masterpieces

sometimes, you just have a good week, and no matter what else drags you down, stresses you out, or what have you. 3 excellent things came into my life this week, only one of which did i have anything to do with. regardless of what else is happening, it's important to stop and give these things their due. they are, after all, what makes life worth while.

first, i give you the most excellent pizza pie ever created by a 5 year old boy, my friend Owen. he and his mom, Theresa, came over for pizza the other night, and he showed us how it's done. a little pesto, a little red sauce, a circle of pepperoni, a smaller circle of black olives, finished with a mushroom in the middle.

second, a baby sweater for a friend who gave birth a few months ago. i was woefully behind on this...

...but i think it turned out ok. it is, after all, purple. a nice retro, off-center closure, sure to look dashing on the strawberry blond babe it's headed for.

and finally, after much waiting, my new niece, Marin. she came a little early but not without much fanfare and excitement. welcome, little thing - can't wait to meet you!

masterpieces, i think, all 3.

purling on the porch

spring has been slow to come to the north land and as most of you know, i'm somewhat loathe to tempt the gods of warm weather when they first show their sunny faces. they seem like ground hogs sometimes, hiding again if you make too big a deal over their early appearances.

so it takes more than a few warm days around here to get me talking about spring. but today, i heard my first sandhill cranes and we hit about 50F at the height of the day, so i'm sure we can't turn back now.

to celebrate, Dea and i spent a chunk of the afternoon purling on the porch, enjoying the warm sun and melting snow.

who cares if the rest of the country has green grass and cheery flowers by now? we work hard for our spring in these parts and sitting on the deck knitting, while watching the snow recede from the yard as cranes fly overhead might just be the best way to spend an afternoon.

masterpiece

it starts like this:

Scharfenberger chocolate and butter mixed with eggs, sugar, pecan flour, and vanilla. that's it.

after that's all baked and cooled, you pour a spreadable ganache (this time Scharfenberger chocolate, cream, and butter) over the cake to make a glaze.

a few chopped pecans pressed into the sides, a garnish of white chocolate designed with a toothpick, and a ring of fresh raspberries...

and you have a birthday cake! Happy Birthday Cara, and many, many more...

recovery

I've been down for a week now with a nasty chest cold that has kept me on the couch with Kleenex and cough drops. but today, armored with a bit more energy and inspired by freshly falling snow, i ventured out for a short walk with Nuchie who has been patiently waiting for my recovery.

we started out on a foot trail near our house. I like these little trails where i don't have to worry about snow machines or 4-wheelers and where Nuch and i can romp without ruining ski tracks.

it was slow going. 5 solid days of hacking has left me feeling like someone was squeezing the bottom 2/3 of my lungs, leaving me with little breathing capacity for a hilly trail that really required snowshoes.

but going slow provides other opportunities. stopping to gasp gave me time to look around and see the trail i might have otherwise looked past.

a peeling birch. i mean, how cool is this tree? pretty and good fire starter, not to mention its importance to Athabascan cultures in making birch bark baskets.

the promise of summer in frozen high bush cranberries leftover from last year. these little guys grace many Fairbanks tables in the form of syrup, jelly, and wine every fall. they are part of the bounty we try to keep up with during our short summer months.

i finally made it back home, thanks to the unflagging support of Nuchie, my trusty bad dog. even though it was a short walk, it was good to get outside again and see some of the world's details.

99 bottles of beer on the counter

i live with a beer brewer. he'd be the first person to say that he's not a "real" brewer (whatever that means), but then he'll break out the 'original gravity' and 'protein break'. if you're not a real brewer, you won't know what those things are. but i digress.

beer has been brewing in my house for the last 11 days. it's happened before and though i get the basics of yeast and grains from my bread-baking days, i don't get beer. it's a mystery to me.

so, for the uninitiated, i watched the process carefully and came up with these easy steps for making homebrew.

1. drink beer. (apparently, brewing begins with drinking. it seems like we're getting a little close to a chicken and egg dilemma, but this is what they did...oh! and you have to look reflective while you're doing this step. very important.)

2. next comes the malt. (I think some grains slipped into that pot while i wasn't looking, but no matter. malt provides the 'body of the beer' - still not sure what this means, but that's what they said...and food for the yeast to make alcohol. this is an important step.)

3. more malt. (because of the importance of this step, i got involved to make sure alcohol happened. you can't leave these things to chance, you know.)

4. drink more. (this actually happened a lot more than portrayed here, but i'm trying to keep these guys looking respectable.)

5. get hoppy. (hops are actually a flower that account for the aromatic bitterness of beer and help prevent it from spoiling. at one point, Cob exclaimed, '14.2% alpha acids, my ass!' which has something to do with the bitterness index of these particular hops. either way, i refer back to my point about not being a "real" brewer.)

6. fermentation in the carboy (notice the vodka bottle...brewing beer requires some obsessive sterilization procedures to avoid creating off-tastes in the beer. this is one that i think may just be to continue with the whole drinking theme. Here, Cob is "sterilizing" his mouth before creating a suction in the tube to the carboy.)

7. [10 days later] bottling. (this is the only part i really understand. beer goes in bottle. cap goes on bottle. clean up kitchen.)

8. naming the beer.

i give you Cold Snap Ale, an IPY IPA (for the non-Arctic types: International Polar Year India Pale Ale).

triple word score

can you tell we're excited about Tuesday around here?

teaser

knitters like to share their stuff. get a bunch of knitters in a room and people start pulling out their projects in various stages of completion, even projects that require a guided tour by the maker. knitters can take this leap of creative faith; they are used to things unfinished. imagining the finished product sometimes requires as much creativity of mind as nimbleness of fingers.

the frustration comes when you want to share widely and can't. you create a thing of cabled beauty, glorious even in its incompleteness, and it must remain hidden in the shadows lest its recipient see it.

this is my solution. just a glimpse, a brief and incomplete snap-shot, a fleeting tableau:

this is, by the way, a return to my cabled roots after a long hiatus in the crisp, precise land of scandinavian two-color knitting. let me just point out that it is reversible and the other side is just as pretty.

whew. i feel better now.