and make the pie the next. The other issue I had was the puff pastry - I probably didn't let it thaw enough, so I had some trouble rolling it out, and the top sheet only just barely fit onto the pie. It wasn't the prettiest pie ever - but at some point it stops mattering what it looks like. :)

...and then on an entirely unrelated note, I cooked to help Daughter with real homework: part of her Social Studies grade is based on outside activities in which you learn something about another culture. I guided her through the process of making onigiri, Japanese rice balls wrapped in nori. For our first try, they didn't come out too bad - if we do it again, I think our hands will need to be a little wetter while we mold the rice. After that, I raided Personal Trainer Cooking for a Japanese dish to serve with them for dinner, and came up with a yummy gingered pork chop - and I was struck by the principle behind the recipe. The dish was actually very simple - I don't think there's much simpler than a marinated, grilled chop, unless it's a grilled chop that you didn't bother to marinate - but the presentation, specified by the instructions given, was unique and interesting. Isn't that the basic gist of all Japanese cooking? If I'm going to be exploring the creative potential in cooking, that probably wouldn't be a bad place to start.