Patchwork plans

‘The ultimate in recycling!’ exclaimed the sign.  Josie and I were in the Fairtrade shop underneath St. Michael at the Northgate looking for a present for her niece, and I had noticed a basket full of remnants from a cloth factory, parcelled up into bundles of squares.

It seemed like a great idea.  I could buy these offcuts which had no sentimental value, practise making a quilt or some patchwork cushion-covers, end up with some handmade patchwork somethings to decorate my flat or to give away, and then turn to my stash of nostalgic remnants armed with confidence and new skills.  I bought two bundles and took them home very excitedly to sort into colour combinations and patchwork designs.

That was six years ago, and I have been lugging these ‘non-sentimental’ pieces with me from flat to flat ever since.  Over time they have acquired a legend and dust of their own, and reproach me for their remnanty status just as loudly as the other scraps and old bits of fabric I have squirreled away.

But! there is no time like a new decade for following things through and starting new projects.  These black and white printed fabrics were always intended for a quilt for my mum, and as she was the only person I didn’t give a handmade gift to this Christmas I am hoping to have it finished in time for her birthday at the end of March.  Don’t laugh.  It won’t be anything fancy – just squares sewn together, possibly quilted somehow although I’m not certain about that, with some batting and a backing and some binding.

‘Well,’ I thought, as I typed the above post, ‘now that I’ve written it down it does sound like a little bit of work, but really, how hard can it be?  Pull your socks up, self, and face your fabric demons!’ and I flung the squares blithely into my washing machine.

Two weeks, three floods of my kitchen and one £95 call-out fee to the washing-machine repair people later, I am poorer and (hopefully) wiser.  The little fraying threads at the edge of the squares worked their way loose in the wash, and travelled down the siphon to clog up the one-way valve nicely.  (As this wasn’t a problem with the machine itself, but the plumbing under my sink, it wasn’t covered by the guarantee).  On the right you can see the little wodge of threads I pulled out of the pump when the machine first stopped working, and on the left the bundle of threads I pulled and cut away from the squares to separate them when I took them out of the machine.  Yup, I know.

The squares are therefore smaller, and more frayed around the edges.  My kitchen floor is cleaner, and I got to know some of my neighbours a little better when they offered me the use of their washing machines.  And I am fighting the urge to jump up and down on those squares, tear them into shreds, and post them into the fabric recycling bin round the corner.

But! My New Year’s Resolutions haven’t faded into the January gloom yet, and I am nothing if not stubborn.  Instead, I am going to use this sad tale as a Learning Point (can you tell I spend many of my waking hours in a hospital?), and make the damn quilt.  I am never again going to buy yarn or fabric which doesn’t make my heart sing and my soul leap, no matter how cheap it is or how worthy the cause.  I am not going to worry about the quilt not being good enough, and I am never ever going to write a post which ends with the facile rhetorical question ‘How hard can it be?’.

Note to self: Buy some pinking shears.

Pumpkin Kofta Curry

The squash were beautiful at the farmer’s market yesterday, glowing roundly in their plastic basket in the pouring rain.  I brought them home eagerly, looking forward to trying this recipe which has been floating at the edge of my brain, waiting to be cooked, for a while now.

The recipe, for Pumpkin Kofta Curry, is from Claudia Roden’s Book of Jewish Food, which is far and away one of my favourite cookery books.  In fact I think it might be one of my favourite books, full stop.  Claudia Roden is a fantastic writer, whose books are meticulously researched and brim with enthusiasm and warmth.  The Book of Jewish Food is not just a collection of more than eight hundred wonderful recipes, it is also a history of different Jewish communities throughout the world – an exploration of the Jewish diaspora through its food.  It is both scholarly and personal, the result of fifteen years research into Jewish food from Europe to Iran and China, and includes discourses on dumplings from different communities, memories of her own childhood in Cairo, notes on subjects from the New York Deli to harissa, and recipes from hundreds of people she met on her travels.  I love the book partly because it’s so interesting to read, partly for the recipes which are comforting and delicious, and partly because, no matter what I feel like eating or cooking, I can find it in here.  I have read it, cover to cover, more than once, and I still learn something new every time I dip into it.  My copy – slightly dog-eared now and a bit splattered – was a 21st birthday present from one of my best friends, who wrote in the front, ‘For Philippa, who loves comforting kitchens and cooking (and who is a little bit Jewish)*, with very much love on January 8th 2005 from Anna’.

This recipe is an Indian one from the Sephardi Vegetable section.  It is a bit fiddly, and probably more work than you’d want to do for an ordinary weekday meal, but it was fun.  I really enjoyed pottering around the kitchen this afternoon, mashing the squash in a colander, making up the spice paste and peeling tomatoes for the sauce, and mixing up the jewel-bright dumpling mix and patting it into little balls – and my flat still smells deliciously of the kind of food I wish I cooked every day.

Food styling isn’t my strong point, and the resultant plate (with brown rice and some tinned butter beans heated through with spinach and garlic) doesn’t look very appetising, but the curry was actually more orange, the kofta as fun to eat as dumplings always are, and the meal was tasty, warming and filling.  The dumplings didn’t stay very dumpling-shaped (mind you, they weren’t very round to begin with) so next time, I’ll either increase the amount of gram flour, or dry out the pumpkin purée a bit over a low heat before mixing the dumpling ingredients.

As it turned out, I only needed one squash for the recipe, so I still have one left.  What would you make with it?

*That would be my atheist dad, who, er married my mum – so, even if it were possible, not really.  I had brilliant Jewish grandparents who taught me a lot of things, but not much about Judaism, and I am about as Jewish as a mushroom.

27

Today is my birthday.

Today, my boyfriend’s uncle died, my washing machine broke, I burnt my birthday cake, I went out to dinner with some friends, and two of them had an argument about something momentous and painful and insoluble, and my boyfriend started working nights, again, for a while.

Today, my sister came round with drinking chocolate and madeleines and tulips – and bagels and lox for my breakfast tomorrow.  I got to know my neighbours a little better, and was struck by their unexpected generosity.  A copy of Knitting Workshop arrived in the post.  Jane, as usual, acted as my fairy godmother.  Some of my best friends took me to dinner at The Gate, and the food was lovely and we laughed a lot.  And in the midst of everything, and in spite of the miles, and the timing, and the fact that I only saw him for four days last month, my boyfriend continued to love me and help make me  happier being me.

Today feels ‘right’ somehow (as well as, in the ways I’ve listed and others that are more indefinable, wrong) – as if it heralds the right age for me to be right now, for a while.  I remember this feeling distinctly when I turned 17, and 25, and both those years were big and important and turned my world inside out in lasting and significant ways.  I have a feeling this year won’t be plain sailing either, and like everything else at the moment, it is complicated before it has even begun.  I am really looking forward to it – to some particular things, and others I have yet to discover – and I am very grateful for the bigger picture, and its sturdy resilient frame.

‘We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.’

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hope my year, and yours, will be full of joy, generosity and courage, and I don’t doubt it will bring sorrow and some less than perfect behaviour.  Through it all there will be making (knitting and hopefully some patchwork! and I’ve a few other plans too), cooking, reading and writing, learning, and (fingers crossed!) new friends.

And I hope you will share it with me, if you’d like, on my blog and yours, and in many other ways besides.  Cheers!

Snow, and all the forms of the radiant frost

Last night, while we were having dinner at a friend’s house, it started to snow.  Big, cloudy flakes which covered the ground with a thick white carpet to cushion our footfalls as we walked home through an almost-silent city.

It is still snowing today.  As I trudged in to lectures this morning, wrapped in woolly hat and scarf and wearing my trusty wellies, normally-harried mums threw snowballs with their children on the way to school, and I saw more than one dad who had bundled their little ones into a sled instead of a pushchair and was pulling them along the pavements!

Deri is off this week so staying with me (yay!) and as I had the afternoon free we went for a walk on the heath and then lunch at a nearby café.  A gift of a day.

I hope that if there’s been snow where you are it has brought happiness rather than troubles.  Normal knitting and blogging should resume soon.  In the meantime, happy New Year!

Happy Christmas!

I hope that wherever in the world you are and whatever you do today, it is a day of light, warmth, good food and friends and family.

Christmas Eve Cooking

Bread sauce

Quince and chilli jelly (quince jelly melted slowly in a pan, with some chopped dried chilli stirred through and left to steep for a while, because we have run out of chilli sauce)

Red cabbage

Apple sauce with lemon.

Ready for tomorrow, hopefully.

Mince pies

They are a bit rustic-looking; pastry is still not one of my strong points. They taste good, though.

Ally’s Christmas mitts

I’ve never been very fond of little projects knit for the sake of knitting something, but there is something very satisfying about one that appears almost overnight.  I really wanted to knit Ally something because I’d finished Gideon’s scarf and couldn’t think what to give my aunt.  And I like giving things in pairs, don’t you?

Pattern: modified Malabrigo Hand Thingies by Anne Sahakian (see below)

Yarn: Malabrigo Merino Worsted (I have lost the ticket, so I don’t know the name of the colour.  It is beautiful shades of wine, sealing wax and rose).

Yarn from: somewhere on the internet, via the depths of the stash

Needles: 4.5 mm Brittany birch DPNs

Cast on: 16 December 2009

Cast off: 17 December 2009

Mods: Cast on and off hand using 8 mm DPNs.  Left out slip stitch pattern.  Knit 27 rounds before increasing for thumb.  After putting thumb stitches on waste yarn, knit nine more rounds, purled one round, cast off in purl.  Thumb as written, casting off on 4.5 mm needles.

I found this yarn rummaging through the stash for something else.  I thought the colours would suit Ally – and this yarn has been hanging around waiting for a project forever, and I finally realised I could make them into mitten-thingies.  These are not my favourite knitted project ever, but they are finished, and wrapped! and I am trying to worry less about perfect (starting with my knitting …)

I am  really happy finally to be giving something knitted to my aunt and uncle this Christmas.  They are lovelier to me than they know, and hopefully these will say that better than my always-clumsy words.

Gideon’s Garter Stitch Scarf

Pattern: cast on 333 stitches on a long circular.  Knit in garter stitch until you’ve nearly run out of yarn.  Cast off.

Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted, colourway ‘Baltic Sea’

Yarn from: Stash Yarns

Needles: 3.75 mm Addi lace circ.

Cast on: 25 November 2009

Cast off: 13 December 2009

This is the simplest of scarves but I am really happy with it.  I love these colours and the jubilant springiness of the yarn in garter stitch at this gauge.  I also really like the effect of a garter stitch scarf knit lengthways – it stretches in the right direction, and drapes beautifully.  The yarn does flash and pool a bit, but I like the way the variegations make stripes, too.  It feels as if it’s exactly what the yarn wanted to be, and is happily settling into its new stitches.  And I am also encouraged because every time I had it with me in the library, people would immediately pounce and admire it, which is a change from the usual ‘What on earth is that?’.

Photos taken quickly as I hurry to wrap this.  If I’d blocked it sooner I could have persuaded a friend to model it when we went to the park in the snow, but instead it was pinned out on my living room floor.  Never mind.  I can well imagine knitting another one soon.

Carrot and parsnip soup

Today’s lunch, a helping from the second batch of soup.  It is not very exciting, but soothing and warming, and is very easy to make.

You will need:

Butter
6 carrots or so
2 parsnips
Stock

1. Melt a large slice of butter over a medium heat with a dash of oil to stop it burning.
2. Peel parsnip and slice into batons.
3. When butter starts to foam, stir in parsnip slices, sweat over low heat with the lid on.
4. Peel or scrub carrots and slice into batons or rounds.
5. Stir into parsnip and butter.
6. Cook gently, covered, until parsnip and carrot slices are both soft enough to break with a wooden spoon.
7. Pour over stock to just cover.
8. Simmer a few minutes (or a few more if the phone rings) to let the vegetable flavours mingle into the liquid.
9. Blitz!
10. Season to taste.

This makes a very sweet, mild and creamy soup, so is best served with something salty and flavourful, like a handful of grated parmesan stirred in, or topped with crisp bits of bacon and snipped chives.  (The feta I crumbled over the top, most of which sunk into the soup and half-melted, was not very successful).  It would be really nice (and pretty!) with some bright freshly-chopped herbs, mixed with a dash of olive oil, swirled in.