Midwinter Break in Boston

It is Mr. Cleaver and I's longstanding tradition to get outta dodge at least once in midwinter - usually late January/early February. It's been overnight trips to Boothbay and Lake Geneva, or as simple as a day trip to FunSpot. This year we returned to a place we've played hooky in a few times before: Boston.

This year's excursion was specifically inspired by the current special exhibit running at the Museum of Science, A Day in Pompeii (still around until Feb 12th - if you're interested).

I'm a bit of an ancient history geek, having minored in Classical Studies in college, and while my Latin is sadly a bit rusty these days my love of classical art and history hasn't diminished.

The Pompeii exhibit was very well done and if I were to describe it in a single word, it would be "striking."

The preserved artifacts are incredibly well preserved and cover a wide range of items from the sophisticated plumbing pipes and fixtures to intricate statues to wonderfully bright colored frescoes.

Of course the most striking of all are the body casts, which are really a punch to the gut that bring home the tragedy in an all too effective way. I was most shaken of all by the two chained figures - one a man and one a dog, that had no way of escaping the volcano.

We spent a little over an hour in the Pompeii exhibit before enjoying the rest of museum, including a collection of Geckos and a fun exhibit on model-making, which included making your own fish and seeing how long they survive in the environment  (Mr. Cleaver's far out-survived mine.)

The other museum highlight for me what a photo exhibit called "What I Eat: Around the World in 25 Diets." The exhibit featured a series of portraits of people from various countries and that day's food intake, along with a calorie count - which raised some interesting connections, such as the model, cod-fisherman, and refugee who all had similar calorie intakes, though wildly different food choices.

It certainly made not want to think about the bacon and onion ring-covered burger I had for lunch (Yes, there's a burger under there, it's from the 21st Amendment and it was delicious, one the best burgers I'd ever had).

All in all, it was a fun trip, well worth the pre-sunrise train ride down.

Done and done!

After several weeks of joking, last week I gave a co-worker/friend a list of all the little things on my to-do list that I've been ignoring for far too long and gave her full permission to bug me about them. The list contains things like sew the belt loops back on my lady grey coat (done!), order harp strings (done!), and fix tiny rust spot on car (not done!).

In this spirit, here are two things I finished recently.

About a year later than I intended to, I finally made curtains for the built-in bookcase in my living room. The clearance home dec fabric I bought ended up being a bit stiffer than I thought it'd be, but it still looks miles better than being able to see the miscellaneous stuff on the shelves!

And I handed off a sample for a new design on Monday. I don't know when it'll come out (probably fall), but I really like the way this one turned out and I can't wait to show you the whole thing!

Some other things I hope to finish soon:

• a pair of socks for Mr. Cleaver,
• spinning my Sheep Heid yarn, and
• shipping out some submission swatches!

A Few Notes on Cup-pies

At a friend's request, here are a few tips on making cup-pies.

• I'm generally able to get 10 cup-pies out of one regular pie's worth of crust and filling.
• For the bottom crust I cut a 4-inch circle, and used a 3-inch biscuit cutter for the top.
• The thicker the bottom crust, the easier it will be to pop them out of the cupcake tin.
• There's no need to grease or line the cupcake tins at all.
• I probably overfilled these a bit as they leaked a bit during cooking, so a little under the tin rim is probably best.
• Don't forget to vent the top!
• For extra flair, I brushed the tops with milk and then sprinkled them with a bit of granulated sugar.
• I cook them at 350-375°F for 30 minutes, or until the filling bubbles. For this batch then broiled the tops for about a minute to get them golden brown.

Happy National Pie Day!

In America, the National Pie Council (what, your country doesn't have one of those?) declared January 23rd National Pie Day. Being as we for some strange reason don't get this as a day off, I had to do my celebrating yesterday in my now-traditional fashion, with a pie-luck!

I made a batch of cherry cup-pies and a chocolate/raspberry pie that I neglected to photograph.

(Note to all bakers out there, when making a recipe for the first time, read the whole recipes before the morning you attempt to make it. I neglected to do this and caught myself running out of time when I realized that my raspberry pie took FOUR HOURS to make due to refrigerating time for the different parts.)

I think I need to make cup-pies more often, they're adorable and take only a tiny bit more work than a regular pie.

As usual we had a range of savory, sweet, and tart pies.  A pie-luck requires at least three rounds to the table and generous amounts of tupperware for the leftovers.

We also got in a fair amount of knitting and Aimee, Chris, and Maggie split up several balls of Jamieson and Smith yarn for our sheep heid knit-a-long. (I'm spinning mine).

So for those interested, here's a run-down of the pies (if I forgot any my apologies!):

• Savory
  • Red Lentil & root vegetable pot pie
  • Goat cheese and leek egg pie/quiche
  • Pizza Pie
• Fruit-Based
  • Apple Cranberry
  • Cranberry Pear Shortbread
  • Cranberry Sage
  • Cherry Cup-pies
  • Chocolate Raspberry
  • Apricot Cheese
• Cream
  • Chocolate Satin
  • Butterfinger

With all the leftovers I ended up with - I'll be celebrating pie all week!!

Northern California Adventures: The Plates

Maybe it's because I have food on the brain, but I took a lot of photos of food on our California trip, and truthfully we did a lot of eating out while we were there, so I thought I'd share some highlights.

Oxbow Public Market

For southern Mainers, the Oxbow Public Market is like a successful version of what the Portland Public Market tried to be. INside the market there are a dozen or so food-related booths ranging from cupcakes and ice cream, to spices and olive oils, to oysters. Even on a Wednesday the whole market was fairly popular.

We grabbed some delicious Tacos at Casa and had the unseasonable pleasure of enjoying them outside on the patio seating. Casa's food is my favorite kind of Mexican - instead of the heayy refried bean and cheese fare at most Mexican chains, their food was fresh and light and featured some tasty but untraditional favor combos, like my blue cheese/onion/steak taco below.

Buttercream Bakery:

My visits to Butercream are more about nostalgia than anything else. The food at the diner is simple diner fare, while the doughnuts come in regular and fancy varieties. We picked up a dozen of my old favorites, but I most enjoyed the red velvet doughnut I'd never tried before. So much for nostalgia!

Genova Delicatessen

A great deli in an unassuming location, this is the one spot my brother always makes sure to visit whenever he's in Napa.

See's Candies

If you're Californian, or ever been in a California airport, you probably know See's Candies. I used to always try to get to the sprinkled one first - never realized they were mocha-flavored. If you visit one of the stand alone-stores, you get a free sample!

In-N-Out Burger

What is there to say about In-N-Out that hasn't been already said. Of all of my food photos from the trip, this is one that made Mr. Cleaver the most hungry again.

Boon Fly Cafe

I was most excited to visit the Boon Fly Cafe.

One summer during college I worked at the under construction Carneros Inn (its parent/location) as a temp in the accounting department filing papers in a trailer full of soap and shampoo and one day my supervisor took me to lunch at the Boon Fly, which I remembered as delicious.

My memory served me well.

The Boon Fly is my favorite kind of restaurant, simple food done incredibly well. The blackberry lemonade and flatbread pizzas were especially tasty. As a bonus the restaurant boasts a beautifully designed and relaxed atmosphere.

Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop

After all this food, there's still a place for desert. While in San Francisco we stopped at the Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop, and let me tell you they do not mess around with chocolate there.

Other notable stops (non-pictured):

Gillwood's Cafe - Napa locals' favorite brunch spot

Norman Rose Tavern - a new spot w/ great comfort food and an impressive tap list that includes several local beers and ciders in addition to the expected wines.

Northern California Adventures: The Places

Last week Mr. Cleaver and I headed out to Northern California to visit my family. The weather was beautiful and we ate enough food for the entire month of January - in fact most of my trip photos were of food, so I'm going to give the eats their own post.

Today I wanted to focus on the last day of our trip when my big brother (hi Luke!) took us to Muir Woods and San Francisco before depositing us at the airport to catch our red eye back to Maine, where it promptly snowed 8 inches on our return.

Luke had suggested we go to Muir Woods, and since Mr. Cleaver had never seen a giant redwood tree, I heartily agreed!

If you're not familiar with redwoods, the coastal redwoods are the tallest living trees in the world and can grow up to 380 ft (115m) high. These amazing trees grow only in a small region of Northern California and the the Pacific Northwest and I visited them often growing up on camping trips with my family.

Perhaps even more amazing is that these giant trees grow from the tiniest pinecones!

Coming from Maine, it was fun to see how green everything was, even if the non-evergreens had lost their leaves.

For a complete 180 from our woodland trekking, we ended the afternoon at Ghiradelli Square and Pier 39 in San Francisco- the epitome of touristy hustle and bustle.

The  Bourdin Sourdough Bakery

Checking out the Sea Lions at Pier 39

Sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge.

2012: A Year in Food

It's not so much a resolution as a a general feeling, but in addition to all the usual crafty things I do (and boy, do I plan to do a lot of them this year), I'd also like to spend more time and mind-space crafting my food. I put a great deal of time and thought into my knitting, sewing, and other crafts, but when it comes to food, I usually take the path of least resistance.

For example, breakfast for me is often a bowl of Trader Joe's Honey-O's. It's not that I crave the taste, it's not that it's the most nutritious, it's just that it's easy. I'm a bit embarrassed when I think of the number of times I've thought that the six minutes it takes to microwave oatmeal is just too long (you have to watch it whole time!), even though I'm always hungry by 10 AM when I eat cereal.

This is not to belittle cereal in any way, it's just about the general mindlessness of the whole thing.

I'm not forswearing any foods, or vowing to only eat things raised within a prescribed mileage. I just want to make and eat food for a reason other than convenience.

It's also not about weight loss or eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

It's about being aware that I live in a place and time that gives me the good fortune to have access to a huge range of food of all varieties. It's making an actual choice about what I'm feeding myself, even if that choice is a bowl of popcorn and some Oreos.  As long as it's an actual decision.

I'll be the first to admit that Mr. Cleaver does more than the lion's share of food shopping and prep in our house, and that I need to step up to the plate more often. 9 to 5 cannot be my excuse for not caring.

So I'm going to care, and plant the veggie garden I didn't get to last year, and do better than the can of soup I've taken to work for three days straight and not eaten.

I'm not promising weekly posts or anything, but if you haven't heard anything in a couple of months you have my permission to bug me about it some. So long as you don't mind reading a little about the stir-fries along with the stitches.

So here's to 2012 and putting as much care into my food as I put into my craft.

...and now that I read this whole post, it's sounds an awful lot like a New Year's Resolution. And that's okay too.

P.S. Can I point out that I drew all the veggies in the logo thingy myself in Adobe Illustrator? I'm still fairly new to the program, so I'm pretty proud! (Yeah I made a logo thingy for this)

Introducing: Bob & Wave Cowl

In September I stopped in PurlDiva and treated myself to two skeins of Misty Alpaca Chunky.

I'm not a big yarn horder, I typically only buy for specific projects, so I had admired and passed on this yarn on a couple different occasions. But on this particular day it had been a long week, and Misty Alpaca feels like soft cuddly air and Purl Diva had it stocked in one of my favorite colors, so how could I resist??

As soon as I had a break from all that November knitting, I turned that yarn into this Bob & Wave cowl. The color reminded me of 1950s Cadillacs, so I wanted do do something with a retro feel and nothing feels more like retro knitting to me than bobbles.

Though it's a small and relatively quick project, there are a lot of fun details. The cowl features an i-cord cast on and bind off. I-cord also appears as the button loops and faux i-cord is created by rows of purl stitches that are pleated horizontally to make the texture really pop. Carefully placed increases and decreases create the scalloped waving background for the bobbles and the fabric manipulation makes for a denser and warmer cowl.

The project uses two skeins of Misti Alpaca or 175 yds of cozy chunky yarn and measures 22”/ 56 cm long, 9”/23cm high.

The pattern is available for purchase for $4.00 USD

or you can queue it up on Ravelry.

To find out about new pattern releases and special offers, sign up for the Ms. Cleaver Mailing List.

More Christmas Makings

Here's a few more things I either made in secret (ornaments) or at the last minute (wreath):

Did you do any Christmas making?

2011 in Review

We became homeowners on Dec 31 of 2010, and a lot of this year was learning the in and outs of being homeowners. We removed what didn't want and started building in what we did. We peeled wallpaper and painted walls.

Shoveled snow and learned the importance of roof-rakes.  (Hint: don't pile that much snow that close to your house)

Perennials were planted in the spring and bulbs were planted in the fall. Lawns were moved and leaves raked. Floors were swept and appliances replaced. And at some point along the way it stopped being their house and started being ours.

Starting the day after we moved in, we filled our home with friends: Pie Day, poker games, dinners and documentaries. The highlight was inviting over all our friends for a summer time barbecue and concert.

And we saw a little doggy online and decided to invite him to stay for the long-haul.

During Lent I wore skirts for 47 days and visited Washington D.C. for the first time.

In sewing, I got my own studio space and made a thing or two.

Fiber-wise, I learned how to dye and needlefelt.

I bought a loom and made a total of one scarf.

I also did a fair amount of spinning, but haven't quite met my knitolution of knitting anything with handspun yet.

Knitwise, this has been a huge year for me. I've released three patterns with Quince & Co., one with Twist Collective, and six on my own. I started a mailing list.

It's amazing to me how much has happened in one year, and how quickly that year has gone. There's snow on the ground outside now and it's a few days to Christmas. It's been a helluva year in the best way possible.

Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year!