Another Design

I usually knit garments and accessories using purchased or free patterns designed by other knitters. Because all patterns are copyrighted, I cannot sell items made from their patterns unless I have express permission, and express permission is rarely given. Knitting designers make very little money in relation to the number of people who may be knitting their patterns at any given time, and knitters are often unaware that swapping patterns with each other takes money from the pocket of the designer. Because I have such an overdeveloped sense of justice, I feel guilty sometimes just giving the knitted item away. Crazy, I know, but there it is.

I have entered into a tentative agreement with a sheep farmer whose sheep produce luxury fleece (and therefore, wool, of course). She's a local farmer, so this idea fits right into my "shop local" attempts, and her spun fleece is lovely and cashmere-like. Our idea is that I will knit items that she can display and sell when she attends fiber festivals. (Yes, all you non-knitters out there, these exist and are quite popular.) I buy the wool from her; she sells my items. Helps her; helps me. And I'm going to be knitting anyway.

The only problem, of course, is that I usually knit items from designers' patterns, and I cannot sell these items. Solution: design my own.

I am especially proud of my second design: the River of Leaves Wrap. Knitted in DK weight cormo (Corriedale/Merino), this wrap is whisper-light but warm and snuggly, and at 11.5 inches wide and 65 inches long, can be worn a variety of ways. As soon as it is dry, I'll post photos of some ways to wear this accessory.

Until then, here is a photo as it is drying. Any one want one? $72 and I'll ship it for free. You can choose the color. This one is hand-dyed in Spruce.

Tomayto-Tomahto

Campus closed for snow and ice, so I'm spending some of my morning picking this year's tomato varieties.


It's hard to choose tomatoes. While the varieties I can buy at Lowe's or Kroger are so hybridized that I can't do much wrong, the heirloom and older varieties are a little more sensitive. For example, I love Black Krims, but they just don't do well in my garden. It's too much work to baby along four or five plants for 10 or 12 tomatoes.

It's also hard to choose because all the varieties look so beautiful in the catalog. It's easy to order too many and end up with 200 tomato plants like we did last year. Who in the world can take care of 200 tomato plants and grow broccoli, too? Not me.

I need some tomatoes for canning. How about Santa Clara Canners? Tomato Growers Catalog describes this tomato as very juicy yet solid, with fruit that weighs 8 to 10 ounces. Perfect for canning. Until I grew Santa Claras, I thought that you were supposed to can the tomatoes that were just not good enough to eat or sell. I highly recommend them. They are kind of picky, though.

When I had to run to the grocery to buy three cans of tomatoes for spaghetti sauce last week, I sorely missed those canned tomatoes gleaming in the pantry. Better not settle for the Santa Claras alone. I think I'll try Bradley, which are described as pink, smooth, blemish free and produce fruits over a concentrated time period. I guess this means I'll have Bradleys overflowing the kitchen sink but only for a little while. These catalog writers must have been trained by the J. Peterman crew.

What else? Paste tomatoes to thicken my sauces: Grandma Mary's Paste, Opalka, Italian Red Pear, Mama Leone, and Howard German. And I can't forget the Polish Linguisas. See what I mean? Six varieties already and I haven't chosen slicers and salad tomatoes yet.

Plenty of choices to make on a cold winter day. I haven't even begun to think of peppers and onions yet.

A Bird in the Hand

Regardless of how much I would like to raise chickens and have "farm-fresh" eggs at the ready, I know there are limits on how much I can do in a day. Having chickens requires having someone at home to watch over them during the day--and this can't be the dog--and someone to put them up in the evening.

Not only are the foxes around here brave enough to venture onto our patio, the neighbors do not seem the sort exactly open to the idea of wayward poultry scratching in their yards. I would have to worry about them--the chickens, the foxes, and the neighbors--all the time. I don't have the energy for that.

I mentioned my love of homegrown eggs in my night class last semester: rich scrambled eggs, yellow cakes that are really yellow. One of the students came up to me after class and said she could bring me all the fresh eggs I could eat. Her father sells organically raised chickens and their eggs, and they keep the smallest eggs for themselves. "I cannot eat four dozen eggs a week," she said. "You're welcome to at least half of them for as long as you want them."

Last Thursday, she brought me two dozen of the sweetest little eggs. They are barely the size of my cupped palm, and I have small hands. Making scrambled eggs for the three of us took an entire dozen, but they are the richest eggs I have ever eaten. When I made the white cake yesterday, I compared the store-bought eggs to the farm eggs, and the color of the yolks is the difference between the color of lemons and oranges.

I am thankful for students who enjoy sharing their abundance with me. I should not be so amazed at the number of good people I know, but I often forget how many there are.

Seven Minute Frosting

Granny really couldn't cook very well. I'm sure she was a product of her time, but boiling green beans with ham for two or three days before they were eaten really didn't leave much bean to enjoy. And they were mighty salty. I can't even talk about the mincemeat pie, for which she fancied herself famous. Perhaps she was.

I haven't eaten meat in years, but every now and then I want to taste those beans and choke down a bite of mincemeat pie. (For some reason, I was usually allowed--or was it forced?--to eat only a bite. My memory fails me on this one.)

In the summer, she made us "Snow Joes" with ice we crushed by hand using a heavy, metal contraption. For the flavoring, she used a little sugar, a little water, and half a bottle of pure extract: lemon, peppermint, or rum. But what exactly is the difference between Pure Rum Extract and rum? By the time we went to bed or Mom picked us up, we were tipsy from those kid-version mint juleps.

Every birthday cake that I remember Granny making me was iced with Seven Minute Frosting, one of the only things that she made well every single time. In fact, I don't remember even a holiday-related cake that did not have this frosting; it was a family specialty that Granny, Aunt LaVerne, and their mother, myGrandma Mayme, all made.

Until today, I had never tried to make this frosting. I usually end up making a butter and sugar based "cold" frosting. I was feeling a little homesick for Granny's house today, and I pulled out my recipe box to look for the recipe that I must have copied down from her at some point. I could not find the Seven Minute Frosting recipe in any of the cookbooks I own, so I know it must be hers.

Making Seven Minute Frosting is a lot like making candy. Eggs, cream of tartar, sugar, corn syrup, and water cooked over a hot double boiler for seven minutes or until the mixture forms stiff peaks. I made two batches today, and the first one took twelve minutes and the second one took nine.

When it's finished, it looks like melty marshmallow, even when it turns hard on the cake. I could have cried when I tasted that cake and frosting mixture. It was like being home at Granny's again.