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Episode 128: Cool & Refreshing

July 18, 2016July 18, 2016 by Sara

cover128 This episode includes the following segments: The Front Porch, Ever-expanding Skill Set and Off the Shelf. Inspired by the Eat Your Words Read-along and farm-fresh produce, I’ve been experimenting with refreshing drinks to ease the torment of this recent heat wave. Two popular beverages at my house are switchel (left) and a ginger-mint mule (right). I’ve completed a knitting project and I’ve made excellent progress on my Tour de Fleece goal of spinning a 4 ounce braid of wool/silk from Three Waters Farm. Last evening, I completed spinning the singles and I’m ready to ply.

The Back Porch

Geysir Stretch knit in Foster Sheep Farm kettle-dyed Romney / Wensleydale.

Singles from Three Waters Farm -- ready to ply. — Singles from Three Waters Farm — ready to ply.

Ever-expanding Skill Set

Even though the recipe pictured at the right is from Cooks Illustrated, I recommend trying the Food52 recipe for Ginger Rhubarb Downside-up Cake, simply replacing the rhubarb with freshly sliced peaches, because I think ginger and peach make an excellent pairing and because I think that the cake with oatmeal in it is super moist and delicious. If you’re not so keen on ginger, you could add grated lemon rind and some lemon juice to the cake batter.

Warm Yellow Wax Beans with Bacon Vinaigrette
To try this week: Carrot Fritters
Switchel recipe
How to make a Ginger-mint Mule: In a tall glass, muddle mint leaves; add 1 shot bourbon whiskey (Smuggler’s Notch), 3 tablespoons ginger syrup. Fill glass with ice and seltzer. Stir. Garnish with lime wedges. Sip with an attractive companion.

Our new pantry adds eight cubic feet of storage capacity to our small kitchen. Click for a link to the Instagram video.

Off the Shelf

Select a work of food-related journalism, memoir or fiction and read along this summer. Listeners have suggested excellent titles and there is lively conversation on the thread. Each month, a post will be randomly-selected for a prize. July’s prize is a set of notecards from JoAnna of Knit Spin Farm.

Arrows and Doorways

The design for this super-cozy cowl was inspired by textiles in a hotel lobby. Concentric geometric shapes kept playing in my mind until finally I was able to chart the pattern and get it onto my needles. The interplay of this chevron-like patterning has a mesmerizing effect–while you’re knitting and when you wear the finished accessory.

Knit up a cowl with yarn from your stash, adding some magical new mini-skeins from your advent calendar, or exchange leftover yarn with a friend. The design invites frequent color changes, and makes an ideal knit for the advent season. It could be just as striking knit with two high-contrast colors.

While most cowls of this type are seamed within a band of a single color, this pattern incorporates a technique called stranded donut grafting, an incredibly clever and completely seamless graft that allows you to maintain colorwork patterning so that your starting and ending rounds are undetectable. Really! With many possibilities for color play and a new technique to add to your skill set, this cowl pattern is really an opportunity for knitters to level-up!

NEW PATTERN DESIGN!

ONE DARK BLUE NIGHT

This hat is the third in a series of patterns inspired by teachings in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. This time, I drew inspiration from Estés’ retelling of a Japanese tale, Tsukina Waguma or “The Crescent Moon Bear,” in which a young woman travels to the cave of an incredibly intimidating and ferocious bear. She makes several journeys to the cave, leaving food and quickly retreating, until “one dark blue night,” she musters the courage to stand her ground and ask for what she seeks--one hair from a moon-shaped patch on the bear’s chest--which she is granted. The young woman returns, triumphant, to the old healer who has sent her on this quest. She believes this single hair is the magic ingredient in solving the problem that plagues her. She holds it forth, but the healer tosses the hair into the flames. The young woman is in despair until she realizes the true lesson of her quest: that using her determination, courage, and patience, as she did with the crescent moon bear, will help her to confront the challenge at hand.

The moon phase motif of this colorwork hat is meant to capture the magic of a dark blue night--when the moon shines brightly overhead, the frosty air sparkles with possibility, and we succeed in summoning accumulated wisdom from deep within ourselves so that we can apply it to our own healing. Choose colors to conjure a wintery night sky, or select a palette of your signature colors.

Available on Ravelry December 20th.

Yarns at Yin Hoo

Episode 128: Cool & Refreshing

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